Chinese dev steals US HTML5 Game engine, US hosts won't close down the copy | Hacker News Reader

Chinese dev steals US HTML5 Game engine, US hosts won't close down the copy

techinasia.com

132 pointshoi123 comments

Within a month of releasing my very successful iPhone app TextPics, there were several Chinese clones using a slightly modified icon, all of my content, my design, layout, and with names like "TextPics Pro" and "TextPics(R)" or "TextPics+". As annoying as this was and confusing to my customers, it got even worse. Theft in China does not stop at the dev level, oh no. Comparing my Google analytics app usage to my Apple purchases in China was even more depressing. It turned out China was by far my biggest country for usage... And just about at the bottom of my list for revenue. The Chinese were simply stealing the app with their cracked iPhones. I see no way to win here.

And this is no blind hate for the Chinese. I have a Chinese wife from the mainland, I study Chinese Rosetta Stone daily, and I've been to China multiple times for pleasure. I know these people. As a culture, they consider it laughable and stupid to pay for something they could otherwise steal. I've had this conversation with enough Chinese at this point.

So seriously I don't see how I can take that country or it's people seriously from a tech biz standpoint if I can't trust their ethics.

This is very interesting.

Genuine question: how is pirating PC games, songs and movies acceptable while pirating apps is not?

Edit: this is not a question toward parent, but rather the general public, as I kind of get the sense that pirating is somewhat acceptable under certain circumstances while not others. Where is the line?

Where did he say pirating anything was okay?

It is funny how if it's copying a developers HTML5 game, it's stealing, but if it's a movie or song, well... that's just copying, because the creator still has a copy -- that's not stealing.

The level of hypocrisy around here is incredible. The only occurrence of the text string "not stealing" in this whole tread is in my post right here.

You didn't answer the question. No-one ever said pirating was okay (or "not stealing").

Also, I think you're wrong: pirating a movie/book/whatever will at most result in the price of one movie/book being lost from the creators (given that I may or may not have bought it legally otherwise). Copying an app, on the other hand, can result in a (theoretically) unlimited number of apps being purchased where the money doesn't go to the original creators. That is more like ripping a dvd and posting it to a torrent site.

I'm not saying pirating is defensible, but downloading something illegally is far less harmful than copying someone's app.

What about posting movies/books/whatever to trackers in the first place?

Comparing theft of a product with the intent of resale to theft of a product with the intent of personal consumption is disingenuous.

Stealing something to resell it for a profit is rightly a much worse transgression than stealing it for personal use, as you're only denying a single potential sale (your own) as opposed to actually stealing multiple REAL sales and keeping all the profit.

"... than stealing it for personal use ..."

As long as both instances are stealing, I have no problem. Relative badness is another debate, but I doubt we'd disagree much on that.

It's not hard to argue that only the one that involves money is theft.

Not that that argument is exactly where I would stand, but I think you're on shaky ground to call them the same crime with the difference being magnitude.

Plagiarism, where you take another's ideas or work and pass them off as your own is a different act than stealing (or copying) something for your own enjoyment. Neither are acceptable, either morally or legally, but there is a difference between the two.

As well, you are acting as though this thread of conversation is trying to justify one while demonizing the other. No one has made any kind of statement at all justifying copyright infringement. I don't understand your accusation in the context of this thread.

Well, certainly some people are solely motivated by it being free, and don't care it's illegal. Not everyone thinks into it as much as people on HN do.

I'm not sure if I gave the impression that I think pirating games, songs, or movies is acceptable to me but it is certainly not. I have paid for every song I own, every movie I've watched, and every game I've played. No exceptions.

- Ok, it was not obvious to me from first reading of this. The content was copied and not the code. So there are many copycat versions of your app in the store.

- Copying is an issue everywhere (Zynga games, dating apps, camera apps, texting apps, twitter clones anyone?) Maybe not as blatant as your case. Your idea is easily copyable and I've learned elsewhere on HN that if the uniqueness of your idea is the only selling point of your product then you will not succeed against competitors. And you should expect competitors. Maybe complaining to Apple will help.

