They’re claiming that forking their open source code and using the user agent in it unchanged is “impersonation”. And the only reason that might be an issue is because Section 1201 of the DMCA makes it illegal to break any digital lock, even if it’s a shitty one. Whether this even counts as a lock is up for debate in my opinion, but that doesn’t stop people from getting sued and owing lawyers money.
If you share the lock and the key with the public and tell them (via AGPL copyleft open source license) they may use, share, modify it (or not), etc with no penalty, and they even give you the secret knock, i can’t in any way see how that’s breaking a lock.
What, are they claiming the user agent their application uses is copyrightable IP?
They’re claiming that forking their open source code and using the user agent in it unchanged is “impersonation”. And the only reason that might be an issue is because Section 1201 of the DMCA makes it illegal to break any digital lock, even if it’s a shitty one. Whether this even counts as a lock is up for debate in my opinion, but that doesn’t stop people from getting sued and owing lawyers money.
If you share the lock and the key with the public and tell them (via AGPL copyleft open source license) they may use, share, modify it (or not), etc with no penalty, and they even give you the secret knock, i can’t in any way see how that’s breaking a lock.
But they said don’t use the key or the secret knock, otherwise they’ll write a blog shit talking you.
So if there is a legal battle, this would likely be the crux of their argument. Good to know.