Code theft: Asciimo: Where have I seen this before?
patorjk.com
patorjk.com
He is a regular on the nodejs mailing list. An example of his, ha-hum, somewhat difficult disposition (break-down starts from the third post down):
http://groups.google.com/group/nodejs/browse_thread/thread/c...
> To be fair, Marak is from New York. This, I'm told, is how they talk out there.
Wow, that guy really is a dick.
He seemed ok in person, and I know he hacks a lot of his own code, but I'm surprised what a dick he seems to be being. He definitely wasn't this much of a jerk face to face. Oh the Internet, this is why we can't have nice things.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IrkDqh9ZVog
More Marak facts:
* Rich kid from the Hamptons.
* His website: http://www.jimbastard.com/Why? Because that's the natural way to use the Internet, and (despite the recorded music industry's best efforts) nobody has ever pointed out to them that it's illegal. They copy on the Internet like fish swim in the sea.
What Marak did is wrong, and I feel for the guy who had his code nicked. It's happened to me - Wordpress today contains my code in blatant violation of the license under which I published it. When that happened it annoyed me at first, but ultimately I decided to let it go because any complaint would be met by blank incomprehension. When your stuff is taken by "kids on the Internet", you can't just call them out on it, you have to educate them into a whole new way of thinking. And life's too short for that.
For comparison, Wikipedia requires that all submitters "irrevocably agree to release [their] contributions under the CC-BY-SA 3.0 License and the GFDL. [They] agree that a hyperlink or URL is sufficient attribution under the Creative Commons license." (See the comment under the edit box on any Wikipedia edit page.) Wikipedia is big enough to actually deal with legal issues, and this is how they do it. They get explicit permission, and they explicitly require agreement with a particular method of attribution.
I am not a lawyer, but everything I've read about copyright (from reliable sources, such as the actual legal code) suggests that Wikipedia is doing it right. There are certain implicit permissions with user-submitted content. Permission to re-license is not one of them. Since Wikipedia does re-license content, they ask for permission to do so. SO should do the same.
OK, that wasn't as brief as I hoped. I apologize. I don't mean to derail the commentary here.
Thanks for your point of view though, I'll definitely keep take what you said into account.
You agree that all Subscriber Content that You contribute to the Network will be licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution Share Alike license.
Add to this sites like reddit who, willy-nilly, deep-link to images on other sites with few if any moral qualms. Hotlink/Deep-link protection is something you ought to make sure you implement. The comic artist The Oatmeal chose to split up his images so they couldn't be exploited effectively.
While true, owning a piece of mail does not imply that you own the relevant copyright.
Consider a book that you own. You own that copy. You can destroy it, you can sell/give/lend/show it to someone else, you can keep it. That physical thing is yours do do with as you will.
However, you can't (legally) copy it if its copyright is still active. (Yes, fair use comes in here too.)
Physical and electronic mail is exactly the same.
We must remember that copyright is only justified on practical grounds, and with the internet these practicalities have changed greatly. If we only want to lecture 'kids on the internet' of how copyright was, we are failing to give the matter the thought it now needs. Copying, in itself, is good -- it is one of the two sides of the trade-off, and that the internet enables and encourages people to copy is a substantial good that we don't want to impede.
I think we should want attribution, but permission I feel less certain about. It is probably corporations that muddy the waters: people do plenty of open-source and share freely, and so retaining a little control seems socially reasonable. But corporations are all too often obnoxious sociopaths about copyright.
So I am not sure what I would tell 'kids on the internet'. I lean toward the share-everything-freely side, but it doesn't really matter anyway because the whole system is going to be doing a lot of evolving and adapting by itself in coming years.
I have a little more sympathy for the author of the plagiarised code. Whatever "copyright" system emerges from the Internet storm, it's not going to enable the RIAA to make money, but it might protect guys like that from having attributions removed from their work. I hope so.
(This isn't legal advice, of course; I don't know enough of the facts to be sure what applies.)
But in this case this code is copyrighted and has no open source license clause:
"His response to my comments was that because I didn’t explicitly put a copyright notice in my code that he could use it however he wanted (which I’m pretty sure isn’t true)."
AFAIK copyright law says its not obligatory whether there is a copyright header or not, the work would be copyrighted either ways. Copyright is there the moment you create the work. So what he did was clearly illegal (and unethical).
Other than that, carry on.
I'm not a lawyer, but in some places, isn't it hard or next to impossible to get your work into the public domain? You're 100% right about government works, but I was under the impression that the WTFPL was the closest thing you could really get to putting something of your own into the public domain...
