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"It's not like Jeff has a copyright on his CSS, javascript, or design" Well, actually he does (and so do you). Most of the world (all the signatories of the Be
by smanek 18y ago
"It's not like Jeff has a copyright on his CSS, javascript, or design"
Well, actually he does (and so do you). Most of the world (all the signatories of the Berne Convention, in blue at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Berne_Convention.png http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Berne_Convention.png) grant you automatic copyright on anything you create. You don't need to file any paperwork, you don't need to have a little disclaimer, it just happens.
Now, usually it isn't worth the trouble of pursuing legal action, but you can.
- jrockway 18y agoI think CNProg just copied the design. Chinese companies copying American design is not exactly anything new.
- smanek 18y agoGranted. I was just responding to the claim that Jeff doesn't have copyright on his work - I'm not claiming that CNProg violated that copyright (I don't have any idea, one way or the other).
- whacked_new 18y agoTaoTao (twitter), youku (youtube), digg.cn, faceren, and now cnprog. I heard that there are teams in China that take orders as simple as "copy site X," and get it done within a month or so.
- jasonkester 18y agoGoogle the name of any tech startup and you'll come across oDesk projects titled "[startup] clone", with tons of bids. There are teams actively cloning Twiddla right now (as evidenced by accepted bids to projects like the above). It's just the way it goes.
- halo 18y agoIt's worth adding that Stack Overflow has licensed their content under CC-by-SA, and so has cnprog.com, which suggests to me that they may be operating under that license and may not have even broken copyright law. Moral of the story: if you don't want people to use and build on your work, don't license it permissively.
- jhancock 18y agoyep, there is no case to cry foul here. StackOverflow clearly provided license to copy. Maybe they did no expect something like this China copy to happen. But that's the beauty of a permissive license. I think its great that StackOverflow chose to use Creative Commons. Crying foul here would be no different than Debian being offended by Ubuntu.
- petercooper 18y agoIt's not always that clear cut. Is "look and feel" copyrightable? - http://blog.pastie.org/2008/05/copyright---des.html http://blog.pastie.org/2008/05/copyright---des.html