Flat UI DMCA Takedown
github.com
github.com
It's hard not to lose a little respect fo the LayerVault guys, even if the icons in question were direct copies. I get you're protective of your art, but this doesn't really make sense from a business standpoint, and their response has been less than convincing. It's really disappointing.
Clearly this infringes on LayerVault's copyright.
Direct copies only work as an argument if the item is an Original, as in the idea of a thing wholly onto itself without an external influence of any sort.
you might argue that it's derived as in Originated from, borrowed from, a sourced to, an antecedent of, an allusion towards. I could continue. sort of like how Star Wars Episode II and Star Wars Episode I are derived from Star Wars Episode IV. :)
Not "like" them, not derivative of them, but actually them (e.g. Yoda).
So yeah, that would be a direct copy.
A direct copy, would be the _exact_same_ characters as depicted in ep VI, but alas they are not, they are however similar to, which makes it a derivative of.
Even then it's a good idea to put up a quick and easy comparison sheet.
But for things like "3 cogs" (cogs are different sizes, different colours, different numbers of teeth, different orientation) it's ridiculous to DMCA it. 3 Cogs is so generic that it's an annoyance to engineers. (Because the cogs are usually drawn in such a way that they cannot possibly turn).
HN is generally pretty good when people rip off a design. Even people like me (who have very little idea about design) respect the amount of work and expertise that goes on. But it's because I have so little clue about design that people need to explain the similarities. If you're the first people to curl a newspaper under then tell me that. Show me what people used to do, and how you innovated that.
Remember Svbtle?
Someone very quickly ripped it off.
There was intense discussion. Some people felt it's fair game to rip off the design. Other people felt it was a poor copy. Others were angry that it was such a blatant rip off (especially because it was so bad).
I've tried to describe this as neutrally as possible, but I understand it will sound pretty biased.
a svbtle page: http://benyu.org/net-worth
obtvse page: http://jackdempsey.me/migrating-to-obtvse
wp-svbtle: http://wp-svbtle.themeskult.com/
I believe obtvse at the time of the dispute was more directly ripping off svbtle than it is now, but I could be misremembering.
The unintentional pretentiousness of svbtle was amusing at the time and I can remember the urge to create a clone and replace the dammned kudos hover trap with a fontBomb[1].
I know other people have discussed it, but my search engine skills are too weak to find anything at the moment.
I remember it distinctly from launch, the cogs were more inside the circle and in a different orientation: http://venturebeat.files.wordpress.com/2013/03/screen-shot-2...
The three icons removed were the cog, the map, and the twitter face.
Edit: Here is a comparison image from further down the page: http://imgur.com/IH1osAD
If that's indeed them who sent the notice, they are just shitting all over their reputation and alienating a lot of people. Talk about "starting off on the wrong foot"... and for what? A design that is border-line trivial. It would seem that their best option for getting the situation under control is to release their own version of the toolkit. A version that is sufficiently different from their original background-color, border-radius and icon @font-face. If not, they are bound to repeat the clone wars of Svbtle.
Edit | LayerVault actually appears to be a pretty useful product, clearly with a lot of thought sunk into it. Which makes it twice as unfortunate that they decided to pursue something like this. Google "LayerVault videos" if interested.
Oh and did the developer of Flat UI file a counter takedown notice?
Edit: Sorry if I offended anyone, just posted what I thought.
Create a new topic guys!
I thought I had a backup on my laptop, desktop, remote backup from my desktop and all the revisions on their server. But all revisions were corrupted and it synced those bad copies to all my machines, including the machine that performed it's own remote backup (so all those backups were broken).
Their support team acknowledged that it was a problem and that they were 'hoping' to fix in an upcoming version, but offered absolutely no solution to fix my data except their apologies.
Never going to trust that product ever again if they don't have data integrity as their number 1 priority.
My desktop was being backed up nightly to a remote source. Though it was the laptop (which wasnt being backed up) which I was doing the work on / changes to. But I saw that layer vault was syncing the changes to the desktop so figured it was fine.
So it went Laptop -> Layer Vault -> Desktop -> Remote Backup. But of course everything that passed through Layer Vault got corrupted. And eventually it 'resynced' all that corruption back to the laptop and the file went completely dead. So there ended up being no good copies of it.
