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The Wholesale Plagiarism of Obscure Sorrows

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Re: The Wholesale Plagiarism of Obscure Sorrows

#161

Post by carlosjobim »

zelphirkalt wrote: post #125
carlosjobim wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Computer code is not comparable to a book. A better comparison would be a blueprint or a recipe. If Coca-Cola publishes their recipe wide and far for anybody to read, would you rage together with them when another beverage company starts selling drinks together with them?

Computer code is also not comparable with a wallet thrown onto a busy street corner. Can you decide, whether you are OK with unfit comparisons or not, instead of trying to have it both ways?

Good point! However, a book is nothing more and nothing less than its content. Code you can copy and implement wherever you want, and nobody necessarily would know it, unless you also publish it as open source.

Let me make a music comparison. If Metallica or Michael Jackson uploaded all their raw recording tracks to Napster and The Pirate Bay. The DAW files, or the separate instrument and voice tapes. Do they have a right to then get mad if people use those files to make remixes and edits?

There is a way to give away your software for free without any risk of people stealing your work: Just give the compiled binaries.

If you upload your source code to a public website explicitly created for source code sharing, which even has a one button press to copy the source code, then you have no right to be mad that somebody copied your source code. You then did everything in your might to facilitate that behaviour.

Okay, not everything. I guess FOSS people could also start hacking in to other people's computers and install their software there, so that they can turn around and be outraged that their code was stolen. That's probably the next step being prepared in the FOSS swamp right now.

Re: The Wholesale Plagiarism of Obscure Sorrows

#162

Post by carlosjobim »

ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #126
carlosjobim wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can't steal something which is free. This is what you should expect if you give away stuff for free to anybody who happens on it. To me it seems that FOSS people take perverse pleasure in these kind of things. It's easy to prepare for what is ahead: Get yourself out of the filthy FOSS swamp and start charging a fair price for your work from real customers. That is something everybody benefits from and it is also…

> the filthy FOSS swamp Now, be nice. This isn't Reddit, and I don't think the HN mods are really into "engagement"* I tend to release a lot of stuff MIT. I don't give a shit, if anyone takes it and gets rich (which I seriously doubt will happen). It's just that I don't want people coming after me, if they misuse it. If, however, someone rereleases my stuff with a "gift," and makes it appear that I was behind it, the…

I agree with you that taking somebody else's name or brand is foul play. I the case I was replying to, somebody had copied the code and put their brand on the author's FOSS project.

Which is the same as some very popular software, including the Safari browser, Android, and much more. That's FOSS, if you give it away you have to expect people to take it. Just as you say.

Re: The Wholesale Plagiarism of Obscure Sorrows

#163

Post by leephillips »

phkahler wrote: post #151
bonoboTP wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you released it under a free software license, then all they seem to have not done properly is putting an attribution text in their software. But you did not specify what license you used which already makes me doubt if you have the correct mental model around free software and it's ethos. Who makes money on what is not the main concern in free software ideology. It's a side question. It's the four freedoms that a…

"Gave away for free" does not mean they did so under a Free Software license. One could just put a copyright notice with NO license and they'd be in violation of the copyright.

They would be in violation even if there were no copyright notice. You own the copyright to anything you create; no notice required.

Re: The Wholesale Plagiarism of Obscure Sorrows

#164

Post by ChrisMarshallNY »

carlosjobim wrote: post #162
ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the filthy FOSS swamp Now, be nice. This isn't Reddit, and I don't think the HN mods are really into "engagement"* I tend to release a lot of stuff MIT. I don't give a shit, if anyone takes it and gets rich (which I seriously doubt will happen). It's just that I don't want people coming after me, if they misuse it. If, however, someone rereleases my stuff with a "gift," and makes it appear that I was behind it, the…

I agree with you that taking somebody else's name or brand is foul play. I the case I was replying to, somebody had copied the code and put their brand on the author's FOSS project. Which is the same as some very popular software, including the Safari browser, Android, and much more. That's FOSS, if you give it away you have to expect people to take it. Just as you say.

It looked to me, like they actually took his name and brand, as well as his work, and republished it.

I guess it was sort of a "fan art" way, which isn't too bad, but they showed pretty callous disregard for the niceties of copyright, which is pretty important, for the type of work they are advertising.

