9 ms·

Code theft: Asciimo: Where have I seen this before?

172 points by RBerenguel 16y ago

RBerenguel 16y ago
I submitted here yesterday the original asciimo link, now you can read here where the code cames from and the opinion from the real author.
- papertiger 16y ago
  Thanks for posting this update.
deleted 16y ago
[deleted]
- RBerenguel 16y ago
  Yes, but de facto is not de jure. Moreover, if you write something like i had to do unholy things to make the original code work, seriously. check the commit logs on github and you’ll see how much “code” i had to delete and refactor. what’s left isnt really acceptable, but it does work. and on the first comment in this post is I think it’s really funny you still don’t quite grasp the reason why I ported this library. You said, “He tried to say he did it for altruistic reasons, but FIGlet itself is open source, and there are already PHP modules available for people looking to use it in the browser (here and here).”. That is just funny. Thanks a lot of the write up, this will give me some great SEO. You are not really being "cool" about someone else's code, which you didn't ask for permission (which is de facto done, at least to say you have done so, if not to ask for permission).
  - _delirium 16y ago
    Hmm, I guess my understanding of hacker norms, at least in the communities I've been in for some years, was that there was no particular requirement to ask permission before building derivative versions of stuff, and generally you should assume it's allowed and encouraged, though credit is appropriate (and generally more prominent credit than this asciimo site gave). There's a half-dozen or so Hacker News repackagings that never asked pg's permission before going live, for example (e.g. http://hacker-newspaper.gilesb.com/ http://hacker-newspaper.gilesb.com/). So I'd definitely agree credit was poorly given, and this guy's motives probably aren't good either, but "code theft" seems a bit silly. "Nobody can use my stuff without permission" seems sort of out of place in hacker culture. I mean, TAAG itself is built on reusing a bunch of other people's work.
    - Tichy 16y ago
      The code for Hacker News is actually released as open source afaik.
      - _delirium 16y ago
        The code is, yes, but repackaging the actual live site content is a bit iffier. From what I can tell, pg's never either explicitly blessed or objected to it--- he seems to benignly tolerate it (though I may have missed somewhere where he addresses it?).
        ErrantX 16y ago
        Well, you're right to point out that is a "grey area". But it's a completely different situation to reworking copyrighted code :) It's hard to draw too many parallels between the two.
        steveklabnik 16y ago
        > Though I may have missed somewhere where he addresses it? He did allow Hacker Newspaper to do so, they asked him explicitly.
    - almost 16y ago
      This was not open source code. Would you expect to be allowed to download the GMail JavaScript code and use it to make your own webmail software? Hacker culture is great, but that doesn't mean you can or should force everyone in the world to abide by its norms (or your perception of those norms).
      - utnick 16y ago
        There is quite a big difference between Gmail and a just for fun ascii art generator. I could see this guy being upset if he wasn't given credit for it. But the new version gave credit to his original from the very start. Kind of a weird thing to get mad about.
fsniper 16y ago
I don't get it. If every change is tracked by github and he gives links and attribution to TAAG what is the problem? Is there any license issues involed that i can't grasp? What is the original codes license? In what license the new library is distributed?
- almost 16y ago
  The original code was not open source. It just happened to be JavaScript so it was possible to steal it. Just for anyone who doesn't know: when no explicit license or copyright information is given this means all rights are with the author. Code is only ever public domain when it is explicitly put there by the author.
  - _delirium 16y ago
    If you want to take a hardline attitude towards it, then TAAG itself is in iffy territory, because many of the fonts it uses were just thrown on BBSs or the internet with no explicit open licenses. He seems to have just assumed (probably correctly) that if they were put online, or as part of "figlet font packs", then a BSD-style license was intended, but there isn't an explicit one on most of them.
    - RBerenguel 16y ago
      Probably FIGlet font packages have some kind of license, which is open enough, and the problem goes back to FIGlet and not to the original author. If the original authors had some problem with someone using these fonts (and keep in mind that ASCII fonts are somehow "easy" to think from scratch!) they would have complained way earlier.
    - jcl 16y ago
      Less iffy than you'd think. Fonts are not copyrightable (within the US, at least, and for fonts that do not contain executable code). http://nwalsh.com/comp.fonts/FAQ/cf_13.htm http://nwalsh.com/comp.fonts/FAQ/cf_13.htm
almost 16y ago
Wow, what a dick this Marak guys seems to be. He steals someone's code (possibly laboring under a mistaken idea of how copyright law works) makes snarky comments about the original and then when he's called on it instead of just admitting his mistake he is rude and nasty about it (and still doesn't bother to check what the actual law is, which just makes him look like a total idiot).
- bnoordhuis 16y ago