So yeah in hindsight can say it was my fault for not doing nightlys of the laptop. But at the time I thought my strategy was fine, trusting that while at worst I'd lose a few versions or something if something terrible happened, not for it to actively destroy the file.
Well hindsight is always 20/20, but your backup strategy still relied on a single service (that wasn't your own). Backup is one thing no one should completely rely on a third-party. Whether it's a USB drive, good ol' DVDs or what have you, anything else "of your own" is crucial at least weekly if not end-of-day.
The effort going into your backups must match the value you place on your data.
not a "one kind of anything" single pt of failure problem. he expected LayerVault to not corrupt the PSDs sent through them (and the syncing actions made it worse), which is not unreasonable. it's the same as trusting Photoshop to write PSD files to disk that are identical when opened later.
the difference is that Photoshop is more time-tested and well-known, which changes the odds, but in your argument still would make Photoshop's saving mechanism a single point of failure as well.
and then what, use more different graphic design tools? :)
in your example, if you burn your backups to a good ol' DVD, don't you check that the files are actually on there? and have the burning tool check the integrity? and finally, if you don't check a few of those PSDs to actually load in Photoshop, who knows that the data your DVD burning tool received was correct?
You're right, backups are meaningless if they're unchecked. No different than dumping to a tape drive that's never verified and you get weeks of... nothing.
As the Desktop was getting the changes via the LayerVault syncs (simliar to say a Dropbox folder) each sync from LayerVault was sending a corrupted file.
So there were plenty of 'versions' of the file in remote backup, except these were all totally corrupted!
Github search found 116 repositories: https://github.com/search?q=flat-ui&ref=commandbar
There are 48 forks alone of this single fork: https://github.com/iurevych/Flat-UI/network/members
The project itself shows 129 forks.
You really prepared to piss off hundreds of people by sending a DMCA takedown to each and every one? Really? Do you know when to stop digging? Is the hole deep enough yet? Found some suspicious odorous dark substance? I can tell you, it's not oil.
Google uses the same:
There is no doubt that the Flat UI was highly inspired by LayerVault, but c'mon, you can't restrict a certain style or color pallete from being used.
It's true that all these flat UI themes are really similar, so It's really interesting how this will turn out and will the Flat UI repo will be brought back.
However in order to win an infringement claim you'd have to show that they constituted a substantial part of a work and that the colours were copied and not derived from a third party source or coincidentally the same. The usual civil law test is the balance of probabilities.
I think a more likely claim is that the matching colour scheme were a trademark infringement, an unlicensed use of trade dress (jurisdiction dependent of course). AFAIK DMCA takedown notices don't work for trademark infringement though?
It's impossible to pick a green in a tetradic scheme and not get a red, orange and blue to match it.
"Here's the eMail icon. This version was designed by Susan Kare".
Now imagine I file a takedown notice for every aspiring project posted here on HN that is hosted on github. They take a pretty good hit from it I'd assume, to be silenced on the launch. Of course I open myself to litigation with false takedown request... but what do I care? I'm not a citizen of United States and I don't really care what laws are there.
So what now? How can this work?
I'm not entirely sure whether you can submit a DMCA takedown request if you're not a citizen of the USA. For once, you need to provide US-based contact info.
However, I am not sure if the service provider needs to check whether this contact info is correct before takedown.
So it seems that any public-facing data on any US-based server can be made to disappear for at least 10-14 days. But just because a country has crappy laws doesn't mean you should use those laws against them! ;)
So you can't just have an agent do the request on your behalf?
It doesn't. Our most recent copyright overhaul (which this is a feature of) currently works close-enough to OK to be tolerable to those who would otherwise fix it.
http://www.google.com/transparencyreport/removals/copyright/
Even without the DMCA, if the service provider interjects itself into the dispute they risk legal action against themselves. For example, they could evaluate the claims wrong, and get sued to allowing actually infringing material to stay up.
It goes like this:
1. DMCA is filed by a person/entity with the service-provider.
2. Service-provider takes down offending content.
3. The person/entity that submitted the offending content now has the option to file a counter-notice with their service provider claiming that they feel/know there is no infringement. If they do file a counter-notice, then we continue on. If they don't file a counter-notice, then the story ends here.