Re: The Wholesale Plagiarism of Obscure Sorrows

#166

Post by DrewADesign »

shimman wrote: post #160
DrewADesign wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are a lot of really solid reasons someone might choose not to sue one of the world’s most powerful corporations over their core business practices, even being completely in the right. Pretty similar to reasons someone might not call the cops on some mafiosos that are blocking your driveway while fencing a truckload of stolen electronics.

I disagree, state AGs are taking any opportunity to attack big tech for easy political points. If you want justice, now is the best time to try and get it.

Filling a complaint with the civil division of your AG so they can take legal action vs suing a giant powerful corporation and hoping the AG’s civil division steps in are very different things. I’ve also known numerous people who’ve filed multiple complaints with the MA AG with easily provable and well documented cases of repeated, ongoing wage theft as restaurant workers, at a time where service industry labor abuses were a popular hot button issue, and they didn’t even get a callback. Not exactly what you’d call a slam dunk. Not having support from the AG would be one of the very solid reasons I was referring to.

Re: The Wholesale Plagiarism of Obscure Sorrows

#167

Post by ouraf »

mcoliver wrote: post #54

A similar thing is happening to me. I worked on something for 3 years which I give away for free to help people and a thief took my software, ran it through ai to rebrand everything and relaunched as their own app. Unfortunately the ai missed a few Easter eggs I had hidden so the theft is undeniable. Google and Apple are useless for dmca unless you have a court order. They refuse to look at or arbitrate. So now I'm o…

Mail the EFF

Re: The Wholesale Plagiarism of Obscure Sorrows

#168

Post by NamlchakKhandro »

forgetfreeman wrote: post #152
fsckboy wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This is why awards need to be based on % of total assets or revenue of the defendant. yes! and we need to add the death penalty to the list of punishments for children, because what matters is not the size of the crime, but the harshness of enforcement, that's the real deterrent, arewerite!?

Ridiculous. The initial proposal was to improve proportionality, what are you on about here?

It's obviously to point out that you have no clothes on

Re: The Wholesale Plagiarism of Obscure Sorrows

#170

Post by froggit »

fsckboy wrote: post #148
rustcleaner wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is why awards need to be based on % of total assets or revenue of the defendant. If little guy beats the big guy defendant, little guy should walk away with millions or billions. If big guy wins against the little guy defendant, it's just hundreds or thousands. It makes relatively poor individuals who can't afford a team of effective lawyers lawsuit proof, while making those who can wage effective lawfare juicy…

> This is why awards need to be based on % of total assets or revenue of the defendant. yes! and we need to add the death penalty to the list of punishments for children, because what matters is not the size of the crime, but the harshness of enforcement, that's the real deterrent, arewerite!?

> yes! and we need to add the death penalty to the list of punishments for children, because what matters is not the size of the crime, but the harshness of enforcement, that's the real deterrent, arewerite!?

Child death penalties probably aren't something that you actually want, right? You NEED them. Nothing gets people to take a step back like capital punishment for misdemeanor crimes. And with great power comes great responsibility.

However, I get where you're coming from. A thought: Speeding is a pretty tiny crime but it needs to be punishable by the death penalty on the first offense. We'd never have to worry about that criminal driving dangerously again. It actually stones 2 birds with 1 kill. That speeder might actually be a serial speeder. Serial offenders sometimes escalate their crimes over time and they never, ever stop until they're not just dead, but also decapitated. The serial speeder that drove 5 over yesterday might drive 7 over today. Tomorrow may even get all the way to 8 over the limit. Eventually they'll get to ramming speed. After a serial speeder gets to ramming speed, they will never accept a slower speed; they will ram other cars and die first. This would have been prevented by simply taking advantage of the power of 1st offense: death penalty.

For both time efficiency purposes and the perception it would bring, judges should be walking around with 2 fully automatic assault rifles tucked under their robes. They already line up before the verdict is read, then dump both mags as soon as the jury says "guilty."

There's an overly lax legal system and no signs of a "Death Row Children's Fun Zone". The reality of that approach is that kids have the freedom ( and enough tokens) for basic white collar crimes. If enough of that happens, money will get canceled forever. Then by the time next Tuesday comes around we'll wake up on an Earth with everything regressed all the way back to a pure barter economy. This is why we can't have nice things.

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