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0 pointsethanrutherford7d ago0 comments

By definition, it is exactly a law. It's known as business law. The ToS is a business contract which you must agree to if you wish to use the service. Violating terms of service is literally a breach of contract.

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vova_hn27d ago

How can you breach a contract if you are not a party to a contract? OpenCode is not using any Anthropic services, they are just publishing some source code that seems (obligatory IANAL) to be protected speech under the First Amendment [0], if this legal argument is happening in American jurisdiction.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Code_as_speech

gitaarik7d ago

Interesting point. I've been looking into a similar issue recently, and for example LinkedIn won a lawsuit against the analytics company hiQ because they violated their ToS for scraping their website. And I think they also never technically had a direct contract they'd breach.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HiQ_Labs_v._LinkedIn

vova_hn27d ago

Yes, but I think that there is a big difference. In the case you linked, hiQ were actually doing the scraping themselves.

People (or company? not sure) don't make any requests to Anthropic themselves. They just publish code that can make such requests.

I don't think that there is a legal precedent that would make publishing code that can do scraping illegal.

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vova_hn27d ago

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Code_as_speech

gitaarik7d ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HiQ_Labs_v._LinkedIn

vova_hn27d ago

Yes, but I think that there is a big difference. In the case you linked, hiQ were actually doing the scraping themselves.

People (or company? not sure) don't make any requests to Anthropic themselves. They just publish code that can make such requests.

I don't think that there is a legal precedent that would make publishing code that can do scraping illegal.

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