- Yeah, pirating is an issue everywhere (thepiratebay.org anyone?) and not just in China

- I'm just getting the impression that some areas of app development are not profitable. If you're trying to sell to consumers it could be a huge uphill battle on many fronts. Crowded app store, race to the bottom on pricing, copycat products (not just from the Chinese)...

[Edit] - I recall reading a success story on HN about an app developer that created a better version of another app (iphone app of a talking elf or something) and made a profit on it. He was celebrated too. So that's the flip side of your situation. The developer was from Silicon Valley and not China.

The app was very successful, and I'm quite happy with my earnings from it, but that was not really the point of my comment. And I am also from California, not China, nor am I Chinese or even Asian.

My point was only that the Chinese specifically are much more prone to steal and/or copy software than any other group I know of. I know this firsthand from speaking openly with many Chinese, including my wife. And certainly my stats of app usage vs revenue in China have proven this conclusively to me. Nearly nobody buys it there, and yet China shows the most app usage!

In my opinion, this is an unfortunate side effect of the "growth at all costs" economic policy of China. Money becomes the only thing that matters -- IP, the environment, even the health of citizens is second-class. As China further develops, we will hopefully see attitudes change. I don't believe you see this level of theft/piracy in more mature economies like Singapore or Taiwan (not China, but similar in that they are ethnically majority Chinese).

DISCLAIMER: I did not intend to write such a long response, but got carried away. The intention is not to disparage China in any way, but to frame the issue as an economic incentives problem, rather than pointing fingers.

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One issue I have heard from individuals much more familiar with the current Chinese culture than myself, is that the cultural revolution (communist legacy if you will), really disassociated the modern mainland culture from its roots and what you see if the "off-shoots", like Taiwan and Singapore.

The ethics, asporations, priorities, etc. that a person has, are all influenced by their surroundings and the culture that the family/environment holds. I saw this all too well in Russia in the 90s. The "anything for a buck" mentality is the core issue. In US/Western-derived cultures, as well as Singapore/Taiwan, you see boundaries put in place to restrain some this capitalistic drive. For example, in the old days, a man's word, was as good as a contract written on paper. You see this in many historic documents, such as British common law and it's influence on US legal system.

When the "anything for a buck" mentality sets in, your word is no longer that valuable. So naturally, you shift to other value-driving things, such as acquisition of monetary instruments and other "stuff". Means of said acquisition take second seat to acquisition itself. The apps in this case are the other "stuff" being acquired. How they are being acquired are irrelevant, so people doing the acquiring are taking the route of least resistance.

But this is not a China problem. Anyone remember the US financial crisis? Same basic problem - it was easy for consumers to consume beyond their means, and it made sales people richer. For a while, seemed like a win-win, until people needed to pay-up that is.

All of this is incentives problem. In US for example, you have much more incentive to "play nice" with the system, than going against it. For example, it's much more convenient for me to just buy the app. That "convenience" comes from a mix of ethical convictions and the fact that pirating takes time, which I am unwilling to invest, even IF I was ok with it, which I am not ok with stealing. From the economic view, the cost of stealing the app is much greater for me than someone else, so I make the rational choice of buying it and consuming for less.

This is great. It seems people have blinders on and are only outraged to see stealing and copying when it happens in China. It fits a stereotype. But when Zynga copies a game or somebody is downloading a torrent - not so much outrage, unless you're the MPAA or RIAA.

My point was only that the Chinese specifically are much more prone to steal and/or copy software than any other group I know of.

Maybe you should be talking to other groups. :-)

And certainly my stats of app usage vs revenue in China have proven this conclusively to me. Nearly nobody buys it there, and yet China shows the most app usage!

All it takes is one server with one pirated copy of your app for it to become popular. There may even be a app store for pirated apps out there making the pirating process even easier. This, combined with the viral nature of your app could account for these large numbers in China but it isn't damning proof that each Chinese user is prone to stealing. It's just so darn easy to do it. Just like how downloading torrents has gotten so easy that everybody is doing it.

Oh no, there are pirated versions in the US and everywhere else but my stats speak for themselves as far as I'm concerned. And then how does one explain the fact that the clone apps are almost exclusively made by Chinese?

