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YC and 500 Startups company Curebit caught stealing from 37 Signals

306 points by bhuga 15y ago

benjlang 15y ago
From David Mcclure "have spoken to Curebit founder Allan Grant, he has taken down the pages with Highrise assets. he's also now drafting a public response. needless to say, he is re-thinking recent behavior. although i'm sure DHH will not forget the transgression, but hope he may allow them opportunity to show they can learn from their mistakes & change."
- getsat 15y ago
  Seems to be an endemic problem: https://twitter.com/#!/dhh/status/163343265729490945 https://twitter.com/#!/dhh/status/163343265729490945
jtchang 15y ago
This happens more often than you think. Curebit just happened to get caught because the developer probably just copied and pasted the original HTML. And the fact that they copied from a ridiculously high profile site.
- loschorts 15y ago
  I remember when Leaky (YC S11) launched, its design was quite obviously taken from Square, but they put the notice: "All design credit goes to Square. We based our design on their home page until we can hire a designer of our own." http://techcrunch.com/2011/08/08/yc-backed-leaky-is-hipmunk-for-car-insurance http://techcrunch.com/2011/08/08/yc-backed-leaky-is-hipmunk-...
mindcrime 15y ago
We’re willing to file this story under “lean startup wankery,” folks. WTF? How does "lean startup" factor into this? That seems like an odd little digression there at the end of the article.
- waitwhat 15y ago
  "No matter how many corners you cut and no matter how small your team is, you still have to spend time and money on development and design." The implication is that a slightly less lean startup would have had more design resources and wouldn't have done something so stupid.
  - mindcrime 15y ago
    OK, I guess I can see why somebody might have written that, especially after reading the other HN thread (which I had skipped before) and seeing the stuff about ghetto testing, etc. BUT... I still believe that "lean principles" and "doing stupid things" are orthogonal ideas. Nothing about embracing lean mandates (or even suggests) doing something this lame-brained. I think it was a bit of an unreasonable jab at lean startup advocates, by the author of this piece.
yangez 15y ago
At what point does inspiration become imitation? Clearly Curebit stepped over the line in this case, but it's undeniable that lots of startups draw design inspiration from other companies. But at what point does this become unacceptable? For example, if Curebit merely used the same design, except hosting the assets on their own server, would that be okay? What if they just copied the layout but used their own styles, images, and fonts? Or if they just copied the button?
- chrisacky 15y ago
  I have similar thoughts. Some of the sites I've designed, look like the illegitimate love child of a collection of popular sites.
- gregpilling 15y ago
  If I was DHH I would have replaced the images with something else. It is always entertaining what you can do to someone's site if they are foolish enough to pull images off your server. Or they could have blocked the hotlinking of the image.
  - ceejayoz 15y ago
    The images had explicit height/width set (and were small) so any damage from this would've been pretty limited.
    - west1737 15y ago
      True, but changing the little checks to little middle finger bullets would have been a much more elegant method of retaliation.
      - tim_h 15y ago
        What if Curebit had an important demo/presentation that was botched as a result of this? I think the response should be tailored to provide them with a learning opportunity rather than to hurt their startup. A private naming/shaming like betageek suggested would probably do the trick.
chrisacky 15y ago
Is this really such a big deal? We are all only where we are today based on building on the improvements of others. This isn't exactly like Zynga copying other small studios games, it's just a bit of design rip off, which incidentally, I'm not a designer, but if I see something that I think looks good on another site, I'm happy to copy the css styles for it. I've often thought if I'm just kidding myself, and what I'm doing should be considered totally wrong, but ultimately, it's just some styles. I've still coded everything myself. While linking directly to assets you are using for your site, is clearly ridicuslously stupid, I don't think we should call the lynch mob out on them just yet. (Thoughts?)
- citricsquid 15y ago
  For me personally I found his attitude towards the entire thing the real problem. He asked if crediting the original creators was enough, he then hid behind all manner of silly startup buzzwords ("a/b testing", "ghetto test", "lean startup") and didn't seem to understand it was wrong. His tweets after the fact were worrying too, especially when others uncovered that they had other products that took designs from elsewhere. Shit happens and hopefully this doesn't damage curebits business long term, but Allan really needs to understand what he did wrong, he seems to think the problem was he didn't credit and it's perfectly okay to take someone elses work, pass it off as your own and then hide behind silly phrases. No matter what your business is or how old you are stealing is wrong.
  - reledi 15y ago
    Allan did have some silly responses. Either he was panicking and couldn't think clearly (he does have a lot on the line) or he genuinely doesn't understand what the problem is. On the other hand, I think David is overreacting and trying to get as much attention as possible -- seems a bit childish. If I was in David's shoes, I'd be shocked to see how much they directly copied and simply ask them to take it down, and possibly notify their investors. I'd also be proud that they used my design.
    - alexwolfe 15y ago
derwildemomo 15y ago
I'm sorry, but am I the only one wondering about the ... tone of dhh's response? I mean, "fucking scumbags", is he like 14? He has every right to be upset, but the choice of words are in no way helpful. just saying..
- ceejayoz 15y ago
  I think anyone wondering about dhh's tone hasn't followed him on Twitter for long.
  - derwildemomo 15y ago
    unfollowed him a long long time ago ( but i can still remember. )
- thirdsun 15y ago
  Exactly, This doesn't make him look very good. Beside the rude language, this isn't something grown-ups need to settle publicly via twitter. Very immature.
  - abjr 15y ago
    Agreed. Not that it matters much, but I just took Rework out of my wish list on Amazon. Reading his tweets in response to this has totally turned me off to 37Signals.
- ceol 15y ago
  DHH is well-known for being... crude, for lack of a nicer word. He's a guy who revels in the fact that he's arrogant.
  - sofuture 15y ago
    Why do we tolerate this behavior from people in our 'community' (or anyone really)? It's comically childish and infuriating to see it get a pass because 'oh, that's just their thing'.
vasco 15y ago
What I get from this situation is that the people over at 37 Signals are unfortunately, large kids, from the tweets present in the article. I see companies copying other companies' work all the time and although that's morally wrong, I also don't see how some lines of html are going to be the a relevant part of a company. (and if they are... bad news) What I don't see everyday is this kind of immature responses from the copied companies. Usually they just brush it off, because they know that in the end of the day, they are the better company. I say this without any other knowledge of the situation apart from the article though.
- veyron 15y ago
  It's one thing to complain that another company built a design largely influenced by yours. And that's a legitimate complaint, although the most you can do is say "Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery" This is wholesale ripping off (in particular, indicated by the direct linking to 37signals site assets). I would be pissed off too if I found that my bandwidth was being used to serve another company's site. Especially if the site was for a competitor. This is more than just design copying
  - vasco 15y ago
    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?
    - psykotic 15y ago
      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 them out in no uncertain terms was a community service. Let's not quibble over vocabulary.
aresant 15y ago
When 37Signals wrote a blog post showing this design style outrageously improved conversions they must have expected that lots of folks would copycat. Is DHH as pissed off at Elance for the blatant copy? https://www.elance.com/ https://www.elance.com/ There's a difference between eLance's "inspiration" and actually referencing hosted images & code that CureBit did, but it's not a night and day difference. Murky territory with us all copying eachother's moments of brilliance, but I don't think curebit deserves the full bodyslam, "scumbag" treatment.
- veyron 15y ago
  Copying the design doesn't necessarily deserve "scumbag" treatment. Some brusque words, sure, but certainly not the escalation of DHH. What Curebit did DEFINITELY qualifies as scumbag. There's some unknown tangible cost for 37signals (in the form of bandwidth, hosting assets for a competitor's site). There are small claims court cases considering similar situations nearly every day.
  - slig 15y ago
    What about their logo? https://twitter.com/#!/dhh/status/163298220322209792 https://twitter.com/#!/dhh/status/163298220322209792
    - aresant 15y ago
      Ouch. I hadn't seen that one as part of the story. The whole looks worse that the preliminary part mentioned in this story OP.
    - kingsidharth 15y ago
      <sarcasm> Naah, they were just A/B testing that one. I guess crediting it will make it fine. Unless the other party demands it to be taken down.</sarcasm>
    - dwynings 15y ago
      This one? http://www.bigstockphoto.com/image-5418738/stock-vector-retro-rocket-ship http://www.bigstockphoto.com/image-5418738/stock-vector-retr...
deleted 15y ago
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MichaelApproved 15y ago
I saw this play out yesterday in the comments and kept thiking "why won't someone stop him from posting?!" It was getting bigger and bigger the more he opened his mouth. I learned an important lesson a few years ago: sometimes you can't make something better, and trying to make it better only makes it worse. Stop, regroup with others and get a proper plan together.
- inovica 15y ago
  I fully agree. Sometimes saying nothing is better. I don't mean forever, but think about it, sleep on it, but don't just 'react'.
  - MichaelApproved 15y ago
    Yes, but it's also good to respond to comments, to a certain extent. I like when founders come on HN and answer questions, solve problems and speak frankly. But there's a point when you're having a PR nightmare that you need to stop trying to fix things yourself. My suggestion would be to acknowledge the issue, let people know you will address it shortly but you need time to talk with your partners so you could get a proper response together. Perhaps some version of "we're going to get to the bottom of this." Sure, it could be deemed a short term cop-out but it's better than sticking your foot in your over and over. I'm curious how public relations experts recommend people handle a situation like this.
drostan 15y ago
Seems to be some logical inconsistencies in the startup community over what is and is not ok to copy. Usually, like anything, it comes back to whatever is self-serving to the person doing the talking. Investors speak out against patents on methods of doing business because their well-funded current or future portfolio companies could "build on" the ideas and use the cash lead to make a ton of money. Digital media distribution platforms want online content to be freely distributed off of or outside of the publishers' sites that paid for the content to be produced. This is all still pretty new and the rules of law and of decency are still being determined (and, in the case of the latter, are different for each individual). I think the more productive outcome of this line-crossing is this exact discussion to help shape those rules.
