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The Daily Mail Stole My Visualization Twice
- TheLogothete 11y agohttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5eBT6OSr1TI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5eBT6OSr1TI
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- anon1385 11y agoYou didn't read the article did you.
- dang 11y ago> You didn't read the article did you. This comment breaks the HN guidelines: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html More importantly, your two prior comments were personal attacks. Surely you realize that those are bannable offenses on HN. We hate to ban longstanding users. But please: no more uncivil comments or we will have to.
- anon1385 11y agoWell if you moderated comments/users that made threats of physical violence against me I wouldn't be tempted to make posts referencing them. You can't deny seeing the comment in question since you replied to it.
- dang 11y ago> I wouldn't be tempted It's up to you (i.e. to each of us) to resist that temptation. Somebody else breaking the rules doesn't entitle you to as well.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- Raphmedia 11y agoDidn't you read the article at all? It's only a few paragraphs: "So how did Daily Mail embed the visualization without the word “poop” popping up on an empty page? They downloaded all the files from my server on to their own server and deleted the snippet that brought up a poop alert. That way they didn't have to deal with those pesky safeguards I setup. In other words, The Daily Mail deliberately stole my work."
- privong 11y ago> Didn't you read the article at all? It's only a few paragraphs: This is an unhelpful comment to make. But if you're going to take that tack, one could plausibly make the same remark in response to your comment. Because farther down, the post talks about the other time the Daily Mail used one of his visualiations: They didn't just screenshot the map. They didn't just embed the map itself. They iframed my entire site, which is why the FlowingData logo and header appear on their site. So there were two instances. One in which they copied the code and removed the code snippet, and another in which they just iframe-ed the page. The charitable interpretation of the GP's comment is that they were referring to the latter.
- oldmanjay 11y agoSince the latter isn't the point of the article, the charitable interpretation is actually that the OP didn't read it
- fixermark 11y agoYes, but the parent poster isn't wrong; the bulk of the article is about iframe embedding, and it's a clear distinction people should draw in terms of responsibility. In addition, DM crossed a line that they shouldn't have crossed by re-hosting the content. But conflating iframe embedding and content theft is a bad precedent.
- 6stringmerc 11y agoDownloading all files and re-uploading them without attribution is pretty akin to digital IP theft however.
- dangerlibrary 11y agoYou can remove 'pretty akin to digital'. But also it's copyright infringement, not theft.
- 6stringmerc 11y agoThough I agree and understand the difference (layman's mistaken terms aside), it's also a criminal version of copyright infringement which, if memory serves correctly, in the US is a more stiff penalty than petty theft even.
- dangerlibrary 11y agoIt's worse! You still route traffic to the site and don't even pay for your own bandwidth, while reaping the benefits of their content. Also, they didn't just embed an iframe - read the whole article.
- matheweis 11y agoHe had, shall we say, "protections" in place to prevent his page from being embedded. Daily Mail downloaded his source files, removed the protections, and then embedded their own iframe referencing the copied files with the protections removed. I'd say that counts as stealing.
- stevesearer 11y agoThis sort of thing happens all the time with images though. It just sounds worse and different because it is a fancy visualization rather than a .jpg or .gif.
- matheweis 11y ago... and many photographers have successfully sued for various websites using their imagery without permission - regardless of whether or not it was publicly available on the author's website. The fact that copyright is violated on a regular basis does not make this case any more or less excusable.
- stevesearer 11y agoI agree with you but that didn't come across well in my comment. My point was to say that it is indeed the same thing, only it sounds different because it took more steps to accomplish.
- feintruled 11y agoDodgy as hell though, if you do it without attribution. And you are sticking the true owner with the bandwidth costs. Also: "So how did Daily Mail embed the visualization without the word “poop” popping up on an empty page? They downloaded all the files from my server on to their own server and deleted the snippet that brought up a poop alert. That way they didn't have to deal with those pesky safeguards I setup."
- JupiterMoon 11y agoDownloading someone's website and re-hosting it one your own server without permission is surely a copyright infringement?
- mishchea 11y agoSounds like somebody didn't read the article.
- azalutsky 11y agoYou must be really good at creating visualizations. :) way to go sir!
- lmm 11y agoAs soon as you searched you saw that many other people had written this kind of thing, and yet that hadn't done any good. What made you think this post would make any more difference than the previous ones you found? If you want to actually make a difference, talk to your solicitor. You might even get some money out of it.