4. The service-provider notifies the person/entity that filed the DMCA notice that a counter-notice was filed. The service-provider can now restore the content, but there is some weird stipulation that they need to wait something like 10 ~ 14 days before doing so.
5. The person/entity that filed the original notice now has to take legal action against the person/entity that they feel has infringed their copyrights if they want anything more to happen.
The party that files the DMCA notice stipulates that they believe that their work has been infringed under penalty of perjury.
[1] For a long time, people on the Internet believed that 'Common Carrier' provisions applied to ISPs, but it really only applies to phone companies. The Safe Harbour provisions of the DMCA are meant to give something similar for ISPs, though there are different rules.
It's totally skewed- a false counter notice has a high risk and a false notice a low risk. The damage due to a false counter notice is likely small (it can't disrupt the real owners own usage; it's probably been online quite a while anyhow; and the infriger(s) can find other ways to do so if he really wants to - notice the quick Flat UI resuscitation). But the damage due to a false notice is potentially quite large since it imples complete loss of service (not just someone else getting a few days of free reign), and potentially loss of momentum, and the issue with free speech - which isn't critical, perhaps, but all else being equal I'd prefer we err on the side of open.
So given the skewed potential for damage (much greater for a false notice), and the skewed risk to the fraudulent/mistaken party (much smaller for a false notice), it's utterly obvious there should not be such a waiting period.
I also don't see what would stop someone from sending thousands of DMCA takedowns from TOR or some anonymising VPN, laying waste to an entire website for 10 days.
The EFF's "dancing baby" lawsuit is still going; if they win that will set a stronger precedent for forcing copyright owners to first consider fair use.
thanks for the explanation, I never realised it was like this.
The DMCA has good and bad parts about it. It's like a "Good Idea, Bad Idea"[1] short:
----
Good Idea: Make it relatively easy and cheap to send takedown notices so that the 'little guy' without fancy lawyers on retainer can participate.
Bad Idea: Make it relatively easy and cheap to send takedown notices so that the 'big guy' can send out millions of them relatively easy.
----
Good Idea: Make it so that you only need a 'good faith' belief to file a notice, so that the 'little guy' doesn't accidentally get caught up in legal terms and procedures.
Bad Idea: Make it so that you only need a 'good faith' belief to file a notice, so that the 'big guys' can get away with filing obviously stupid takedown notices because their fancy lawyers on retainer can easily quash any perjury charges over bogus takedown notices.
----
Obviously none of the 'little guy' stuff was considered during the drafting of the legislation though. It's just a by-product. Legislators also never considered the implications of bad actors, because they were only thinking of large content companies (which would obviously never do anything bad). It's also worth it to consider that this was passed on 1998 (and drafted earlier). The Internet was not as pervasive as it is now (even though the dotcom bubble was in its early stages).
1) what happens with perjury? how severe is "penalty of perjury"?
If at point 5, LayerVault chooses not to take legal action (say, because they realized their mistake), did they just take some random piece of work offline for 10-14 days without any consequence?
What if they do take legal action and lose?
2) You say the provider has to act like a "dumb pipe" and just obey these notices. Does this also exclude basic sanity checks such as calling back the phone number on the notice to check whether the corporation in question actually filed this notice, or whether notice-filer actually exists, whether the phone number is actually connected to the corporation the notice claims to be from, etc? Because otherwise, it's just a matter of time until somebody is going to ... take down all the things.
I just checked Wikipedia on perjury and it says, "Statements which entail an interpretation of fact are not perjury because people often draw inaccurate conclusions unwittingly, or make honest mistakes without the intent to deceive. Individuals may have honest but mistaken beliefs about certain facts, or their recollection may be inaccurate, or may have a different perception of what is the accurate way to state the truth", I think this is pretty much the case for LayerVault. So they won't get penalty of perjury, because they did believe their work had been infringed ... even when it's based on a wrong idea of what constitutes an actual infringement instead of a "heavily inspired by" rip-off?
| 1) what happens with perjury? how severe is "penalty
| of perjury"?
> In the United States, for example, the general perjury
> statute under Federal law classifies perjury as a felony
> and provides for a prison sentence of up to five years.
| If at point 5, LayerVault chooses not to take legal
| action (say, because they realized their mistake),
| did they just take some random piece of work offline
| for 10-14 days without any consequence?
| What if they do take legal action and lose?