- jsavimbi 15y ago
  > Seems to be some logical inconsistencies in the startup community over what is and is not ok to copy. Let's not pretend that we're dealing with a couple of noobs here, people. If it weren't for the cumulative years of technology-related experience of everyone involved, a case could be made for excusing a blatant misstep with an admonishment, but for outright copy/paste theft? Allan Grant knew better and decided to steal anyway.
dctoedt 15y ago
From a copyright-law perspective, it's not a slam-dunk that Curebit infringed any protectable aspect of the 37Signals design, as opposed to "stock" elements.[1] West Side Story has a lot in common with Romeo and Juliet, but the latter itself has a lot in common with a long line of still-earlier romantic tragedies.[2] Some of the reactions here are fascinating. As a group, HNers prize the freedom to copy from others and the ethic of helping others --- but for some, it seems to be "I get to copy from others, but no one else is allowed to copy from me." EDIT 1: That said, from a purely-practical perspective it's usually better and cheaper to steer clear of controversy (depending on how you think the PR scales will tip). Curebit might have been better off had it not copied what it did, not least because this controversy is sucking up management time that could probably be put to better use. EDIT 2: Plus, stealing someone else's bandwidth by linking directly to their copies of images, etc., without permission does cross the line, if that's what Curebit did. EDIT 3: Even copying HTML and CSS might not constitute copyright infringement if there are only a limited number of ways to express the same idea(s). This is even more the case if there's an optimal way to code a given set of ideas. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sc%C3%A8nes_%C3%A0_faire http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sc%C3%A8nes_%C3%A0_faire [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romeo_and_Juliet http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romeo_and_Juliet
- RockyMcNuts 15y ago
  Just because something's legal doesn't make it appropriate or professional behavior. It's legal to be an a-hole, but I usually try not to be one.
- luckyisgood 15y ago
  West Side Story and Romeo and Juliet share the same _idea_, not the same image file.
  - kingsidharth 15y ago
    And they don't copy paste dialogues. Paramount to using images from highrise.com (not even bothered to download and host them).
- 15y ago
slig 15y ago
No such thing as bad PR. Let's how well those guys will be doing in the future.
- corin_ 15y ago
  Anyone who says there's no such thing as bad PR has never worked in PR. Yes, seemingly bad PR can cause unexpected good things, and bad PR can sometimes be turned into a good thing when handled skillfully (even then, not always). The idea that all PR is good PR is just naive. If Allan Grant hadn't dug himself deeper into his hole, but instead come back with modesty, apologies and flattery to DHH at the very least (perhaps something outside the box as well, "Hey @DHH, to show we're sorry we'll donate $10k to a charity of your choice"?) then the bad PR would have got their name out there and their response might have prevented people from thinking badly of them, and even made people like them. But even then, there's never a guarantee that any response can turn bad PR to good.
darksaga 15y ago
Wow, talk about lazy. I'm ok with taking the layout, changing the images and using the same basic styles. At least change some of the fonts. I mean, How many sans serif fonts are out there that would've worked? Thousands. They lost me when they started copying the HTML VERBATIM. Apparently they don't have capable developers either. The layout in question is not that complicated, and I'm struck on why they decided to do what they did. Even in A/B testing you could've mocked this thing up in a few hours and had it ready to go. Inexcusable.
- shareme 15y ago
  Its called Too Much Money with Angles with too little time chasing wanabes
deleted 15y ago
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earnubs 15y ago
Now I've heard of Curebit.
aymeric 15y ago
This kind of thing happens often and I think it is ok as long it hurts no one and is temporary. If you are testing 10 variations, getting "inspiration" is faster than come up with your own design and doesn't hurt 37Signals during the short length of the test. Why did people get so angry so fast? The only people who got really hurt in this story are Curebit, not 37 Signals.
viscanti 15y ago
Curebit shouldn't have used assets off the 37Signals site, but I don't think this is a huge deal. If you write an article talking about how to do a/b tests (like 37Signals did), and talk about how great your results were from adding people instead of text to the landing page, then you have to expect that some people will use that information to influence their design decisions. The whole point of technical blogging is to help other people solve a problem the author has already solved. In this case, it was how to improve conversions on landing pages. If you put that content out there, don't be surprised when people use that content to help them solve a problem. You loose the right to whine and complain about someone using that information as soon as you blog about it. In return, you get more credibility (people treat you as a thought leader) and more page views.
_rs 15y ago
My two cents: everyone is making this a big deal, and it isn't. 37signals is respected, and they do great work. For a startup trying to get funding, a few images and a layout goes a long way, especially if it's just a small team of devs with zero design experience, etc. Sure they shouldn't have copied, but sure I shouldn't have googled the answer to that coding problem I just spend 2 hours slamming my head against the desk over.
- neotorama 15y ago
  They are not a 'normal' startup. With 1.2M, they can hire designer from Asia which probably cheaper rate compare to the state. Looking at the founder respond on twitter, He clearly have no idea about design and how web works.
nirvana 15y ago
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 seems so archaic to me. Like building images with text, rather than using photoshop. I write code on the backend, that lives on servers, I don't write HTML for a living, so maybe I'm missing some necessary requirement that forces people to work in text editors.... but a straightforward page like that should be much faster to create by dragging a button element onto it, even a generic one and picking the image, and then putting text boxes in there and setting their style, etc, should take maybe 2 minutes if the assets are already created. Not being able to do so seems like such a time sync. I remember once not too long ago tweaking a landing page, by going back and changing absolute pixel offsets 2-3 pixels at a time in text. I've done this with iOS code as well. Change the text, compile, run, how does it look? ok, need to go farther, back into the editor, bump it up 2 more pixels. etc. FWIW, if anyone knows of visual tools from startups or open source that are trying to solve this problem, I'd be keen to hear about them. (I'm building a web platform, and rather than create my own design tool would rather support existing ones with my platform.) The closest I'm aware of is Cappucino which supports using Apple's Interface Builder to layout UI for Webapps, and then export the IB files to the Cappucino format. Sproutcore had Greenhouse which looked even better, but seems to have been abandoned. A better tool would mean easier AB testing, maybe even ABC testing... faster development and more iterative design. I see no reason that such a tool couldn't be made, or would have to necessarily impose restrictions that limited its functionality... and I think that boosting web designer productivity would be hugely valuable. On the other hand, I can't imagine why nobody has tackled this. PS-- on the mac there's Flux, which sorta does this, but it doesn't integrate with a common web framework like rails, etc. I mean, you can, but it seems more suited to static pages. http://theescapers.com/flux/ http://theescapers.com/flux/
- matt1 15y ago
  I've been slowly building a high fidelity WYSIWYG web design tool called Lean Designs that might interest you: http://www.leandesigns.com 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 proceed long term.
gioele 15y ago
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` http://example.com/background.jpeg` is a wonderful image and indeed it is used on `http://example.com/index.html` http://example.com/index.html`. I run another site, example.net. I have my own `http://example.net/index.html` http://example.net/index.html` page and I decide to add a `<img src="http://example.com/background.jpeg http://example.com/background.jpeg alt="A wonderful landscape">` to it. Is this an infringement? If it is, why? Because it has been "contextualised" in another site? Please note that I did not copy the file, nor I distributed it, I just made a reference to it. You did use it, you did download it, your browser on your computer did all the composition. If hot-linking an is an infringement, then also distributing a bittorrent file is, the mechanism is very similar, just with one more level of indirection. And it is common option (mine as well) that the distribution of a bittorrent file does not constitute any kind of infringement by itself. Do you know how US copyright law deals with this?
- dctoedt 15y ago
  I just did a quick search and couldn't find any court cases directly on point. Three possible arguments come to mind: Alternative 1: By making your file available via the Web, you implicitly consented to having anyone download it who wants to do so, even via hot-linking, therefore there's no infringement. Alternative 2: It's established custom that the implicit consent applies only to people who are downloading the whole page, not individual images --- therefore you didn't implicitly consent to hot-linking, therefore whoever downloads your content that way is an infringer, therefore the hot-linker is liable for contributory infringement or perhaps inducement of infringement. Alternative 3: The person who created a page including hot-linked images, etc., has thereby created an unauthorized, and therefore infringing, derivative work [1]. (This assumes the hot-linked content is copyrightable.) [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Derivative_work#Definition http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Derivative_work#Definition
- walexander 15y ago
  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,_Inc 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"
yobbobandana 15y ago
Please do not conflate stealing with copying. When something is stolen, the original owner no longer has posession of the stolen object. If the story were about money or physical property, "stealing" would be appropriate. It is not. The word "copying" is quite adequate. In this case, direct copying is obviously poor behaviour. It betrays a lack of capability on the part of the copyer. This story would have had the same emotional impact, had it used the correct term. Using the word "stealing" mires the story in the intricacies of digital copyright debate, which is not what this is about. It is about a startup not doing its own work, and thus demonstrating inability.
- tzs 15y ago