  > Wow, what a dick this Marak guys seems to be. He is a regular on the nodejs mailing list. An example of his, ha-hum, somewhat difficult disposition (break-down starts from the third post down): http://groups.google.com/group/nodejs/browse_thread/thread/c332756b714d692e/f207a05f505cab2b http://groups.google.com/group/nodejs/browse_thread/thread/c...
  - RyanMcGreal 16y ago
    I rather enjoyed this reply: > To be fair, Marak is from New York. This, I'm told, is how they talk out there.
    - thwarted 16y ago
      There are some choice ones in there. "Perhaps if we enforce a 'if this is your first night at nyc.js, you have to to speak'".
  - alrex021 16y ago
    >http://groups.google.com/group/nodejs/browse_thread/thread/c332756b714d692e/f207a05f505cab2b http://groups.google.com/group/nodejs/browse_thread/thread/c... Wow, that guy really is a dick.
  - sh1mmer 16y ago
    Also a regular in the Node irc room (JimBastard). I just connected the dots. He won a ticket to JSConf by winning the pre-conference talk in a bar about JavaScript competition. He seemed ok in person, and I know he hacks a lot of his own code, but I'm surprised what a dick he seems to be being. He definitely wasn't this much of a jerk face to face. Oh the Internet, this is why we can't have nice things.
thecircusb0y 16y ago
If I'm reading this right he took messy javascript someone wrote, and ported it to a php library... If he didn't give original credit to the OP, then yeah thats rude, but don't we all end up porting old code at sometime or another?
- almost 16y ago
  He took (possibly messy, although that doesn't have much to do with it) JavaScript code which he didn't own and had no rights to without asking and made changes to it. No PHP here.
  - thecircusb0y 16y ago
    Okay.. but Javascript is free to view through the client machine no matter what. It brings up that question "if its easy to cheat, will people do it?" and the answer is, usually yes. Sure theft really sucks, but was there a way to prevent this other then trusting someone not to steal?
    - almost 16y ago
      I'm not sure what your point is.
      - thecircusb0y 16y ago
        In other words I'm not sure why we should be surprised and caring that someone stole javascript.
        almost 16y ago
        For the same reason I'd care if someone stole any other piece of work.
        thecircusb0y 16y ago
        Well is there a way to hide your javascript, or compile it to hinder the ability to steal it so easily? I'd like to know cause as far as I knew you had to be extra careful on what you do with javascript to protect the security of your site. I always have my controllers verifying my input from javascript/ajax, cause I know my js is easily viewable.
jqueryin 16y ago
Personally, I'd be more okay with the fact this dude was posting some code on github had he properly credited the original author and posted a link to the original project. IMO he probably should have also asked for permission to post the author's code in the first place. I can't say whether or not he made changes to the codebase, but it's just plain wrong that he goes about crediting himself as the author when the truth is he probably contributed a very small amount to an already functional program.
Aegean 16y ago
if this code was licensed with an open source license and he adhered to terms, this would be perfectly valid. You _can_ indeed copy such code and write whatever snarky comments you want about it. But in this case this code is copyrighted and has no open source license clause: "His response to my comments was that because I didn’t explicitly put a copyright notice in my code that he could use it however he wanted (which I’m pretty sure isn’t true)." AFAIK copyright law says its not obligatory whether there is a copyright header or not, the work would be copyrighted either ways. Copyright is there the moment you create the work. So what he did was clearly illegal (and unethical).
- kmfrk 16y ago
  You are indeed correct; the copyright no longer needs to be mentioned explicitly by the owner.
- steveklabnik 16y ago
  Just picking some nits, but "But in this case this code is copyrighted" is wrong. In _all_ cases, code is copyrighted, even open source code. It's just that with F/OSS, someone has given you a license to use something they've created. Other than that, carry on.
  - lutorm 16y ago
    Actually no, you can put code in the public domain, thereby explicitly waiving your copyright. I believe, for example, that all code written by the US government is in the public domain.
    - steveklabnik 16y ago
      I knew someone was going to mention this... I'm not a lawyer, but in some places, isn't it hard or next to impossible to get your work into the public domain? You're 100% right about government works, but I was under the impression that the WTFPL was the closest thing you could really get to putting something of your own into the public domain... I could also be totally wrong. Then again, anyone who does this isn't going to face the problem that the OP did, and it doesn't really invalidate my earlier statement either. Only part of it.
alextingle 16y ago
