
How my school rejected an app made for students - theiostream
http://theiostream.tumblr.com/post/87830445451/portoapp-a-story
======
was_hellbanned
"In the real world I'd be sued"

Well, maybe, in the real world, if anyone even noticed, you might get sued. It
would be baseless, but you wouldn't have the resources for a court battle, so
you'd just tuck your tail and run.

The lesson here is that institutions can be pointlessly authoritative
assholes. Between the offended IT schmucks who were churning out their own,
awful app, and the administrative types who are seeking to cover their own
asses, legally speaking, it really couldn't work out any other way.

Oh, and since they can just kick you out of school, with no meaningful
recourse, you're _really_ getting a lesson in what it's like to be the little
innovator.

~~~
faceyspacey
I agree ..and if you graduate soon, re-release the app lol. They wont be able
to do anything and they won't bother to sue lol. Like someone else said, it's
baseless. Guess what? Google scrapes the entire web and profits from it. But
in your case, you happen to go to the school, so unless you want to be kicked
out, that changes everything.

It doesn't make it a moral issue though. Tell em: "look, first off, I will
remove it, but don't fool yourself: this in no way is a moral/ethical issue.
You simply have control because if I don't follow your desires or rules, I get
disciplined in one way or another. So there's nothing ethical to it. It's an
agreement between me and you that I can be apart of your school if I follow
your rules. It's too bad you're so shortsighted here and arbitrarily inventing
this rule that before didn't exist."

Anyway, you've been at this school for 8 years and you're programming great
stuff--aren't you due to graduate some time soon. Like I said, release it
again then. ..But also leave school. You don't need school to be a big
success. You'll have way more time to devote towards what you really love.
email me at james@faceyspacey.com for a paying remote job right now. I got
work for you doing stuff you will love.

------
dethstar
"This goes to show that as much as schools attempt to mask the image of a
great environment for students to thrive, learn enterpreneurism and so on
(mine does that a lot), they’re traditionalists to the point that it doesn’t
make any sense. What do they have to lose with my app? How is that
classification as copyright infringement even pertinent? They apparently just
must have control of anything that has anything to do with the school."

Biggest problem with education. It is not about learning how to learn,
enterpreneurism or any other fun thing you could think of. Is about learning
how to obey, and letting those in charge take care of things (even if they're
done terribly by people who actually don't like/care for it).

edit to add something else: I think more schools should allow for software to
be made by the students. They understand the needs of the other students
better.

~~~
krrishd
To the point of your edit, I'm actually working on something along those lines
- [http://openSourceSchool.co](http://openSourceSchool.co)

The code isn't on Github yet, but I've developed an open source website
framework and mobile app framework for schools and other educational
institutions, because ed tech kinda sucks from what I've experienced.
Hopefully I'll be working on larger aspects if schools would allow non-trivial
software to be developed by students who could do it better than the school.

------
drchiu
To the OP, I feel for you.

Your app made someone over at the IT dept feel inadequate. Remember, some
older IT person is trying to protect their job, no matter how crappy they're
doing it. Your app, as you had mentioned, was much better than the one that
they made.

This, unfortunately, is the way the world is. Think about patent trolls,
incumbents suing start ups that threaten to shake up the industry, etc.

The way they all sat you down (quite literally like going to the principal's
office) was simply bullying.

Keep your chin up and look beyond this. This app is not the fight worth
expending energy fighting for.

~~~
Alupis
I don't know where you live, but here in the US, you violated no copyright
laws (or any laws or ethical clauses for the matter) by simply providing
access to pre-existing works, ie. the schools website data.

If the school's website is publicly accessibly, as-in anyone can find it
online, then it's public information and you can use it at your will so long
as you state where the information came from (ie. not your original writing,
etc).

if you are in the US, check your schools student handbook/policies...
closely... if you found there is nothing restricting you, I would argue to
pursue your app (and be prepared for pushback from the school).

~~~
megablast
He is charging for the app, of course he is violating copyright laws.

~~~
jrockway
So if you view the site in a web browser that you pay for, the developer of
the web browser is infringing the website's copyright?

This app is just an HTTP user agent, as far as I can tell.

------
siculars
OP, consider this episode a badge of honor. You're doing the right thing.
Learning valuable technology and skills for a successful future - not just in
tech but in whatever you want to do. Finding a problem and doggedly pursuing a
solution is what you need to do in "real life." Chalk this episode up to life
experience. You have won a moral victory but as you said, don't expect them to
change their minds. Graduate and move on to bigger and better things and leave
these luddites in your rearview.

