YC and 500 Startups company Curebit caught stealing from 37 Signals • Hacker News Board

Re: YC and 500 Startups company Curebit caught stealing from 37 Signals

#151

Post by jasonlotito » Sun, Jan 29, 2012, 1:23 AM UTC

gizmo wrote: post #138

jasonlotito wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An honest question (and thank you for not using the term stealing!=)), but you listed 4 reasons. Just curious about where it crosses the line for you. If someone does A, is it still a grey area? Is it because of B? C? D? Personally, I see it as A. B, C, and D merely exasperate the situation, but without A, B, C, and D aren't an issue. Of course, the follow up is if it's because of B, C, and D that it isn't in a grey…

They're not in increasing badness. I don't think copying other people's work (a) is particularly wrong, unless you do so for profit (c). Otherwise it falls under the banner of "fair use". Taking credit for other people's work (b), even in a not-for-profit context is something I consider wrong. In combination with (c) only more-so. I think (d) is also a real issue, because it signals a certain sense of oblivious right…

Thanks for the answer. I didn't mean to imply they had increasing badness, it just happened to work out that way.

I find it interesting that copying others people's work is okay with you as long as you credit them and don't do so for profit. I'm guessing it's mainly a "You know it when you see it"-porn kind of thing.

I agree with your point on D, especially as it relates to this. I think the community would be somewhat more forgiving if they'd just come right out and said "We fked up!" 37Signals did this a couple weeks ago with the cat.jpg incident.

Re: YC and 500 Startups company Curebit caught stealing from 37 Signals

#152

Post by atomical » Sun, Jan 29, 2012, 1:24 AM UTC

matt1 wrote: post #62

nirvana wrote: post #60

This incident strikes me as a glaring example of how broken web design is. A simple page like that should be easier and faster to create from scratch using a WYSIWYG tool, and then publish to a web platform that support it.... than copying the source and then editing it in a text editor. I know in the past such WYSIWYG tools were too rigid and thus we have a generation of designers that work in text.... but it just s…

I've been slowly building a high fidelity WYSIWYG web design tool called Lean Designs that might interest you: http://www.leandesigns.com It's hard to get folks to switch over to a less-than-complete web design tool (and building an unconstrained editor that generates quality HTML is a challenge), but I think it will get there eventually. I'd love to hear your feedback on the current product or advice on how to proce…

I signed up for your other site (jmockups) and I already had an account on file so I tried it out. It's pretty cool. Depending on how intuitive and slick this is I could see a big market for this.

Re: YC and 500 Startups company Curebit caught stealing from 37 Signals

#153

Post by meric » Sun, Jan 29, 2012, 1:32 AM UTC

bandushrew wrote: post #103

chrisacky wrote: post #6

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…

"I'm happy to copy the css styles for it." vs " I've still coded everything myself." No, you haven't. Seeing a website look that you like and emulating it by creating a blackbox version of it is fine, seeing a website look that you like and grabbing the css styling for it is breaching copyright. Its also ridiculously lazy in a bad way, getting someone else's css to work with your html is going to be way more painful…

What if you are web browsing and you see a background colour of a site that looks really good, so you decide to get it from the source and use it from your website?

"I'm happy to copy the colour code for it." vs " I've still coded everything myself."

Re: YC and 500 Startups company Curebit caught stealing from 37 Signals

#154

Post by gizmo » Sun, Jan 29, 2012, 1:57 AM UTC

jasonlotito wrote: post #151

gizmo wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They're not in increasing badness. I don't think copying other people's work (a) is particularly wrong, unless you do so for profit (c). Otherwise it falls under the banner of "fair use". Taking credit for other people's work (b), even in a not-for-profit context is something I consider wrong. In combination with (c) only more-so. I think (d) is also a real issue, because it signals a certain sense of oblivious right…

Thanks for the answer. I didn't mean to imply they had increasing badness, it just happened to work out that way. I find it interesting that copying others people's work is okay with you as long as you credit them and don't do so for profit. I'm guessing it's mainly a "You know it when you see it"-porn kind of thing. I agree with your point on D, especially as it relates to this. I think the community would be somewh…

> I didn't mean to imply they had increasing badness, it just happened to work out that way.

Ahh, ok. My bad.

My moral intuition with regard to copyright probably isn't entirely consistent. For instance, if a poor kid wants to learn but the parents can't afford books, is it OK for him to pirate those books (either with a photocopier or digitally)? I think it is okay, and it's definitely in the best interest of society. After that it's just a slippery slope towards a very free interpretation of "fair use", regarding music, art and so on.

As for D, society punishes people harshly mostly for being unstrategic. After all, they should just do a "We fked up!" post regardless of their beliefs, because it's obviously the strategic thing to do. They didn't do that right away, so they are effectively punished for their poor strategy, not for their moral judgement. Even a transparently disingenuous apology is (erroneously) judged (by the public) as an apology of sorts, even though it only means that the company in question did a cost-benefit analysis.

Effectively we're browbeating companies into giving the sort of apology we want to see, regardless of what they believe they did was wrong. That's sort of messed up, when you think about it.