  You are confusing everyday English with court pleadings. Here are some illustrative examples to show the difference. 1. You come home from work, and find that while you were gone someone came into your garage and stole your motorcycle. It would be quite normal to exclaim "I've been robbed!". Yet you in fact have been burgled, not robbed. Nevertheless in common English usage people use "robbed" in a more expansive sense than it is use in law. If writing a police report, or an indictment, one must make the distinction, but not in regular conversation. 2. You are in a bar, in a tuxedo, obviously trying to drink yourself into oblivion. I ask you what is wrong. You tell me "my best friend stole my fiancé...on our wedding day!". Technically, he did not steal her, as she is not property. He perhaps committed tortious interference with contract, or maybe alienation of affection. However, if you are not writing the pleadings for a lawsuit, it is in fact perfectly acceptable to say the bastard stole your fiancé. 3. You are the quarterback for your high school football team. The big game is coming up with your most hated rival high school. Your sister starts dating the quarterback of their time. While he is at your house visiting your system, he sneaks into your room, where you have your team's confidential playbook. He quickly uses his cell phone camera to take photos of each page. This would generally be described as him stealing your plays, even though it is not legally stealing (and probably isn't even legally a crime). The use of terms like stealing, theft, robbery, and so on to describe situations where they do not literally apply in the legal sense goes back a long way. E.g., from Shakespeare: "Who steals my purse, steals trash, but he that filches from me my good name robs me of that which not enriches him and makes me poor indeed." Note that he is using both filching (a synonym for stealing) and robbery to describe damaging a reputation. Copyright law's mechanism is to create a property interest in the right to make and distribute copies of a given work. Exercising someone else's property interests without there permission is acceptably called "theft" in ordinary English.
kristenlee 15y ago
They even copied the pricing page verbatim, I have personally incorporated some 37signals design elements in my own websites but nothing to this extent. 37signals is a bit hypocritical in my opinion because they brag about their design practices and then whine when someone copies it, either you're an open company sharing your inner-workings with the world or you're not, they can't have it both ways. http://www.curebit.com/pricing http://www.curebit.com/pricing
- getsat 15y ago
  Wow, they even copied a lot of the CSS ids/class names. > 37signals is a bit hypocritical There's a difference between leveraging the lessons learned/data gathered from a particular design and copying the design itself nearly verbatim. A big one.
protomyth 15y ago
If 37 Signals wanted to point out how it is not a costless transgression, they could send and invoice for the data transfer of the image at Amazon rates. More work than value. I am just struck by the fact that they thought no one would notice. It just seems like one of those judgement things that could be a red flag for future direction.
VonLipwig 15y ago
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...
- Peaker 15y ago
  In what way is the world a better place when you have to reimplement the design from scratch - as opposed to a world where anyone can copy a design (assuming some credit is given)? Sounds like the latter world will free up a lot of resources for more useful creative work.
  - jsavimbi 15y ago
    Assuming credit is granted. Creatives work on design to be creative; they don't outright steal it to save time and resources. It's what thy do and witness what happens when you cross them.
    - Peaker 15y ago
      I think the OP is about copyright infringement and plagiarism, which is a form of fraud. I do not justify it but it is not theft. I don't think the world has much to benefit from plagiarism, but I think the benefits of copying others' work and building upon them freely far outweigh the downsides.
  - bandushrew 15y ago
    Design done well is fantastically useful, fantastically creative work. It is an art, and you do not reward those who are good at it by copying not just their ideas but their actual works. I agree, as a developer who does not have much talent for design, that it would be a 'better' world for me if I could just grab the html from places that do have that talent and not suffer for it. It is hard in an area where you dont have much to offer, to accept that you do not have a right to take from those who do, but accepting that and learning to work within those constraints will make you both a better person and a better developer.
jasonlotito 15y ago
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.
- betageek 15y ago
  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.
  - gizmo 15y ago
    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.
    - jasonlotito 15y ago
      An honest question (and thank you for not using the term stealing!=)), but you listed 4 reasons. Just curious about where it crosses the line for you. If someone does A, is it still a grey area? Is it because of B? C? D? Personally, I see it as A. B, C, and D merely exasperate the situation, but without A, B, C, and D aren't an issue. Of course, the follow up is if it's because of B, C, and D that it isn't in a grey area?
      - eropple 15y ago
        You don't think hotlinking images and CSS is stealing bandwidth?
mhartl 15y ago
N.B. It's "37signals", not "37 Signals". Impressively, the original VentureBeat headline actually gets this right.
keeptrying 15y ago
I think dhh just threw a lot of traffic at Curebit. Would be good to find out how many more users Curebit got today.
zerostar07 15y ago
Is the tweet war in the article real? Sounds way over the top for what is simply a landing page. I suppose they didn't make millions out of it. Kind of makes you sympathize with curebit (but a good opportunity to get to know them). PS. the Rocket logo thing dhh is referring to is a stock image, i 've even used it myself! http://www.bigstockphoto.com/image-5418738/stock-vector-retro-rocket-ship http://www.bigstockphoto.com/image-5418738/stock-vector-retr... PS 2: Is dhh always so irritable? PS 3: Reminds of the oatmeal vs funnyjunk situation, but much less civil http://theoatmeal.com/blog/funnyjunk2 http://theoatmeal.com/blog/funnyjunk2
jvandenbroeck 15y ago
OMG, that's really really stupid. (1) It's incredible stupid to just copy sites, (2) it's retarded to keep references to files hosted on other servers and (3) it's incredible retarded to tweet to dhh "chill dude", imo a huge lack of respect & social feeling. YC has to look out, a few more of these stupid incidents and the YC brand will lose it's golden shine.. if you 're a 16 yo. kid you can make this "mistake", if your a YC company with $ 1.5 m in funding you can't imo.
sachingulaya 15y ago
A lot of people here are only referring to them ripping off 37signals' design. They ripped more than that. http://yfrog.com/oejp7cp http://yfrog.com/oejp7cp Curebit vs. Kinoma Sharebooster's logo is stolen directly from LaunchBit: http://yfrog.com/odx67yoj http://yfrog.com/odx67yoj No one can defend the theft of a logo.
- ryanwaggoner 15y ago
  To be fair, perhaps both of those companies used purchased themes or artwork from something like themeforest as a starting point. But this definitely looks bad, particularly in light of the 37signals dustup. EDIT: Looks that way for the rocket ship at least: http://www.bigstockphoto.com/image-5418738/stock-vector-retro-rocket-ship http://www.bigstockphoto.com/image-5418738/stock-vector-retr...
  - hippo33 15y ago
    Hey -- yeah, I'm one of the co-founders of LaunchBit, and it's true that on a startup budget, we bought the image from iStockphoto.
    - waitwhat 15y ago
      You should be aware that the iStockPhoto (and BigStockPhoto) license specifically excludes using their content in logos.
AznHisoka 15y ago
In a month, everyone will forget this, and Curebit will be well on its way to success. Disagree? Just look at the AirBnb stories (Craigslist spamming AND the user getting her house wrecked). Move on.. nothing to see here, just drama and egos.
dave_sullivan 15y ago
This is clearly an egregious case of design theft, particularly considering the fact that they're actually linking to assets off the Highrise site. But at the risk of opening myself up to an absolute shit hurricane, I'm curious where my site would fall on the Highrise design theft scale: http://www.powerplayforsalesforce.com http://www.powerplayforsalesforce.com. Personally I think it's fine, but it's also obvious that I read 37signals' post a while back re: their a/b testing and thought to myself: Hey, that's a great idea! Instead of doing a long form like everyone else, let's blow up a picture of a guy (me) on the left, put a video in the middle, and put some bullet points to the right with a signup button on bottom. Short and to the point, and incidentally, a technique that's been in use by print advertising since the beginning of print advertising. So where exactly is the line? (and I'm asking because I'm truly curious if I've crossed it) 3 bullet points about your product is nothing new. The smiling guy you can relate to with a testimonial isn't new. Some screenshots or a product video above the fold isn't new. But I certainly wouldn't give myself a ton of credit for originality in landing page design. I guess I could put the guy on the right and bullet points to the left. I could move the signup bottom. I could have more content in my footer. How do you take the general concept and produce something that doesn't look like something of a rip off? Personally, I have a lot of respect for what 37Signals has achieved over the years. So while I certainly want to learn from their mistakes and successes, I certainly don't want to be accused of being a scumbag design thief. Any thoughts?
- sixQuarks 15y ago
  Looks like you photoshopped your face onto someone else's body.
  - dave_sullivan 15y ago
    You're half right. Although this will make me sound like an absolute narcissist, I needed a haircut when I took the pic, so I photoshopped my twitter pic onto my own body rather than get a haircut and retake a bunch of pictures.
    - aaronblohowiak 15y ago
JonnieCache 15y ago
It's a bit like stealing another standup's jokes, or biting another rapper's lyrics. Not illegal, probably not immoral, but it will certainly make you look like a dick.
ryanwaggoner 15y ago
One thing I see coming up over and over in these comments is that people get upset that this is called "stealing". The logic goes that stealing deprives the original owner, and since 37signals hasn't been deprived of the code and images that were copied (the hosting is a separate issue), this doesn't constitute theft. While that may be a good argument that file-sharing is not "stealing" (though may still be unethical), I'm not sure it's an accurate assessment in the arena of design. Part of the purpose of design is branding and establishing a unique visual identity in the marketplace. By copying these designs, curebit hasn't deprived 37signals of the actual code and images, but they have deprived them of some degree of unique visual identity. And to that extent, isn't this stealing?
- richardw 15y ago
  But Javascript that has been hand-coded to offer uniqueness in identity and function, is largely considered fair game. Front-end specialists use view-source as a learning technique. I think many of these arguments lean in the direction of the interests of the person making the statement. For example, I have been impacted by file-sharing sites so I feel nothing but satisfaction when they're taken down. I'd imagine the forums where movie creatives spend their time are generally filled with high-conviction arguments about 'downloading=stealing'. The startup industry hit the roof when a few colour combinations and png's are taken, but feels nothing for old-media industries whose bedrock is being eroded. There's a lot of 'grey' in there, no obvious answers. Personally I don't torrent, but I have friends that do. I'll view-source but make it hard to steal my own source. Unique visual identity? Same as anything else - better have a lawyer advise you before you upload it for the world to see, and enough firepower to protect it.
schrototo 15y ago