I could also be totally wrong. Then again, anyone who does this isn't going to face the problem that the OP did, and it doesn't really invalidate my earlier statement either. Only part of it.
I'm also not a lawyer, but I've asked this question of some law professors, and the consensus appears to be that at least in common law states, while there is usually no de jure mechanism for placing work into the public domain, if such a case ever went to trial you can be 99% certain that the judge would wave a magic common law wand to fix that.
That said, wikipedia's "I place this in the public domain, or if that isn't possible, I grant anyone the right to use this work for any purpose, without any conditions" is probably the safest approach.
I can't say whether or not he made changes to the codebase, but it's just plain wrong that he goes about crediting himself as the author when the truth is he probably contributed a very small amount to an already functional program.
You own the copyright. The declaration is an option. If you have been financially damaged by this, then you have legal recourse, but you must be able to prove damages with a dollar figure.
His API spy is still the best I've ever used: http://patorjk.com/downloads/patorjkapispy51.zip
As corny as AOL programming may have been, I learned so much from it, and it definitely got me hooked on writing software. Good memories.
I've thought about writing a series of articles / FAQ on A Hacker's Guide to Copyright Law.
The thing that's been stopping me is:
* The sort of people who really need to know it won't read it
* The sort of people who want to know how copyright works can find out from other sources
Just for anyone who doesn't know: when no explicit license or copyright information is given this means all rights are with the author. Code is only ever public domain when it is explicitly put there by the author.
If the original authors had some problem with someone using these fonts (and keep in mind that ASCII fonts are somehow "easy" to think from scratch!) they would have complained way earlier.
In this case, though, my guess is that the figlet font packs are copyrightable, especially since he didn't just copy the font shapes (as you say, not copyrightable in the U.S.), but literally included the entire original binary code of the fonts, and even their commentary/packaging/etc. That's of course fine, because they were produced / distributed in the context of a community in which BSD-style licensing terms are assumed as the default--- an understanding he seems to have violated. It's in his legal right to build something on figlet fonts and then (c) All Rights Reserve it, but it doesn't seem in keeping with the share-things spirit that he himself benefited from.
Disclaimer: I have no relation with the author, but I feel very upset by this, because it could happen to anyone who has pet projects like this.
I suppose plagiarism could be seen as "theft of attention/credit" or such, but copyright infringement is only what it sounds like -- not respecting someone's government-granted monopoly rights.
(1) Add an explicit copyright/license/reuse statement to the code to avoid similar misunderstandings in the future. While not required, it's wise for people who care about the copying of their work.
(2) If he cares enough to enforce his preference against reuse, he should then send a DMCA notice to github/etc.
From what I can see, both people are a little naive about copyright. The mature resolution isn't fuming back-and-forth, but to just learn and implement what the law already provides.
On the other hand, if the real goal is to instead have an attention- and inlink- and traffic-grabbing web feud, they can each boost their fame/infamy by a few more rounds of mutual criticism in every forum that will have them and their supporters. For this goal, the more emotion/insults/ad-hominem, the better.
* shrug * not interested enough to investigate deeply.
I start hearing Smeagol's my preccccciiooosssss when some artists and coders talk about their work.
[Edit] Ownership of goods is a social construction, not a universal truth nor is there some universal morality to consider. We can consider his feelings, but I'll tell you what, the peeps getting snippy here about justice for someone's ASCII generator, while simultaneously accepting the near universal oppression of poor people by their own consumption habits protected by intellectual property laws have somewhat questionable priorities, it would seem.
It's a social construction most of us agree on, though. In fact, I have no doubt that some on here consider it fundamental to the advancement of the species. You're free to be here and disagree with us about it, but don't expect us to couch all our conversations in hypotheticals because you differ with us on our "undebatable subjects" -- those subjects we have pondered over enough that we need not debate them again and again every time someone raises an objection.
> near universal oppression of poor people by their own consumption habits . . .
The theory is that if the content isn't protected it won't be generated _at all_ at the margin. You can debate that theory if you like, but if it is true then the mere removal of the laws won't do a lick of good for poor people. Similarly, if wealth accumulation is disallowed, it's not that poor people will magically become wealthier. Instead what will happen is those who had previously worked hard to accumulate wealth will stop working as hard, and less wealth overall will be created.
2. Trickle down economics at its finest. Where's the evidence?
I'll give you some counter-evidence: music after vs music before MP3 pirating. Seems like this vibrant cultural explosion happened despite all that lack of trickle down, huh.
By your logic the colonialists and imperialists did a favor for all those tragic natives. I mean, where would all those Indians and Indonesians be without all that wealth creation by the East India Company?!?? [Edit: or Apple]
The point is this system of IP is predicated on acceptance of not just winners but losers (at life), and justified with a generous self-serving of trickle-down economics.