Taking a step back, I think this is an excellent example of how most people are woefully ignorant about copyright. The vast majority of people think nothing of infringing copyright - they use images from Flickr without bothering to check the license, they forward e-mails, they post & repost videos to Youtube, they download & share music & video & software with their friends without a care in the world. Why? Because that's the natural way to use the Internet, and (despite the recorded music industry's best efforts) nobody has ever pointed out to them that it's illegal. They copy on the Internet like fish swim in the sea. What Marak did is wrong, and I feel for the guy who had his code nicked. It's happened to me - Wordpress today contains my code in blatant violation of the license under which I published it. When that happened it annoyed me at first, but ultimately I decided to let it go because any complaint would be met by blank incomprehension. When your stuff is taken by "kids on the Internet", you can't just call them out on it, you have to educate them into a whole new way of thinking. And life's too short for that.
- DanielStraight 16y ago
  I think in the end, as sad is it is, what you said about "blank incomprehension" is the take home lesson from this. I've tried for months, if not years, to get people to understand that SO is violating copyright by not asking for permission to re-license user-submitted content under cc-wiki, but no one seems to get it. The basics of copyright law are not very complicated. I think the big problem is all the misinformation and rumors out there on copyright law. That and the fact that copyright law has historically not kept up well with new technology.
  - edanm 16y ago
    Can you expand on that SO statement? I know you said you've already been talking about it for months, but I've never heard anything about this.
    - DanielStraight 16y ago
      I don't know if this is the place for that discussion, but briefly, I think posting to SO gives them an implicit right to show your content on the web and store it on their servers. What I don't think it gives them an implicit right to do is re-license your content under cc-wiki, provide it in a data dump, and specify how you are to be attributed for your contribution. When I've brought this up with SO, their response was that because the footer says that all content is licensed under cc-wiki, it's OK. I disagree. If I say that your response to this comment will be in the public domain, that doesn't make it so. I would need your explicit permission to re-license your comment, even though I have certain implicit permissions, like the permission to cache it in my browser. For comparison, Wikipedia requires that all submitters "irrevocably agree to release [their] contributions under the CC-BY-SA 3.0 License and the GFDL. [They] agree that a hyperlink or URL is sufficient attribution under the Creative Commons license." (See the comment under the edit box on any Wikipedia edit page.) Wikipedia is big enough to actually deal with legal issues, and this is how they do it. They get explicit permission, and they explicitly require agreement with a particular method of attribution. I am not a lawyer, but everything I've read about copyright (from reliable sources, such as the actual legal code) suggests that Wikipedia is doing it right. There are certain implicit permissions with user-submitted content. Permission to re-license is not one of them. Since Wikipedia does re-license content, they ask for permission to do so. SO should do the same. OK, that wasn't as brief as I hoped. I apologize. I don't mean to derail the commentary here.
0wned 16y ago
This is why I stopped releasing source code. Idiots who want 15 mins of fame and constant attention but cannot create, so they consume what others create. You own the copyright. The declaration is an option. If you have been financially damaged by this, then you have legal recourse, but you must be able to prove damages with a dollar figure.
qeorge 16y ago
Great to see Patrick Gillespie is still around, I remember him from the AOL programming community (1999!), nice guy and very sharp. His API spy is still the best I've ever used: http://patorjk.com/downloads/patorjkapispy51.zip http://patorjk.com/downloads/patorjkapispy51.zip
- jeremymcanally 16y ago
  Wow I totally did not put 2 and 2 together until now. Now we just need someone to release "gothic nightmarez" for IRC and revive KnK and it'll be like it's 1995 again.
  - qeorge 16y ago
    Wow, KnK! That takes me back. What a great site. As corny as AOL programming may have been, I learned so much from it, and it definitely got me hooked on writing software. Good memories.
    - txt 16y ago
      Hahaha this is exactly why I clicked this article..I saw the name patandjk and thought holy crap I haven't heard that since the beautiful days of AOL.. I remember using there API generator while learning to code in vb6...I think everybody had a copy back then..Boy does that bring back memories....
cduan 16y ago
If it really is the case that this is copyright infringement, the easiest step may be to send a DMCA complaint to GitHub. The purpose of the DMCA complaint mechanism was to make it cheap and easy to deal with online copyright infringement without resorting to the courts. I know we're used to hearing about silly and illegitimate DMCA complaints, but this would seem like a reasonable use of it. (This isn't legal advice, of course; I don't know enough of the facts to be sure what applies.)
tbrownaw 16y ago
So is this a good place to be slightly pedantic and point out that "theft" as a concept doesn't apply to non-rivalrous goods? I suppose plagiarism could be seen as "theft of attention/credit" or such, but copyright infringement is only what it sounds like -- not respecting someone's government-granted monopoly rights.
- chc 16y ago
  It is always a good time to point that out. Big content owners try to twist the meanings to their benefit, but while both are illegal, they are not the same thing, and it's not to society's benefit to confuse them.
