4 ms·

I'm not going to comment on wether I believe the infringement claim or not, but let's have a look at the way they calculate damage - it's the same way the music

I'm not going to comment on wether I believe the infringement claim or not, but let's have a look at the way they calculate damage - it's the same way the music companies calculate damages for illegal downloading: They take a number with questionable origin (27 commenters), multiply it by a factor that appears from thin air (assume 1 of 50 downloaders commented) and then pretend that everyone of these would have bought the template and next thing assume that's the low-ball figure. Given that per their own claim the template sold 361 times in half a year I find it hard to believe that there was a sudden rush of I-Must-Have-This-Template. This "I'll just conjure a number" method of claiming inflated damages just ruins the credibility of the whole post for me.

whatshisface 13y ago
When a big emotional upset is involved, it is important to separate the faulty math from the real evidence. They could claim millions of dollars in loss and it still wouldn't change the fact that they were stolen from.
- svenkatesh 13y ago
  So would you agree that the exorbitant losses the media industries claim is excusable, since their IP is also being stolen? EDIT: I apologize for going against the popular opinion on HN.
  - deleted 13y ago
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  - chc 13y ago
    Two conclusions you could have come to here: A. "Ah, I've brought up a politically charged tangent and people are downvoting to keep the discussion on topic" B. "I'm a martyr to the HN hivemind!" Yeah, definitely the second one.
  - pessimizer 13y ago
    Saying that: This silly algorithm for calculating damages is irrelevant to this claim of theft, is not the same as saying: All claims of theft from everyone who uses this silly algorithm for calculating damages are equally true or untrue. Apologize for the failure in reasoning and the passive-aggressiveness instead.
- Xylakant 13y ago
  See, I consider their case weak at best. The template is nice, but I've seen templates like that before. It's clean and well done, but to be honest, it's not that unique either. That little ribbon on the dark background - I have that on my website. The class "plusIcon", I probably used all possible permutations of "plus-icon", "plusIcon", "plus_icon", ... somewhere over the last couple of years. The color is the same, but hey, the number of colors is somewhat limited. And then the html differs as well if you really look at it. The CSS differs significantly. EmailOnAcid acknowledge the inspiration they used for a mostly educational article, and promised to change the design in the article. Now that could have been a peacefully and entirely fair resolution for the problem. Another option might have been for EmailOnAcid to acknowledge the inspiration and link back, offering the opportunity to rack up some sales to offset the damage. But now the case has been blown out of proportion - they created a new blog to post this entry(!). I understand the feeling of rage, but that's not a good mood to write a blog article. And for me, personally, stampready just lost out. I'm not going to buy from a company that goes ballistic at the first possible opportunity - I prefer to deal with professionals.
  - Drakim 13y ago
    While I agree that the "lost income" argument is bunk, it's pretty clear that the code was copied. The number of excessive whitespace after a line of HTML is not something you get "inspired" by, it's something you copypaste.
    - Xylakant 13y ago
      Or something that happens by accident. I fully agree with you that it's probable that the HTML was copied, but it was substantially altered in any case. And I must admit that that's a crime that I'm guilty of as well and I doubt that there's any web developer out there that never did something alike, just as there is no designer out there that never copied an arrow-icon. My point is that the whole article smells of "we wanted to be insulted", name calling and call to action included. Writing a blog article to call out copying is the nuclear option, setting up a blog and writing a single article, just to play the nuclear option is just not warranted over such a minor case.
    - 13y ago
- keypusher 13y ago
  They were not stolen from. If you have a thing and I copy the thing, it is not stealing. Copyright infringement, piracy, loss of theoretical sales, perhaps yes.
  - campnic 13y ago
    I'm only saying this because your entire point is about being pedantic with the language, one of the definitions of steal[0] is "to appropriate (ideas, credit, words, etc.) without right or acknowledgment." In this case, whether its a copy or not is immaterial. I've seen a bunch of people parroting the line that if you're not taking a tangible thing you're not stealing. This is plainly false both by connotation and denotation. 0: http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/steal http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/steal
bdcravens 13y ago
They should consider the % who look at their template and don't purchase (I do this all the time on ThemeForest). Apply that percentage to their imaginary number (nothing spectacular about it, so I'll guess 1%?) Email on Acid should send them a check for $200 and call it a day.