I don't know what else to say. It's a cultural thing. I know this from data and I know this from more personal experience with Chinese people both in and out of China than a lot of people in my situation.

This isn't China bashing, it's just the facts.

This "x happens everywhere" argument always sickens me. Murders happens everywhere, does that mean we shouldn't criticize a specific mass murderer?

He's saying that the Chinese are prone to stealing/copying. I'm saying that stealing/copying is happening everywhere so you can't really pin this behaviour on one race/culture. I'm not saying that it's okay either. People will often use the "everybody's doing it" argument to justify something. Not me.

Can't you stem piracy by requiring users of your app to login to a server? So that pirating the app isn't enough to use it?

This requires you to keep a server running. And unless the server is actually providing some service which is critical to the app functionality, somebody will just fire up their favourite hex editor and modify the binary so it doesn't need to speak to the server.

AND my customers that aren't stealing it would down vote it for the annoying inconvenience of having to log in for little to no value :/ The app store is a rough place.

You have to understand that certain applications are prone to be "cloned" - there is 7B people on the planet and there is big chance if something is successful and can be easily cloned WILL BE cloned.

It really does not matter if it is Chinese or not. If your thing is REALLY successful then Samwer brothers will clone it.

I think you're being rather flippant here. Cloned would seem to imply that they did the work to re-craft it. This is just stealing. Hell they're directing traffic to his servers.

To be more precise, it's clear copyright infringement. Except that it's happening in China so we can do nothing about it.

- They couldn't have just stolen it. There are slight differences in the UI plus the binary has creator information embedded in it. The app is simple enough. I think it would be harder to take the source binary and modify it than to clone it.

- I'm not sure whether he maintains servers or not. If he did then he can do something about it. All I know is that he gets app usage information from pirated copies. Those pirated copies would be stolen but they would also not be obtained from the app store. There are two things happening: devs ripping off his ideas, users pirating his app

Ok - here is one clone app of the original: http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/cute-textpics/id537228845?mt=...

So if they did something illegal, then it should be easy to remove it iTunes App store. Correct?

Sadly no. Luckily I have the trademark on the name TextPics so I have these apps using my name removed every now and then, however the process is very slow and manual thanks purely to Apples horrid process. With a clone on android google took care of it promptly and placed the word TextPics in a database of trademarks to avoid future violations.

But then there is the non-illegal clones that stole my content, design, icon, etc. Now they call themselves things like Text Pictures. Is this not wrong? Funny part is its maybe 90% Chinese. I think there may have been a few Russian ones.

I had a similar issue a few years ago when someone from Asia had modified and resold my ecommerce application for years as his own. I lost at least $50,000 in sales to US customers who purchased this guy's copy of my software.

The big problem that I ran into is the cost to litigate international issues. I contacted a bunch of law firms and they all pretty much said it would be a six-figure cost to pursue any international action and the hopes of collecting would be almost zero. Fortunately, the copying was so blatant that I didn't have a problem getting the US web host to pull down his site.

Partially as a result of the incident I decided to open-source the code base. Other than locking up the code in a SaaS platform there isn't a 100% foolproof way to protect IP so why not embrace the copying and build a business model around reality.

I know it's a bit late to suggest this but for future reference you could have always followed the VBulletin model of sending DMCA/Legal threats to people who purchase the bootlegged software.

I realize this doesn't make you any friends but if enough of those customers disputed the charges with the person who had stolen your software you may have been able to put him out of business.

I actually contacted most of them because the software was sold in a small community. I offered them immunity from legal threats in exchange for registering with me so that I knew how many people had purchased. The plan is to sell them official upgrades as their current unsupported versions become outdated.

Thanks for the suggestion.

As much as I hate the DMCA, when this happens and a U.S. host starts ignoring legitimate DMCA notices, start emailing their upstreams. Softlayer is probably doing this because they have an inexperienced tech handling your request.

Email ATDN, Global Crossing, Cogent Communications, and many of the other companies they peer with and say the website has not been shut down despite emails sent to Softlayer. Those companies may threaten to nullroute the website's IP.

If they don't do anything (unlikely) get an injunction.