madair 16y ago
Ah yes, Mob justice, bring the pitchforks plz. I start hearing Smeagol's my preccccciiooosssss when some artists and coders talk about their work. [Edit] Ownership of goods is a social construction, not a universal truth nor is there some universal morality to consider. We can consider his feelings, but I'll tell you what, the peeps getting snippy here about justice for someone's ASCII generator, while simultaneously accepting the near universal oppression of poor people by their own consumption habits protected by intellectual property laws have somewhat questionable priorities, it would seem.
- houseabsolute 16y ago
  > nor is there some universal morality to consider It's a social construction most of us agree on, though. In fact, I have no doubt that some on here consider it fundamental to the advancement of the species. You're free to be here and disagree with us about it, but don't expect us to couch all our conversations in hypotheticals because you differ with us on our "undebatable subjects" -- those subjects we have pondered over enough that we need not debate them again and again every time someone raises an objection. > near universal oppression of poor people by their own consumption habits . . . The theory is that if the content isn't protected it won't be generated _at all_ at the margin. You can debate that theory if you like, but if it is true then the mere removal of the laws won't do a lick of good for poor people. Similarly, if wealth accumulation is disallowed, it's not that poor people will magically become wealthier. Instead what will happen is those who had previously worked hard to accumulate wealth will stop working as hard, and less wealth overall will be created.
  - madair 16y ago
    1. Agreeing on it doesn't make it moral. [Edit: although it does create a moral majority, aka, the tyranny of the majority] 2. Trickle down economics at its finest. Where's the evidence? I'll give you some counter-evidence: music after vs music before MP3 pirating. Seems like this vibrant cultural explosion happened despite all that lack of trickle down, huh. By your logic the colonialists and imperialists did a favor for all those tragic natives. I mean, where would all those Indians and Indonesians be without all that wealth creation by the East India Company?!?? [Edit: or Apple] The point is this system of IP is predicated on acceptance of not just winners but losers (at life), and justified with a generous self-serving of trickle-down economics. [Edit, to insert an LOL at people who think IP wouldn't be created without necessarily oppressing foreigners and people born without silver spoons. Note, I am aware that I have to construct the connection, and I haven't done that here, but there's no point in this forum, abstractions like this remain couched as a conveniently theoretical debate, despite the very real lives that poor people lead] [Edit, to insert another LOL at people who think that we must support our wealthy people's desire to create more wealth]
patio11 16y ago
I have a brilliant PR move for the content industries: we will wrap all their stuff with four lines of Javascript and then suddenly the Internets will rediscover copyright.
gojomo 16y ago
The creator's path should be clear: (1) Add an explicit copyright/license/reuse statement to the code to avoid similar misunderstandings in the future. While not required, it's wise for people who care about the copying of their work. (2) If he cares enough to enforce his preference against reuse, he should then send a DMCA notice to github/etc. From what I can see, both people are a little naive about copyright. The mature resolution isn't fuming back-and-forth, but to just learn and implement what the law already provides. On the other hand, if the real goal is to instead have an attention- and inlink- and traffic-grabbing web feud, they can each boost their fame/infamy by a few more rounds of mutual criticism in every forum that will have them and their supporters. For this goal, the more emotion/insults/ad-hominem, the better.
Semiapies 16y ago
I love that there are people trying to conflate an blog's image use that falls under a lot of concepts of "fair use" with a particularly obnoxious act of code plagiarism.
- alextingle 16y ago
  What on earth makes you think it's fair use? It's not commentary about the image. It's not educational. He reproduced the whole image, not a part of it. I suspect that you need to go and read up about copyright law.
  - Semiapies 16y ago
    I suspect you need to read up on fair use and will leave it at that.
drewcrawford 16y ago
While IANAL, I read copyright law books for fun. I've thought about writing a series of articles / FAQ on A Hacker's Guide to Copyright Law. The thing that's been stopping me is: * The sort of people who really need to know it won't read it * The sort of people who want to know how copyright works can find out from other sources
- chopsueyar 16y ago
  Write it and we will read it!
Groxx 16y ago
Since apparently nobody has yet posted here about it, the current state of all this is that Patorjk sent an email to Github, and they've taken the project down. http://github.com/marak/asciimo/ http://github.com/marak/asciimo/
- Groxx 16y ago
  OK, they... brought it back? * shrug * not interested enough to investigate deeply.
fictorial 16y ago
FYI the Node.js IRC channel is logged. http://nodejs.debuggable.com/2010-06-21.txt http://nodejs.debuggable.com/2010-06-21.txt