- rco8786 11y agoThat's a pretty silly thing to conclude. I, for one, didn't know about any of this. So that's at least 1 more person aware of this practice because OP chose to write about it. I imagine I'm not the only one.
- andy_ppp 11y agoThe morally corrupt posing as moral guardians. I know people who have had other things like photos from flickr stolen by them. They are disgraceful!
- madaxe_again 11y agoWell, what does one expect - they are the hateful paper for hateful people. In the 30's they ran many pieces about the wonderful Mr Hitler and his brilliant solution to the Jewish problem - and today they trot out the same rhetoric re: Muslims and immigrants. This is relevant because the kind of person who wants to work for a paper that espouses such views is very unlikely to care about your human, never mind intellectual property, rights.
- gadders 11y agoThe Daily Mirror also supported Hitler in the 30's. They were also the first paper to publicly accuse the murderers of Stephen Lawrence.
- fixermark 11y agoI can't help but think that it would make sense for Mr. Yau to either (a) Change the server setting to emit the X-Frame-Options: DENY header or (b) monetize views on his graphic. In general, you can't assume people won't deep-link your content, and that includes embedding. Taking steps to protect against or take advantage of traffic spikes is the responsibility of a content provider. This, of course, wouldn't protect against DM just straight yanking all his assets and hosting them itself, which should be clearly immoral (and possibly illegal, depending on jurisdiction). But "framers gonna frame" is a fair thing to assume about the nature of web content, along the lines of "<img> tags are cheap and if people see something funny on your site, they're gonna use 'em to share it."
- untog 11y ago> I can't help but think that it would make sense for Mr. Yau to either (a) Change the server setting to emit the X-Frame-Options: DENY header The article states that the Daily Mail scraped the files and uploaded them separately, to avoid his iframe detecting JS. And "just monetize it" feels like a... simplistic approach. Even if the Daily Mail did a normal iframe embed, how would the author monetize, exactly?
- fixermark 11y agoAs noted in my original comment: yes. However, he's had issues with multiple sites iframing his content against his will, not just Daily Mail. DM just went the extra mile to straight-up rehost the content, which crosses a line that directing a user's browser to mash up content from multiple servers isn't generally considered to cross (and can be controlled by content providers via use of existing cross-domain headers).
- DanBC 11y ago> And "just monetize it" feels like a... simplistic approach. Even if the Daily Mail did a normal iframe embed, how would the author monetize, exactly? Send them an invoice for using his material, with an additional fee for not getting permission in advance. Then take it to small claims if DM doesn't pay.
- 6stringmerc 11y agoWhat I Would Do: Find out what law firm represented the Beastie Boys when they went after GoldiBlox. Why I Would Do That: They were successful in their defense of the rights of the Beastie Boys and reached a settlement that included a public admission of guilt. Long-Term Goal: To discourage such behavior through numerous examples of punishment using established rules.
- untog 11y agoSomething tells me the Beastie Boys have a little more money to spend on lawyers than this guy does. And that's a significant problem - most of the time organizations like the Daily Mail are ripping off small-time practitioners of data visualizations, comics, whatever... if it's something produced by a large company with lawyers you can bet they wouldn't touch it.
- whistlerbrk 11y agoClass action, if that applies then maybe?. I think if this is really a repeat behaviour enough people would come out of the woodwork to say they too were stolen from and signup.
- Brakenshire 11y agoAs I understand it, we don't have class action in the UK.
- 6stringmerc 11y agoWell I didn't list "sell all worldly possessions and file a lawsuit" as one of the options, I just figured they'd be in the best position to consult, at least from a US standpoint if that's of any help. If I'm not mistaken, The Daily Mail likely has pretty hefty insurance policies in place for damages against them for a variety of legal tests / cases.
- SixSigma 11y agoOne of the reasons The Beastie Boys had money was that in 1983 they sued British Airways [1] for using a snippet of “Beastie Revolution” [2] without permission and received for $40,000 which they used to build a rent an apartment / rehearsal space / recording studio which they used to learn their craft. [1] https://web.archive.org/web/20110826155454/http://samplinglaw.wordpress.com/2008/01/04/the-very-first-sampling-lawsuit/ https://web.archive.org/web/20110826155454/http://samplingla... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cooky_Puss https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cooky_Puss
- wnevets 11y agothe daily mail is awful, I wish people would ignore their garbage.
