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YC and 500 Startups company Curebit caught stealing from 37 Signals

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

#211

Post by jakejake »

shad0wfax wrote: post #177
jakejake wrote: post #173

This is an honest question, I'd be curious to hear how you might differentiate this from music and movie sharing? I hope that people won't just down-vote me without responding. I am truly curious because I myself have mixed feelings about all of these issues as both a content creator as well as a consumer. It's hard for me to understand why certain types of art must be free for all, but others are defended vigorously…

I am not sure if people here acknowledge stealing/pirating movies/music as an acceptable act. What we want is for the movies that we genuinely purchase (be it as a DVD or a direct download), to be more accessible and available on different platforms. Or we want services that make these resources free and yet make a profit to the creators (youtube/pandora). I believe that something I have already paid for should not b…

I'm definitely in agreement with you about DRM. It feels like punishment for those of us who actually bought the music or move.

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

#212

Post by jakejake »

jakejake wrote: post #211
shad0wfax wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am not sure if people here acknowledge stealing/pirating movies/music as an acceptable act. What we want is for the movies that we genuinely purchase (be it as a DVD or a direct download), to be more accessible and available on different platforms. Or we want services that make these resources free and yet make a profit to the creators (youtube/pandora). I believe that something I have already paid for should not b…

I'm definitely in agreement with you about DRM. It feels like punishment for those of us who actually bought the music or move.

(movie)

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

#213

Post by mkr-hn »

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…

You can't eat bits. When everything else is non-scarce, you can reasonably argue that everything should be freely available. Until then, the right to control licensing is the simplest and most fair way for a creative professional to convert their effort into scarce resources.

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

#214

Post by dave_sullivan »

ams6110 wrote: post #207
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 re…

I think the big difference, and what I think works well, is most sites I've seen do the stock photo thing as an accent (microphone girls anyone?) and it rarely works well imo. What I liked about 37 signals version is putting someone approachable and friendly--someone from their target market in particular--front and center and blown up. Again, often used in print, but first I'd seen it done well on web.

And that's good, sounds like no points for originality, photoshop doctoring, or ironing shirts, but at least I'm not a total scumbag design thief. I can sleep at night :-)

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

#216

Post by snowwrestler »

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…

Folks can design images in WYSIWYG tools like Photoshop because the output standards are much more stable and consistently implemented than HTML + CSS + JS. Every OS, browser, image viewer, etc. will render a JPG, GIF, or PNG almost exactly the same. But give them all the same HTML, CSS, and JS, and you might get very different results--especially if you are trying to make use of the coolest new features. Basically, hand-coding is the price we all pay for an industry that is innovating its technology so quickly.

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

#217

Post by dustyleary »

pbhjpbhj wrote: post #201
vacri wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

No, he's saying that when a guy walks out of Walmart with a pallet full of flatscreen TVs, nobody cares about the snickers bar he also grabbed on the way out, and talking about the snickers bar is a waste of time.

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

#218

Post by rbanffy »

It's fascinating to see the abundance of doublethink. Somehow, copyright violation is not theft when it's a song and, suddenly it appears to be worse than murder when it's code.

What Curebit did was reprehensible, amateurish and plain stupid. Most definitely not OK, but aren't we overreacting a bit?

Are they selling the copied code? Did they refuse to take it down? Did they fail to apologize?

BTW, in the same way we strongly suggest RIAA and MPAA affiliates they should look for business models that are viable in an age when copying and sharing music and movies is easy, shouldn't we encourage internet companies to seek business models compatible with the fact copying code is easy too? Let's forget for a second it's still wrong to use someone else's code without the right to do so, but how much does it hurt when someone copies some clever script from a public website? Last time I checked, 37 Signals had a very viable business model.

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

#219

Post by felipemnoa »

rbanffy wrote: post #218

It's fascinating to see the abundance of doublethink. Somehow, copyright violation is not theft when it's a song and, suddenly it appears to be worse than murder when it's code. What Curebit did was reprehensible, amateurish and plain stupid. Most definitely not OK, but aren't we overreacting a bit? Are they selling the copied code? Did they refuse to take it down? Did they fail to apologize? BTW, in the same way we…

I think you are mixing two things. The outcry seems to be from one business copying another business. It would be like one songwriter copying the work of another songwriter. You are then comparing this to a regular person copyrighting the work of a songwriter/singer for their own consumption.

Although they are similar they are not the same thing. Just wanted to point that out. I won't go into an argument about which is wrong though since that is not the intention of my comment.

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

#220

Post by envex »

visegrip wrote: post #174

Epic fail on all parties. Y combinator encourages 10 finger theft for not doing it's part in due diligence. Maybe it's because Y-combinator supports SOPA and want's to lead by example. 37 signal clearly shows supports for SOPA by making a big F deal about this publicly. Than you have Curebit clearly taking investors for a ride. Clearly a Breach of contract!

Just because you don't want people stealing your work doesn't mean you support SOPA...
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