It's trivial for this guy to get it hosted elsewhere, however. This is just me, but I wouldn't expect to build anything in HTML5 that couldn't be copied-- the platform is inherently open. If the only creative and useful properties of your work is built in the open, there does not seem to be a compelling reason why you would be protected by copyright. This person could build a website around your "copyrights" in little time.

Just because a product uses open technology, it doesn't necessarily undermine the labour and creative skill that a person puts into creating a product from the open technology available. This could be the same skill put into a non-open source piece of software, just that the opportunity to copy isn't so readily available.

Also, saying that the person who copied the website could build around the website in no time at all rather assumes that they have the skill to do so.

> Just because a product uses open technology, it doesn't necessarily undermine the labour and creative skill that a person puts into creating a product from the open technology available.

I never said it did, and that's what's unfortunate about this situation. His service has no backend that could not be easily replicated, and the frontend is portable. You cannot build software like this without being copied... by nature it is not practical to expect to limit others' behavior with open platform code. There are no laws that will protect you from sufficient copying effort.

Whether the person is skilled or not is another issue. The OP would still be mad if somebody ripped off his website and made it just different enough.

Ah I see - yes, I take your point. I agree that if it is easily available, it is likely to be copied, such is the reality of human nature. Unfortunately, it does rather incentivise keeping things locked up which is a shame in some respects in terms of increasing knowledge. Some times the best way of protecting your innovation is simply not to disclose.

I agree that most people have an emotional connection to their product and if someone designed around it, it would still hurt. However, this process would take time and is the nature of competition. As such, the impact can't be as great as in the instant case where the infringer has just ported the whole platform.

> non-open source

"Open source" does not mean "you can view the source". It means software that is freely usable and redistributable:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Debian_Free_Software_Guidelines...

Thank you for the correction. Is there a term to describe code which although freely viewable is not open-source?

Proprietary.

But that for me doesn't capture the aspect of it being freely available to examine/read - perhaps such a term doesn't exist!

I don't think there's one term. "An application with exposed/visible source code", maybe.

The term "shared source" exists, and sort-of covers this scenario:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Reciprocal_License#Mi...

Minified JavaScript is only marginally easier to read than disassembled/decompiled binaries.

"Source-available"

The link has a section that says "Inclusion of source code".

I am not an open source expert but I always understood that open source software comes with source code for anyone to view. I could be wrong but would like to confirm this.

All open source software has the source code available. But the availability of source code does not mean that it's open source. You can put a very restrictive license on software with the source code available.

No, that's free software. Open source just means that the source code is freely usable. It doesn't mean that it has a copyleft license.

The definitions are quite similar, actually:

http://opensource.org/osd.html

As you can see, it's based on Debian's guidelines.

Open Source includes copyleft (GPL) licenses, but also BSD/MIT/Apache and others as well.

I would consider those very different, actually. When you only allow copyleft licenses you become a social movement, whereas open source is a software development methodology.

Edit: I must be way out of date, or something. I was under the impression that all Free Software had to have a requirement that derivative works also be published under a Free Software license. This doesn't seem to be true. I would agree, then, that they are basically the same.

Yes, but in practical terms, the amount of code that is one, but not the other is either small or nonexistant.

The original poster thought that open source simply meant 'source code available', which I corrected. You are going off on a tangent.

That's like saying a book is not copyrightable because anybody who understands that language can easily copy it. Of course things built on the web in HTML5 can be copyrighted, regardless of how easy one can copy them.

Protecting them is another matter and I agree with you on that. You can go to great lengths to obfuscate the code or whatever but in the end anybody with enough skill and motivation will be able to copy your work.

People can write ripoff books that are different enough to be free from recourse. In HTML5, the platform is even more narrow than natural language. A "thief" has available to them all of the approaches, quirks and libraries of the original author -- none of which is exclusive.

Together with the lack of practical enforcement, there doesn't appear to be any utility in the law. Saying an HTML5 web app should be protected by copyright is a bad joke at this point.

It's not a bad joke, and what he is selling is not a web app either. There is a lot of open source projects that you have to buy commercial licence in other more closed languages.

