DMCA takedown on GPL-copyrighted code
class.pm
class.pm
I've made some strange observations here about the situation:
1. The original author didn't post any copies of the DMCA request, no copies of emails, no links to the offending item on Codecanyon nor any links to the original repo that contained the code.
2. The person accused of stealing the code commented on this submission and claimed the situation is the other way around and the blog post author stole the code that was being sold. How did the accused know about this submission? There's a chance that maybe he frequents HN, but no links were provided in the post, so how does this commenter know it's even his plugin being spoken about in the post?
3. Why have neither sides of the fence provided any evidence whatsoever? Both the defender and accused have provided no links, no emails, nothing and it's been a word against word situation.
While I could be wrong here, it feels like this whole situation could be fake. I am not saying that it is, but it feels a little too weird that neither side have made their case clear with actual evidence. Is this a publicity attempt to get sales for a Codecanyon plugin? I hope my suspicions are wrong and that it's just a case of the original author wanting to give the supposed thief a chance to take his item down which given the situation would be unusually generous.
Upon finding my code on his site i emailed him. He didnt reply, i commented on a post, he didnt reply so i sent him a notice.
4 hours later he sends me the same notice back + to the marketplace and my host. The blogs about it!
I click the tweet button on the blog to monitor why and what he does, i come across this blog, i send him an email warning him to remove my code, delete the blog and move on.
He hasn't done so and continue's his story so i'm happy to provide all my evidence to show this person is lying.
still, I've absolutely no idea why he would take a lie this far, but i have all the proof which i will be providing on this thread very shortly!
However - your account does have one advantage in this: Codecanyon's project pages list the date the project was created on Codecanyon, not a date of the author's choosing. Additionally they do not make it simple to completely re-write some older project on there you might have already had to re-use the timestamp to mask devious deeds.
So far your timestamps win over his. Unfortunately, I still have no access to the code of your project to vet whether one is a copy of the other. Given that your code is sold for profit, it would be hard to verify this without your code getting out without going to trial (or I guess I could give you some bucks on codecanyon to find out what's hosted there).
Edit:
On review of the code in your live demo at https://pure.codeworks.org.uk/ I definitely agree he ripped you off. That's an unfortunate danger when it comes to selling client-side scripting. Good luck taking him down.
It's brilliant because it works. It also only works in a market that is shielded from making informed decisions about the service/product/behind-the-scenes shit because the information isn't easily accessible or understood.
Given that this is a business that isn't hiding in the shadows, it will be interesting to see how this plays out.
edit: I should add, it works because eventually it becomes a contest of personalities and the argument drifts away from what started it into some other territory. The FUD is never resolved so it winds up being True to the market.
It's also scary because of the amount of forged information, like official documents, lab reports, inventories, invoices, messages etc are forged by the hands of the dishonest proprietor.
Honestly, if it isn't resolved file a civil suit for libel. The internet will not resolve this and will make it worse.
Wish i knew why he felt the need to take it this far
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this site has stopped letting me reply to posts because im so new!
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I very much expect he's removed it due to this whole ordeal, you can find it on the waybackmachine cache though.
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=== my reply to consonants ...
It has worked, im deflated and upset, and it absolutely ruined my day. The only reason i was really bothered by it, was because he was taking donations for something that i had coded.
I will probably never understand why he just didnt think "oh i got caught, ill take it down" - end of story.
Why then go on to fabricate this story, make a blog post and add a post onto this form perplexes me.
I'm contemplating uploading all my original correspondence to him, but from the looks of things I've managed to prove my point and he's gone quiet so theres not much point.
It's a shame the outcome of this has been a terrifying ordeal for me sat on a forum trying to set the facts straight, I will have to explain the whole thing again with the marketplace tomorrow - and what tops the biscuit is that its still sat on his website.
If anything, this makes me think someone should take a look at his other projects and see if they match anything out there - maybe you're not his first victim.
It looks like he unfortunately thought that changing some variable names (but leaving the .png / resource file names the same, the code structure the same, etc.) was enough for him to claim the code to be his original work - and thus slap a license of his choice on it. Very wrong.
You mentioned earlier that he has a donation link / button somewhere - that this might be for profit to a certain extent via donations? I can't seem to find that on this site.
I will simply say that all that what you say is a lie and was cooked up cleverly. You don't provide a name of yourself, a history about you, nothing. while the guy who wrote the code, has publicitly a name, a history behind ( http://www.class.pm/about/ ). He has a reputation to hold, and because he is a professional, i doubt that he would do such a thing, like appropriating code. He is keeping it quiet, while you have the big mouth.
Writing javascript for a living is a funny thing considering it's usually client-side code that's downloaded by the user, meaning it "escapes" into the real world for anyone to copy / slap their name on it.
Just because someone is "a professional" doesn't mean that they're ethical. It just means they have a public image.
And so far, the evidence everywhere else in this thread is pointing towards code937 as the original author.
Also take in account the blog post: he thinks is strange to get a DMCA take down for a GPL-ed code, why would anyone take the effort to write that post, unless, is very close to the truth?