~~~
Fuxy
Don't you think you're contradicting yourself a bit you encourage him to be
persistent in fixing problems and never giving up but on the other hand you
tell him to give up and let the school have its way.

The hacker mentality doesn't just abruptly stop once we're not dealing with
programming issues.

Being relentless and constantly pushing to get what you want is a way of life.

------
sxtxixtxcxh
if you weren't aware, many school districts partner with a private firms for
technical services... which include things like selling the school a web site.

looking into this a bit more it would seem these services are provided by
[http://www.educacional.com.br/home/home.asp](http://www.educacional.com.br/home/home.asp)

what i'm saying is no, the school didn't reject this app... their partner –
your competition – did.

edit: oh wow, i've realized i had missed half the article (i stopped reading
at the first screenshot)... you're _charging_ for an app that stores
passwords, scrapes 3rd party content, practically bragging about how you
removed the company and school's branding... and _you 're_ upset?

~~~
theiostream
Educacional is their provider for some online content (mainly games and
similar stuff for young kids to have IT lessons). The grades db, memos and so
on are managed by the school itself, and the news as well. Educacional, as far
as my app is concerned, is simply a gateway for getting authentication tokens
to /those/ services which I actually use.

And, the app that I mentioned in the article (which could be considered as a
competitor of sorts) is also being developed by the school itself.

~~~
iancarroll
> And, the app that I mentioned in the article (which could be considered as a
> competitor of sorts) is also being developed by the school itself.

Which is probably why the school shut you down.

~~~
theiostream
Their app's feature set consists of contact information, maps to the school, a
gallery of static photos about the school, and webviews that display their
website's content directly. It doesn't even comprise grades, memos and so on,
which is what my product's focus is. That's why I don't think that's the
reason.

~~~
pistle
So, you requested written permission... didn't get it... charged for your
app... and now they are just a bunch of luddite meanies turning you into an
evil villain instead of fawning all over you?

You are serving as a proxy for credentials into a system where the school is
legally liable to protect the privacy of the students, families, and staff.
Yeah. You get shut down NOW. It doesn't matter where your code is or how great
your work is. you are taking control of something that they are required to
protect.

If someone can hack iOS or your app and steal credentials, who's ass is on the
line for discovering, disclosing, remediating, rebuilding trust, resigning,
etc.? All those people have enough work without your app. They are responsible
for what they create. They can't be responsible for your work. If they
knowingly let it exist, they will have to take responsibility for any fallout
that may come from it.

Who is going to be handling all the calls when people change their passwords
at the site, but your app locks their accounts out by trying to use the cached
credentials?

They have plenty to lose with your app. You are learning many things.

~~~
belovedeagle
But it sounds like the app isn't doing anything a web browser couldn't do.
This is a recurring theme among authoritarians now: take something that a web
browser does, and argue that because it's being done outside of a web browser,
somehow that's wrong. Look at weev; that's exactly what he did (there are
certainly other aspects, but it was one used to scare the court and the aspect
that the prosecutor willfully failed to understand).

"All those people" are responsible for a public API; in this case, it is a
text-based api over HTTP only, meant for human consumption, but it's an API
nonetheless. This app does not bypass that API. If they don't like how the API
is being used, they need to change it; but of course you can't close it
completely. This is the analog hole of the Internet.

Web browsers are just a client for that particular kind of API. It's
ridiculous to limit which clients can access an API, as long as they do so
correctly. Of course, you can make it difficult or impossible for unapproved
clients to access the API, that will achieve the goal; that's what DRM does.
But by not putting those controls on the API you're allowing new competing
clients to connect with it.

~~~
pistle
You can try to recontextualize it to suit some internal need of yours to feel
OK or good about something being bent to suit another purpose. That doesn't
change the copyright in spirit or in law.

It's not a public API meant for human consumption. It's a viewstate object,
which is meant for currying data back and forth inside controls, etc. in an
ASP.Net application. It's not an API. He had to hack that format which is
feasibly a DMCA violation as well.

Weev would be a horrible example to bring up.