What he is selling is a programming framework to do games and it is not licenced to be resold, simple as that.

If the guy would be in the US, it's clear that action would be easily enforceable. Softlayer should atleast take down the website.

If Softlayer ignores the DMCA complaint, thats good news from a monetary standpoint, because now they have fallen out of the safe harbor and there is someone to collect money from. Then they get to do the hard work of collecting from "Long Yang."

The OP wrote that "I prepared a DMCA and sent it via fax to Softlayer. I never heard back and finally gave up on the whole thing."

This is probably not the most effective way to handle a DMCA notice. While it would be nice if every company's compliance team was responsive and open, this task is often outsourced and because the DMCA is fundamentally a legal process, review and action can be very conservative. If you want to fast-track action, certified or registered mail beats facsimile every time. A follow-up letter including a copy the certified delivery receipt is very effective. This is even more true if it's on law firm letterhead or company letterhead and professional in tone.

Presumably, if this is a big enough issue to post on HN and if there's some lost revenue, it's probably worth the time to follow up on the DMCA takedown request(s). It may also be worth the time to ask an attorney to prepare a sample letter you can use for this and future takedown procedures.

I'd encourage the OP to not give up on the DMCA process, as it can be very effective with a little bit of followup.

Hopefully I (as the only SoftLayer employee in this thread that I'm aware of) can provide a little insight. Before addressing the specific issue in the post, I want to share a quick overview of SoftLayer's Abuse Department and the processes of handling complaints.

The abuse@softlayer.com address functions as more of a notification system than a medium for conversation. You don't have to be a SoftLayer customer to contact that address, and when reports of verifiable abuse are received, the abuse team will work with the customer responsible for the infringing server to get it resolved as quickly as possible. If the DMCA is properly formatted, the abuse team will work with our customers (who may, in turn have to work with their customers) to have the infringing material removed.

If a complaint is submitted to that address that doesn't meet the legal guidelines of documentation we need before we can take action, we cannot take action. If we can't take action because of an incomplete or invalid complaint, we also can't provide any visibility or feedback to the complaining parties about what was incomplete/invalid, as that could fall into the "legal advice" category.

Abuse tickets aren't handled by technical support, and they people creating and responding to the tickets are only responsible for abuse-related issues. Not only are they a distinct team, they fall in an entirely different part of the organization (alongside the legal, internal security and systems teams). As such, the way they respond needs to be extremely consistent from one issue to the next, and they're only able to make decisions based on the reports/evidence they have.

I don't have visibility into the specific complaint that was submitted, so the only assumption I can make is that the complaint wasn't properly formatted or it didn't have the legal evidence we need to take action. Whether or not the copyright infringement is "obvious" or "unquestionable" from an outside perspective does not change our legal requirement of having a properly formatted DMCA complaint to take action. If there's a lawyer in the building who is willing to offer his/her services to the game developer, a resolution might be a lot quicker. When the DMCA is submitted, I'd love to be copied on it (khazard@softlayer.com) so I can immediately have it investigated and acted upon.

-Kevin Hazard

Reading this and the related stories of other products like Cloudstone [1] I'm immediately reminded of another, recent HN post [2] which suggested covering about half a dozen markets/languages with your initial releases.

Something to think about.

1: http://www.reddit.com/r/gaming/comments/yc02l/some_company_i...

2: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4389468

On the other hand, it's sad that so many startups are ignoring the huge market that China is. People on HN often critique the music/film industries for claiming to lose ridiculously huge amounts of revenues due to piracy. In this case, I am willing to bet that 99% of people buying from the Chinese website wouldn't have bought the original. Anyways, I'm not trying to justify what this guy did but simply suggesting that more startups should consider serving the Chinese market.

What would a positive outcome of serving a group be when you know 99% of them won't buy anything from you?

I'd be very impressed if any outsider managed to sustainably serve the Chinese market, without the very hungry local competitors improving on the solution. Support by itself would be quite a challenge.

99% of them would not have bought the original product because their English skills are not good enough. They would buy a localized Chinese version, which is what the Chinese site from the story was selling. The moral of the story is, Chinese customers want a localized copy of your product. If you don't provide it, someone else will, and that guy might not feel like paying you any license fees.