- fixermark 11y agoThey had a story about the Orion capsule project recently [http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-3432512/Orion-Capsule-someday-humans-Mars-ready-begin-structural-testing-ahead-2018-lunar-flight.html http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-3432512/Orion...], that included an infographic comparing rockets throughout space history. Take a look at that last one; fans of space simulators will recognize it. Seriously, they are garbage journalists. Editorial oversight and quality control is, at best, a hobby for that publication.
- saganus 11y agoWow. I can't believe this passes as a newspaper. Where are the editors? Can't they even screen the things they steal at least?
- anentropic 11y agothey don't care
- saganus 11y agoYeah, I agree. But still... I mean, if I'm going to steal a diamond, I would make sure it's the real deal, instead of some Snatch's moissanite...
- ollybee 11y agoI use this plugin (also available for Chrome) to redirect to pictures of tea and kittens should I accidental click on a Daily Mail link. https://addons.mozilla.org/en-GB/firefox/addon/kitten-block/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-GB/firefox/addon/kitten-block/
- microcolonel 11y agoThis review has made my day. https://addons.mozilla.org/en-GB/firefox/addon/kitten-block/reviews/509312/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-GB/firefox/addon/kitten-block/...
- inetsee 11y agoIt would be nice if this plugin could be configured to do the same for a list of websites, and not just the Daily Mail.
- dickbasedregex 11y agoI would be better if it just dresses the link in CSS so you know never to bother clicking in the first place.
- sleepybrett 11y agoIt would be better if he determined the ip space of the internal daily mail employees and whitelist them. That way it all looks great for them, internally, but everyone else looking at that page sees an anti-daily mail screed... or just the word 'poop'
- andy_ppp 11y agoWhat does the law say about putting a license on use of things like this "Embedding this content into your site without written permission from the author will involve a £100000 fee for it's use. You agree by embedding this content that you abide by these terms." Is something like this enforceable?
- saganus 11y agoI think the problem with this, like with most routes that involve a lawyer, is that this isn't about being enforceable or not, but whether you can actually pay in time and money to try to enforce it. That's why typically only companies try to enforce licenses. The author said that even writing the blog post was hard because he had not much time to spare. Imagine what it would cost if you sue and demand a newspaper like The Daily Mail.
- andy_ppp 11y agoAh yes; it's almost as if we live in some sort of serfdom where all the laws are set up to benefit only those who already have wealth, influence and power.
- jwatte 11y agoAlmost...
- samstave 11y agoWhat if you just start invoicing their AP department?
- fweespeech 11y agoI bet you if you sourced it well, made it look formal, and referenced the relevant articles, visualizations, etc. they might pay it rather than fight you if the price was reasonable. Otherwise, you can always send them to collections for non-payment and/or hire a lawyer.
- 11y ago
- vermontdevil 11y agoThe Flowing Data is great. Yau really builds great visual charts of various data.
- sft 11y agoCouldn't you DMCA the fuck out of them?
- NelsonMinar 11y agoA few years ago the Daily Mail ran an article about a visualization I made. They obeyed my CC license, so I have no complaint as serious as Yau's. But the article was just full of errors, including spelling my name wrong in three different ways. I wrote the article author and pointed out all the errors and he responded "No copy editing! It's a tight budget." The Daily Mail truly doesn't give a shit. About quality, about copyright, about decency. It seems to be working for them.
- minikites 11y agoThe free market in action, I suppose.
- jdimov10 11y agoYes! Why is this a problem? The Daily Mail is SHIT. The majority of people LOVE to read about shit. It's not my thing, so I don't read it. That's what free market means.
- EGreg 11y agoDoes free market mean abusing someone else to host your stuff for free? Good thing we have REFERER in the browsers!
- anentropic 11y agothink a bit harder they still need to adhere to the rules of society (no stealing etc) also, publication of stories in a newspaper has implication wider than the readership of that newspaper and besides, any free market also needs rules in order to function properly
- druddha 11y agoBecause the same people who absorb this garbage have an influence on public policy. "The best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter."
- madaxe_again 11y ago
- beckler 11y agosounds like someone needs to set his X-Frame-Options header.
- jrs235 11y agoThank you for this. I was unaware of such an option! Here's a nice clickjacking cheat sheet I found after searching for more info: https://www.owasp.org/index.php/Clickjacking_Defense_Cheat_Sheet https://www.owasp.org/index.php/Clickjacking_Defense_Cheat_S...