I'm astounded how many people here are defending this... Leaving all other aspects aside, why should I trust a company that doesn't even have enough pride to spend 5 minutes whipping up their own fucking button images? And that they have over a million dollars in funding just makes this even more sad...
joelrunyon 15y ago
honest question The direct-linking is obviously a stupid move, but if the design was the same (minus the linking), would there be the same reaction? As a non-designer, if I saw 37 Signals page and told my designer, I want it to be like that, but with our info, I would expect it to look like that. (I'd also expect that they'd mock it up themselves). I can understand the uproar about the linking - that's a jerk move. But copying the overall design inspiration doesn't seem like a big deal to me though. Am I misunderstanding something?
pnmahoney 15y ago
I don't think anyone has a final answer, but really _how close_ do designs have to be so as to lack integrity? (assuming that they hadn't straight up lifted the CSS, images, button etc... which they did, which is clearly wrong.) Ex: DHH says http://elance.com http://elance.com is inspiration, not theft. Ok. Ex 2: A more difficult edge is http://coursekit.com http://coursekit.com I instantly recalled their design after seeing this scandal, although I'd initially taken note of it for its effectiveness. Their similarity to basecamp is on the front page only, and no assets stolen. (full disclosure: competitor, vaguely, for a hackathon-started education product I'm working on.) Like, we can think up a MILLION edge cases. That's not the point. I'm really, really curious to hear what you guys think the difference IS. and please, please, PLEASE don't respond to this with vitriol on other side. if you think there are problems happening here in the way we treat design, and how ppl react, just DON'T add to it in that way. reposted here b/c my q was downvote buried.
langsamer 15y ago
Why this this story on the front-page of HN? This provides very little quality content and discussion. This just seems to be propaganda. Yes, Curebit was in the wrong, admit it, move on. I'm sure there are more interesting things in the world of technology and startups than this. To quote PG: "I think HN's initial population of smart, mostly apolitical nerds has been diluted by the arrival of a lot of new users who are not as smart, and are thus more excited by shallow controversies." http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3105036 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3105036
kevinpet 15y ago
I don't see anything wrong with the following scenario: - Hey, what should we do for this page? - What do you think of this 37signals page? - Yeah, that'd be great, throw up something like that, we'll polish it later. However, that's not really the scenario here. There's a big difference between ripping off a style and layout (which is only declasse if people notice its a ripoff) and taking the actual code.
phzbOx 15y ago
Yeah, it's really a tricky subject. What if: a) The images weren't linked directly to 7signal. b) The html was * slightly* modified, but enough to show that it wasn't the same. 3) A little bit of tweaking here and there to make it * slightly* visually different. By the way, I'm more playing the devil advocate as, even if this was actually legal, that'd still be an unrespectful move. It's hard something to draw a line between inspiration and stealing. I.e. When you are a beginner, you keep taking stuff here and there. As you become better, you start to use pattern that you've learned. As you become even better, you know that everything you do is based on something, somewhere and can even point to where you've learn it / been inspired by. Only when you really master a subject can you really create something.. and then, it's not a full creation.. it might be only small details.. which will then inspire others.
rglover 15y ago
This is wrong, certainly, but the easy fix is to either disable the assets or move them to a new URL. All that's left is a slap on the wrist from the community and a lesson learned for any startup considering design appropriation.
blantonl 15y ago
This issue boils down to something plain and simple. If you come across something on the Web that visually makes since for your business, you open up your favorite editor and begin to code to match what you see. Source graphics that are similar in nature to reflect your objective and the design's objective. For CSS and JS, examine what has already been accomplished and add your flavor and tweaks that make your brand what it is. But if you copy CSS and HTML directly from another site and link to their images? For an up and coming funded startup? You are just greedy and lazy, or someone on the team got lazy.
jakejake 15y ago
This is an honest question, I'd be curious to hear how you might differentiate this from music and movie sharing? I hope that people won't just down-vote me without responding. I am truly curious because I myself have mixed feelings about all of these issues as both a content creator as well as a consumer. It's hard for me to understand why certain types of art must be free for all, but others are defended vigorously. I've seen this happen several times before where someone uses photos, design or article text without permission, gets busted and winds up on the tech forums. The tech community generally tends to get pretty noisy about how despicable they find it. It strikes me as interesting because one of the piracy arguments is that it's not stealing because the original author didn't lose anything. In this case (well aside from the hot-linking bandwidth) the original authors didn't lose anything. If all intellectual property should be free, shouldn't this be perfectly fine to use art and graphics and such as well? Why is it ok for 37signals to have any claim of ownership over these things when musicians who do so are criticized for not understanding. Is the difference the way the material is being used? It because curbit is using this in a corporate setting? People who are in favor of file sharing, does that not apply to design and software? Does it only apply to individual, personal use? What about sites who host music and have banner ads, are they ok? What if I use a song in my YouTube video, is that the same thing? How about some photos for a YouTube slide show? Thanks for any thoughts!
- stevenp 15y ago
  There's a difference between downloading music (albeit illegally) and taking someone else's work and trying to pass it off as your own. When I download a Duran Duran album, I don't post it on my website and claim that I made the album and attempt to sell it as my own (as much as I wish I was Simon LeBon). This isn't an issue of piracy -- it's an issue of plagiarism, which is quite different in my opinion.
  - jakejake 15y ago
    I think that is a pretty good point, the matter of taking credit for the work. How about using copyrighted music in your own YouTube video or something like that? If you give credit does that make a difference?
visegrip 15y ago
Epic fail on all parties. Y combinator encourages 10 finger theft for not doing it's part in due diligence. Maybe it's because Y-combinator supports SOPA and want's to lead by example. 37 signal clearly shows supports for SOPA by making a big F deal about this publicly. Than you have Curebit clearly taking investors for a ride. Clearly a Breach of contract!
- envex 15y ago
  Just because you don't want people stealing your work doesn't mean you support SOPA...
nfriedly 15y ago
I definitely feel that Curebit was in the wrong here, but the “fucking scumbags” comment cost DHH most of the respect I had for him. If he's willing to say something like that in public and on the record about someone he's never met, then I don't think I'd ever want to spend any time working with him.
evanlong 15y ago
Sorry curebit. you are on the HN homepage so I CSRF hunt: http://evanlong.github.com/security/web/csrf/curebit.html http://evanlong.github.com/security/web/csrf/curebit.html You pass in authenticity tokens but don't even bother to check them on the backend.
kkt262 15y ago
Saw this blatant copy earlier today when the news first broke. You'd think that if they really wanted to copy something they'd do a little bit better of hiding it, but the copy is just bad. Shame on Curebit.
xentronium 15y ago
Two amazing things: * Non-issue being treated like it's a world-wide catastrophe of some sort * Total inability of a startup founder to say "Okay, we fucked up" and do a proper mea culpa before it becomes a PR clusterfuck
rbanffy 15y ago
It's fascinating to see the abundance of doublethink. Somehow, copyright violation is not theft when it's a song and, suddenly it appears to be worse than murder when it's code. What Curebit did was reprehensible, amateurish and plain stupid. Most definitely not OK, but aren't we overreacting a bit? Are they selling the copied code? Did they refuse to take it down? Did they fail to apologize? BTW, in the same way we strongly suggest RIAA and MPAA affiliates they should look for business models that are viable in an age when copying and sharing music and movies is easy, shouldn't we encourage internet companies to seek business models compatible with the fact copying code is easy too? Let's forget for a second it's still wrong to use someone else's code without the right to do so, but how much does it hurt when someone copies some clever script from a public website? Last time I checked, 37 Signals had a very viable business model.
- felipemnoa 15y ago
  I think you are mixing two things. The outcry seems to be from one business copying another business. It would be like one songwriter copying the work of another songwriter. You are then comparing this to a regular person copyrighting the work of a songwriter/singer for their own consumption. Although they are similar they are not the same thing. Just wanted to point that out. I won't go into an argument about which is wrong though since that is not the intention of my comment.
  - rbanffy 15y ago
    I just want people to stop using "theft" when "copyright violation" and "unauthorized usage of resources" (which is closer to theft than copyright infringement, BTW) are the right expressions to describe something. For the pure copying of substantial parts of code from one site to the other, it's not that much different from one musician sampling another one's work. Our HTML, JavaScript and CSS are all out there exposed and readable. I fully expect to find parts of it copied all over the web. It's a fact of life. I don't always like it, but I know better than wasting my time with it. I don't think Curebit has any right to use 37 Signals' work, far from it, but I also think this outcry is a bit of an overreaction to mindboggingly idiotic deeds made even worse by a poorly conducted response. Once, a friend of mine caught a competitor using their CSSs and images (directly off my friend's servers) on their own site. One morning, the competitor woke up to find their site completely disfigured in randomly clever ways for every IP that wasn't their office's. It was very enjoyable to observe.
msacca 15y ago
I guess this isn't an uncommon occurrence. I was checking our analytics this morning when I noticed we've been getting some strange traffic regarding "Laptop Repair In Cochin." Well I dug around and found a site that copied and pasted our codebase outright, HTML / JS & CSS - then tweaked a couple CSS variables. I built the Wordpress theme from scratch about a year and a half ago and never released it for sale. This laptop repair site doesn't appear to be using Wordpress. Our site was featured on several design galleries at the time (it's in desperate need of an upgrade now, we just don't have the time) which, I'm sure, is how they found it to rip-off. Check it out: Our Site: http://www.tinyfactory.co http://www.tinyfactory.co Their Site: http://www.laptoprepairkerala.com http://www.laptoprepairkerala.com I suppose imitation is the sincerest form of flattery - and a great reminder that it's time to upgrade our site ;)