172 points by RBerenguel 16y ago

I submitted here yesterday the original asciimo link, now you can read here where the code cames from and the opinion from the real author.

papertiger 16y ago
Thanks for posting this update.

deleted 16y ago

[deleted]

RBerenguel 16y ago
Yes, but de facto is not de jure. Moreover, if you write something like i had to do unholy things to make the original code work, seriously. check the commit logs on github and you’ll see how much “code” i had to delete and refactor. what’s left isnt really acceptable, but it does work. and on the first comment in this post is I think it’s really funny you still don’t quite grasp the reason why I ported this library. You said, “He tried to say he did it for altruistic reasons, but FIGlet itself is open source, and there are already PHP modules available for people looking to use it in the browser (here and here).”. That is just funny. Thanks a lot of the write up, this will give me some great SEO. You are not really being "cool" about someone else's code, which you didn't ask for permission (which is de facto done, at least to say you have done so, if not to ask for permission).
- _delirium 16y ago
  Hmm, I guess my understanding of hacker norms, at least in the communities I've been in for some years, was that there was no particular requirement to ask permission before building derivative versions of stuff, and generally you should assume it's allowed and encouraged, though credit is appropriate (and generally more prominent credit than this asciimo site gave). There's a half-dozen or so Hacker News repackagings that never asked pg's permission before going live, for example (e.g. http://hacker-newspaper.gilesb.com/ http://hacker-newspaper.gilesb.com/). So I'd definitely agree credit was poorly given, and this guy's motives probably aren't good either, but "code theft" seems a bit silly. "Nobody can use my stuff without permission" seems sort of out of place in hacker culture. I mean, TAAG itself is built on reusing a bunch of other people's work.
  - Tichy 16y ago
    The code for Hacker News is actually released as open source afaik.
    - _delirium 16y ago
      The code is, yes, but repackaging the actual live site content is a bit iffier. From what I can tell, pg's never either explicitly blessed or objected to it--- he seems to benignly tolerate it (though I may have missed somewhere where he addresses it?).
      - ErrantX 16y ago
        Well, you're right to point out that is a "grey area". But it's a completely different situation to reworking copyrighted code :) It's hard to draw too many parallels between the two.
      - steveklabnik 16y ago
        > Though I may have missed somewhere where he addresses it? He did allow Hacker Newspaper to do so, they asked him explicitly.
  - almost 16y ago
    This was not open source code. Would you expect to be allowed to download the GMail JavaScript code and use it to make your own webmail software? Hacker culture is great, but that doesn't mean you can or should force everyone in the world to abide by its norms (or your perception of those norms).
    - utnick 16y ago
      There is quite a big difference between Gmail and a just for fun ascii art generator. I could see this guy being upset if he wasn't given credit for it. But the new version gave credit to his original from the very start. Kind of a weird thing to get mad about.

fsniper 16y ago

I don't get it. If every change is tracked by github and he gives links and attribution to TAAG what is the problem? Is there any license issues involed that i can't grasp? What is the original codes license? In what license the new library is distributed?

almost 16y ago
The original code was not open source. It just happened to be JavaScript so it was possible to steal it. Just for anyone who doesn't know: when no explicit license or copyright information is given this means all rights are with the author. Code is only ever public domain when it is explicitly put there by the author.
- _delirium 16y ago
  If you want to take a hardline attitude towards it, then TAAG itself is in iffy territory, because many of the fonts it uses were just thrown on BBSs or the internet with no explicit open licenses. He seems to have just assumed (probably correctly) that if they were put online, or as part of "figlet font packs", then a BSD-style license was intended, but there isn't an explicit one on most of them.
  - RBerenguel 16y ago
    Probably FIGlet font packages have some kind of license, which is open enough, and the problem goes back to FIGlet and not to the original author. If the original authors had some problem with someone using these fonts (and keep in mind that ASCII fonts are somehow "easy" to think from scratch!) they would have complained way earlier.
  - jcl 16y ago
    Less iffy than you'd think. Fonts are not copyrightable (within the US, at least, and for fonts that do not contain executable code). http://nwalsh.com/comp.fonts/FAQ/cf_13.htm http://nwalsh.com/comp.fonts/FAQ/cf_13.htm

almost 16y ago

Wow, what a dick this Marak guys seems to be. He steals someone's code (possibly laboring under a mistaken idea of how copyright law works) makes snarky comments about the original and then when he's called on it instead of just admitting his mistake he is rude and nasty about it (and still doesn't bother to check what the actual law is, which just makes him look like a total idiot).

