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

#71

Post by [deleted] » Sat, Jan 28, 2012, 9:39 PM UTC

matt1 wrote: post #62

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 slowly building a high fidelity WYSIWYG web design tool called Lean Designs that might interest you: http://www.leandesigns.com It's hard to get folks to switch over to a less-than-complete web design tool (and building an unconstrained editor that generates quality HTML is a challenge), but I think it will get there eventually. I'd love to hear your feedback on the current product or advice on how to proce…

[deleted]

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

#72

Post by VonLipwig » Sat, Jan 28, 2012, 9:41 PM UTC

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 Curebit did is indefensible. This is something some 2-bit web designer fob's off to a client paying $200 for a website... the fact Curebit is a start up is not a defense. It is frankly scary that a company can get $1M+ in funding and not realise they cannot just rip other peoples work...

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

#73

Post by jasonlotito » Sat, Jan 28, 2012, 9:43 PM UTC

I thought we'd already concluded that copyright infringement is not stealing. Neither is linking. Fair use is fine. And that ideas can't be stolen.

So, is Curebit wrong because 37Signals is one of us?

I'm not suggesting what Curebit did is right. But I doubt any HN user of any length of time can ignore the similarities with other copyright cases where the community here is opposed to the "37Signals" side.

I'll have to remember this thread next time someone suggest that copyright infringement is okay because copyright infringers have been shown to buy more copyrighted material, or that it helps advertise, or some other argument.

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

#74

Post by vasco » Sat, Jan 28, 2012, 9:45 PM UTC

psykotic wrote: post #61

vasco wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I still don't see how any of this validates such an immature response from the copied company. Don't they have a PR guy or something to shut them up before they say things they might regret?

Why would they regret what they said? We should all be glad they called them out in such a public and unequivocal fashion. It means that scumbags might think twice next time before ripping off other people's work verbatim. Your response would have been more apropos if DHH's allegations had turned out premature, but the reality is that the extent of their plagiarism went much further than initially assumed. Calling th…

Well this is very subjective, and I can understand your views, but I just don't think it is professional to be impolite in this manner. Being right should not give you the right to be rude! I can see where you're coming from though.

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

#75

Post by ronaldj » Sat, Jan 28, 2012, 9:45 PM UTC

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…

As someone that writes HTML for a living I couldn't imagine using a WYSIWYG editor. A lot of markup, especially the new semantic HTML5 stuff is pretty subjective. Different organizations/teams have different markup patterns/views on this stuff. A WYSIWYG editor would have to be pretty customizable to fit in different organizations I think.

You can use Firebug/Web Inspector to adjust your layouts in real-time without needing to go back, modify code in your editor, save, and reload the page. There are some new tools (backfire) out that will even let Firebug/Web Inspector automatically update your CSS file so you don't have to go back after tweaking it in browser. Hopefully, browser vendors will one day bake this functionality in to their browsers.

The biggest time sink is not being able to drag and drop it's cross browser support. I can spit out a page from a design pretty quick, but getting it to look consistent across four or five different browsers takes forever.

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

#76

Post by jsavimbi » Sat, Jan 28, 2012, 9:46 PM UTC

jasonlotito wrote: post #65

jsavimbi wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you offended by the tone? What would you call a person who steals your ideas (no value), steals your work ($$$), steals your bandwidth (~$), passes it all off as their own and then brags about raising money, a venture which was probably aided in no small from the theft? And when caught redhanded, further insults you by offering you credit for your work? What would you call that person? I call those people scumbag…

They didn't steal anything. I thought we've discussed this enough already, what with RIAA/MPAA's attempts to redefine copyright infringement as thievery. Hell, they didn't even steal bandwidth. Linking is not theft. It might be something else, but it's not stealing. That, more than anything, pisses me off about this. That somehow the RIAA is wrong when it calls people infringing it's copyright thieves, but when it's…

My apologies, I did not realize that they either received permission from or licensed design, code and image hosting from 37signals.

Or maybe I just choose to ignore your pathetic misdirection and call things as I see them, which couldn't be more obvious to the eye. Because that's what a retraction of the work and the (forced) composition of a public apology are all about.

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

#77

Post by betageek » Sat, Jan 28, 2012, 9:48 PM UTC

jasonlotito wrote: post #73

I thought we'd already concluded that copyright infringement is not stealing. Neither is linking. Fair use is fine. And that ideas can't be stolen. So, is Curebit wrong because 37Signals is one of us? I'm not suggesting what Curebit did is right. But I doubt any HN user of any length of time can ignore the similarities with other copyright cases where the community here is opposed to the "37Signals" side. I'll have t…

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.

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

#78

Post by walexander » Sat, Jan 28, 2012, 9:51 PM UTC

gioele wrote: post #63

Legal, not ethical question: in US, is it a copyright infringement to hot-link an image that resides on another server and belongs to another site? Let me explain better: the file at ` http://example.com/background.jpeg` is a wonderful image and indeed it is used on ` http://example.com/index.html` . I run another site, example.net. I have my own ` http://example.net/index.html` page and I decide to add a ` http://ex…

I believe this is still contested in some respects, but there has already been one case which decide it was not copyright infringement: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perfect_10,_Inc._v._Amazon.com,....

"The court held that Google's framing and hyperlinking as part of an image search engine constituted a fair use of Perfect 10's images because the use was highly transformative"

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

#79

Post by jasonlotito » Sat, Jan 28, 2012, 9:52 PM UTC

jsavimbi wrote: post #76

jasonlotito wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They didn't steal anything. I thought we've discussed this enough already, what with RIAA/MPAA's attempts to redefine copyright infringement as thievery. Hell, they didn't even steal bandwidth. Linking is not theft. It might be something else, but it's not stealing. That, more than anything, pisses me off about this. That somehow the RIAA is wrong when it calls people infringing it's copyright thieves, but when it's…

My apologies, I did not realize that they either received permission from or licensed design, code and image hosting from 37signals. Or maybe I just choose to ignore your pathetic misdirection and call things as I see them, which couldn't be more obvious to the eye. Because that's what a retraction of the work and the (forced) composition of a public apology are all about.

> Or maybe I just choose to ignore your pathetic misdirection and call things as I see them,

I'm sorry. Maybe you could point to me where 37Signals no longer has what was stolen?

I also applaud your open commitment in support of redefining copyright infringement as thievery. Let me know how that works out for you.

Finally, you should avoid baseless insults. It makes you appear stupid and detracts from what you are attempting to say. Throwing around insults like you do hurts the quality of HN. Maybe that's what you want, but I'd prefer to keep things accurate and intelligent.

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

#80

Post by gizmo » Sat, Jan 28, 2012, 9:53 PM UTC

betageek wrote: post #77

jasonlotito wrote: post #73

I thought we'd already concluded that copyright infringement is not stealing. Neither is linking. Fair use is fine. And that ideas can't be stolen. So, is Curebit wrong because 37Signals is one of us? I'm not suggesting what Curebit did is right. But I doubt any HN user of any length of time can ignore the similarities with other copyright cases where the community here is opposed to the "37Signals" side. I'll have t…

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.