306 points by bhuga 15y ago

From David Mcclure "have spoken to Curebit founder Allan Grant, he has taken down the pages with Highrise assets. he's also now drafting a public response. needless to say, he is re-thinking recent behavior. although i'm sure DHH will not forget the transgression, but hope he may allow them opportunity to show they can learn from their mistakes & change."

getsat 15y ago
Seems to be an endemic problem: https://twitter.com/#!/dhh/status/163343265729490945 https://twitter.com/#!/dhh/status/163343265729490945

jtchang 15y ago

This happens more often than you think. Curebit just happened to get caught because the developer probably just copied and pasted the original HTML. And the fact that they copied from a ridiculously high profile site.

loschorts 15y ago
I remember when Leaky (YC S11) launched, its design was quite obviously taken from Square, but they put the notice: "All design credit goes to Square. We based our design on their home page until we can hire a designer of our own." http://techcrunch.com/2011/08/08/yc-backed-leaky-is-hipmunk-for-car-insurance http://techcrunch.com/2011/08/08/yc-backed-leaky-is-hipmunk-...

mindcrime 15y ago

We’re willing to file this story under “lean startup wankery,” folks. WTF? How does "lean startup" factor into this? That seems like an odd little digression there at the end of the article.

waitwhat 15y ago
"No matter how many corners you cut and no matter how small your team is, you still have to spend time and money on development and design." The implication is that a slightly less lean startup would have had more design resources and wouldn't have done something so stupid.
- mindcrime 15y ago
  OK, I guess I can see why somebody might have written that, especially after reading the other HN thread (which I had skipped before) and seeing the stuff about ghetto testing, etc. BUT... I still believe that "lean principles" and "doing stupid things" are orthogonal ideas. Nothing about embracing lean mandates (or even suggests) doing something this lame-brained. I think it was a bit of an unreasonable jab at lean startup advocates, by the author of this piece.

yangez 15y ago

At what point does inspiration become imitation? Clearly Curebit stepped over the line in this case, but it's undeniable that lots of startups draw design inspiration from other companies. But at what point does this become unacceptable? For example, if Curebit merely used the same design, except hosting the assets on their own server, would that be okay? What if they just copied the layout but used their own styles, images, and fonts? Or if they just copied the button?

chrisacky 15y ago
I have similar thoughts. Some of the sites I've designed, look like the illegitimate love child of a collection of popular sites.
gregpilling 15y ago
If I was DHH I would have replaced the images with something else. It is always entertaining what you can do to someone's site if they are foolish enough to pull images off your server. Or they could have blocked the hotlinking of the image.
- ceejayoz 15y ago
  The images had explicit height/width set (and were small) so any damage from this would've been pretty limited.
  - west1737 15y ago
    True, but changing the little checks to little middle finger bullets would have been a much more elegant method of retaliation.
    - tim_h 15y ago
      What if Curebit had an important demo/presentation that was botched as a result of this? I think the response should be tailored to provide them with a learning opportunity rather than to hurt their startup. A private naming/shaming like betageek suggested would probably do the trick.

chrisacky 15y ago

Is this really such a big deal? We are all only where we are today based on building on the improvements of others. This isn't exactly like Zynga copying other small studios games, it's just a bit of design rip off, which incidentally, I'm not a designer, but if I see something that I think looks good on another site, I'm happy to copy the css styles for it. I've often thought if I'm just kidding myself, and what I'm doing should be considered totally wrong, but ultimately, it's just some styles. I've still coded everything myself. While linking directly to assets you are using for your site, is clearly ridicuslously stupid, I don't think we should call the lynch mob out on them just yet. (Thoughts?)

citricsquid 15y ago
For me personally I found his attitude towards the entire thing the real problem. He asked if crediting the original creators was enough, he then hid behind all manner of silly startup buzzwords ("a/b testing", "ghetto test", "lean startup") and didn't seem to understand it was wrong. His tweets after the fact were worrying too, especially when others uncovered that they had other products that took designs from elsewhere. Shit happens and hopefully this doesn't damage curebits business long term, but Allan really needs to understand what he did wrong, he seems to think the problem was he didn't credit and it's perfectly okay to take someone elses work, pass it off as your own and then hide behind silly phrases. No matter what your business is or how old you are stealing is wrong.
- reledi 15y ago
  Allan did have some silly responses. Either he was panicking and couldn't think clearly (he does have a lot on the line) or he genuinely doesn't understand what the problem is. On the other hand, I think David is overreacting and trying to get as much attention as possible -- seems a bit childish. If I was in David's shoes, I'd be shocked to see how much they directly copied and simply ask them to take it down, and possibly notify their investors. I'd also be proud that they used my design.
  - alexwolfe 15y ago

derwildemomo 15y ago

I'm sorry, but am I the only one wondering about the ... tone of dhh's response? I mean, "fucking scumbags", is he like 14? He has every right to be upset, but the choice of words are in no way helpful. just saying..

ceejayoz 15y ago
I think anyone wondering about dhh's tone hasn't followed him on Twitter for long.
- derwildemomo 15y ago
  unfollowed him a long long time ago ( but i can still remember. )
thirdsun 15y ago
Exactly, This doesn't make him look very good. Beside the rude language, this isn't something grown-ups need to settle publicly via twitter. Very immature.
- abjr 15y ago
  Agreed. Not that it matters much, but I just took Rework out of my wish list on Amazon. Reading his tweets in response to this has totally turned me off to 37Signals.
ceol 15y ago
DHH is well-known for being... crude, for lack of a nicer word. He's a guy who revels in the fact that he's arrogant.
- sofuture 15y ago
  Why do we tolerate this behavior from people in our 'community' (or anyone really)? It's comically childish and infuriating to see it get a pass because 'oh, that's just their thing'.

vasco 15y ago

What I get from this situation is that the people over at 37 Signals are unfortunately, large kids, from the tweets present in the article. I see companies copying other companies' work all the time and although that's morally wrong, I also don't see how some lines of html are going to be the a relevant part of a company. (and if they are... bad news) What I don't see everyday is this kind of immature responses from the copied companies. Usually they just brush it off, because they know that in the end of the day, they are the better company. I say this without any other knowledge of the situation apart from the article though.

veyron 15y ago
It's one thing to complain that another company built a design largely influenced by yours. And that's a legitimate complaint, although the most you can do is say "Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery" This is wholesale ripping off (in particular, indicated by the direct linking to 37signals site assets). I would be pissed off too if I found that my bandwidth was being used to serve another company's site. Especially if the site was for a competitor. This is more than just design copying
- vasco 15y ago
  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?
  - psykotic 15y ago
    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 them out in no uncertain terms was a community service. Let's not quibble over vocabulary.

aresant 15y ago

When 37Signals wrote a blog post showing this design style outrageously improved conversions they must have expected that lots of folks would copycat. Is DHH as pissed off at Elance for the blatant copy? https://www.elance.com/ https://www.elance.com/ There's a difference between eLance's "inspiration" and actually referencing hosted images & code that CureBit did, but it's not a night and day difference. Murky territory with us all copying eachother's moments of brilliance, but I don't think curebit deserves the full bodyslam, "scumbag" treatment.

veyron 15y ago
Copying the design doesn't necessarily deserve "scumbag" treatment. Some brusque words, sure, but certainly not the escalation of DHH. What Curebit did DEFINITELY qualifies as scumbag. There's some unknown tangible cost for 37signals (in the form of bandwidth, hosting assets for a competitor's site). There are small claims court cases considering similar situations nearly every day.
- slig 15y ago
  What about their logo? https://twitter.com/#!/dhh/status/163298220322209792 https://twitter.com/#!/dhh/status/163298220322209792
  - aresant 15y ago
    Ouch. I hadn't seen that one as part of the story. The whole looks worse that the preliminary part mentioned in this story OP.
  - kingsidharth 15y ago
    <sarcasm> Naah, they were just A/B testing that one. I guess crediting it will make it fine. Unless the other party demands it to be taken down.</sarcasm>
  - dwynings 15y ago
    This one? http://www.bigstockphoto.com/image-5418738/stock-vector-retro-rocket-ship http://www.bigstockphoto.com/image-5418738/stock-vector-retr...

deleted 15y ago

[deleted]

MichaelApproved 15y ago

I saw this play out yesterday in the comments and kept thiking "why won't someone stop him from posting?!" It was getting bigger and bigger the more he opened his mouth. I learned an important lesson a few years ago: sometimes you can't make something better, and trying to make it better only makes it worse. Stop, regroup with others and get a proper plan together.

inovica 15y ago
I fully agree. Sometimes saying nothing is better. I don't mean forever, but think about it, sleep on it, but don't just 'react'.
- MichaelApproved 15y ago
  Yes, but it's also good to respond to comments, to a certain extent. I like when founders come on HN and answer questions, solve problems and speak frankly. But there's a point when you're having a PR nightmare that you need to stop trying to fix things yourself. My suggestion would be to acknowledge the issue, let people know you will address it shortly but you need time to talk with your partners so you could get a proper response together. Perhaps some version of "we're going to get to the bottom of this." Sure, it could be deemed a short term cop-out but it's better than sticking your foot in your over and over. I'm curious how public relations experts recommend people handle a situation like this.

drostan 15y ago

Seems to be some logical inconsistencies in the startup community over what is and is not ok to copy. Usually, like anything, it comes back to whatever is self-serving to the person doing the talking. Investors speak out against patents on methods of doing business because their well-funded current or future portfolio companies could "build on" the ideas and use the cash lead to make a ton of money. Digital media distribution platforms want online content to be freely distributed off of or outside of the publishers' sites that paid for the content to be produced. This is all still pretty new and the rules of law and of decency are still being determined (and, in the case of the latter, are different for each individual). I think the more productive outcome of this line-crossing is this exact discussion to help shape those rules.

