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MailChimp threatens legal action against an open source side project

imluke.me

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Re: MailChimp threatens legal action against an open source side project

#31

Post by connortomas »

lukechesser wrote: post #16
jrochkind1 wrote: post #3

Regardless of who is in the right, their letter was more professional and polite than this OP response. The author is mistaken to think this is a pushy or aggressive letter, compared to an actual pushy or aggressive legal letter. PS: In the U.S. (if not the rest of the English speaking world?), if you want to use an honorific for a woman but don't know which she uses, always use "Ms.", never ever "Miss." "Miss" impli…

Arguing on HN is probably a moot point, but I'll try anyways. Don't get me wrong, I'm aware they could have gone about this in a much more aggressive way. But to go through their lawyers right away was a much more aggressive response than what I would have expected from MailChimp. I guess that's the totally correct legal response, but why not just send me a quick message?

Who would you expect to receive a message from? Presumably this happens more often than you think, and the company protocol is to get legal to deal with it. I think you've misinterpreted this as in any way "aggressive" - this is just a company trying to tie things up as efficiently as possible. Sure, you'd like an informal response, but when a company is operating at the scale of Mailchimp, that doesn't seem realistic.

I was also quite impressed by the tone of the message from Mailchimp legal - probably the clearest, most polite takedown request I've seen.

Re: MailChimp threatens legal action against an open source side project

#32

Post by MetaCosm »

First of all -- I think the letter from MailChimp was very polite and straightforward. The posters expectations (hopes?) are insane

That said, what are the rights around "clean room" implementation of website designs? If I simply pull up a site on another monitor, and build a clone of it from scratch (omit the logos of course), what are my rights?

Sadly, it appears the Popular UIs guy didn't even bother removing obviously trademarked and identifying logos. His argument that "sharing PSDs is a great way to learn" doesn't explain why he left logos in the work.

Re: MailChimp threatens legal action against an open source side project

#33

Post by etchalon »

jronald wrote: post #12

The response to MailChimp's letter is distasteful at best. I don't know how MailChimp found out about Luke's work, but I imagine having a Dev contact someone infringing on their work is not normal procedure for any company. Lawyers are paid to do this professionally, however Ms. Danin's letter goes above and beyond, illustrating the issues they have and their reasoning behind it. They could have had court documents (…

That's basically true. The MIT license generally doesn't provide for any restrictions. That's why it's so awesome.

But ultimately, there's no legally binding rules about using the MIT license. I can "use" the MIT license and then say, "Only cats who can ride motorcycles can use this code", and then, while MY license is "based" on the MIT license, it now has a totally valid motorcycle cat restriction. Cause I added one.

Re: MailChimp threatens legal action against an open source side project

#34

Post by [deleted] »

narrowingorbits wrote: post #22

OP is on flaky legal ground reproducing and distributing other's designs without permission as it is; but then to suggest that MailChimp is in the wrong, simply for, in a very polite, even friendly, letter, acknowledging their brand and their legitimate copyright, and asking OP to play fair...wow. Also, he wanted someone from MailChimp's design or development team to reach out to him? Really? Maybe they're busy, you…

[deleted]

Re: MailChimp threatens legal action against an open source side project

#35

Post by nwh »

topherjaynes wrote: post #26

What a great paragraph: clean, logical and completely valid. "Further, while your intentions appear good, those who download the UI file may not act so altruistically. For example, a nefarious downloader may use the file to set up a fake website to lure unsuspecting users to log in or to try to trade off their own service or product as part of our brand (5). We’ve seen both of these situations happen before, so they…

I'm quite impressed by how well it was written actually. You'd be very unlikely to get a response like that from any other company.

Re: MailChimp threatens legal action against an open source side project

#36

Post by jronald »

etchalon wrote: post #33
jronald wrote: post #12

The response to MailChimp's letter is distasteful at best. I don't know how MailChimp found out about Luke's work, but I imagine having a Dev contact someone infringing on their work is not normal procedure for any company. Lawyers are paid to do this professionally, however Ms. Danin's letter goes above and beyond, illustrating the issues they have and their reasoning behind it. They could have had court documents (…

That's basically true. The MIT license generally doesn't provide for any restrictions. That's why it's so awesome. But ultimately, there's no legally binding rules about using the MIT license. I can "use" the MIT license and then say, "Only cats who can ride motorcycles can use this code", and then, while MY license is "based" on the MIT license, it now has a totally valid motorcycle cat restriction. Cause I added on…

Thanks for clearing that up. I'm a little fuzzy on where that can be done - ie on github, if you set it to the MIT license, can you define the additional rules within the license section? does putting the "educational use only" anywhere on the page apply? I'm not a coder, and this normally would not apply to the work I do, but it is interesting seeing how these things play out.