I'm not sure we're going to close a gap here if you feel all copyright is
stripped the moment data can be presented in an anonymous user's browser.

------
outworlder
> "I found out they were developing an app for themselves"

This is the reason, no need to look into it further. They probably sunk a lot
of money in what turned out to be a crappy app. Knowing how these things work
in Brazil, I wouldn't be surprised if the company developing it had ties with
the school's administration. If so, a crappy app wouldn't usually be a
problem... until this guy's app appeared. Then, the development costs will
have to be justified.

Notice how they didn't complain that the student was making money. They don't
care about that. All they care about is not looking bad, while furthering
their agenda.

------
aeontech
Sorry to hear it. You're completely right, there's nothing unethical about
what you did, and if you did get sued for it in "real world", any competent
judge would laugh the plaintiff out of the room.

If you really want to fight for it, perhaps you can get support from the
student body and the teachers that have liked the app before?

If not, well, at least you learned a lot by completing it, congratulations on
that!

~~~
loumf
IANAL, but websites are allowed to control (via their terms of service)
whether you can scrape them and use their data. There is a difference between
accessing a website via chrome and via a native app that uses the website as a
service.

~~~
MattHeard
There is an even bigger difference between accessing a website via Chrome and
via a native app which costs 99c.

~~~
spacemanmatt
The app doesn't aggregate content, it displays it. This notion of authorized
clients you seem to have doesn't exist. If they put their HTTP port out there,
they don't get to say access by Chrome/IE/FF is ok, but curl or your custom
app is not. If you then _republish_ the data from your site, that's a wholly
separate issue, but displaying it on a viewer directly after requesting it
from their site is not aggregation.

~~~
loumf
You can say whatever you want in your terms of service. Enforceable or not,
good-actors just follow the rules of the service -- because if the service
wanted to block you, they could probably easily do it.

------
xauronx
So, what you're saying is that since it's open source.... I should publish a
version myself and see if the school is ballsy enough to try to bluff a random
company in a random part of the USA?

~~~
Alupis
There is nothing they could do, even in their own country. No laws have been
violated here.

(maybe we should all publish the app to prove the point)

~~~
e28eta
They'd probably still harass the student, as the original author. I don't
think you'd be doing him any favors.

~~~
Alupis
Fair point.

It boils my blood to see a school administration so blatantly and wrongly take
advantage of a student that they claim to be educating and preparing for the
future. If anything, the administration should be in full support of the OP.
If the OP can tolerate the pushback, and there is nothing in his school's
policies forbidding, he should pursue the app. Let the administration spin
their wheels. They can't sue him. And if they tried, they would lose. It's
just absurd.

------
Canada
You are right, your school is wrong.

They should be thinking, "We should be also serving this data in a parsible
format such as JSON or XML so apps like this are easier to create and to avoid
breaking things if we change our HTML"

Also, facts such as grades or sports results cannot be copyright at all.

~~~
Alupis
Even if it were subject to copyright, you violate no laws (in any country I
know of) by simply re-posting the information and providing attribution to the
original author/creators of the content. If true, any news aggregator and most
websites would be getting sued every day for regurgitating information.

~~~
schrijver
You’ve posted this further up as well, but it is simply not true. The whole
point of copyright is that no-one can re-publish (‘copy’) a copyrighted work
without permission. News sites pay for the right to republish Associated Press
reports, for example, as ‘hueving’ points out.

Aggregators like Hacker News and Reddit don‘t copy content as a whole, they
just provide links. Providing a preview of the content, as Facebook does,
might be considered either fair use or citation—but in neither case they’re
copying and republishing the entire content.

Attribution does not magically remove copyright.

~~~
luka-birsa
I agree.

If I'm not mistaken, Google got sued for providing short excerpts of news from
various news outlets and decided to settle out of court.

------
sumukh1
As a former student who created an iOS app for my school district - I really
feel for you.

Creating the application & working with the district was a great learning
experience for me - perhaps the most useful thing I did in high school. I'm
sure you learned a good bit by creating the app - those skills will certainly
help you in the future.

Luckily for me the staff/administrators we talked to really embraced the idea
and brought me on and made it into the official iOS application for the school
district and then open-sourced it. We pitched the ability to check grades, get
push notifications, and check documents. It's important to note, however, that
I went to school in Silicon Valley - so that's probably a factor.