Re: YC and 500 Startups company Curebit caught stealing from 37 Signals

#155

Post by abjr » Sun, Jan 29, 2012, 1:58 AM UTC

thirdsun wrote: post #18

derwildemomo wrote: post #10

I'm sorry, but am I the only one wondering about the ... tone of dhh's response? I mean, "fucking scumbags", is he like 14? He has every right to be upset, but the choice of words are in no way helpful. just saying..

Exactly, This doesn't make him look very good. Beside the rude language, this isn't something grown-ups need to settle publicly via twitter. Very immature.

Agreed. Not that it matters much, but I just took Rework out of my wish list on Amazon. Reading his tweets in response to this has totally turned me off to 37Signals.

Re: YC and 500 Startups company Curebit caught stealing from 37 Signals

#156

Post by alexwolfe » Sun, Jan 29, 2012, 2:02 AM UTC

reledi wrote: post #102

citricsquid wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For me personally I found his attitude towards the entire thing the real problem. He asked if crediting the original creators was enough, he then hid behind all manner of silly startup buzzwords ("a/b testing", "ghetto test", "lean startup") and didn't seem to understand it was wrong. His tweets after the fact were worrying too, especially when others uncovered that they had other products that took designs from else…

Allan did have some silly responses. Either he was panicking and couldn't think clearly (he does have a lot on the line) or he genuinely doesn't understand what the problem is. On the other hand, I think David is overreacting and trying to get as much attention as possible -- seems a bit childish. If I was in David's shoes, I'd be shocked to see how much they directly copied and simply ask them to take it down, and p…

Allan has founded four companies. This isn't his first ball game and I'm sure he knows better.

Re: YC and 500 Startups company Curebit caught stealing from 37 Signals

#157

Post by MichaelApproved » Sun, Jan 29, 2012, 2:19 AM UTC

inovica wrote: post #105

MichaelApproved wrote: post #26

I saw this play out yesterday in the comments and kept thiking "why won't someone stop him from posting?!" It was getting bigger and bigger the more he opened his mouth. I learned an important lesson a few years ago: sometimes you can't make something better, and trying to make it better only makes it worse. Stop, regroup with others and get a proper plan together.

I fully agree. Sometimes saying nothing is better. I don't mean forever, but think about it, sleep on it, but don't just 'react'.

Yes, but it's also good to respond to comments, to a certain extent. I like when founders come on HN and answer questions, solve problems and speak frankly. But there's a point when you're having a PR nightmare that you need to stop trying to fix things yourself.

My suggestion would be to acknowledge the issue, let people know you will address it shortly but you need time to talk with your partners so you could get a proper response together.

Perhaps some version of "we're going to get to the bottom of this." Sure, it could be deemed a short term cop-out but it's better than sticking your foot in your over and over.

I'm curious how public relations experts recommend people handle a situation like this.

Re: YC and 500 Startups company Curebit caught stealing from 37 Signals

#158

Post by dwynings » Sun, Jan 29, 2012, 2:43 AM UTC

slig wrote: post #31

veyron wrote: post #25

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

This one? http://www.bigstockphoto.com/image-5418738/stock-vector-retr...

Re: YC and 500 Startups company Curebit caught stealing from 37 Signals

#159

Post by dennisgorelik » Sun, Jan 29, 2012, 3:02 AM UTC

drm237 wrote: post #94

ronaldj wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone that writes HTML for a living I couldn't imagine using a WYSIWYG editor. A lot of markup, especially the new semantic HTML5 stuff is pretty subjective. Different organizations/teams have different markup patterns/views on this stuff. A WYSIWYG editor would have to be pretty customizable to fit in different organizations I think. You can use Firebug/Web Inspector to adjust your layouts in real-time without…

> As someone that writes HTML for a living I couldn't imagine using a WYSIWYG editor. You can't imaging using any existing WYSIWYG editor. I would argue that using Firebug to make changes, see them in real time, and have the code auto-saved is just begging for a good WYSIWYG editor. Image if a WYSIWYG editor could create decent markup and css and provide perfect cross-browser support for all relatively modern browser…

WYSIWYG has two major disadvantages:

1) It's hard to share components of WYSIWYG design across different projects.

2) It's hard to see what differences are between two versions in source control system. In order to do that you still need look at underlying code.

Re: YC and 500 Startups company Curebit caught stealing from 37 Signals

#160

Post by nl » Sun, Jan 29, 2012, 3:06 AM UTC

jasonlotito wrote: post #145

nl wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who concluded that copyright infringement is not stealing? Opposition to SOPA etc does not necessarily mean people don't believe in copyright. There is a very broad range of views on that particular question.

> Who concluded that copyright infringement is not stealing? You've got that question backwards. Whose concluded that copyright infringement is stealing? > Opposition to SOPA etc does not necessarily mean people don't believe in copyright. That has absolutely nothing to do with what I said. You clearly don't understand what I'm saying. I oppose SOPA and absolutely support copyright. And that doesn't contradict anythi…

Whose (sic) concluded that copyright infringement is stealing

That's the facts under the law as it stands at the moment.

I figure there are 2 views

There is a broard range of opinions ranging from a major criminal offence, to a minor offence to a non-criminal civil offence to not wrong at all to a duty of all people.