Re: MailChimp threatens legal action against an open source side project

#37

Post by jerrya »

rhizome wrote: post #19
citricsquid wrote: post #13

Had someone from the MailChimp design or development team reached out and asked me to take the resource down, I totally would have understood. I greatly admire their work and respect their talents immensely. It's like they teach this in asshole 101. You can tell someone is being unreasonable every time this argument arises, "I'm not upset about the bigger picture, I'm upset about meaningless-detail x!".

It's a tone argument, which is toward the bottom of PG's hierarchy of disagreement, not to mention many other places (e.g. random google hit http://lucereta.wordpress.com/2011/06/30/tone-argument-as-lo... ).

It's not a tone argument.

An argument from a legal department is a threat. And if it's not actually a threat, it's certainly a very significant perceived threat.

And lawyers and society definitely understand that.

The letter itself wasn't terrible, but it definitely contained a threat, and claiming it is a tone argument denies that.

Also, do you have a reference to PG's "hierarchy of disagreement"? Sounds interesting.

Re: MailChimp threatens legal action against an open source side project

#38

Post by mpyne »

lukechesser wrote: post #24
nwh wrote: post #4

The letter from MailChimp seems completely fair. Publishing PSDs of someone else's website—regardless of who made the PSD—is a dick move. Doubly so given that the authors resources contain the original companies branding and image resources ripped right from the original pages.

Legally, I completely agree, they're allowed to. But by that same token, hundreds of PSDs are posted on Dribbble every day. As Allan, the designer for Designer News and Layervault, said when I asked him if he wanted me to take the resources down, he said 'Why? It's wonderful'. Same thing from Heroku. I'm not saying that MailChimp isn't allowed to have the resources taken down. I never presented them as anything other…

> But by that same token, hundreds of PSDs are posted on Dribbble every day. As Allan, the designer for Designer News and Layervault, said when I asked him if he wanted me to take the resources down, he said 'Why? It's wonderful'.

That is Allan's right, and Heroku's right. But Allan can only speak for himself, Heroku can only speak for Heroku. So while it's good that you've asked them for their opinion, they have no agency and confer no expectations as to what MailChimp does or does not do.

You're not really giving people a choice if you expect only one answer when you ask them for permission, you know. ;)

Re: MailChimp threatens legal action against an open source side project

#39

Post by autodidakto »

jrochkind1 wrote: post #3

Regardless of who is in the right, their letter was more professional and polite than this OP response. The author is mistaken to think this is a pushy or aggressive letter, compared to an actual pushy or aggressive legal letter. PS: In the U.S. (if not the rest of the English speaking world?), if you want to use an honorific for a woman but don't know which she uses, always use "Ms.", never ever "Miss." "Miss" impli…

You're right, with one clarification: Miss. isn't an abbreviation, it's the full word. Ms. is short for Miss but is used for professional communication nonetheless. [Source: I transcribed documents intended for lawyers]

Re: MailChimp threatens legal action against an open source side project

#40

Post by dandrews »

darkstar999 wrote: post #11
jrochkind1 wrote: post #3

Regardless of who is in the right, their letter was more professional and polite than this OP response. The author is mistaken to think this is a pushy or aggressive letter, compared to an actual pushy or aggressive legal letter. PS: In the U.S. (if not the rest of the English speaking world?), if you want to use an honorific for a woman but don't know which she uses, always use "Ms.", never ever "Miss." "Miss" impli…

The fact that we have to worry about womens' marital status when addressing them is sad.

darkstar999, read Douglas Hofstadter's "A Person Paper on Purity in Language", his clever 30-y-o essay on sexism in writing.

http://www.cs.virginia.edu/~evans/cs655/readings/purity.html

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