You've already demonstrated a lot of skill by creating the app. (It looks a
whole lot better than my v1)! - Chalk this up as a good learning experience -
Keep it up!

------
knappador
Hahhahaa this is a hilarious. I went to a school like this that was super
paranoid and also had a counselor person. People put into these roles always
came across as psycho and condescending to me. What a better way to bring
young minds into the world than to fail to bargain or negotiate with them
about their behavior, instead just waffling into that "in the real world" BS.

Ditch the proprietary soft when possible if you want to get as far away from
BS as you can. FOSS is one of the few refuges where you can believe in
humanity as much as you might. You have the "challenge" to think about how
unethical your choice of platforms is ;-D

------
forrestthewoods
Isn't a key part of copyright lawsuits damages? Let's say, for example, that
the school did sue him for copyright infringement. Then let's say they win the
lawsuit. It is in fact copyright. Now what? I believe he'd have to take it
down and then pay damages. What, exactly, would the financial damages to a
public institution be? Hell, even if it was a private school what type of
damages could you possibly argue for this type of app?

Now he is selling the app so profiting off of someone else's copyrighted work
is pretty much a no go. But what if he gave it away for free? What the result
of a copyright lawsuit be exactly?

~~~
Alupis
No copyright law (in any country that I'm aware of, even if the OP sold the
app) has been violated.

The OP may be subject to some school policy... but that's it. The
administration is plain wrong and the OP should pursue his app if he can
withstand the administrations push-back/threats.

You can always link-to and/or provide access to existing work (copyrighted or
not) so long as you provide proper attribution (state the original content
authors/creators)

~~~
luka-birsa
I'm not certain that linking and providing access is the same. Let's take a
copyrighted work which we can relate to more easily than web pages - TV Shows
on Hulu.

Now, you can always link to Hulu in your browser and direct your visitors to
Hulu. Hulu as the (C) holder can then decide if you're geographically suitable
to recieve this content.

How about building a proxy webpage that provides access to Hulu (let's call it
EU-Hulu)? We'll build a complete Hulu clone that works in EU by tunneling
video streams via VPN to our page and stream them from our web video players.

I don't think that adding attribuition (ie providing a "THIS CONTENT IS FROM
HULU" and their logo) to the page would solve our legal problems. If anybody
can confirm that this is in fact legal, I know what I'll be developing in the
near future: EU-HULU, EU-Spotify, EU-...

Copyright law is very very very strict. If it's not explicitely stated it's
forbidden. Even by taking code from a pastie repository, where it's clearly
made public, you're braking the authors Copyright unless he specifies
Licensing terms that allows you to copy paste it into your app. Source code
for all closed source software could be made public and that doesn't mean
you're allowed to use it in any way.

To go even further - Hulu, while it openly shares video content to US citizens
is unavailable to the rest of the world. We all know that you can bypass the
limitation by employing VPN, but you're breaking the Copyright law nontheless.
It's their choice if they want to limit access to their copyrighted materials.

If OP built a Web browser clone, he would be in the clear. He instead took
data from the webpage, mangled it into his own app and sold it for 0.99$. Now
while I do not agree with the tactics employed by the school (they should
embrace it instead), image we would be talking about Wikipedia and 6.99$
BestEncyclopedia app, developed by Apple, which downloads the data and
presents it a very nice way (they'd call it Cylopedia-Flow with huge images
and Helvetica all the way).

Right now you'd be very pissed at Apple.

~~~
clarry
> How about building a proxy webpage that provides access to Hulu (let's call
> it EU-Hulu)? We'll build a complete Hulu clone that works in EU by tunneling
> video streams via VPN to our page and stream them from our web video
> players.

This is not at all comparable to the OP's app, which (if I've understood the
post correctly) is a special purpose HTTP client. If its user can use that app
to get the data he wants, then he can also use a normal browser. It's using
the user's credentials. There is no middle man tapping into a restricted
stream and republishing that to the world.

> image we would be talking about Wikipedia and 6.99$ BestEncyclopedia app,
> developed by Apple, which downloads the data and presents it a very nice way
> (they'd call it Cylopedia-Flow with huge images and Helvetica all the way).

> Right now you'd be very pissed at Apple.

Nope. There are many wikipedia clones already. There is nothing wrong with
them. And there are many special purpose http clients to show specific sites
in a user friendly way. Nothing wrong with them.

------
scotty79
Good lesson. To be creative and avoid lawyers you need to be anonymous. That
nicely reinforces uselessness of copyright.

------
woah
What was the "ASP.net view state parser"?

