# Redundancy Built Under Duress Becomes Evidence You Were Never Trapped ## Claim Infrastructure a dependent party was forced to replicate during a cutoff can later be cited by the party who caused the cutoff as proof the dependency was avoidable all along. <!-- atomicity: 1 idea ✓ --> ## Scope & conditions - The move requires the replication to be visible and dated after the cutoff, which is exactly when it is easiest to document. - It inverts the evidence: the cost incurred under compulsion is reread as evidence the compulsion was survivable, and therefore minor. - Creates a real incentive problem — building redundancy strengthens the other side's argument that you never needed the dependency. - Generalizes past litigation to any dependency dispute, including vendor lock-in and platform deprecation. ## Evidence From The Repository's coverage of Automattic's response to the WP Engine customer class action, where post-cutoff replication is cited against the claim of dependency. ## Links - [[A Defendant's Admissions Constrain the Record Its Denials Do Not]] — the other reading move from the same filing - [[Trademarks Are the Only Asset a Fork Cannot Route Around]] — the asset that no amount of forced replication produces, which is what makes this inversion incomplete - [[Distribution Channel Control Is a Governance Surface Separate From the License]] — what the replication actually had to rebuild, and why it was expensive - [[3. Resources/MOCs/Open Source Governance MOC]] — the WordPress-saga thread this inversion came from.