I'm working on something similar, so I may be biased but I'd say no. It's something that transforms and integrates with the content in your browser to facilitate learning. I think fair use applies because 1. it's for educational purposes 2. it does not diminish or compete with the value of the original copyright owner since the content is not copied to some separate site, and subscriptions/ads still apply (unless of course they also start a language learning business)
The name "Netflix" though seems troublesome, I agree.
For-profit education does not get a free pass in fair use.
> transforms and integrates with the content in your browser
"Integrates with" and "browser" are irrelevant technical details.
I'm not a lawyer, so I'm not sure, but for example Grand Theft Auto's publisher shut down efforts in the computer vision industry to use their game as a training data generation engine for self-driving car research. That's why I'm also wondering how the law deals with using things you have a license for in different ways, for different purposes than originally intended.
By that logic any Chrome extension that modifies the contents of a copyrighted web page is illegal. Holding up an automatic translation device to translate what is being said on the TV would be illegal etc. There are nuances of course, but I don't think it's a problem here.
> That's why I'm also wondering how the law deals with using things you have a license for in different ways, for different purposes than originally intended.
I really don't know much about law, just trying to apply my common sense here. I think the difference in this case is that there is a single customer that _uses_ the extension to modify their experience, not a large corporation using a product (game engine and content) for unlicensed purposes. I could see why Rockstar would potentially want to keep the right to license the engine for these simulation purposes in the future, in which case they'd have to block this kind of use of the game directly.
> Grand Theft Auto's publisher shut down efforts in the computer vision industry to use their game as a training data generation engine for self-driving car research.
Yes. I know many people still use it and if you're just a small university lab, Take-Two probably won't come after you. They still don't allow it, and researchers literally don't care (to the extent of not even knowing that there may be something to care about), us CS folks don't like to think about legal matters.
It appears that some people were distributing modified copies of the game or selling access to it as a driving simulator. In that case I agree that it's copyright infringement, in the same way that distributing modified copies of Photoshop or selling access to it as a cloud service would infringe on Adobe's copyright.
But that's different from using the game to generate data and only sharing that data (or using Photoshop to draw a picture) since there cannot be copyright infringement without copying.
Since LLwN requires the users themselves to obtain access to the content they want to study, there's no copying happening beyond what the user has the license to do, and hence no copyright infringement.
The name "Netflix" though seems troublesome, I agree.