[Edit, to insert an LOL at people who think IP wouldn't be created without necessarily oppressing foreigners and people born without silver spoons. Note, I am aware that I have to construct the connection, and I haven't done that here, but there's no point in this forum, abstractions like this remain couched as a conveniently theoretical debate, despite the very real lives that poor people lead]
[Edit, to insert another LOL at people who think that we must support our wealthy people's desire to create more wealth]
Yeah, but it does mean that we may unapologetically assume it when we talk about economic issues.
[Edit: people can't stand when you only debate on the actual terms of an artificially constructed reality, rather than the make-believe terms that only exist within that reality. It's human, it keeps us from having to think about consequences. But why is that reasonable, it is just convenient.]
Yes, we can choose to believe that other moral matters relating to people driven in herds to create profit for far wealthier people matters more than say moralizing about IP regimes which have a large net negative affect on those same people. As I said earlier, it's a matter of priorities. Nicely put ;)
There's a handy quotation from random famous person that nails this one nicely, but I can't think of it right now.
[Edit, but we can break it down more in so many directions, and all of them end up very badly for the true believers in advancing civilization with schemes that necessarily require there to be vast numbers of losers for the small numbers of winners. Goddamn that whole conscience thing gets in the way, put a cork in it fast!!!]
>>> It's not the "source" of the reality that matters. What matters is whether we generally agree on it.
Actually, I think that only matters to the winners under that scheme.
You've yet to establish the net negative effect, so I think this is putting the cart before the horse just a little. Also: "other moral matters relating to people driven in" -- what?
> Goddamn that whole conscience thing gets in the way
I disagree with you on how best to advance the lot of people in the world. That's not the same as not having a conscience.
> Actually, I think that only matters to the winners under that scheme.
That's typically how it goes, yes.
I'm not the one claiming that trickle down economics is a morally justified way to rationalize the goodness of IP regimes. Why do I have to disprove conjecture which is not generally proven as a net benefit? Proponents of this dogma are the ones who want to justify IP regimes, and not only that they (i.e. you) insist this is the way to progress. You've got to prove that the inequalities created are better than the inequalities averted. That basic first step (proof of net positive) has not been done. I am not suggesting action (i.e. IP enforcement), I am suggesting inaction. As in, don't fuck with people unless your theory is proven.
Of course, it's worth pointing out that whole line is thinking is utilitarian. Are you truly utilitarian? I doubt it. So some consistency would be nice too.
Yes, but that is the broadly accepted view. It's not incumbent on me to prove it.
What you're doing would be kind of like if I called the policy you're endorsing "socialism" and pointed out that that rarely works and is widely discredited among economists and everybody else. Makes for good reading I guess, but it wouldn't be very honest.
The widely accepted view on copyright is that it's needed to protect creators' ability to profit from their work and encourage the production of more such work. That's why it's written into the legal codes and sometimes constitutions of almost every major political entity in the world. Most economists similarly embrace its efficacy -- with caveats, in many cases, but the overall consensus is for. Misnaming it "trickle-down economics" changes that not a whit.
And yes, I choose to attack priorities that do act high and mighty (good description for the whole general mob outcry, btw) while they ignore the inequalities created and/or bolstered by the very same IP regime which is at issue. Why is that confusing?
We must constantly select intellectual abstractions to guide our reasoning. That becomes more difficult once there is a realization of the lack of clear absolutes (and very difficult if one is originally religious). As coders we're aware better than most that all abstractions are leaky, but they are still valuable.
My specific desire in the discussion for this article is to cause someone who is in the midst of mob furor to question the trade-offs of the IP issue at hand and consider that all this sense of justice may (I say does) create and rationalize more inequalities than we would have otherwise, and either way is utilitarian in its notions (i.e. the greater good, etc) and the people arguing for it may not have considered that and may not actually agree with the full implications of those ideas.
We've got enough actual scarcity, why are we creating more?
[Edit: It's very convenient for artists and artisans (coders, for instance) to feel morally justified, but why are the inequalities created by them in the pursuit of wealth or fame any different than those created by the uber-wealthy? It's all just a bit too self serving.]
[Edit: We have to live in the world we have. Getting the impression that I'm claiming a person should not utilize IP at all is incorrect, it's a whole other thing to light the torches and burn down a house with a smug sense of rightness of a cause, and that's when I think, okay, enough play, you might have to use what we've got to survive, be stable, attempt to find satisfying lives for ourselves and our families, but let's not get too sure of the justice of it all.]