| ▲ | mcoliver 3 hours ago |
| A similar thing is happening to me. I worked on something for 3 years which I give away for free to help people and a thief took my software, ran it through ai to rebrand everything and relaunched as their own app. Unfortunately the ai missed a few Easter eggs I had hidden so the theft is undeniable. Google and Apple are useless for dmca unless you have a court order. They refuse to look at or arbitrate. So now I'm on to fighting this in court on principal which is going to be expensive. Theft is only going to become worse. It's already so easy and it's going to become even easier. We aren't prepared for what's ahead. |
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| ▲ | saghm 3 hours ago | parent | next [-] |
| > Google and Apple are useless for dmca unless you have a court order. This is especially egregious in Google's case given how trigger happy they are with pulling YouTube videos with a simple claim that something is infringing. I guess unless you can lobby them at the level of the music industry, their default policy is to do nothing. |
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| ▲ | dylan604 3 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | Let's consider an independent dev making claims vs the army of lawyers from RIAA/MPAA type claimants. Which one do you think evilCorps will pay attention to? | | |
| ▲ | rustcleaner an hour ago | parent | next [-] | | This is why awards need to be based on % of total assets or revenue of the defendant. If little guy beats the big guy defendant, little guy should walk away with millions or billions. If big guy wins against the little guy defendant, it's just hundreds or thousands. It makes relatively poor individuals who can't afford a team of effective lawyers lawsuit proof, while making those who can wage effective lawfare juicy targets if they so much as fudge the line with the outside of their shoes! | | |
| ▲ | dylan604 39 minutes ago | parent [-] | | > with the outside of their shoes! But it's the outside of the boot that lets you bend it. (yeah, I'm watching a World Cup match as I type this) |
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| ▲ | nikanj 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | The lawyers from evilCorps are on a first-name basis with the key lawyers from the copyright lobby, because their fates are fully intertwined |
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| ▲ | fantasizr an hour ago | parent | prev [-] | | reminds me of this woman who had copyright filed against her for playing moonlight sonata. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27004577 if not for the complete hassle and threat to her livelihood, it might be laughable. | | |
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| ▲ | leni536 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| > Google and Apple are useless for dmca unless you have a court order. They deserve to also be sued too for the infringement. I don't think safe-harbor applies if they don't act on a valid notice. |
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| ▲ | cromka 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Crazy shit. You should absolutely write about it, though. Stories like these need publicity to actually have people realize all type of IP will get affected. |
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| ▲ | kstrauser 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Name and shame. I'd be furious if I were one of the thief's tricked customers. |
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| ▲ | pfcd 2 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | I doubt people that are already systematically stealing material can't hide, or forge arbitrary identities. Naming and shaming doesn't work for such attack vectors, it's a social strategy for people that have a real identity established and are making money out of that, not for ephemeral identities of such scammers. | |
| ▲ | vkou an hour ago | parent | prev [-] | | You would, most consumers wouldn't. |
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| ▲ | eboy 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
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| ▲ | carlosjobim 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-] |
| You can't steal something which is free. This is what you should expect if you give away stuff for free to anybody who happens on it. To me it seems that FOSS people take perverse pleasure in these kind of things. It's easy to prepare for what is ahead: Get yourself out of the filthy FOSS swamp and start charging a fair price for your work from real customers. That is something everybody benefits from and it is also dignified for everybody involved. |
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| ▲ | pfcd 2 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | "FOSS" doesn't mean that you cannot monetize your program. It's just that people have taken different routes historically. | | |
| ▲ | carlosjobim 2 hours ago | parent [-] | | Sell the program or give it away for free, to me both is fine. But to release the source code for free, then complain that other people take it and sell it - that's ridiculous. If I give away my secret sauce recipe, I have no right to complain if somebody puts it in a bottle and sells it. Either you keep it to yourself or you don't. | | |
| ▲ | derektank 2 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | > Either you keep it to yourself or you don't. Governments have presented us with a third option, intellectual property, which allows a creator to release their intellectual contributions publicly while preventing someone else from reproducing it. Violating the terms of an open source license are generally considered intellectual property violations and allow the creator to seek damages. | | |
| ▲ | carlosjobim an hour ago | parent [-] | | Good luck with that. If you throw your wallet onto a busy street corner, then by the law nobody is allowed to take it either. But cops will tell you that they have more important things to take care of than victims who take every measurable action at hand to make themselves victims. | | |
| ▲ | bluefirebrand 12 minutes ago | parent [-] | | There are a lot of things that are immoral (or just rude) to do but not explicitly illegal Personally I would prefer to live in a society filled with people who are better than thinking "well there's no law against it so it's 100% fine" Edit: I also don't want to live in a society where every tiny piece of social decency must be encoded in laws to get people to actually be decent |
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| ▲ | InsideOutSanta 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Every book contains all of its content. It's "open source" by necessity. Are you saying that if you buy a book, you can do with the contents of the book whatever you want? | | |
| ▲ | carlosjobim an hour ago | parent | next [-] | | Computer code is not comparable to a book. A better comparison would be a blueprint or a recipe. If Coca-Cola publishes their recipe wide and far for anybody to read, would you rage together with them when another beverage company starts selling drinks together with them? | | |
| ▲ | zelphirkalt an hour ago | parent [-] | | Computer code is also not comparable with a wallet thrown onto a busy street corner. Can you decide, whether you are OK with unfit comparisons or not, instead of trying to have it both ways? |
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| ▲ | an hour ago | parent | prev [-] | | [deleted] |
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| ▲ | ChrisMarshallNY an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | > the filthy FOSS swamp Now, be nice. This isn't Reddit, and I don't think the HN mods are really into "engagement"* I tend to release a lot of stuff MIT. I don't give a shit, if anyone takes it and gets rich (which I seriously doubt will happen). It's just that I don't want people coming after me, if they misuse it. If, however, someone rereleases my stuff with a "gift," and makes it appear that I was behind it, then that's a Bozo no-no. I think that kind of thing is going on at GitHub, right now. *Mud-wrestling in a cesspool | |
| ▲ | Rekindle8090 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | [dead] |
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