You make it sound like someone who doesn't immediately produce a Chinese translation deserves what they get when someone pirates their app and adds a + to the end. Also, like translation is the only reason someone's app gets ripped off.

Not buying software does not mean that they won't buy anything. It simply means that particular business model (selling software licenses) does not work in China. But that's not the only possible model available, for example if you can package your software as training or something more tangible.

I wrote an article a couple of years ago with some ideas to overcome this issue: http://successfulsoftware.net/2010/08/12/selling-your-softwa...

Upvoted. I remember your article on SS. Good points.

As many people have said - with HTML5, you basically give your IP away and hope for the law to keep people honest. Making money is those conditions is the old open source conundrum.

I would suggest the OP to sell support contract (sponsored features, priority bug fixing, ...) to the Chinese customers of his copycat. If the situation gets worse (eg: the chinese firm translate their website in English), the engine can be open sourced and try to recover with the support.

If the Chinese site is selling the minified/uncommented JS code that you would get from "view source" then he probably wouldn't be in business for long.

In this case, it sounds like he bought a copy of the engine/level editor/build scripts/documentation and is selling that. Is that any different than buying the Unreal Engine Source Code and reselling it for 50% off?

Yes. It would be like buying the Unreal Engine Source Code, translating everything into Chinese, and selling that for 50% off.

While I condemn what they have done, this is what you're open to if you try to create HTML5 games, as the whole UI is just one wget away.

The un-obfuscated code and the level editor isn't available though. I believe the thief bought a copy of Impact to get all the source files - this could have happened with any product.

Is it possible to sell just obfuscated library?

In theory, yes. In practise, developers wouldn't like it since they can't deal with bugs in it or debug easily with it.

How is this different than any other commercial software library - once you have a copy, what prevents you from reselling it illegally?

While HTML5 games can be easily copied wholesale somewhere else (as can Flash SWF files generally) - the code is usually minified and not terribly useful to try to do development on.

This is interesting as I have had similar problems with hackers/copy catters, and it is true that the majority do come from an asian region, but I think its still important to note that the majority of the world's population is also in asia. For me, this article seems to concentrate the online IP problem specifically in asia/China, which in my opinion is simply not the case. For instance, are the Samwers really that much different from what the developer in the article just did? I think the real question is how do you respect IP at a global level where governmental laws can differ largely from one country to the next.

>For instance, are the Samwers really that much different from what the developer in the article just did?

yes, stealing a product and selling a stolen product is quite different from copying, iterating on and subsequent scaling a business model.

It is only 'different' because we have defined/framed copyright in the way we have.

Infringing copyright is not that different from copying a business model. (You are still copying something from someone else).

with this logic (and if it would have always applied) we would have 1 restaurant chain in the whole world, 1 car maker in the whole world, hey we would have only one merchant in the whole world - and worst of all - only one OS maker in the whole world.

Reductio ad absurdum.

Care to try to explain 'why' for any of those assertions?

the business model of a merchant is to buy something cheap and sell it at a more expensive price. if this business model would be copyrightable than nobody else would be allowed (not until he/she licensed it) to buy something cheap and sell it at a more expensive price.

the one merchant who invented this concept would then be the only merchant in the world, and as the other guy who invented "licensing" would probably not have "licensed" licensing to the merchant (as the merchant would then have a license on licensing and would have just licensed licensing to other people) the merchant would be forever the only merchant in the world.

note: yeah i know this is absurd, but not as absurd as the notion, that business models are copyrightable. (or should not get copied because of .... whatever)

Copyright would never apply to business models, patents would. Both copyrights and patents expire, so the scenario you describe wouldn't happen.

I agree that business models should not be protected, though.

It's why we need copyrights and patents.

If there were no protections, anyone that had lots of resources could just cherry-pick new technology and ideas (use the companies as almost free R&D) and beat them to the market before any small company even has a chance to get off the ground.

The result would be a few huge companies.

It's a nice idea.

And yet, in the 1980s and early 1990s, when there was absolutely no patent protection for software, the software industry flourished.

