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Notes -
Apologies for the late response.
That one does seem to have been created before the original went down, fair enough.
I think it's more likely that two things are true
If I was a soulless corporate bastard in charge of killing this open-source product off I'd get the teams working on this product to rework the APIs in a way that just happens to break this method and look to deliver that in 6-12 months. This gives plenty of time to work on it, plausible deniability as to why the workaround broke, and hopefully everyone has forgotten by then.
But are they, actually? FULU isn't a person so while the organization could be sued it seems much less likely for any of the people behind it to be vulnerable. It's hard to tell in a foreign language but that "dafik" fellow seems to be fairly anonymous, with a common name, few projects, and little information.
I'm also not sure if just hosting the repository is legally problematic. Most of the claims Bambu made sound related to development of the repository and it's not clear to me that any of the people rehosting intend to continue development.
In practice, I’ve noticed pirates tend to do this: a big software or repository will be taken down (drawing attention), they’ll wait a bit (well past mainstream attention span), then a fork will start accumulating software updates or re-uploaded media.
I’m sure they don’t want to be arrested. Usually they’re in a country like Russia or Brazil where they’re safer from legal action. But the result is the same, the data is re-uploaded.
Maybe. It might also be the case that some new 3D printer is announced that is open and has enough features/price, so developers and consumers focus less on Bambu.
It wouldn't surprise me. Keeping under the radar is a good strategy for actions you don't feel you can defend, whether that's morally or legally.
I only partially agree. Yes, the data will be there (probably). But having to trust anonymous people in faraway countries has significant downsides; it's harder to find them and there's a lot more risk they could serve you something malicious. Reputation and community are hard to build when trying to avoid companies playing legal whack-a-mole.
Also note that none of this requires the data be legal. To bring this back around towards the original argument about enabling game preservation, if you're happy to download hacked-up .exes or .dlls from an anonymous individual in Russia or Brazil then you can do that right now! You don't need to legalize anything to get this outcome. The pirates probably have most games available already.
I think a lot of SKG's support comes from people wanting a better process than this, one with less risk and which doesn't require significant technical know-how and internet savvy. I don't dislike the idea of making reverse-engineering and fixing old games legal but I just don't think it alone gets us there.
I don't know the 3D printing space well enough to comment on the plausibility of this scenario, but I do hope it comes to pass.
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