Someone taking actual legal action is pretty costly. If someone uses a DMCA takedown notice, and follows up with a lawsuit, then this process is working as intended, even if the claimant/plaintiff is in the wrong. Who is wrong, and who is right will be handled by the courts at this point.
The real danger is using the DMCA without filing a lawsuit. There are few penalties[3] for false claims, little cost and yet a big benefit to sending the takedown notice. The service provider has to comply, unlike with a C&D letter.
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perjury
[2] Think someone posting a product prior to release. E.g. posting Windows 9 a week before the release date.
[3] Perjury is a serious penalty, but you're not punished until you're dragged to court over it (and convicted). Thus far, I don't believe anyone has been convicted of perjury over a false DMCA notice, despite some really egregious examples (e.g. one of the takedown notices sent to MegaUpload was for a "url" that was actually a paragraph of text containing something like 90+ words -- pretty obviously generated by an automated process, but signed off by a human).
As stated, in this case it's very unlikely there would be any consequences because perjury convictions are rare. However, it's worth noting that if any individual made a habit of this behaviour (false DMCA takedowns) then the probability of facing a charge would likely escalate.
Why is this being upvoted a 2nd time in the same week to the top of the homepage...
I remember because I was trying to get it not having heard of the takedown, and it wasn't working, and, after getting to the page, saw the notice.
Counter notice commit with comments: https://github.com/github/dmca/commit/6a33a213e04e7fc5e74ce3...
We in tech need to be good to each other because other corporate interests and patent trolls won't be. We should always give each other the benefit of the doubt and try to resolve issues without menacing legal language and the threat of lawyers. We need to show we can thrive without this garbage. Otherwise, it will only embolden our enemies and cause this type of confrontation to happen more frequently in the future - to everyone's detriment.
it's trés bothersome when designers behave like this when they're themselves just un/consciously influenced by previous artmovements and designers (florian freundt(2003), matias duarte spring to mind).
I never understood why people don't just embrace the idea of imitation being the biggest form of flattery.
So you are doing something right, great continue with that.
LayerVault lost me as a customer today.
http://www.dpreview.com/news/2012/01/25/Imitated_Image_Copyr...
LayerVault should have gotten a design patent. That works pretty well regarding trivial bullshit like corner radii, so it probably covers icon similarity also.
the other part deals strictly with derivatives (creative meaning, not legal) What I mean is that strictly speaking, the new art movement influenced the "flat ui" movement, a folded newspaper is clearly an influence for the nuon project, dribbble iconry, DM flat ui representation and the LV icon. In much the same way a set of gears are derivative of a set of.. gears, which has been represented in too many ways in art that it's lost the entire concept of originality.
and Originality, due to Barthe's work on the Death of authorship, is quite moot at this point.
http://i.imgur.com/yFHlGVH.png
http://i.imgur.com/VX1h4Xj.png
http://i.imgur.com/oyAYDM8.png
http://i.imgur.com/ZUlf0hF.png
http://i.imgur.com/QMSTZ8k.png
Given that they don't show it off on their demo page, it's either incomplete or clunky.
"The Son of Man" was painted 1964. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Son_of_Man_(Magritte))
I stress respectfully. Try to be well spoken and sincere.
So go public. On a medium which the company doesn't control. And then they're not in control anymore.
It's exactly the same with SO: everytime someone comes up with a very valid criticism about SO there are SO officials (or high-rep users) saying "Put this on meta". But no, that's precisely the point: do certainly not put it on meta because once it's on meta it's the same little clique who's in control.
My opinion is that something like this reaching several times the front page of HN is the best way to make people aware of the problem (including the people at the company/ies concerned).
As unlikely as it may sound, there have been lawsuits somewhat like what you describe. Perhaps most notorious is a tattoo artist claiming IP on Mike Tyson’s face tat visibly shown on Ed Helm’s character’s face, being used without permission. The artist sued Warner Bros. (I believe) for damages and asking to be taken down. IIRC the judge was very close to issuing an injunction against /The Hangover 2/. Not sure what ended up happening; probably settled out of court.
http://cl.ly/image/2X2c1T1X043a
I was secretly hoping that it would act recursively when clicking the second "fork" button, creating a "fork bomb" of sorts, but no cigar :P