[...] for example, not only believes that it was copyright infringement pure and simple, he suggests there's some deep hypocrisy flying around the developer community here: The prevailing view, outside of Hollywood, seems to be that IP creators need to accept that [...]

[...] Paul Carr, for example, not only believes that it was copyright infringement pure and simple, he suggests there’s some deep hypocrisy flying around the developer community here: [...]

[...] Pando Daily: Copyright Theft Is Bad, When It Happens To People We Like http://pandodaily.com/2012/01/28/angry-nerds-copyright-theft-is-bad-when-it-happens-to-people-we-lik... [...]

[...] Angry Nerds: Copyright Theft Is Bad, When It Happens To People We Like >> PandoDaily [...]

Resistance to SOPA wasn't based on our right to free stuff (or even: more easily- and cheaply-purchased stuff), it was based on not handing copyright owners the power to block entire websites on their say-so that they linked to copyrighted material. A mechanism provably abused by big content owners such as UMG with YouTube. Your over-simplification is as about as helpful as the common media thread that the London riots could be reduced to kids wanting free stuff. Simplistic answers for people who just want simplistic answers would be fine, if it didn't also doom us to repeat past mistakes. Please stop handing large media interests a free lunch by reducing a nuanced and interesting issue to being about people just wanting free stuff.

[...] Do a quick search on Twitter for Curebit and behold at the self-righteous rage at the original crime and the extremely grudging acceptance of the inevitable apology. The last time we saw this kind of outpouring of rage amongst tech people was when — uh — the government tried to clamp down on copyright theft. via pandodaily.com [...]

Agree. This goes straight into my new blog - the PangoDaily

[...] Paul Carr has a fun piece noticing how the tech community likes copyright when it’s their copyright. One tech firm swiped [...]

Nobody is demanding Hollywood be killed for asking to defend their rights, but instead for: - Buying the Congress - Trampling the rights of non-infringing parties - trying to offload their" vigorous defense" onto the backs of sites, ISPs and search engines without paying for the work - trying to prevent accused infringers from exercising their right to defend themselves with extrajudicial procedures - Conning Congress into trying to break the Web What does your case in point have to do with any of this?

[...] fragmento de Angry Nerds: Copyright Theft Is Bad, When It Happens To People We Like escrito por Paul Carr. Precisamente revierte el punto del artículo anterior y señala la doble [...]

How about a photographer who has had his work stolen and I supported the tech take on these laws, I guess that makes me quite the Judas

I think you misunderstood the tech world outcry about SOPA.... No one was upset that the government wanted to stop piracy... The law was written poorly... So the basis for your entire post is wrong.

I think there are a few misconceptions going around here. Let's clarify them. a) The open source movement isn't a single entity, there are very different opinions on what is, isn't, should and shouldn't be. For instance, GPL folk are quite strict when it comes to enforcing copyright. They like it, they defend it, they live by it and they use it as much as possible, only in a direction that feels illogical, not to mention insane, from the point of view of someone who uses copyright as it was originally intended. The same can be said of most of the CC crowd (those that chose anything more restrictive than CC-BY). And they both *DO* respect and enforce more standard ways of copyright. For an example, just browse the discussion on Wikipedia about deleted photos. b) On the other extreme there's the BSD and CC-BY folk, who don't usually care about who's doing what with their stuff. They only require that their name be mentioned, but otherwise it's laissez faire territory. Now, I wouldn't go so far as to say that they don't care about standard copyrights, but that the attitude here is more relaxed and laid back than among the above crowd, it certainly is. Now, about the notion of copyright itself, there are many differing positions, and they don't involve necessarily people doing anything in the open source arena: c) There are those who are militantly against copyright itself, such as myself. We oppose it in all instances, period. But even among use your find those: c1) Who don't mind plagiarizing at all and think moral rights are a matter of social customs, not law. This extends to an opposition to trademark law, since trademarks are just a bigger kind of moral rights. Again, I'm in this group. c2) Those who find plagiarizing wrong, and think authorship (and trademark) must be protected. Among those who defend some form of copyright, there are many different opinions, which can be plotted in a two dimensional chat. One axis is for copyright scope, which goes: d) From one extreme, in which there are those who defend it as a part of moral rights, hence opposing the possibility of selling a copyright to a 3rd party, which includes "selling" it to an employer. e) To the other, in which there are those who think the current way of doing things, with transferable copyrights, is perfectly fine. The other axis being that of copyright extension, which goes: f) From one extreme, in which there are those who understand copyright to be useful as long as it causes more intellectual stuff to be produced, and hence defend its extension to be the minimum possible, the criteria varying (lots of options there, which I'll avoid here as it would be tiresome to list an f1, f2, f3, f4, f5, f6...). g) To the other extreme, in which there are those who think it should be perpetual. And yes, there are those who do so publicly. On top of all this, you have the many, multidimensional set of opinions on patents, which, although similar to the range of opinions on copyrights, also adds discussion about different areas of human endeavors. For instance, it isn't uncommon for someone to have different opinions depending on whether he's talking about patents on biological, mechanical, electronic, software, design, business practices etc. matters. And THEN you also have the different social practices among piracy subcultures, which vary wildly, many times having no connection whatsoever with the above subjects to the point of not even knowing about them, other times understanding copyright law incorrectly and developing explicit rules of behavior about said misunderstandings, all of which is a quite interesting subject in itself. So, it'd help if you were to point about whom, specifically, you're talking in your text, because depending on the subgroup who reacted this way or that, the behavior described is, contrary to how you perceive it, quite coherent, even if, and here I'll agree, excessively rude.

