> This isn't difficult: stealing and copying API design and API documentation is wrong.

Copying APIs is fine, as far as I'm concerned.

The world is as better place if hardware and software is compatible with each other, and common interfaces enable that.

Right or wrong is relative. If to me this is not wrong then what are you gonna do about it.

I don't particularly agree with you; I've often thought that amounts to trying to win the debate by nuking the entire playing field. Even if you win, have you?

But I can spot you that anyhow, because there's a perfectly reasonable fallback position: This is illegal. It's a copyright infringement at the very least, and possibly other things as well. And being "illegal", the "what are you gonna do about it" actually has clear, well defined answers. Smartcar.com is doing them a favor by serving a cease & desist, as there is nothing preventing them from moving straight to legal action.

Copying a design is not illegal. Unless the design is patented (which it doesn't seem to be or the OP would likely have said so in the article), everyone is free to copy any design they want.

That you wish something was true doesn't make it so, unfortunately.

What is not OK is copying the documentation verbatim, that is copyrighted. However, that is, frankly, the least of the problems (and easiest to rectify) when someone is taking your product idea wholesale.

I see two issued US patents for smartcar: https://patents.google.com/patent/US9870656B2/ https://patents.google.com/patent/US10169825B2/

Those patents are directed towards "method[s] for processing requests for vehicular data", which at first glance appear unrelated to the descriptions of web APIs authenticated by OAuth that Smartcar is complaining about.

>everyone is free to copy any design they want

Copying text or pictures would be copyright infringement.

So, I'm wrong about this act being illegal, because it's not illegal, except for the parts where it is illegal?

even if its illegal, its nothing unless you win it in court.

I think I mentioned that when I said "moving straight to legal action".

Why is it wrong?

Copyright infringement? Plagiarism?

I hope most here can agree that taking a web page, doing command-C, command-V, changing a few words in a small amount and passing it off as your own work is wrong.

This is not even about cloning an API.

Everyone getting into business knows that competitors want to copy them. Not only that, there are only so many ways to do things, so it's usually a question of how much you're copying.

So inferior goods (using the economic term) can add low-cost options for consumers and are thus a social benefit.

While copying itself isn't bad, in practice those companies often releasing products that are unfit for sale or engage in deceptive advertising.

Because people and companies who do this add no value to society. They are parasites.

What if they provide the product at a lower price?

For how long? Until the VC money runs out and they either jack up the price or go bust?

Stealing from Peter and donating some of the gains to Paul is not ethical.

Even then, they are still parasites with no ethics.

If you won't throw your ethics into the pit for power, someone else will. And them everybody will be forced to throw the shared ethics or be outcompeted. And collectively, everyone will be poorer as a result.

https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/07/30/meditations-on-moloch/

I'll take the high road, thank you. I'm perfectly fine taking satisfaction in being morally and ethically superior for not stealing someone else's hard work.

I leave it to that someone else to have to resolve the cognitive dissonance. One concrete benefit might be not doing in my 50ies due to stress-related health issues.

And I would happily live in a poorer society with better ethics any day (given some minimum threshold of live quality).

I think you draw the wrong conclusion, even from your link. Your link as I read it is basically saying we are all collectively responsible for good and evil, and that there are supposedly unpopular evils which we ourselves create and implicitly endorse, often counterintuitively.

That doesn't mean we ought to just give up and worship whatever worst thing capitalism produces. If you look at Ginsberg's long history of political activism as an example it's certainly not what he and those around him lived.

At a separate scale from that discussion we need to "play our side" of the game, and that will necessarily involve your personal interpretation of ethics. I believe it is a kind of laziness to dismiss that.