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Developer Exposes Copyright Infringers On Twitter
snitty writes "Wil Shipley, developer of Delicious Library, found some applications on the iTunes App Store that were using without permission some images from his popular desktop application. He outed them on Twitter. The team at Technically Legal broke down the story and the take-home messages for using other people's images."
Image off of his website.
Macbook, Starcraft, Peggle... Are those fair use applications?
Take down notice: BAD
Software developer: GOOD
Copyrights: BAD
Twitter: GOOD
Lawsuit: BAD
Caught red-handed: GOOD
==Head Assplodes=l
I have no problem with your religion until you decide it's reason to deprive others of the truth.
Yeah. the twitter angle was pretty much gratuitous. I think it's become the Web2.0 way of making something cool: wedge "on Twitter" on the end of the sentence. Just like "in my pants" automatically makes any sentence hilarious.
"Developer Exposes Copyright Infringers In My Pants"
Yup. Hilarious.
Welcome to the Panopticon. Used to be a prison, now it's your home.
The copyrighted image is actually the "woodgrain background", quoting Technically Legal. Is this a joke? The whole story is about a background texture being stolen? Some actual artists out there who've been ripped off must be feel pretty distressed right now.
I know the guy who made the blue frog on the Azureus startup screen.... and it wasn't for Azureus.
lol.
The RIAA didn't become the "big bad meanies" because of going after copyright infringers.
They got that title through their strong arm tactics, legal arguments, twisted logic, abuse of the justice system, extortion... well, pretty much everything associated with how they operate these cases.
Contrast the above to how this infringement was handled.
I see no moral conflict here.
Even in 16 bit color the set of all possible 32x32 icons is 67,108,864 bytes, ( 67 megs )for 32 bit color it's 4,398,046,511,104 or 4 terabytes.
For 64x64 icons in 32 bit color, it's 17,592,186,044,416 bytes, or 17 terabytes.
I am surprised some copyright troll doesn't copyright the set of all 128 x 128 icons at 32 bit color depth ( comprising 70 terabytes ) and then sue everyone who uses a new icon in any product into oblivion. Every possible icon would be contained in one of those copyrighted icons either in whole or in part. It might be worthwhile to copyright commonly used lower color depths as well, though it shouldn't be strictly necessary.
...
It sure sounds like a joke, doesn't it? I mean, come on, he's all bent out of shape over a woodgrain texture? It's not like they took his logo or something distinctive about his application. It sounds pretty petty to me.
I hate to say it, Mr. Shipley, but this is not the kind of trivial copyright stuff that we're constantly railing against. From TFA:
Congratulations Mr. Shipley, you're now being compared to organizations like the RIAA. Were you Right(TM) (as in, technically correct in that your copyright was violated)? Sure, I'll concede that, and if they knew that the texture came from you, they should have checked if it was okay before using it. But where you right (as in, responding in an ethically appropriate way)? Absolutely not. Again, from TFA:
Mr. Shipley, it strikes me that you decided to publicly call someone a thief and unilaterally decided to shame them without really knowing the circumstances of the situation. Did they simply decide that they didn't want to pay for a texture, and maliciously rip yours off? Maybe. But I find it just as likely that they may have simply assumed that it was a public domain texture.
Or just maybe, being a small outfit or independent developer (which I can certainly empathize with), they got it from a third party who represented that it was either public domain or their texture. I know that for community projects I'm involved with, being as artistic as a two-by-four, when I need a resource like that, I usually post a message somewhere saying something like, "Hey, does anyone have an icon/texture/whatever that I can use?" If someone sends me one, I usually do the due diligence of asking them if I have the rights to use it (e.g. if it's public domain or, if they created it, if they are willingly giving me the rights to use it), but it's not like I hire a lawyer to do a detailed search of everything that's ever been copyrighted to verify it. I simply don't have the time or money to do so.
So according to TFA, "there are really two important take-away messages from this story." Actually there is at least one more. Some people can really be stupid and petty about such things, making mountains out of molehills, and unfortunately, the legal system today favors those people. Oh, and maybe another is that it's getting harder and harder to be a small, independent developer these days because of idiocy like this. Every time you turn around and no matter what you do, there are people out there who want to squash you like a bug, people ranging from other small developers to giant corporations. Everything from "Hey, you used a button, and we use a button, so we're suing you!" to "You thief, you stole my generic-looking woodgrain texture, waaah!"
Delicious Library is one of the most popular Mac shareware apps, and is exceptionally well-designed. Those wood bookcases are central to its UI look and feel. And he's already written an iPhone app - except Amazon decided to yank all mobile licenses to their data. Yes, that's right, he pays Amazon for access to their data, so it is legal use and paid for.
So your entire post is written like a true asshat who has no idea what's going on, and has contributed nothing. But that never stops Slashdot.
I don't know what kind of crack I was on, but I suspect it was decaf.
Dude... thanks for telling.
I though this was about the icons and glyphs, which in many high-quality applications are actually designed by external design studios for lots of money. I can imagine getting pissed about somebody taking something which you actually had to pay quite a bit for.
But this is just a woodgrain texture, and a pretty ugly one at it.
I mean seriously, it isn't hard to make a woodgrain texture lots better than that one:
5 minute photoshop tutorial: http://www.tutorio.com/tutorial/photoshop-wood-texture
Free windows program for making wood textures: http://www.spiralgraphics.biz/ww_overview.htm
Heck, for all we know he actually used one of these or a source image, in which case he couldn't even claim copyright over it since anybody who made it themselves using such methods would end up with an identical texture.
Slashdot social media options: AIM, ICQ, Yahoo, Jabber and Mobile Text. Why no MySpace?
If it's that easy to "make a woodgrain texture lots better than that one", then how come none of those lazy bastards did it instead of poaching his?
"I guess the moral of the story is, don't paint your airship with rocket fuel." -- Addison Bain
I wish he'd spend less time Twittering and blogging and more time fixing the bugs in Delicious Library 2 that have been there since the beta. There's like, what, one update a year for that application? I don't even bother running it any more.
He who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me.
Yeah. the twitter angle was pretty much gratuitous.
It's probably twitter marketing parasites. Any "news" item that even remotely mentions twitter gets spammed everywhere.
Most people seriously underestimate just how much astroturfers = stealth/undercover marketers = shills = low lifes have invaded social networking sites and the net in general. They talk the talk of ethics but they rarely walk the walk. Twitter is currently one of the worst.
Anytime you see a one-sided "story" talking about some commercial product, or have trouble trying to have a legitimate discussion with a commercial product zealot (there are very few consumers who are zealots about any commercial product), you're probably dealing with an astroturfer. They are lying shits, make their life hell.
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Astroturfing "marketers" are liars, fraudulently misrepresenting company propaganda as objective third party opinion. Anonymous commercial speech should be illegal.