41–50 of 243 posts
When 37Signals wrote a blog post showing this design style outrageously improved conversions they must have expected that lots of folks would copycat. Is DHH as pissed off at Elance for the blatant copy? https://www.elance.com/ There's a difference between eLance's "inspiration" and actually referencing hosted images & code that CureBit did, but it's not a night and day difference. Murky territory with us all copying…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Copying the design doesn't necessarily deserve "scumbag" treatment. Some brusque words, sure, but certainly not the escalation of DHH. What Curebit did DEFINITELY qualifies as scumbag. There's some unknown tangible cost for 37signals (in the form of bandwidth, hosting assets for a competitor's site). There are small claims court cases considering similar situations nearly every day.
What about their logo? https://twitter.com/#!/dhh/status/163298220322209792
From a copyright-law perspective, it's not a slam-dunk that Curebit infringed any protectable aspect of the 37Signals design, as opposed to "stock" elements.[1] West Side Story has a lot in common with Romeo and Juliet , but the latter itself has a lot in common with a long line of still-earlier romantic tragedies.[2] Some of the reactions here are fascinating. As a group, HNers prize the freedom to copy from others…
West Side Story and Romeo and Juliet share the same _idea_, not the same image file.
From a copyright-law perspective, it's not a slam-dunk that Curebit infringed any protectable aspect of the 37Signals design, as opposed to "stock" elements.[1] West Side Story has a lot in common with Romeo and Juliet , but the latter itself has a lot in common with a long line of still-earlier romantic tragedies.[2] Some of the reactions here are fascinating. As a group, HNers prize the freedom to copy from others…
In this case, Curebit was only copying the design of a landing page, so it was probably not worth pissing off DHH even if that landing page was legally usable and worked better. Although it really seems that DHH was more pissed off by Allan's tweets and posts about it than by the design itself.
Is this really such a big deal? We are all only where we are today based on building on the improvements of others. This isn't exactly like Zynga copying other small studios games, it's just a bit of design rip off, which incidentally, I'm not a designer, but if I see something that I think looks good on another site, I'm happy to copy the css styles for it. I've often thought if I'm just kidding myself, and what I'm…
If you are testing 10 variations, getting "inspiration" is faster than come up with your own design and doesn't hurt 37Signals during the short length of the test.
Why did people get so angry so fast?
The only people who got really hurt in this story are Curebit, not 37 Signals.
When 37Signals wrote a blog post showing this design style outrageously improved conversions they must have expected that lots of folks would copycat. Is DHH as pissed off at Elance for the blatant copy? https://www.elance.com/ There's a difference between eLance's "inspiration" and actually referencing hosted images & code that CureBit did, but it's not a night and day difference. Murky territory with us all copying…
I believe there is a clear legal difference here. These things are over the line (and illegal): Using images without permission Using code without permission Referencing images and code from another site without permission Gray area: Designing a site from scratch to roughly copy another site's design
This is not illegal, merely poor form and also a bad technical decision because the other site can then control you.
If this were illegal, you would have to get permission from other sites to use iframes. Things like stumbleupon's web version couldn't exist.
Seems to be some logical inconsistencies in the startup community over what is and is not ok to copy. Usually, like anything, it comes back to whatever is self-serving to the person doing the talking. Investors speak out against patents on methods of doing business because their well-funded current or future portfolio companies could "build on" the ideas and use the cash lead to make a ton of money. Digital media dis…
Let's not pretend that we're dealing with a couple of noobs here, people.
If it weren't for the cumulative years of technology-related experience of everyone involved, a case could be made for excusing a blatant misstep with an admonishment, but for outright copy/paste theft? Allan Grant knew better and decided to steal anyway.
No such thing as bad PR. Let's how well those guys will be doing in the future.
Yes, seemingly bad PR can cause unexpected good things, and bad PR can sometimes be turned into a good thing when handled skillfully (even then, not always). The idea that all PR is good PR is just naive.
If Allan Grant hadn't dug himself deeper into his hole, but instead come back with modesty, apologies and flattery to DHH at the very least (perhaps something outside the box as well, "Hey @DHH, to show we're sorry we'll donate $10k to a charity of your choice"?) then the bad PR would have got their name out there and their response might have prevented people from thinking badly of them, and even made people like them. But even then, there's never a guarantee that any response can turn bad PR to good.