jsavimbi 15y ago
> Seems to be some logical inconsistencies in the startup community over what is and is not ok to copy. Let's not pretend that we're dealing with a couple of noobs here, people. If it weren't for the cumulative years of technology-related experience of everyone involved, a case could be made for excusing a blatant misstep with an admonishment, but for outright copy/paste theft? Allan Grant knew better and decided to steal anyway.

dctoedt 15y ago

From a copyright-law perspective, it's not a slam-dunk that Curebit infringed any protectable aspect of the 37Signals design, as opposed to "stock" elements.[1] West Side Story has a lot in common with Romeo and Juliet, but the latter itself has a lot in common with a long line of still-earlier romantic tragedies.[2] Some of the reactions here are fascinating. As a group, HNers prize the freedom to copy from others and the ethic of helping others --- but for some, it seems to be "I get to copy from others, but no one else is allowed to copy from me." EDIT 1: That said, from a purely-practical perspective it's usually better and cheaper to steer clear of controversy (depending on how you think the PR scales will tip). Curebit might have been better off had it not copied what it did, not least because this controversy is sucking up management time that could probably be put to better use. EDIT 2: Plus, stealing someone else's bandwidth by linking directly to their copies of images, etc., without permission does cross the line, if that's what Curebit did. EDIT 3: Even copying HTML and CSS might not constitute copyright infringement if there are only a limited number of ways to express the same idea(s). This is even more the case if there's an optimal way to code a given set of ideas. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sc%C3%A8nes_%C3%A0_faire http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sc%C3%A8nes_%C3%A0_faire [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romeo_and_Juliet http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romeo_and_Juliet

RockyMcNuts 15y ago
Just because something's legal doesn't make it appropriate or professional behavior. It's legal to be an a-hole, but I usually try not to be one.
luckyisgood 15y ago
West Side Story and Romeo and Juliet share the same _idea_, not the same image file.
- kingsidharth 15y ago
  And they don't copy paste dialogues. Paramount to using images from highrise.com (not even bothered to download and host them).
15y ago

slig 15y ago

No such thing as bad PR. Let's how well those guys will be doing in the future.

corin_ 15y ago
Anyone who says there's no such thing as bad PR has never worked in PR. Yes, seemingly bad PR can cause unexpected good things, and bad PR can sometimes be turned into a good thing when handled skillfully (even then, not always). The idea that all PR is good PR is just naive. If Allan Grant hadn't dug himself deeper into his hole, but instead come back with modesty, apologies and flattery to DHH at the very least (perhaps something outside the box as well, "Hey @DHH, to show we're sorry we'll donate $10k to a charity of your choice"?) then the bad PR would have got their name out there and their response might have prevented people from thinking badly of them, and even made people like them. But even then, there's never a guarantee that any response can turn bad PR to good.

darksaga 15y ago

Wow, talk about lazy. I'm ok with taking the layout, changing the images and using the same basic styles. At least change some of the fonts. I mean, How many sans serif fonts are out there that would've worked? Thousands. They lost me when they started copying the HTML VERBATIM. Apparently they don't have capable developers either. The layout in question is not that complicated, and I'm struck on why they decided to do what they did. Even in A/B testing you could've mocked this thing up in a few hours and had it ready to go. Inexcusable.

shareme 15y ago
Its called Too Much Money with Angles with too little time chasing wanabes

deleted 15y ago

[deleted]

earnubs 15y ago

Now I've heard of Curebit.

aymeric 15y ago

This kind of thing happens often and I think it is ok as long it hurts no one and is temporary. If you are testing 10 variations, getting "inspiration" is faster than come up with your own design and doesn't hurt 37Signals during the short length of the test. Why did people get so angry so fast? The only people who got really hurt in this story are Curebit, not 37 Signals.

viscanti 15y ago

Curebit shouldn't have used assets off the 37Signals site, but I don't think this is a huge deal. If you write an article talking about how to do a/b tests (like 37Signals did), and talk about how great your results were from adding people instead of text to the landing page, then you have to expect that some people will use that information to influence their design decisions. The whole point of technical blogging is to help other people solve a problem the author has already solved. In this case, it was how to improve conversions on landing pages. If you put that content out there, don't be surprised when people use that content to help them solve a problem. You loose the right to whine and complain about someone using that information as soon as you blog about it. In return, you get more credibility (people treat you as a thought leader) and more page views.

_rs 15y ago

My two cents: everyone is making this a big deal, and it isn't. 37signals is respected, and they do great work. For a startup trying to get funding, a few images and a layout goes a long way, especially if it's just a small team of devs with zero design experience, etc. Sure they shouldn't have copied, but sure I shouldn't have googled the answer to that coding problem I just spend 2 hours slamming my head against the desk over.

neotorama 15y ago
They are not a 'normal' startup. With 1.2M, they can hire designer from Asia which probably cheaper rate compare to the state. Looking at the founder respond on twitter, He clearly have no idea about design and how web works.

nirvana 15y ago

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 seems so archaic to me. Like building images with text, rather than using photoshop. I write code on the backend, that lives on servers, I don't write HTML for a living, so maybe I'm missing some necessary requirement that forces people to work in text editors.... but a straightforward page like that should be much faster to create by dragging a button element onto it, even a generic one and picking the image, and then putting text boxes in there and setting their style, etc, should take maybe 2 minutes if the assets are already created. Not being able to do so seems like such a time sync. I remember once not too long ago tweaking a landing page, by going back and changing absolute pixel offsets 2-3 pixels at a time in text. I've done this with iOS code as well. Change the text, compile, run, how does it look? ok, need to go farther, back into the editor, bump it up 2 more pixels. etc. FWIW, if anyone knows of visual tools from startups or open source that are trying to solve this problem, I'd be keen to hear about them. (I'm building a web platform, and rather than create my own design tool would rather support existing ones with my platform.) The closest I'm aware of is Cappucino which supports using Apple's Interface Builder to layout UI for Webapps, and then export the IB files to the Cappucino format. Sproutcore had Greenhouse which looked even better, but seems to have been abandoned. A better tool would mean easier AB testing, maybe even ABC testing... faster development and more iterative design. I see no reason that such a tool couldn't be made, or would have to necessarily impose restrictions that limited its functionality... and I think that boosting web designer productivity would be hugely valuable. On the other hand, I can't imagine why nobody has tackled this. PS-- on the mac there's Flux, which sorta does this, but it doesn't integrate with a common web framework like rails, etc. I mean, you can, but it seems more suited to static pages. http://theescapers.com/flux/ http://theescapers.com/flux/

matt1 15y ago
I've been slowly building a high fidelity WYSIWYG web design tool called Lean Designs that might interest you: http://www.leandesigns.com 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 proceed long term.

gioele 15y ago

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` http://example.com/background.jpeg` is a wonderful image and indeed it is used on `http://example.com/index.html` http://example.com/index.html`. I run another site, example.net. I have my own `http://example.net/index.html` http://example.net/index.html` page and I decide to add a `<img src="http://example.com/background.jpeg http://example.com/background.jpeg alt="A wonderful landscape">` to it. Is this an infringement? If it is, why? Because it has been "contextualised" in another site? Please note that I did not copy the file, nor I distributed it, I just made a reference to it. You did use it, you did download it, your browser on your computer did all the composition. If hot-linking an is an infringement, then also distributing a bittorrent file is, the mechanism is very similar, just with one more level of indirection. And it is common option (mine as well) that the distribution of a bittorrent file does not constitute any kind of infringement by itself. Do you know how US copyright law deals with this?

dctoedt 15y ago
I just did a quick search and couldn't find any court cases directly on point. Three possible arguments come to mind: Alternative 1: By making your file available via the Web, you implicitly consented to having anyone download it who wants to do so, even via hot-linking, therefore there's no infringement. Alternative 2: It's established custom that the implicit consent applies only to people who are downloading the whole page, not individual images --- therefore you didn't implicitly consent to hot-linking, therefore whoever downloads your content that way is an infringer, therefore the hot-linker is liable for contributory infringement or perhaps inducement of infringement. Alternative 3: The person who created a page including hot-linked images, etc., has thereby created an unauthorized, and therefore infringing, derivative work [1]. (This assumes the hot-linked content is copyrightable.) [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Derivative_work#Definition http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Derivative_work#Definition
walexander 15y ago
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,_Inc 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"

yobbobandana 15y ago

Please do not conflate stealing with copying. When something is stolen, the original owner no longer has posession of the stolen object. If the story were about money or physical property, "stealing" would be appropriate. It is not. The word "copying" is quite adequate. In this case, direct copying is obviously poor behaviour. It betrays a lack of capability on the part of the copyer. This story would have had the same emotional impact, had it used the correct term. Using the word "stealing" mires the story in the intricacies of digital copyright debate, which is not what this is about. It is about a startup not doing its own work, and thus demonstrating inability.

