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

#201

Post by pbhjpbhj » Sun, Jan 29, 2012, 1:33 PM UTC

vacri wrote: post #196

pbhjpbhj wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'll take that pony ride. Someone who's happy to steal from someone else just because that person is richer than them and they're only stealing little things still, IMO, lacks morally. With proviso's which aren't I don't think pertinent to this current situation (eg immediate life-preservation). Your argument is basically the shoplifter's manifesto - the store is rich, I only took some of their stuff, it's barely a d…

No, my argument is that of all the things wrong with this situation, stealing 300-byte bandwidth is so far down the list it's unimportant. That's what I meant by this is not the horse - there are far better horses to ride in this race. It's nice of you to tell me what my argument is, but you have it utterly wrong.

>nice of you to tell me what my argument is

How you've reiterated it here appears to match my interpretation of what you said. So perhaps you can say what your argument actually is - FWIW my comment had several upvotes so it doesn't appear to be just me being a dullard.

>stealing 300-byte bandwidth is so far down the list it's unimportant

So you're saying this is nothing like the argument 'stealing a snickers from Walmart is such a small amount, it's not important'?

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

#202

Post by gurkendoktor » Sun, Jan 29, 2012, 2:35 PM UTC

Peaker wrote: post #198

bandushrew wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fair enough. I am also happy to share my knowledge, such as it is, with whoever wants it. Some of my code I am happy to share, some I make money off and I would rather nobody copy wholesale to compete, some I have done on behalf of clients and cannot make the decision on. The nice thing about the world as it is, is you and I mostly have a choice about how we share our work and where/when we make our source code avail…

One of the bad things about the world as it is, is it encourages people to release things closed, because they can make more financially that way -- and we get a very closed world. In an open world, we could all be making derivative works of awesome works and advance the state of the art, rather than having to duplicate it first, before advancing it.

Without copyright (the law) there would be an even bigger incentive to obfuscate things or move them to the cloud. DRM only exists because the law by itself doesn't work. This is not an easy problem to fix.

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

#203

Post by ams6110 » Sun, Jan 29, 2012, 2:59 PM UTC

baddox wrote: post #183

potatolicious wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because of the fundamental concept of property, and ownership, and the right to control your own creations? It's one thing to voluntarily release something into the public domain (or enable its direct re-use via licenses like Creative Commons). It's another thing to say that all work should be public property, usable as long as credit is given. Or are you suggesting that everything belongs to the People, comrade? Eve…

True, it is another thing, but I'll say it: all work (obviously, in this context of digital "intellectual property") should be public. I left "property" off the end of the sentence for the same reason I put "intellectual property" in quotes: I don't believe that property rights make sense when applied to abstract, non-scarce things like ideas and digital works. This really isn't about controlling the fruits of your l…

This is the same argument that was had about whether it was OK to make photocopies of content in books and magazines at the library, or record a radio broadcast or TV program. I would agree with you that up to a point it is: the content is made available to or broadcast to the public, and that implies a certain license to personally do what you want with it once you receive it. Hence copying or scanning printed material for later reference, time-shifting TV programs and sports events with DVR is generally and legally recognized as "OK" (I believe that "fair use" is the legal term here).

Likewise when you put your creative content on the internet, you are implicitly granting some license to people who view that content. They can view the source, study your CSS and javascript, save it for offline viewing if they want.

But when you take someone else's content, be it a book, a TV broadcast or a web site design, copy it either completely or substantially, and then proceed to personally profit from that work without the permission of the creator, you've crossed the line. Granted the distinction between copying (bad) and imitation (flattery?) can be fuzzy, but in this case it seems very clear.

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

#204

Post by scorpion032 » Sun, Jan 29, 2012, 3:01 PM UTC

gizmo wrote: post #80

betageek wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed, it also seems a massive over reaction to what is, after all, a very small startup committing a victimless crime. Naming and shaming should be enough without dragging them through the streets of the web for a public stoning.

They are (a) copying other people's work, (b) passing it off as their own, (c) doing so for profit, and (d) unable to see why this is wrong. This isn't a gray area at all.

Yes. It was wrong. No one is defending that. Breaking a traffic signal is wrong and killing someone is wrong. The point I think the op is making is that, people have been way too rude for the level of the mistake they have done. They are already insulted and name called. Why take it further in the blogs, newspapers and so on.