bnoordhuis 16y ago
> Wow, what a dick this Marak guys seems to be. He is a regular on the nodejs mailing list. An example of his, ha-hum, somewhat difficult disposition (break-down starts from the third post down): http://groups.google.com/group/nodejs/browse_thread/thread/c332756b714d692e/f207a05f505cab2b http://groups.google.com/group/nodejs/browse_thread/thread/c...
- RyanMcGreal 16y ago
  I rather enjoyed this reply: > To be fair, Marak is from New York. This, I'm told, is how they talk out there.
  - thwarted 16y ago
    There are some choice ones in there. "Perhaps if we enforce a 'if this is your first night at nyc.js, you have to to speak'".
- alrex021 16y ago
  >http://groups.google.com/group/nodejs/browse_thread/thread/c332756b714d692e/f207a05f505cab2b http://groups.google.com/group/nodejs/browse_thread/thread/c... Wow, that guy really is a dick.
- sh1mmer 16y ago
  Also a regular in the Node irc room (JimBastard). I just connected the dots. He won a ticket to JSConf by winning the pre-conference talk in a bar about JavaScript competition. He seemed ok in person, and I know he hacks a lot of his own code, but I'm surprised what a dick he seems to be being. He definitely wasn't this much of a jerk face to face. Oh the Internet, this is why we can't have nice things.

thecircusb0y 16y ago

If I'm reading this right he took messy javascript someone wrote, and ported it to a php library... If he didn't give original credit to the OP, then yeah thats rude, but don't we all end up porting old code at sometime or another?

almost 16y ago
He took (possibly messy, although that doesn't have much to do with it) JavaScript code which he didn't own and had no rights to without asking and made changes to it. No PHP here.
- thecircusb0y 16y ago
  Okay.. but Javascript is free to view through the client machine no matter what. It brings up that question "if its easy to cheat, will people do it?" and the answer is, usually yes. Sure theft really sucks, but was there a way to prevent this other then trusting someone not to steal?
  - almost 16y ago
    I'm not sure what your point is.
    - thecircusb0y 16y ago
      In other words I'm not sure why we should be surprised and caring that someone stole javascript.
      - almost 16y ago
        For the same reason I'd care if someone stole any other piece of work.
        thecircusb0y 16y ago
        Well is there a way to hide your javascript, or compile it to hinder the ability to steal it so easily? I'd like to know cause as far as I knew you had to be extra careful on what you do with javascript to protect the security of your site. I always have my controllers verifying my input from javascript/ajax, cause I know my js is easily viewable.

jqueryin 16y ago

Personally, I'd be more okay with the fact this dude was posting some code on github had he properly credited the original author and posted a link to the original project. IMO he probably should have also asked for permission to post the author's code in the first place. I can't say whether or not he made changes to the codebase, but it's just plain wrong that he goes about crediting himself as the author when the truth is he probably contributed a very small amount to an already functional program.

Aegean 16y ago

if this code was licensed with an open source license and he adhered to terms, this would be perfectly valid. You _can_ indeed copy such code and write whatever snarky comments you want about it. But in this case this code is copyrighted and has no open source license clause: "His response to my comments was that because I didn’t explicitly put a copyright notice in my code that he could use it however he wanted (which I’m pretty sure isn’t true)." AFAIK copyright law says its not obligatory whether there is a copyright header or not, the work would be copyrighted either ways. Copyright is there the moment you create the work. So what he did was clearly illegal (and unethical).

kmfrk 16y ago
You are indeed correct; the copyright no longer needs to be mentioned explicitly by the owner.
steveklabnik 16y ago
Just picking some nits, but "But in this case this code is copyrighted" is wrong. In _all_ cases, code is copyrighted, even open source code. It's just that with F/OSS, someone has given you a license to use something they've created. Other than that, carry on.
- lutorm 16y ago
  Actually no, you can put code in the public domain, thereby explicitly waiving your copyright. I believe, for example, that all code written by the US government is in the public domain.
  - steveklabnik 16y ago
    I knew someone was going to mention this... I'm not a lawyer, but in some places, isn't it hard or next to impossible to get your work into the public domain? You're 100% right about government works, but I was under the impression that the WTFPL was the closest thing you could really get to putting something of your own into the public domain... I could also be totally wrong. Then again, anyone who does this isn't going to face the problem that the OP did, and it doesn't really invalidate my earlier statement either. Only part of it.

alextingle 16y ago

Taking a step back, I think this is an excellent example of how most people are woefully ignorant about copyright. The vast majority of people think nothing of infringing copyright - they use images from Flickr without bothering to check the license, they forward e-mails, they post & repost videos to Youtube, they download & share music & video & software with their friends without a care in the world. Why? Because that's the natural way to use the Internet, and (despite the recorded music industry's best efforts) nobody has ever pointed out to them that it's illegal. They copy on the Internet like fish swim in the sea. What Marak did is wrong, and I feel for the guy who had his code nicked. It's happened to me - Wordpress today contains my code in blatant violation of the license under which I published it. When that happened it annoyed me at first, but ultimately I decided to let it go because any complaint would be met by blank incomprehension. When your stuff is taken by "kids on the Internet", you can't just call them out on it, you have to educate them into a whole new way of thinking. And life's too short for that.