~~~
joshschreuder
Blog post: [http://theiostream.tumblr.com/post/73637206523/parsing-
asp-n...](http://theiostream.tumblr.com/post/73637206523/parsing-asp-net-new-
view-state)

And accompanying source code:
[https://github.com/theiostream/viewstate](https://github.com/theiostream/viewstate)

~~~
glassx
It's been a while since I last had to parse ASP.NET pages, but AFAIK, the
viewstate isn't meant to be parsed by clients, you just have to re-send it
during postbacks. It's more like a cookie, or Rails' authenticity_token [1].

[1] [http://stackoverflow.com/questions/941594/understand-
rails-a...](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/941594/understand-rails-
authenticity-token)

EDIT: Oh, ok. Re-reading the article, he was parsing the ViewState because
there was some data hidden in there (a serious flaw actually), instead of
scraping the site normally! Clever!

------
estebank
In the US, "Copyright does not protect facts, ideas, systems, or methods of
operation, although it may protect the way these things are expressed[1]."
This means that in the US you can take the phone book, digitize it, and as
long as you present it in a distinct way you can publish that. It is clear
that you wouldn't be in the wrong there.

In Brazil, copyright law is slightly different (emphasis mine):

"The current body of Brazilian copyright exceptions and limitations may be
divided into three groups, relating to: 1) partial or full reproduction; 2)
derivative works; and 3) performing rights. The three tables in the following
sections provide an exhaustive list of the limitations present in Brazilian
copyright legislation.[2] _The dominant view in Brazilian literature is that
exceptions and limitations lists are to be strictly construed, with no
credence given to implied limitations._ This is a primary tenet of Brazilian
legal scholarship with respect to copyright; it is taken as dogma in academic
writing and, as a result, often by courts as well[3]."

What I understand is that unless it is explicitly laid out as an exception,
court houses would look at it as infringement.

"The reproduction of small excerpts of preexisting works of any nature, or of
an entire work of visual art, is allowed within the context of a larger work.
The reproduction itself must not be the main object of the larger work, and
must not interfere with the normal exploitation of the work or cause
unjustified harm to the legitimate interests of the author[3]."

Your app is doing quite a lot with the screen-scraped data. You're not just
presenting it unadulterated, but you're transforming it to present it in a way
easier to consume. Don't know if that constitutes enough for the scraped data
to "not be the main object of the larger work".

"To integrate any given computer program into others, be it at application or
operating system level, is permitted if done for personal use and unavoidable
considering the user’s needs. Integration must be done for the exclusive use
of the person who carries it out[3]."

You could argue that your application is doing nothing more than displaying
available information to people that already have access to it in a way that
answers the user's needs, but I don't think it would fly here because
integration is not "done for the exclusive use of the person who carries it
out".

"Higher-education institutions in Brazil usually do not provide clear policy
guidance on course readers and textbook copying. _In practice, the unlicensed
reproduction of copyrighted material is essential to academic life._ Course
readers, copies of book chapters and even entire books can be found in files
hosted by copy shops, ready for on-demand reproduction. Professors usually
keep personal files as well, in which they include all of their courses’
required and complementary reading material. Students are frequently seen
carrying spiral-bound photocopied textbooks to class. This is all done without
prior authorization from rightsholders[3]."

I find it extremely ironical that an "industry" that thrives (IMO correctly)
on copyright infringement, would go against a screen scraper for copyright
infringement of _facts_.

[1]: [http://www.copyright.gov/help/faq/faq-
protect.html](http://www.copyright.gov/help/faq/faq-protect.html)

[2]:
[http://www.bloomsburyacademic.com/view/AcctoKnowledgeinBrazi...](http://www.bloomsburyacademic.com/view/AcctoKnowledgeinBrazil_9781849660785/chapter-
ba-9781849660785-chapter-0003.xml#10)

[3]:
[http://www.bloomsburyacademic.com/view/AcctoKnowledgeinBrazi...](http://www.bloomsburyacademic.com/view/AcctoKnowledgeinBrazil_9781849660785/chapter-
ba-9781849660785-chapter-0003.xml)

~~~
pbhjpbhj
Assuming [1] to be a proper rendering of the current law then I see problems
with the school's claim that this activity is infringing:

Article 7(2) states, quite clearly, that the information in compilations and
databases is not protected. Article 47 says that paraphrases aren't infringing
- but no need to rely on that as Art.7 is so very clear. FWIW Art.8 says that
calendars and diaries are also excluded from copyright protection (but be
careful, as I understand, it Brazilian law doesn't treat lists as examples but
as strictly complete).