tzs 15y ago
You are confusing everyday English with court pleadings. Here are some illustrative examples to show the difference. 1. You come home from work, and find that while you were gone someone came into your garage and stole your motorcycle. It would be quite normal to exclaim "I've been robbed!". Yet you in fact have been burgled, not robbed. Nevertheless in common English usage people use "robbed" in a more expansive sense than it is use in law. If writing a police report, or an indictment, one must make the distinction, but not in regular conversation. 2. You are in a bar, in a tuxedo, obviously trying to drink yourself into oblivion. I ask you what is wrong. You tell me "my best friend stole my fiancé...on our wedding day!". Technically, he did not steal her, as she is not property. He perhaps committed tortious interference with contract, or maybe alienation of affection. However, if you are not writing the pleadings for a lawsuit, it is in fact perfectly acceptable to say the bastard stole your fiancé. 3. You are the quarterback for your high school football team. The big game is coming up with your most hated rival high school. Your sister starts dating the quarterback of their time. While he is at your house visiting your system, he sneaks into your room, where you have your team's confidential playbook. He quickly uses his cell phone camera to take photos of each page. This would generally be described as him stealing your plays, even though it is not legally stealing (and probably isn't even legally a crime). The use of terms like stealing, theft, robbery, and so on to describe situations where they do not literally apply in the legal sense goes back a long way. E.g., from Shakespeare: "Who steals my purse, steals trash, but he that filches from me my good name robs me of that which not enriches him and makes me poor indeed." Note that he is using both filching (a synonym for stealing) and robbery to describe damaging a reputation. Copyright law's mechanism is to create a property interest in the right to make and distribute copies of a given work. Exercising someone else's property interests without there permission is acceptably called "theft" in ordinary English.

kristenlee 15y ago

They even copied the pricing page verbatim, I have personally incorporated some 37signals design elements in my own websites but nothing to this extent. 37signals is a bit hypocritical in my opinion because they brag about their design practices and then whine when someone copies it, either you're an open company sharing your inner-workings with the world or you're not, they can't have it both ways. http://www.curebit.com/pricing http://www.curebit.com/pricing

getsat 15y ago
Wow, they even copied a lot of the CSS ids/class names. > 37signals is a bit hypocritical There's a difference between leveraging the lessons learned/data gathered from a particular design and copying the design itself nearly verbatim. A big one.

protomyth 15y ago

If 37 Signals wanted to point out how it is not a costless transgression, they could send and invoice for the data transfer of the image at Amazon rates. More work than value. I am just struck by the fact that they thought no one would notice. It just seems like one of those judgement things that could be a red flag for future direction.

VonLipwig 15y ago

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...

Peaker 15y ago
In what way is the world a better place when you have to reimplement the design from scratch - as opposed to a world where anyone can copy a design (assuming some credit is given)? Sounds like the latter world will free up a lot of resources for more useful creative work.
- jsavimbi 15y ago
  Assuming credit is granted. Creatives work on design to be creative; they don't outright steal it to save time and resources. It's what thy do and witness what happens when you cross them.
  - Peaker 15y ago
    I think the OP is about copyright infringement and plagiarism, which is a form of fraud. I do not justify it but it is not theft. I don't think the world has much to benefit from plagiarism, but I think the benefits of copying others' work and building upon them freely far outweigh the downsides.
- bandushrew 15y ago
  Design done well is fantastically useful, fantastically creative work. It is an art, and you do not reward those who are good at it by copying not just their ideas but their actual works. I agree, as a developer who does not have much talent for design, that it would be a 'better' world for me if I could just grab the html from places that do have that talent and not suffer for it. It is hard in an area where you dont have much to offer, to accept that you do not have a right to take from those who do, but accepting that and learning to work within those constraints will make you both a better person and a better developer.

jasonlotito 15y ago

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.

betageek 15y ago
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.
- gizmo 15y ago
  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.
  - jasonlotito 15y ago
    An honest question (and thank you for not using the term stealing!=)), but you listed 4 reasons. Just curious about where it crosses the line for you. If someone does A, is it still a grey area? Is it because of B? C? D? Personally, I see it as A. B, C, and D merely exasperate the situation, but without A, B, C, and D aren't an issue. Of course, the follow up is if it's because of B, C, and D that it isn't in a grey area?
    - eropple 15y ago
      You don't think hotlinking images and CSS is stealing bandwidth?

mhartl 15y ago

N.B. It's "37signals", not "37 Signals". Impressively, the original VentureBeat headline actually gets this right.

keeptrying 15y ago

I think dhh just threw a lot of traffic at Curebit. Would be good to find out how many more users Curebit got today.

zerostar07 15y ago

Is the tweet war in the article real? Sounds way over the top for what is simply a landing page. I suppose they didn't make millions out of it. Kind of makes you sympathize with curebit (but a good opportunity to get to know them). PS. the Rocket logo thing dhh is referring to is a stock image, i 've even used it myself! http://www.bigstockphoto.com/image-5418738/stock-vector-retro-rocket-ship http://www.bigstockphoto.com/image-5418738/stock-vector-retr... PS 2: Is dhh always so irritable? PS 3: Reminds of the oatmeal vs funnyjunk situation, but much less civil http://theoatmeal.com/blog/funnyjunk2 http://theoatmeal.com/blog/funnyjunk2

jvandenbroeck 15y ago

OMG, that's really really stupid. (1) It's incredible stupid to just copy sites, (2) it's retarded to keep references to files hosted on other servers and (3) it's incredible retarded to tweet to dhh "chill dude", imo a huge lack of respect & social feeling. YC has to look out, a few more of these stupid incidents and the YC brand will lose it's golden shine.. if you 're a 16 yo. kid you can make this "mistake", if your a YC company with $ 1.5 m in funding you can't imo.

sachingulaya 15y ago

A lot of people here are only referring to them ripping off 37signals' design. They ripped more than that. http://yfrog.com/oejp7cp http://yfrog.com/oejp7cp Curebit vs. Kinoma Sharebooster's logo is stolen directly from LaunchBit: http://yfrog.com/odx67yoj http://yfrog.com/odx67yoj No one can defend the theft of a logo.

ryanwaggoner 15y ago
To be fair, perhaps both of those companies used purchased themes or artwork from something like themeforest as a starting point. But this definitely looks bad, particularly in light of the 37signals dustup. EDIT: Looks that way for the rocket ship at least: http://www.bigstockphoto.com/image-5418738/stock-vector-retro-rocket-ship http://www.bigstockphoto.com/image-5418738/stock-vector-retr...
- hippo33 15y ago
  Hey -- yeah, I'm one of the co-founders of LaunchBit, and it's true that on a startup budget, we bought the image from iStockphoto.
  - waitwhat 15y ago
    You should be aware that the iStockPhoto (and BigStockPhoto) license specifically excludes using their content in logos.

AznHisoka 15y ago

In a month, everyone will forget this, and Curebit will be well on its way to success. Disagree? Just look at the AirBnb stories (Craigslist spamming AND the user getting her house wrecked). Move on.. nothing to see here, just drama and egos.

dave_sullivan 15y ago

This is clearly an egregious case of design theft, particularly considering the fact that they're actually linking to assets off the Highrise site. But at the risk of opening myself up to an absolute shit hurricane, I'm curious where my site would fall on the Highrise design theft scale: http://www.powerplayforsalesforce.com http://www.powerplayforsalesforce.com. Personally I think it's fine, but it's also obvious that I read 37signals' post a while back re: their a/b testing and thought to myself: Hey, that's a great idea! Instead of doing a long form like everyone else, let's blow up a picture of a guy (me) on the left, put a video in the middle, and put some bullet points to the right with a signup button on bottom. Short and to the point, and incidentally, a technique that's been in use by print advertising since the beginning of print advertising. So where exactly is the line? (and I'm asking because I'm truly curious if I've crossed it) 3 bullet points about your product is nothing new. The smiling guy you can relate to with a testimonial isn't new. Some screenshots or a product video above the fold isn't new. But I certainly wouldn't give myself a ton of credit for originality in landing page design. I guess I could put the guy on the right and bullet points to the left. I could move the signup bottom. I could have more content in my footer. How do you take the general concept and produce something that doesn't look like something of a rip off? Personally, I have a lot of respect for what 37Signals has achieved over the years. So while I certainly want to learn from their mistakes and successes, I certainly don't want to be accused of being a scumbag design thief. Any thoughts?

sixQuarks 15y ago
Looks like you photoshopped your face onto someone else's body.
- dave_sullivan 15y ago
  You're half right. Although this will make me sound like an absolute narcissist, I needed a haircut when I took the pic, so I photoshopped my twitter pic onto my own body rather than get a haircut and retake a bunch of pictures.
  - aaronblohowiak 15y ago

JonnieCache 15y ago

It's a bit like stealing another standup's jokes, or biting another rapper's lyrics. Not illegal, probably not immoral, but it will certainly make you look like a dick.

ryanwaggoner 15y ago

One thing I see coming up over and over in these comments is that people get upset that this is called "stealing". The logic goes that stealing deprives the original owner, and since 37signals hasn't been deprived of the code and images that were copied (the hosting is a separate issue), this doesn't constitute theft. While that may be a good argument that file-sharing is not "stealing" (though may still be unethical), I'm not sure it's an accurate assessment in the arena of design. Part of the purpose of design is branding and establishing a unique visual identity in the marketplace. By copying these designs, curebit hasn't deprived 37signals of the actual code and images, but they have deprived them of some degree of unique visual identity. And to that extent, isn't this stealing?

richardw 15y ago
But Javascript that has been hand-coded to offer uniqueness in identity and function, is largely considered fair game. Front-end specialists use view-source as a learning technique. I think many of these arguments lean in the direction of the interests of the person making the statement. For example, I have been impacted by file-sharing sites so I feel nothing but satisfaction when they're taken down. I'd imagine the forums where movie creatives spend their time are generally filled with high-conviction arguments about 'downloading=stealing'. The startup industry hit the roof when a few colour combinations and png's are taken, but feels nothing for old-media industries whose bedrock is being eroded. There's a lot of 'grey' in there, no obvious answers. Personally I don't torrent, but I have friends that do. I'll view-source but make it hard to steal my own source. Unique visual identity? Same as anything else - better have a lawyer advise you before you upload it for the world to see, and enough firepower to protect it.