DanielStraight 16y ago
I think in the end, as sad is it is, what you said about "blank incomprehension" is the take home lesson from this. I've tried for months, if not years, to get people to understand that SO is violating copyright by not asking for permission to re-license user-submitted content under cc-wiki, but no one seems to get it. The basics of copyright law are not very complicated. I think the big problem is all the misinformation and rumors out there on copyright law. That and the fact that copyright law has historically not kept up well with new technology.
- edanm 16y ago
  Can you expand on that SO statement? I know you said you've already been talking about it for months, but I've never heard anything about this.
  - DanielStraight 16y ago
    I don't know if this is the place for that discussion, but briefly, I think posting to SO gives them an implicit right to show your content on the web and store it on their servers. What I don't think it gives them an implicit right to do is re-license your content under cc-wiki, provide it in a data dump, and specify how you are to be attributed for your contribution. When I've brought this up with SO, their response was that because the footer says that all content is licensed under cc-wiki, it's OK. I disagree. If I say that your response to this comment will be in the public domain, that doesn't make it so. I would need your explicit permission to re-license your comment, even though I have certain implicit permissions, like the permission to cache it in my browser. For comparison, Wikipedia requires that all submitters "irrevocably agree to release [their] contributions under the CC-BY-SA 3.0 License and the GFDL. [They] agree that a hyperlink or URL is sufficient attribution under the Creative Commons license." (See the comment under the edit box on any Wikipedia edit page.) Wikipedia is big enough to actually deal with legal issues, and this is how they do it. They get explicit permission, and they explicitly require agreement with a particular method of attribution. I am not a lawyer, but everything I've read about copyright (from reliable sources, such as the actual legal code) suggests that Wikipedia is doing it right. There are certain implicit permissions with user-submitted content. Permission to re-license is not one of them. Since Wikipedia does re-license content, they ask for permission to do so. SO should do the same. OK, that wasn't as brief as I hoped. I apologize. I don't mean to derail the commentary here.

0wned 16y ago

This is why I stopped releasing source code. Idiots who want 15 mins of fame and constant attention but cannot create, so they consume what others create. You own the copyright. The declaration is an option. If you have been financially damaged by this, then you have legal recourse, but you must be able to prove damages with a dollar figure.

qeorge 16y ago

Great to see Patrick Gillespie is still around, I remember him from the AOL programming community (1999!), nice guy and very sharp. His API spy is still the best I've ever used: http://patorjk.com/downloads/patorjkapispy51.zip http://patorjk.com/downloads/patorjkapispy51.zip

jeremymcanally 16y ago
Wow I totally did not put 2 and 2 together until now. Now we just need someone to release "gothic nightmarez" for IRC and revive KnK and it'll be like it's 1995 again.
- qeorge 16y ago
  Wow, KnK! That takes me back. What a great site. As corny as AOL programming may have been, I learned so much from it, and it definitely got me hooked on writing software. Good memories.
  - txt 16y ago
    Hahaha this is exactly why I clicked this article..I saw the name patandjk and thought holy crap I haven't heard that since the beautiful days of AOL.. I remember using there API generator while learning to code in vb6...I think everybody had a copy back then..Boy does that bring back memories....

cduan 16y ago

If it really is the case that this is copyright infringement, the easiest step may be to send a DMCA complaint to GitHub. The purpose of the DMCA complaint mechanism was to make it cheap and easy to deal with online copyright infringement without resorting to the courts. I know we're used to hearing about silly and illegitimate DMCA complaints, but this would seem like a reasonable use of it. (This isn't legal advice, of course; I don't know enough of the facts to be sure what applies.)

tbrownaw 16y ago

So is this a good place to be slightly pedantic and point out that "theft" as a concept doesn't apply to non-rivalrous goods? I suppose plagiarism could be seen as "theft of attention/credit" or such, but copyright infringement is only what it sounds like -- not respecting someone's government-granted monopoly rights.