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

#205

Post by ams6110 » Sun, Jan 29, 2012, 3:21 PM UTC

edanm wrote: post #192

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 waiting for a tool like this ever since I got into Web Design. I just couldn't understand why it didn't exist already - it's such a clearly valuable thing to have. A lot of designers right now (like ronaldj in another comment) think that it's not practical or unnecessary. They think that the design will come out too rigid or it's too subjective. But the thing is, as someone who just does a few pages once in…

I just want to be able to throw up a button on a page, choose it's place/size/color, and then be able to just say "add rounded corners" with a checkbox

We had all that in tools like Powerbuilder, back in the 1990s. AFAIK you still have that if you build your site using Flash (though I've never used Flash to build anything, so I don't know).

The world decided that browser-based apps were better, warts and all. In a way it's a shame that plugin vendors didn't take seriously the concepts of security, performance, and openness, the web could have ended up a very different place.

Likewise, more developers would probably be happy to use WYSIWYG layout tools if they did not generate hideously formatted, immensely verbose and complex markup that is nearly impossible to hand-tweak when needed, or if the tools themselves were not so complex that mastering them was just as much work as mastering HTML/CSS.

I would be interested in a tool that lets me visually build a basic page layout, something like a wireframe, and generates clean markup and CSS that I then easily enhance/fine tune by hand. I'll check out this Lean Designs tool that's been mentioned a few time here...

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

#206

Post by ams6110 » Sun, Jan 29, 2012, 3:31 PM UTC

scorpion032 wrote: post #204

gizmo wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are (a) copying other people's work, (b) passing it off as their own, (c) doing so for profit, and (d) unable to see why this is wrong. This isn't a gray area at all.

Yes. It was wrong. No one is defending that. Breaking a traffic signal is wrong and killing someone is wrong. The point I think the op is making is that, people have been way too rude for the level of the mistake they have done. They are already insulted and name called. Why take it further in the blogs, newspapers and so on.

Well they not only ripped off someone else's work, they picked the work of one of the most fiery, well-known personalities in the web business world (DHH). When you mess with the bull, you get the horns.

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

#207

Post by ams6110 » Sun, Jan 29, 2012, 3:47 PM UTC

dave_sullivan wrote: post #101

This is clearly an egregious case of design theft, particularly considering the fact that they're actually linking to assets off the Highrise site. But at the risk of opening myself up to an absolute shit hurricane, I'm curious where my site would fall on the Highrise design theft scale: http://www.powerplayforsalesforce.com . Personally I think it's fine, but it's also obvious that I read 37signals' post a while bac…

a technique that's been in use by print advertising since the beginning of print advertising

Making a web page look like a print ad is not a concept that I think 37signals would make any claim of ownership on, even if they were the first to do it (which I doubt, but don't know). I do know that people have been putting random stock photos of reasonable attractive people on web pages for a long time, for no apparent reason other than it must make the page seem more "friendly" to the average user.

By the way have your shirt pressed for your next photo. Just a suggestion.

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

#208

Post by tatsuke95 » Sun, Jan 29, 2012, 3:49 PM UTC

VonLipwig wrote: post #72

What scares me most is how many people here seem to think it is OK or 'not that bad'. I don't know a designer who hasn't or doesn't draw inspiration from other websites. However, that process goes something like this... 1) Look at website. || 2) Assess what is good about the design || 3) Mock up own version. What a decent person doesn't do is rip the existing site. HTML + all. Tweak it slightly then publish it. What…

>"It is frankly scary that a company can get $1M+ in funding and not realise they cannot just rip other peoples work..."

And more to come. This is an inevitably when your business model revolves around getting as many start ups money as you can in the hopes that some hit it big. It's inherent when you don't (and can't) vet all the people and ideas; you'll eventually end up with "people of poor moral character" in your system.

And there's no excuse for it. I wonder how it will be dealt with. I bet everyone involved was anti-PIPA.

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

#209

Post by tatsuke95 » Sun, Jan 29, 2012, 3:59 PM UTC

citricsquid wrote: post #11

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…

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…

>"Shit happens and hopefully this doesn't damage curebits business long term"

Why this? Having their business affected is precisely what needs to happen to demonstrate that doing this is unacceptable.

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

#210

Post by jasonlotito » Sun, Jan 29, 2012, 4:03 PM UTC

gizmo wrote: post #154

jasonlotito wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 societ…

> 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.

That's a real good point. I hadn't considered that. We all say "actions speak louder than words," and the ugly truth is, apologies based on a public outting probably wouldn't have happened otherwise.