I'd just laugh if my site was copied by someone. Actually it happened once - i have though of a rather clever way to show various service plans for an ISP i was working at, and it was copied 1-to-1 by one of our competitors. I was PROUD. HTML and some banal images are not MonaLisas, no big deal if someone uses them in a mockup design.

Did you possibly consider that the situation is not as 'black and white' as you imply? Many people were against SOPA not because they want the Internet to be a free-for-all pirates paradise, but because the powers it sought were overly broad and disproportionate, and injected more Government control into areas where it was not welcome. Likewise, you don't have to object to Megaupload's closure to think that no one, not even Dotcom, should be facing more time in jail that a murderer or pederast for owning and operating it - financial penalties and asset seizures should suffice. Additionally, you don't have to be diametrically opposed to the concept of copyright whilst advocating for shorter monopoly terms and for fines and punishments to more accurately fit the infringement. Finally, it shouldn't take the ridiculous 'patent wars' raging in the smartphone sector to highlight the absurdly broken patent system, which needs even more reform than the copyright system. Complicated situations such as intellectual monopolies their relation to the law and to society required a careful and considerate approach, with less hyperbola and more thinking. This isn't supposed to be Engadget! More of this blinkered and one dimensional 'analysis' and I fear PandoDaily might soon be finding it's way off of my RSS list...

[...] getting any real response, and Carr went on to write a fuller article on Pandodaily titled “Angry Nerds: Copyright Theft Is Bad, When It Happens To People We Like” in which he essentially repeats the same claims. After another Twitter exchange between me [...]

I think you are misunderstanding the apprehension at SOPA / PIPA. As the law was written, it would allow broad seizure of domain names, with little to no legal process. This threatens the way the Internet is used, and is over broad. That is different from suggesting at people against the law were against copyright protection. Google, Wikipedia, et al already are careful to conform to takedown requests, and discourage copyright theft where possible. Don't confuse being against an over broad enforcement policy with being agains a principle, as thear two separate things.