whatshisface 13y ago

When a big emotional upset is involved, it is important to separate the faulty math from the real evidence. They could claim millions of dollars in loss and it still wouldn't change the fact that they were stolen from.

svenkatesh 13y ago
So would you agree that the exorbitant losses the media industries claim is excusable, since their IP is also being stolen? EDIT: I apologize for going against the popular opinion on HN.
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
- chc 13y ago
  Two conclusions you could have come to here: A. "Ah, I've brought up a politically charged tangent and people are downvoting to keep the discussion on topic" B. "I'm a martyr to the HN hivemind!" Yeah, definitely the second one.
- pessimizer 13y ago
  Saying that: This silly algorithm for calculating damages is irrelevant to this claim of theft, is not the same as saying: All claims of theft from everyone who uses this silly algorithm for calculating damages are equally true or untrue. Apologize for the failure in reasoning and the passive-aggressiveness instead.
Xylakant 13y ago
See, I consider their case weak at best. The template is nice, but I've seen templates like that before. It's clean and well done, but to be honest, it's not that unique either. That little ribbon on the dark background - I have that on my website. The class "plusIcon", I probably used all possible permutations of "plus-icon", "plusIcon", "plus_icon", ... somewhere over the last couple of years. The color is the same, but hey, the number of colors is somewhat limited. And then the html differs as well if you really look at it. The CSS differs significantly. EmailOnAcid acknowledge the inspiration they used for a mostly educational article, and promised to change the design in the article. Now that could have been a peacefully and entirely fair resolution for the problem. Another option might have been for EmailOnAcid to acknowledge the inspiration and link back, offering the opportunity to rack up some sales to offset the damage. But now the case has been blown out of proportion - they created a new blog to post this entry(!). I understand the feeling of rage, but that's not a good mood to write a blog article. And for me, personally, stampready just lost out. I'm not going to buy from a company that goes ballistic at the first possible opportunity - I prefer to deal with professionals.
- Drakim 13y ago
  While I agree that the "lost income" argument is bunk, it's pretty clear that the code was copied. The number of excessive whitespace after a line of HTML is not something you get "inspired" by, it's something you copypaste.
  - Xylakant 13y ago
    Or something that happens by accident. I fully agree with you that it's probable that the HTML was copied, but it was substantially altered in any case. And I must admit that that's a crime that I'm guilty of as well and I doubt that there's any web developer out there that never did something alike, just as there is no designer out there that never copied an arrow-icon. My point is that the whole article smells of "we wanted to be insulted", name calling and call to action included. Writing a blog article to call out copying is the nuclear option, setting up a blog and writing a single article, just to play the nuclear option is just not warranted over such a minor case.
  - 13y ago
keypusher 13y ago
They were not stolen from. If you have a thing and I copy the thing, it is not stealing. Copyright infringement, piracy, loss of theoretical sales, perhaps yes.
- campnic 13y ago
  I'm only saying this because your entire point is about being pedantic with the language, one of the definitions of steal[0] is "to appropriate (ideas, credit, words, etc.) without right or acknowledgment." In this case, whether its a copy or not is immaterial. I've seen a bunch of people parroting the line that if you're not taking a tangible thing you're not stealing. This is plainly false both by connotation and denotation. 0: http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/steal http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/steal

bdcravens 13y ago

They should consider the % who look at their template and don't purchase (I do this all the time on ThemeForest). Apply that percentage to their imaginary number (nothing spectacular about it, so I'll guess 1%?) Email on Acid should send them a check for $200 and call it a day.