schrototo 15y ago

I'm astounded how many people here are defending this... Leaving all other aspects aside, why should I trust a company that doesn't even have enough pride to spend 5 minutes whipping up their own fucking button images? And that they have over a million dollars in funding just makes this even more sad...

joelrunyon 15y ago

honest question The direct-linking is obviously a stupid move, but if the design was the same (minus the linking), would there be the same reaction? As a non-designer, if I saw 37 Signals page and told my designer, I want it to be like that, but with our info, I would expect it to look like that. (I'd also expect that they'd mock it up themselves). I can understand the uproar about the linking - that's a jerk move. But copying the overall design inspiration doesn't seem like a big deal to me though. Am I misunderstanding something?

pnmahoney 15y ago

I don't think anyone has a final answer, but really _how close_ do designs have to be so as to lack integrity? (assuming that they hadn't straight up lifted the CSS, images, button etc... which they did, which is clearly wrong.) Ex: DHH says http://elance.com http://elance.com is inspiration, not theft. Ok. Ex 2: A more difficult edge is http://coursekit.com http://coursekit.com I instantly recalled their design after seeing this scandal, although I'd initially taken note of it for its effectiveness. Their similarity to basecamp is on the front page only, and no assets stolen. (full disclosure: competitor, vaguely, for a hackathon-started education product I'm working on.) Like, we can think up a MILLION edge cases. That's not the point. I'm really, really curious to hear what you guys think the difference IS. and please, please, PLEASE don't respond to this with vitriol on other side. if you think there are problems happening here in the way we treat design, and how ppl react, just DON'T add to it in that way. reposted here b/c my q was downvote buried.

langsamer 15y ago

Why this this story on the front-page of HN? This provides very little quality content and discussion. This just seems to be propaganda. Yes, Curebit was in the wrong, admit it, move on. I'm sure there are more interesting things in the world of technology and startups than this. To quote PG: "I think HN's initial population of smart, mostly apolitical nerds has been diluted by the arrival of a lot of new users who are not as smart, and are thus more excited by shallow controversies." http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3105036 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3105036

kevinpet 15y ago

I don't see anything wrong with the following scenario: - Hey, what should we do for this page? - What do you think of this 37signals page? - Yeah, that'd be great, throw up something like that, we'll polish it later. However, that's not really the scenario here. There's a big difference between ripping off a style and layout (which is only declasse if people notice its a ripoff) and taking the actual code.

phzbOx 15y ago

Yeah, it's really a tricky subject. What if: a) The images weren't linked directly to 7signal. b) The html was * slightly* modified, but enough to show that it wasn't the same. 3) A little bit of tweaking here and there to make it * slightly* visually different. By the way, I'm more playing the devil advocate as, even if this was actually legal, that'd still be an unrespectful move. It's hard something to draw a line between inspiration and stealing. I.e. When you are a beginner, you keep taking stuff here and there. As you become better, you start to use pattern that you've learned. As you become even better, you know that everything you do is based on something, somewhere and can even point to where you've learn it / been inspired by. Only when you really master a subject can you really create something.. and then, it's not a full creation.. it might be only small details.. which will then inspire others.

rglover 15y ago

This is wrong, certainly, but the easy fix is to either disable the assets or move them to a new URL. All that's left is a slap on the wrist from the community and a lesson learned for any startup considering design appropriation.

blantonl 15y ago

This issue boils down to something plain and simple. If you come across something on the Web that visually makes since for your business, you open up your favorite editor and begin to code to match what you see. Source graphics that are similar in nature to reflect your objective and the design's objective. For CSS and JS, examine what has already been accomplished and add your flavor and tweaks that make your brand what it is. But if you copy CSS and HTML directly from another site and link to their images? For an up and coming funded startup? You are just greedy and lazy, or someone on the team got lazy.

jakejake 15y ago

This is an honest question, I'd be curious to hear how you might differentiate this from music and movie sharing? I hope that people won't just down-vote me without responding. I am truly curious because I myself have mixed feelings about all of these issues as both a content creator as well as a consumer. It's hard for me to understand why certain types of art must be free for all, but others are defended vigorously. I've seen this happen several times before where someone uses photos, design or article text without permission, gets busted and winds up on the tech forums. The tech community generally tends to get pretty noisy about how despicable they find it. It strikes me as interesting because one of the piracy arguments is that it's not stealing because the original author didn't lose anything. In this case (well aside from the hot-linking bandwidth) the original authors didn't lose anything. If all intellectual property should be free, shouldn't this be perfectly fine to use art and graphics and such as well? Why is it ok for 37signals to have any claim of ownership over these things when musicians who do so are criticized for not understanding. Is the difference the way the material is being used? It because curbit is using this in a corporate setting? People who are in favor of file sharing, does that not apply to design and software? Does it only apply to individual, personal use? What about sites who host music and have banner ads, are they ok? What if I use a song in my YouTube video, is that the same thing? How about some photos for a YouTube slide show? Thanks for any thoughts!

stevenp 15y ago
There's a difference between downloading music (albeit illegally) and taking someone else's work and trying to pass it off as your own. When I download a Duran Duran album, I don't post it on my website and claim that I made the album and attempt to sell it as my own (as much as I wish I was Simon LeBon). This isn't an issue of piracy -- it's an issue of plagiarism, which is quite different in my opinion.
- jakejake 15y ago
  I think that is a pretty good point, the matter of taking credit for the work. How about using copyrighted music in your own YouTube video or something like that? If you give credit does that make a difference?

visegrip 15y ago

Epic fail on all parties. Y combinator encourages 10 finger theft for not doing it's part in due diligence. Maybe it's because Y-combinator supports SOPA and want's to lead by example. 37 signal clearly shows supports for SOPA by making a big F deal about this publicly. Than you have Curebit clearly taking investors for a ride. Clearly a Breach of contract!

envex 15y ago
Just because you don't want people stealing your work doesn't mean you support SOPA...

nfriedly 15y ago

I definitely feel that Curebit was in the wrong here, but the “fucking scumbags” comment cost DHH most of the respect I had for him. If he's willing to say something like that in public and on the record about someone he's never met, then I don't think I'd ever want to spend any time working with him.

evanlong 15y ago

Sorry curebit. you are on the HN homepage so I CSRF hunt: http://evanlong.github.com/security/web/csrf/curebit.html http://evanlong.github.com/security/web/csrf/curebit.html You pass in authenticity tokens but don't even bother to check them on the backend.

kkt262 15y ago

Saw this blatant copy earlier today when the news first broke. You'd think that if they really wanted to copy something they'd do a little bit better of hiding it, but the copy is just bad. Shame on Curebit.

xentronium 15y ago

Two amazing things: * Non-issue being treated like it's a world-wide catastrophe of some sort * Total inability of a startup founder to say "Okay, we fucked up" and do a proper mea culpa before it becomes a PR clusterfuck

rbanffy 15y ago

It's fascinating to see the abundance of doublethink. Somehow, copyright violation is not theft when it's a song and, suddenly it appears to be worse than murder when it's code. What Curebit did was reprehensible, amateurish and plain stupid. Most definitely not OK, but aren't we overreacting a bit? Are they selling the copied code? Did they refuse to take it down? Did they fail to apologize? BTW, in the same way we strongly suggest RIAA and MPAA affiliates they should look for business models that are viable in an age when copying and sharing music and movies is easy, shouldn't we encourage internet companies to seek business models compatible with the fact copying code is easy too? Let's forget for a second it's still wrong to use someone else's code without the right to do so, but how much does it hurt when someone copies some clever script from a public website? Last time I checked, 37 Signals had a very viable business model.

felipemnoa 15y ago
I think you are mixing two things. The outcry seems to be from one business copying another business. It would be like one songwriter copying the work of another songwriter. You are then comparing this to a regular person copyrighting the work of a songwriter/singer for their own consumption. Although they are similar they are not the same thing. Just wanted to point that out. I won't go into an argument about which is wrong though since that is not the intention of my comment.
- rbanffy 15y ago
  I just want people to stop using "theft" when "copyright violation" and "unauthorized usage of resources" (which is closer to theft than copyright infringement, BTW) are the right expressions to describe something. For the pure copying of substantial parts of code from one site to the other, it's not that much different from one musician sampling another one's work. Our HTML, JavaScript and CSS are all out there exposed and readable. I fully expect to find parts of it copied all over the web. It's a fact of life. I don't always like it, but I know better than wasting my time with it. I don't think Curebit has any right to use 37 Signals' work, far from it, but I also think this outcry is a bit of an overreaction to mindboggingly idiotic deeds made even worse by a poorly conducted response. Once, a friend of mine caught a competitor using their CSSs and images (directly off my friend's servers) on their own site. One morning, the competitor woke up to find their site completely disfigured in randomly clever ways for every IP that wasn't their office's. It was very enjoyable to observe.

msacca 15y ago

I guess this isn't an uncommon occurrence. I was checking our analytics this morning when I noticed we've been getting some strange traffic regarding "Laptop Repair In Cochin." Well I dug around and found a site that copied and pasted our codebase outright, HTML / JS & CSS - then tweaked a couple CSS variables. I built the Wordpress theme from scratch about a year and a half ago and never released it for sale. This laptop repair site doesn't appear to be using Wordpress. Our site was featured on several design galleries at the time (it's in desperate need of an upgrade now, we just don't have the time) which, I'm sure, is how they found it to rip-off. Check it out: Our Site: http://www.tinyfactory.co http://www.tinyfactory.co Their Site: http://www.laptoprepairkerala.com http://www.laptoprepairkerala.com I suppose imitation is the sincerest form of flattery - and a great reminder that it's time to upgrade our site ;)