I believe that we have issues on many fronts in this argument. As a web scripter/coder I write code for my projects and resist the inclination to copy code from example found on the Internet unless the code is specifically shared by the author. I don't pirate software, music, or videos (for distribution) but I certainly and I would argue, forgivably, transcode music and video for use on my personal devices. I only do this with media I have a license to use, because I do NOT own the software, book, movie, or music, that I have bought a license for. This is the not the letter of the laws, but the spirit of the laws. I am not buying a DVD set of Season On of House, ripping it to a low-grade version on USB key and sharing it, I don't share what I've licensed for my own personal use, period. That said, when it comes to coding for my job, I develop business systems in PHP, VBScript, JavaScript, etc. I will seek out code on the net when I need to save time. I also believe you must understand the code before implementing it, not simply hacking it into place with an electronic crowbar. I seek it out on sites whose purpose is that of SHARING code, not by finding something cool on a site, ripping it apart and lifting the functions I want to take advantage of, that's unethical, and theft of intellectual property, that is outright copyright infringement. That doesn't mean I don't look at how sites were written, come to understand the process and functionality and perhaps use this education to my advantage later. This is the dangerous part of these arguments, and where patents and copyright become very problematic and intertwined. If I learn how to build something in code, come to an understanding of it's function and design, then go write my own version of it, I have not plagiarized a work, nor have I infringed on copyright. This is much like writing a book where you might use a Poe-esque writing style to tell a story and you have use the mechanics of the language, be it English or JavaScript, to plot a solution to a problem. The key here is the amount of similarity. If a particular mechanism of the software you are writing can only be made one way, and you have used that specific way (and I'm not suggesting you just switch variable names around and such) then the code should be protected by a patent. The patent should be definitive, show specific code and detailed logic not some fuzzy approximation of a process. This is not copyright infringement unless you have ripped code, line-for-line or as a module of some sort, from someone else's work, but this is the tricky part, we cannot exclusively protect the designer of the solution solely in the language in which it was written, we must protect them across all languages. This is where the detail of the logic and perhaps those flow-charts come into play. The issue here is that the patent system we are reliant upon is failing us in this manner and does threaten innovation. The patent system, by design, should allow for innovation. It allowed for a design to be superceded and innovation to continue, but this was lost when that system began allowing for the patent of vague ideas of operation and design to be patented as a workable entity with respect to software and business systems. I believe this is because the patent officials failed to hire people who understood technology well enough to see the intricacies and in stead awarded patents while regarding technology as some manner of voodoo. Consumer grade Copyright infringement (Software/Literature/Music/Movies/etc.) is the act of copying an entity, a finished product because you're too cheap pay the price it's offered at or too impatient for it to become affordable. That manner of piracy should be fought because it is exactly like someone stealing your bike. Yes you can make the argument that you can't copy a bike, then download it a thousand times, but this is Intellectual Property as an entity provided over any manner of medium, and the owner should have the control over that distribution and licensing. I have only one beef with this, the idea that if I buy a movie on DVD that most licenses say I can't transcode it for use on whatever device I'd prefer to use it on, and the laws proposed in SOPA would make software that aids me in this transcoding would become illegal. BTW: These ethics do not seem relevant in many areas of the world, just "The West," so it's a battle we will always have because people who have nothing (even in their own mind) will always feel justified in not paying for what they find.

I was disturbed with the attitude shift as well. Both cases, piracy and code theft involve money and IP. In piracy, the content creator loses a copy's worth of money, in code stealing the creator does not lose money but someone else makes money illegitimately. Both are wrong, almost equally, yet the prevailing opinion seems to be that a) it's OK to turn a blind eye on piracy, b) anyone stealing your CSS is a fuckin scumbag.

Well, so much for Pando Daily for me. Give it a shot, but this kind of transparent, superficial, opportunistic propaganda just makes me want to throw up. Does Paul Carr really think that repeating the nonsensical newspeak terminology like "copyright theft" over and over again will turn his readers in believers of the "Copying is Theft" church? Here's a hint: copyright has fuck all to do with ethics. What Curebit did was unethical. What Hollywood does is unethical. Just because one happens to be on the "right" side of our outdated, bought and paid for copyright laws, and one happens to be on the "wrong" side is utterly and completely irrelevant. There's nothing good or bad about copying in itself. It's context that make something right or wrong.

The problem with SOPA wasn't that it tried to enforce copyright laws, but that it would have given the government the unchecked right to break the internet without as much as a court proceeding. Claiming that "angry nerds" are hypocrites about copyright because we opposed SOPA and also disapprove of Curebit's actions is like accusing people of being drug addicts because they don't think drug dealers should be given the death penalty.

For me, the important issue is whether or not someone else has the right to take the thing I create and use it in any way they like, without my consent. I hear a lot about the rights of people to access, download and use "information" in any way they see fit, but very little about the rights of creators of entertainment not to have their work ripped off. Yes, we all take inspiration from others, and have done since the dawn of storytelling. That doesn't mean we have a right to take and use other creators' creations without their consent, let alone using it as part of the process of making money for ourselves without paying them a penny. I'm all in favour of a more coherent and practical copyright system that would unify the various different national systems and make it easier for individuals to support their favourite creators online. What worries me is that the rights of creators are largely ignored or treated as irrelevant. I know you can't make an omelette without breaking eggs. Does anyone know how you can make an omelette after all the chickens have died of starvation?

