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kposehn parent
Morally, I would take it down.

It is all well and good to write these sorts of things as a demo, but distribution is something where I would defer to the actual owner of the API in question.

After all, how many of us would want someone creating an unauthorized library to a private API that we don't wish to have public?

peterkelly
As was ruled in the recent Oracle vs. Google case, APIs are not subject to copyright protection:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2012/05/no-copyrights-apis-jud...

patrickmay
You're responding to a moral argument with a legal argument.

Snapchat developed the service and the API. They don't want alternative implementations of the API to access their service. Morally, publishing such an alternative implementation is questionable. At best, it is discourteous in the extreme.

If someone asks you not to copy the product of their creative work, what moral justification do you have for doing so?

peterkelly
I see this case as being different to copying someone's work. I do admit it's a bit morally questionable, in the sense that it's something that Snapchat doesn't want people doing. However, my view of the relationship between Internet services and client software which accesses those services is such that alternative implementations of both should be considered legitimate.

You have raised a very good point though, and it's certainly made me revisit my take on this. I've personally been the victim of others taking copies of my app and selling it under different names (which I obviously do have a problem with). However I've also seen other people implement similar features and a similar UI to my own app, and I don't have a problem with that - we only got to where we are today because of the spread of ideas through these means (see: Xerox PARC and all the companies that have used their work).

In this particular case there was no IP violation. It was simply an alternative implementation of a network protocol - and in fact it was just a library, not an application in and of itself. The only thing I think the author did wrong was to include the API keys.

ialex
This time is a little bit different since google copy the API but they used their own devices to run the API, in this case he copied the API but still uses snapchat service so he must build their own snapchat server to avoid copyright protection i think.
peterkelly
Yes, I agree, and in fact after looking at the code I realised he's included API keys which I think is wrong. As I received your response I was just finishing up another comment on this (https://www.hackerneue.com/item?id=6084802).
icebraining
Personally, I think the idea of purposely trying to maintain private an API designed to be used by code running on others' computers to be morally dubious.

I would agree with your position if this was some internal service of theirs.

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