And yet, Google, a small upstart, was able to rise well above all the other search engines, despite being (at the beginning) much less funded, and using an algorithm that -- while patented by them in 95 or so -- had been known for 40 years, and even used in exactly the same way with respect to academic references (who have, for all intents and purposes, "links" in the printed paper world).

So, even though everyone who had a lot of resources could do that, it doesn't happen in practice - and in fact, the existing patent regime seems to be useless in this regard.

Patents and copyrights are a very nice idea, but the existing implementations are so horrible, that it is not clear to me we're better off than without them.

> Reductio ad absurdum

That's not a logical fallacy, it's a valid form of argument.

I never said it was. I asked for how such an absurdity would occur (i.e an explanation).

Reductio ad absurdum tends to appeal to emotion (as in this case it has).

Carbon copying another persons work without putting in a minuscule amount of effort is different from taking a proven business model and rolling it out in a different market. It's not like the Samwers steal the sourcecode and design put a new name on it and call it a day. There have real offices, real engineers, real designers, real marketers. You might think cloning a business model is despicable but there is a real effort involved in executing it. Not to mention that unlike in the case of this article the Samwers don't go into already preoccupied markets but rather aim to tap new ones.

> I think the real question is how do you respect IP online and at a global level where governmental laws can differ largely from one country to the next.

It's probably a hint that Copyright is a stupid way to sell software, but perhaps that is high jacking this thread.

It is one thing to attack copyright for being used against consumers who wish to use media, however it is a different issue when a third party is copying your platform wholesale and then deriving revenue from that act of copying. I think in this case, copyright still has a role to play i.e. where a third party is monetising your copyright rather than simply using it.

That's an interesting line to draw. Both breaches of copyright involve a monetary loss.

This feels like a hypocritical stance, but I could be misunderstanding you. :\

With a consumer, the loss is much harder to show as it's difficult to prove that if they hadn't downloaded for free, they would have purchased.

But I don't think it's hypocritical to create that divide - after all there are many exceptions already in existence to the right to prevent copying. Private use would just be another addition.

It also reflects what should be the reality, i.e. that in many cases, you will want to pursue the party that is making money from your creation, because they will be the ones more likely to have money to pay damages, plus it will be easier to show damage.

The people brazen enough to copy .jars and source code seem to be disproportionately Chinese.

One of the biggest issues with this stuff in Asia/China in particular is the attitude of governments toward IP there. The problem isn't just that there's a large population there, and that its another country. Maybe its naive of me, but I think if there was something that was blatantly stolen like this in Canada or the UK, I could go through the channels to have it taken down, and a case pursued against them fairly easily.

The situation is unfortunate, but basically inevitable at this stage in China's development. Take a look at the Chinese book publishing industry and you'll see a glimpse of the Chinese way - most books are put online for free by the authors (mostly in their entirety). The publishing companies pick the most popular ones, who get deals to have their books printed & sold in stores. Totally different from the west.

Doing business in China, I have noticed that there is somewhat of a "creativity gap" (as I call it). I believe that as their society evolves and begins to create more of their own IP, the laws will eventually adapt to protect such developments. In the meantime, it's very difficult.

But still, Cisco has had everything copied (down to the model #s) by you-know-who and yet still makes billions (also powering the great firewall). Like Microsoft & Cisco, there are ways to penetrate and dominate the market in the midst of the piracy.

However, if your IP is some "easily de-obfuscated" javascript (and you're a startup), it's a very difficult position and my heart goes out to them.

As a Chinese, I feel ashamed about these people. They said on their [forum][0] that "The controversy is inevitable. We offer services only for China so that Chinese customers can buy the same product with a low price."

But please believe me there are a lot of good guys, contributors in China and many of them are so reclusive that you cannot recognize they are Chinese.

[0]: http://www.kilofox.net/forum/forum.php?mod=viewthread&ti...

Html5 code is so easy to be copied, and it seems not trivial to prove who copied who. If my website is totally copied, how can I prove that my one is original? Any idea?