- drostie 11y agoUnfortunately that would not work in this case: in this case they created an unauthorized copy of the work on their own server for the purposes of redistribution; therefore they had full control over the HTTP headers.
- nkrisc 11y agoEncode and eval the alert code so it's at least harder than searching the source for "alert"? It's not good, but it might be enough to annoy them into not doing it. Probably not.
- squeaky-clean 11y ago> I made an alert pop up that said “poop” whenever someone loaded the Stuff.co.nz page. Like I said, I'm sophisticated. I would probably have handled this much less maturely, haha. What would be the legality of displaying some really graphic image (like goatse) to only 10% of users when you detect you're within an iframe? :P Ripping the source code of the visualization is so scummy though. I wish I could say I can't believe the Daily Mail, but this article isn't even surprising...
- sirsar 11y agoJWZ used to detect the hacker news referrer and redirect all links that originated on hacker news to goatse. Now it's only slightly less graphic.
- lostlogin 11y agoI think the NZ Herald is worse than stuff. A meaningful percentage of their content is now Reddit stories.
- grawlinson 11y agoReal journalism is dead. What passes for journalism these days is just edits of media releases. Sad state of affairs.
- adjohu 11y agoautorespond *@dailymail.co.uk I hereby deny permission to reuse content from my website.
- nicky0 11y agoSend the Daily Mail an invoice for their use of your work. Pick a reasonable price and bill them. Then if you don't pay you've got something tangible to sue them about.
- werizuwe 11y agoThis. This is a standard procedure for photographers. Writing a blog post does not help anybody. Ask for money and you not only get money, they are more likely to not do it again.
- Terr_ 11y agoIANAL, but this sounds like a great idea even if you don't plan to pursue payment: It's more likely to get a change from the scuzzy people in charge of the scuzzy business than polite letters to article-writers. And if you do feel pissed, it nicely anchors things: "My client promptly sent a notification of infringement and an invoice, which they refused to pay for X months."
- fixermark 11y agoIt suddenly occurs to me that in addition to it being rude to deep-link someone's content via <iframe>, it may be dangerous to Daily Mail's security model. I wonder if they've configured everything correctly to ensure that an embedded iframe can't find its way to the user's Daily Mail cookies or credentials?
- lostlogin 11y agoWhat about just changing what the Daily Mail is serving up? An image referring to the Daily Mail stealing content for example.
- scriby 11y agoThe browser's built-in same origin policy will prevent the iframed content from being able to access cookies in the containing frame because it is being hosted from a different domain.
- teachingaway 11y agoIf you put a lot of effort into a project and don't want it stolen, please REGISTER THE COPYRIGHT. 0. Register the copyright within 3 months after you publish the project. 1. Register online at https://eco.copyright.gov/ https://eco.copyright.gov/ - it costs $35 (or so) and is not particularly difficult to do. 1.1 registration is not difficult, but it is tedious and involves navigating a super-old government website that kinda sucks. 2. You can also hire a lawyer to register for you, which costs around $200-300. 3. Once you have the copyright registration, you can write a polite letter to whomever is stealing your stuff (or write a nasty letter, depending on your mood). 4. You can force them to pay you compensation for stealing your copyrighted content. 5. If your stolen stuff is being hosted by a third party provider (like imgur or whatever), you can send the host a DMCA takedown request, and the host will quickly remove the offending content. that is just US law. Milage may vary in other countries. edit - a lot of downvoting on this comment. Too snarky? Too anti-open-source? i thought this is useful info. Sorry to offend!
- orik 11y ago35$ a visualization seems a steep price to pay.
- wise_young_man 11y agoYou don't actually need to register in order to be protected by copyright laws. The benefit to registering is that it is needed in order to sue. [1] 1: http://thompsonhall.com/does-a-copyright-have-to-be-registered-to-be-valid/ http://thompsonhall.com/does-a-copyright-have-to-be-register...
- teachingaway 11y agoI used to litigate copyright cases. While your comment is technically true, for 98% of cases, you will need the copyright registration for any amount of meaningful copyright protection.
- autotune 11y agoPerhaps the solution would be to embed a link to your site within the content you create itself, be it visualizations or whatever else?
- jrs235 11y agoHow would the Daily Mail feel about (and what would they do) if someone constantly scraped their website and redistributed the content? Perhaps a fun side project called TheLessAdsDailyMail.com?
