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LayerVault Sends DMCA Takedown Letter re Flat-UI

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Re: LayerVault Sends DMCA Takedown Letter re Flat-UI

#291

Post by lowboy »

pifflesnort wrote: post #287
lowboy wrote: post #273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Murder is too loaded of a act to serve as a good example for this discussion, IMO, but just the once? I would describe myself as someone who had murdered, but not a murderer. There's an active/repetitive component to being described as an *-er. As I replied to electic, how would you feel if I described myself as a singer upon meeting someone, having only sang for 3 minutes out of the decades of my life? "Oh, hi, I'm…

> There's an active/repetitive component ... The persistent/active component is in having the personal constitution necessary to engaged in the action in question. The type of person, for instance, who files a false DMCA take-down request -- censoring another person's speech -- without understanding or appreciating the ethical and legal implications of what they are doing. "Repository unavailable due to DMCA takedown…

Sure, but has LV engaged in this behaviour previously? If they haven't, then I don't think they could be described as patent trolls. Right now they might be engaged in patent trolling, but as my singing example hopefully illustrates, doing something once doesn't make one an active/repetitive doer of that thing. I'm not a singer, and feel that it would be dishonest of anyone to describe me as such. Same goes for LV with patent trolling.

Re: LayerVault Sends DMCA Takedown Letter re Flat-UI

#292

Post by pifflesnort »

lowboy wrote: post #291
pifflesnort wrote: post #287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There's an active/repetitive component ... The persistent/active component is in having the personal constitution necessary to engaged in the action in question. The type of person, for instance, who files a false DMCA take-down request -- censoring another person's speech -- without understanding or appreciating the ethical and legal implications of what they are doing. "Repository unavailable due to DMCA takedown…

Sure, but has LV engaged in this behaviour previously? If they haven't, then I don't think they could be described as patent trolls. Right now they might be engaged in patent trolling, but as my singing example hopefully illustrates, doing something once doesn't make one an active/repetitive doer of that thing. I'm not a singer, and feel that it would be dishonest of anyone to describe me as such. Same goes for LV wi…

You seem to have missed my entire point. Since there's nothing I could write here other than a repeat of what I wrote earlier, I will instead simply refer to my above comment.

Re: LayerVault Sends DMCA Takedown Letter re Flat-UI

#295

Post by etchalon »

TillE wrote: post #285
etchalon wrote: post #275

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They believe they do. So it was neither ignorance nor dishonesty. _You_ don't think they do.

Again, you and LayerVault don't seem to understand copyright. Here's an example. There's a famous iPhone game called Fruit Ninja. There's another game called Veggie Samurai. Total ripoff in every imaginable way, but completely legal. Copyright means you can't make direct copies or derivative works of my stuff. It doesn't mean you're not allowed copy all my ideas.

And you don't seem to understand what LV is actually alleging.

Re: LayerVault Sends DMCA Takedown Letter re Flat-UI

#296

Post by lowboy »

pifflesnort wrote: post #292
lowboy wrote: post #291

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, but has LV engaged in this behaviour previously? If they haven't, then I don't think they could be described as patent trolls. Right now they might be engaged in patent trolling, but as my singing example hopefully illustrates, doing something once doesn't make one an active/repetitive doer of that thing. I'm not a singer, and feel that it would be dishonest of anyone to describe me as such. Same goes for LV wi…

You seem to have missed my entire point. Since there's nothing I could write here other than a repeat of what I wrote earlier, I will instead simply refer to my above comment.

I read it. LV is engaging in one act of trolling at the moment, and they have the "personal constitution necessary to engage" in said trolling. No arguments there, and I don't condone what they're doing.

But having the constitution to do an act doesn't mean one is a repeated doer of that act. Has LV actively trolled, or tried to censor people's speech in the past? If not, they shouldn't be described as patent trolls, merely that they are currently engaged in an act of patent trolling.

Re: LayerVault Sends DMCA Takedown Letter re Flat-UI

#297

Post by etchalon »

mrgoldenbrown wrote: post #286
etchalon wrote: post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And LV isn't going after them for turquoise, but for specific illustrations, which are copyrightable. You're jumbling what LV actually did with the simplification of what they did.

AFAIK, the DMCA notice did not list specific images. Have you found the specific images that were copied?

Sadly, no. I'm mostly going off Allan's comments on the DN thread where he talks about them using their illustrations.

And also than they haven't been running around issuing DMCA's to every _other_ flat UI style everything.

Clearly, they believe specific assets were copied to the point that a DMCA was appropriate. Pending a full post from LV, I'm giving them the benefit, as I'm certainly not giving the benefit of the doubt to the designers who so thoroughly ripped LV's style.

Should that post never come, or its contents show LV as trying to enforce a copyright on something that was merely "inspired" and not copied, I'll change my tone.

Re: LayerVault Sends DMCA Takedown Letter re Flat-UI

#298

Post by jakelazaroff »

pifflesnort wrote: post #284
jakelazaroff wrote: post #277

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your point being…? If it were ONLY the colors, or ONLY the look and feel of the widgets (which, come on, are almost exactly the same as well), or ONLY the icons… different story entirely. But it's the SUM of all of those things.

> But it's the SUM of all of those things. This is not how copyright works.

I'm less concerned with the allegations of copyright trolling, etc (IANAL; I don't really know whether or not this qualifies for a DMCA takedown notice, although I suspect it does not) and more with the general opinion among commentators here that this was anything OTHER than a blatant ripoff of LayerVault's UI.

To me it seems like more of a trademark/trade dress issue, which as far as I know doesn't fall under copyright, but it's extremely silly to say that the resemblance between FlatUI and LayerVault isn't uncanny.

Re: LayerVault Sends DMCA Takedown Letter re Flat-UI

#299

Post by BHSPitMonkey »

Karunamon wrote: post #246
lucisferre wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Give me a break. One single misguided DMCA notice does not make one a copyright troll .

One who trolls with copyright is a copyright troll. This is not a difficult concept.

Please see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patent_troll

The term refers to entities who are in the business of enforcing patents they aren't generally even using in the marketplace. This is distinct from someone who actually thinks their work is being affected, as is the case here (even though in this case it seems to be overblown).

Re: LayerVault Sends DMCA Takedown Letter re Flat-UI

#300

Post by ricardobeat »

cooldeal wrote: post #120
recoiledsnake wrote: post #96

Someone please lend LayerVault some contrast. http://i.imgur.com/jfSuxcK.png http://i.imgur.com/cMO4lxA.png http://i.imgur.com/JnaZdN7.png I cannot believe a "top notch" design house can get this so wrong. Edit: Designer News seems to suffer from the same affliction. https://news.layervault.com/ A lot of sites that are HN these days seem to lack contrast, what's up with that?

My best guess is that most designers are young ones(contrast perception decreases with age) using (retina) Macs (which make fonts look thicker than in Windows). They then assume it looks good everywhere(or plain just don't care about Windows/Linux users users and/or older folks).Also, I think this design trend was started or made popular by Apple.

Apple caused the trend of embossed text + gray backgrounds, but they never went low-contrast; in fact their home page still uses a quite dated top menu, and sharp black on white text.

Colorful, pastel, monotone and low-contrast UIs are just a general trend along with "flat" design, I don't think it's roots can be pinpointed.

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