If you're really that concerned about it,

1) Print source code 2) Get it witnessed by a notary public

As a techie myself, printing and code lie on opposite sides of the spectrum. Printing source code screams "wrong" in the back of my head. And how would one deal with updates, esp nightly updates.

http://www.copyright.gov/help/faq/faq-digital.html#website

http://www.copyright.gov/eco/help-deposit.html

http://www.copyright.gov/eco/ under Literary

Did anyone keep registering their evolving javascript code for copyright? Is this a common practice? For images, logos, we can use waterprint as a cheaper alternative, how about javascript code?

I don't know if anyone has done it, but the Copyright Office actually have rules for it.

http://www.copyright.gov/circs/circ61.pdf

The guy who made Impact is from germany, not the US.

I hope the op realizes that, by posting this on HN, he/she has just promoted the much cheaper copycat product to the very target market that alleged thief wants to reach...

Throughout the history of journalism collateral damage has never been allowed to stand in the way of a good a story.

The opposite view is they are alerting potential customers to the counterfeit. If, somehow, you only knew about that version, it would be helpful to know you won't get support, but that a supported version is available.

I would bet that most of HN is ethical and aware enough to buy the original.

I bet most of HN isn't good enough at Chinese, so they'd rather pay more for the original, because it's in English.

And also to support the original developer and definitely receive good support and updates.

according to http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4428159 it is identical.

Millennials believe it's ok to illegally download anything.

The unfortunate reality is that even if Softlayer comply with the DMCA request, the site could be moved to a host in a more infringement-friendly jurisdiction.

Perhaps a letter from a Chinese law firm could help to escalate matters. A basic cease and desist letter would be relatively cheap, but then again, from the infringer's stance so far, I can't imagine it would receive a particularly positive response...

It may not help much but you'd like to think that Softlayer would at least make the effort.

How do you prevent HTML and JS code from getting copied - obsfuscation may not help much. The standard had it coming.

There was a similar incident that someone posted on Reddit recently, however, not using HTML5.

http://www.reddit.com/r/gaming/comments/yc02l/some_company_i...

The difference is that this is not plagiarism; this is just piracy. The Chinese studio does not claim authorship for this. They have even stated their upstream, making them look like an authorized distributor. They claim to be selling a localized "cracked" version. Shamefully, piracy with a price is not uncommon in China.

It's not quite straightforward why they decide to sell a pirated version. They seem to be specialized in web game development, based on Impact and other framework. I guess they had used Impact for game development, during which they spent some time doing the localization, integration and documentation and felt that was a justification for selling for a price. Their customers, if there are any, are not unaware of the piracy, as in their product forum.

I said similar, not the same. Both people had their game ripped off by Chinese companies without their consent who are now selling them. I'd say that's very similar.

>The difference is that this is not plagiarism; this is just piracy.

How is one worse than the other ? Both people's products are being illegally sold by a company in China. Either way, both are losing out on potential profit. One product was straight up copied, the other was (most likely) re-created. Even if the plagiarized game was completely re-coded from scratch, they still stole their ideas, designs, etc...

I don't think I was disagreeing with you. It's purely relevant information on the other side of the story.

I am Chinese (who resides in Bay Area). Yeah, I feel shame.

If the US-based hosting provider ignores DMCA requests, can't you sue the provider?

You could also see if their payment provider is willing to help.

These Chinese copy everything !

It's such an outrage! Don't they know that some token glass pearls go a long way?

The fact that the parent didn't even raise an eyebrow just makes this butthurt reaction even more hilarious. Keep on trucking, and don't worry; there's an idiot born every day, never mind silly old me. Hahaha.

The blog's identical, by the way. No effort to translate it.

This is an exact use case that SOPA was designed to address. We vehemently hated SOPA, so what's the deal? We can't have it both ways.

Personally, I would rather not have SOPA and have this guy lose a few sales.

The game developer is German, and the pirates are in China. How exactly would SOPA do ANYTHING to stop this?

It wouldn't. A Chinese pirate selling pirated software to Chinese customers cannot be stopped by US law.

How is this Hacker News, Chinese game portals are full of stolen games. No matter what you will do, they will reverse engineer and remove ads and blocks.

It's china, the land of counterfeit.

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