The school's claims seem to be unfounded. Perhaps the OP could ask them - in
view of their education(!) - if the school can show how the app is infringing
the school's copyright in view of the Articles saying that information is not
protected.

But as other's have noted it may be that you need to simply accept their
position in order to protect yourself from expulsion or other negative actions
the school could take.

You _could_ seek a copyright attorney/lawyer who will act for you _pro bono_!?
Especially if you wanted to take this to the newspapers.

One issue that is unclear to me is the authorisation process. Does the app
somehow scrape the users data centrally or do the users use the app as the
interface to access the data that is on the web pages.

It's possible that the website terms of use state that scraping is not
allowed. But I don't know with certainty how that one would pan out in my own
country nevermind in Brazil. Either way that wouldn't be "copyright
infringement".

\- - -

[1]: [http://entertainmentlawbrazil.com.br/brazilian-copyright-
act...](http://entertainmentlawbrazil.com.br/brazilian-copyright-act-law-
no-961098/)

------
wiseleo
I am particularly impressed by the viewstate workaround. That demonstrates an
unusual mindset and ability to solve interesting problems.

Mention this post in any job interview in Silicon Valley and you will likely
get hired.

As for the school, just remember that you are interacting with low paid
government employees who will never taste success.

In my opinion, you've done nothing wrong.

Media would love this story, but it may make your life miserable. How long
until you are out of that school?

------
mh_yam
This reminds me of when I asked for permission to make an iOS app for my
school and was denied with similar arguments. I guess it sucks more when
you've already put in so much effort and it gets shot down in one meeting.

I did learn that the school stored user/password information from Active
Directory in a flat file for one of the legacy applications...that was scary.

------
stale
I was rooting for the OP up to the point when he said he was charging for the
app. I know there wasn't some huge profit to be made there unless it's really
huge school, but still. If he wanted to do something good for the school and
fellow students shouldn't the app be free?

~~~
lyndonh
Profit = Sales - Apple's cut - Apple Developer Account annual fee - iTunes App
Store annual fee.

What makes you think he will be making a profit on a $0.99 app ?

Likely he was not making any profit at all. Are you suggesting he shouldn't
try to claw back some of his costs ?

And now they reject his app; he takes it down and definitely won't claw back
anything. Now he is down $200 + time and effort. Yeah, screw him for trying to
make money off the backs of anyone.

~~~
stale
Either way, IMO, students shouldn't be the ones paying (yes, I know it's only
1$). Maybe he should have made an arrangement with the school so they cover
the Apple fees or fund it through donations.

~~~
lyndonh
The information was on the web. Students didn't have to pay the $1 to get to
the information; they would have paid it because he made a nice, convenient
app. Or they could go in via the website and dig through it themselves.

Did you read the story ? He tried to talk to the school but after several
school employees told him they liked his app they changed their tune and
decided he was ripping them off. T hey could have worked to understand what he
had done and offered him his costs to open up the app but they decided not to.

------
edgyswingset
Well, you never got their permission so I don't see what the problem is.

Does it suck? Yeah, sure. That's irrelevant.

------
hellbreakslose
Amazing article from a young kid, bright, smart keep it up!

Let them take it to the appstore and see if they can really get it down due to
copyrights. I don't think they can sue you about anything, you'r just using
public data...

Also something else, take it up with your parents or whoever has you at that
school, and consider changing schools. Make it a scandal for them. School
trying to sue defendless student after having a bright idea for an app using
public data...

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megablast
Ah, you charge for theapp. Then they are correct, you are profiting of their
work.

If somebody was making money of my work, I too would be pissed.

~~~
wirrbel
So if a browser vendor charges for the browser (like Opera did, lets say) can
I sue opera for displaying my website?

