Microsoft Acknowledges Theft of Code From Plurk

adeelarshad82 writes with news that Microsoft has acknowledged and taken responsibility for the theft of code belonging to Plurk.com, although the company also said it was the work of a Chinese vendor. Yesterday we discussed Plurk's blog post accusing Microsoft of copying their UI and code for Microsoft's Chinese microblogging site, Juku. Microsoft has now taken the site down and indefinitely suspended Juku's beta.

Comments

Dealing with the Chinese

[abigor]

I've said it several times before, and I'll say it again: dealing with Chinese vendors sucks. You never know if the code is original or not.

At this point, when I run into Chinese code when working with whatever client, I assume it's been copied from somewhere. Often I recognise it as such (Busybox, various http servers, etc.) When confronted, they either deny it, or simply wonder what the problem is - it's "freeware", after all, particularly after stripping off that pesky GPL at the top of each file.

Re:a world without copyright

[maxwell demon]

How about I go to your house and just take what I want?

The analogy fails in several ways.
First: Your house usually contains private stuff. Going to someone's house is more like breaking into his computer.
Second: If you take something away, it's not there any more.

And the argument that some people do something for a living doesn't tell you anything about if that should be legal. In the times of slavery, some people were trading slaves for a living. Professional killers kill for a living. By your logic, slavery and killing should be legal.