Thanks for being honest about this one. @Davehad, it's still theft.

Good to see you have not lost your ability to generate a response, keep up the good non-pliagirised work.

Hollywood: products are copied but not used to make money. 37 signals: a process is copied and is used to make money.

What Curebit did is not right, and David Hanson's response is over the top and SOPA's bad in general. Plagiarism is passing other people's work as your own. So you're telling people *you* havee created something, but it's actually something created by others. Copyright theft as in movie downloads is different. You're consuming someone else's work, but you're not passing it as your own. Big difference. And I don't see hypocrisy in the way SV is dealing with these two distinct issues.

What is the big deal? Curebit wasn't _stealing_ ! 37Signals still has their copy. If anything, 37 signals should be glad for getting additional publicity and notoriety. I bet some people even signed up for 37 signals after reading about this. Not me though--I don't like how they offer basecamp. We should pirate the code to run highrise on OUR TERMS, and FOR FREE. And since it's free to serve a marginal web user, 37signals are, in fact, idiots to not just give their apps away, and make it up in concerts and public appearances. 37 signals is on retainer with ATT and Comcast, too. They're showing the big guys how to charge "Premium access"-- for the pipes-- something that doesn't cost them any more to operate. 37signals has the most expertise in that kind of consumer shakedown. AirBnB is the same crap--why do they charge for something that should be free? And you know what? the ceo and executives are making HUNDREDS OF MILLIONS of $$, while the rest of us are working all day. - FreeTrumpsAll

You are right about double standards. However I feel the issue is that the industry which owns most of the copyright is trying to change the law by taking infringement, which should be in the civil court, and moving it into criminal law. Basically moving the cost of policing from the copyright holders (a small minority) to the entire taxpayer community. You cannot describe this as fair under any circumstance and the result is that the copyright holders end up with a monopoly and means and motivations to artificially extending it.

[...] I got into a Twitter-fight with @paulcarr earlier today. (Yes, someone was wrong on the Internet!) The topic developed into an editorial piece on Pando Daily. [...]

So to lift the complete Pandodaily site, add ads to it and republish as betterpandodaily.com is o.k. in nerd-land? But if I remove the Pando content and lift the Pando site design and software to fill with my own content. This is not o.k.? Silicon Valley better start saving. They are going to need a lot of lobbying resources to sell this logic. Or Silicon Valley could accept that other people have rights whether they like it or not.

Heinemeier Hanssen is a baby. The people at Curebit didn't hurt him in any way. Think they are low-rent, unimaginative or lazy and that's fine. The idea that this is a great big crime is stupid. It's pure conservative, self-righteous ego. I'll pay attention to him when he tells me that some of his customers have left him because of it. Until then, shut the hell up. The commenter above who said that the outrage over this sort of stuff is a good enough reason not to empower childish people with dangerous laws was exactly right.

You lost me at "copyright theft". I had no idea there were even measurable numbers of people stealing copyrights. BTW, how do you steal a copyright? I have heard of copyright violations, which have absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with theft. There are no theft laws that I am aware of that even mention copyrights. Paul, as long as you employ deliberately deceptive and prejudicial language you forego credibility in your arguments. If I hear rumours that you've taken up intellectual honesty as a new technique for your articles, I might be back. Life's too short to spend time with dishonest folk.

Title reminded me of the second greatest game ever invented: http://atlassian.com/angrynerds

What tends to anger people about plagiarism is that it involves taking someone else's work and misrepresenting it as one's own. Downloading a pirated film (or providing a search engine that enables others to do so) does not involve this type of misrepresentation, and this is arguably the reason for comparative lack of rage. Imagine a case where a filmmaker stole significant amounts of footage from another film, and did so in a context where they passed the work off as theirs without giving the original filmmaker credit. That would be a much more reasonable analogy for this, and it's hard to imagine most of the people annoyed by the Curebit thing being annoyed by it as well