chc 16y ago
It is always a good time to point that out. Big content owners try to twist the meanings to their benefit, but while both are illegal, they are not the same thing, and it's not to society's benefit to confuse them.

madair 16y ago

Ah yes, Mob justice, bring the pitchforks plz. I start hearing Smeagol's my preccccciiooosssss when some artists and coders talk about their work. [Edit] Ownership of goods is a social construction, not a universal truth nor is there some universal morality to consider. We can consider his feelings, but I'll tell you what, the peeps getting snippy here about justice for someone's ASCII generator, while simultaneously accepting the near universal oppression of poor people by their own consumption habits protected by intellectual property laws have somewhat questionable priorities, it would seem.

houseabsolute 16y ago
> nor is there some universal morality to consider It's a social construction most of us agree on, though. In fact, I have no doubt that some on here consider it fundamental to the advancement of the species. You're free to be here and disagree with us about it, but don't expect us to couch all our conversations in hypotheticals because you differ with us on our "undebatable subjects" -- those subjects we have pondered over enough that we need not debate them again and again every time someone raises an objection. > near universal oppression of poor people by their own consumption habits . . . The theory is that if the content isn't protected it won't be generated _at all_ at the margin. You can debate that theory if you like, but if it is true then the mere removal of the laws won't do a lick of good for poor people. Similarly, if wealth accumulation is disallowed, it's not that poor people will magically become wealthier. Instead what will happen is those who had previously worked hard to accumulate wealth will stop working as hard, and less wealth overall will be created.
- madair 16y ago
  1. Agreeing on it doesn't make it moral. [Edit: although it does create a moral majority, aka, the tyranny of the majority] 2. Trickle down economics at its finest. Where's the evidence? I'll give you some counter-evidence: music after vs music before MP3 pirating. Seems like this vibrant cultural explosion happened despite all that lack of trickle down, huh. By your logic the colonialists and imperialists did a favor for all those tragic natives. I mean, where would all those Indians and Indonesians be without all that wealth creation by the East India Company?!?? [Edit: or Apple] The point is this system of IP is predicated on acceptance of not just winners but losers (at life), and justified with a generous self-serving of trickle-down economics. [Edit, to insert an LOL at people who think IP wouldn't be created without necessarily oppressing foreigners and people born without silver spoons. Note, I am aware that I have to construct the connection, and I haven't done that here, but there's no point in this forum, abstractions like this remain couched as a conveniently theoretical debate, despite the very real lives that poor people lead] [Edit, to insert another LOL at people who think that we must support our wealthy people's desire to create more wealth]

patio11 16y ago

I have a brilliant PR move for the content industries: we will wrap all their stuff with four lines of Javascript and then suddenly the Internets will rediscover copyright.

gojomo 16y ago

The creator's path should be clear: (1) Add an explicit copyright/license/reuse statement to the code to avoid similar misunderstandings in the future. While not required, it's wise for people who care about the copying of their work. (2) If he cares enough to enforce his preference against reuse, he should then send a DMCA notice to github/etc. From what I can see, both people are a little naive about copyright. The mature resolution isn't fuming back-and-forth, but to just learn and implement what the law already provides. On the other hand, if the real goal is to instead have an attention- and inlink- and traffic-grabbing web feud, they can each boost their fame/infamy by a few more rounds of mutual criticism in every forum that will have them and their supporters. For this goal, the more emotion/insults/ad-hominem, the better.

Semiapies 16y ago

I love that there are people trying to conflate an blog's image use that falls under a lot of concepts of "fair use" with a particularly obnoxious act of code plagiarism.

alextingle 16y ago
What on earth makes you think it's fair use? It's not commentary about the image. It's not educational. He reproduced the whole image, not a part of it. I suspect that you need to go and read up about copyright law.
- Semiapies 16y ago
  I suspect you need to read up on fair use and will leave it at that.

drewcrawford 16y ago

While IANAL, I read copyright law books for fun. I've thought about writing a series of articles / FAQ on A Hacker's Guide to Copyright Law. The thing that's been stopping me is: * The sort of people who really need to know it won't read it * The sort of people who want to know how copyright works can find out from other sources

chopsueyar 16y ago
Write it and we will read it!

Groxx 16y ago

Since apparently nobody has yet posted here about it, the current state of all this is that Patorjk sent an email to Github, and they've taken the project down. http://github.com/marak/asciimo/ http://github.com/marak/asciimo/

Groxx 16y ago
OK, they... brought it back? * shrug * not interested enough to investigate deeply.

fictorial 16y ago

FYI the Node.js IRC channel is logged. http://nodejs.debuggable.com/2010-06-21.txt http://nodejs.debuggable.com/2010-06-21.txt