- watty 11y agoCopying an entire site is a bit different, if you copy one of their articles I doubt anything would happen. Maybe a sternly worded email. If you copied their entire site, used their name, and removed their ads I'm sure they'd get lawyers involved.
- madaxe_again 11y agoOh, but you could have something in the footer that says "full credit for content to daisy mayall", which is on par with their citations. It's a fun idea though - seo bomb them until their bottom line aches.
- cgm616 11y agoI don't think (not a lawyer) that they could do anything if you put a disclaimer that it is a parody of their "creative work." That should allow use of slightly changed (LessAdsDailyMail) trademarks, and proper citations could handle the rest.
- dickbasedregex 11y agoWe all know what they'd do. Respond with threats and litigation probably.
- vonklaus 11y agoThat's a good idea! What if we repeatedly scraped their site and then display it to some of the users on our site. Then, we could charge them some small fee to click on the link. We could sell them some of the data around who clicked on the link, and even charge their users after we segment them. We would probably have to crawl the site a lot of times and then display their content, but essentially we would own it. Someone should try this. If it worked out, maybe you could expand to buzzfeed, techcrunch and then literally all of the sites on the internet. Why didn't anyone think of this? You would just be able to charge websites (and their users) for providing you content! edit: After thinking about it, it would probably be hard to do this. We could maybe create a standard and then show sites based on how well people listen to that, and then for the rest just see what are users look for and pick.
- alex_hitchins 11y agoI would suggest doing something like Nanex does with their graphs and images, use watermarks or some other identifying mark that is clearly unique to you. This way, they may think twice about clearly showing work that is not theirs.
- hjek 11y agoWhy is it any worse to link to a page than to put it in an iframe? (The author's page header was still on there, so there's a clear attribution.) Why is the author so dissatisfied with his page getting so many views? I'd assume that's the point of putting things on the internet.
- livingparadox 11y agoWho is saying that its worse to link to an iframe? The author's issue was that they asked permission, then took no response to mean "do as you will!" including downloading, modifying, and redistributing his work. I highly doubt he'd complain if they just linked to his content. This is pretty straightforward copyright infringement.
- Sir_Substance 11y agoRemember to disable your ad blocker when on dailymail.co.uk to fund this high quality content, it's not cheap to make! Wouldn't want them to have to close up shop!
- suyash 11y agoFirst things first: How did you even track who was using your Visualizations? Can you explain so others can learn from the lesson as well.
- cookiecaper 11y agoThis kind of thing is beyond rampant at all levels. I think the people most concerned about following the rules are small-medium businesses that are big enough for someone to try to sue, but not big enough to have an army of lawyers that makes them practically invincible from all claims that don't originate from a similar Super-Massive-Corp. Business insurance is pretty meaningless for practically any claim that doesn't involve unsafe facilities, and they often include clauses similar to "If you lose in the wrong way, you owe us all the money we paid for your defense". There's an impression that since big media outlets are such big targets, they're careful about this type of stuff, but it's not true at all. They're only careful when it's another SuperMassive's copyright. They know that a legal fight with them is not possible for any other creator, and they know that they can get an immediate benefit by violating your copyright. They'll rip your stuff off, they may take down the thing they didn't have a license for after you complain, and they'll just laugh at you because they know an attorney is going to charge tens of thousands to even start proceedings against someone as big as them. We need to fix the way legal costs work.
- tonyle 11y agoThis reminds me of the days of flash. There use to be a ton of sites stealing other people's flash games. You could buy flash obfuscater and de-obfuscate programs. People would steal your game code and re-skin the game,etc. Then the new strategy was to put the ads inside the video game.
- joepie91_ 11y agoThey embedded/copied/proxied it. They did not 'steal' it. Regardless of whether you find their behaviour acceptable, those are two very, very different things.
- chrisbennet 11y agoAnd when someone "steals" your identity, they didn't really steal it right?
- eddiecalzone 11y agoThe Oatmeal was recently linked to without permission by the Huffington Post. Matt Inman had a predictably brilliant response. https://i.imgur.com/WDDH8wj.jpg https://i.imgur.com/WDDH8wj.jpg
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- jwatte 11y agoIf they actually downloaded and republished your dikes, then that is clear copyright infringement. Which is both a crime, as well as cause for civil action. You could report them to the DA (or whatever is the equivalent where you or they live.) It would be interesting to see how that went!