I gave him the chance to change his mind by sending an email to him because i hate internet politics and i simply wanted him to remove his attribution to my code. Please read my other posts because i even gave him the benefit of doubt by suggesting perhaps a friend had "written" the plugin and he's sticking up for someone who is lieing to him. However some time later he hadn't responded to my email but he had created a response on this thread making out i was a "fake", so at that point i signed up and started to give my facts.
I have an email from him which he sent to my marketplace and host saying he wrote this plugin in May 2012, he has since updated his website to say so and then backtracked when i pointed out to him his site was cached.
Also the same effect to his donation button which he has since removed but can also be found in a cache.
My name is Kevin Steerment, i work for a company called codeworks (however this project was a personal project) and i am the original author of the code that he claimed to write. I don't have a full on profile online because I never thought I would need one, certainly not to prove who I am. I can't sit back and let that happen and then perhaps one day - this get back to me in a bad way. I have never slandered or badmouthed anyone including him, please read all my responses. I've tried to be very fair in the way I've written my responses but as you can understand I am a tad emotional about being accused of something that is simply not true. (So thats why I've defended myself, as anyone would)
I'm happy to answer any additional questions you might have. He has now taken his website offline, removed his github account - not something he needed to do. I simply wanted him to remove my plugin. If he's reading this I want him to know that I simply came on this forum to respond to the false allegation which he started, not to cause any additional problems.
It's a very strange situation because looking through his other work and projects - particularly an online photo editing tool - his skills go way beyond mine and the end result of his work is excellent, I'd even go as far as saying I'd recommend the photo editing tool. Which is why I'm so very very confused!
I hope this can be brushed under the carpet and forgotten about now because i'm sure we all have more important things to be doing.
Kevin
With this in mind, I wish you success with getting everything right and/or keep on doing great things.
This is a diff of the CSS file from both projects: http://paste.roguecoders.com/p/2f703b39668f1b85ee071ec42ed52...
CodeCanyon clearly puts the release date for the paid version at June 2012, while the supposed open-source version has multiple dates pointing at December 2012.
I temporarily forked the repository on GitHub for posterity. Compare the feature list between https://github.com/lunixbochs/jquery-classyedit/blob/master/... and https://pure.codeworks.org.uk/features.php
I changed my fork of his repo to private. Let me know if you need it for anything.
On codecanyon for $6 under the name 'jQee' http://codecanyon.net/item/jqee-keyboard-shortcuts-for-jquer...
On class.pm as 'ClassyKeyboard' http://www.class.pm/projects/jquery/classykeyboard/
Edit: And another
On codecanyon for $6 as 'RollBar': http://codecanyon.net/item/rollbar-jquery-scrollbar-plugin/2...
On class.pm as 'ClassyScroll': http://www.class.pm/projects/jquery/classyscroll/
I've emailed both of the above authors through CodeCanyon and pointed them to this thread. That's my good samaritan work done for the day but I think you should look for more! :)
It looks like his site couldn't handle all the traffic from HN, but after looking at google's cache I can see he's ripped most of my sales copy word for word, and just changed the examples slightly.
People have been pirating this script since day one, but claiming ownership and releasing it as his own makes me much more irritated. Is he doing this so he can build a fake portfolio and rip off someone else who would then hire him for freelance? I can't really tell from his now defunct website.
Anyway, I'm not sure what I can do about it. Honestly, it's not worth my time given that it's only made only ~$150 in the 1.5 years it's been on CodeCanyon. For me, this script was a one-time CodeCanyon experiment.
However, I'm sure some of the other more serious CodeCanyon authors might have more to lose. Thanks again for bringing this to our attention.
Josh
My project has been in the wayback machine since March 2012, incidentally the same time I posted to CodeCanyon: https://web.archive.org/web/20121025090123*/http://joshpurvi...
His page project first appeared March 2013: https://web.archive.org/web/20130310135658*/http://www.class...
My project predates the creation (Nov 2012) of his domain name even: http://whois.domaintools.com/class.pm
Also his site isn't down -- he intentionally put that message there, I assume to lessen the heat. His wife's subdomain (http://tina.class.pm/) is still active and lives on the same IP address: 137.135.220.37
Good luck Coder937! I hope you can get your project back on CC.
He still has the gall to leave that blog post up though.
I spotted 3 more offending plugins today, still up on his site class.pm, that's 7 so far that he appears to have taken from CodeCanyon and is passing off as his own.
I've emailed the authors concerned.
http://codecanyon.net/item/owl-unobtrusive-css3-notifications/408575
http://www.class.pm/projects/jquery/classynotty/
http://codecanyon.net/item/jquery-lightbox-grooveshark-style/526922
http://www.class.pm/projects/jquery/classylightbox/
http://codecanyon.net/item/powercontext/551656
http://www.class.pm/projects/jquery/classycontextmenu/I would very very much appreciate those then.
code937: based on the comments here as well as the comments from a year ago (http://codecanyon.net/item/pure-rich-text-editor-lite/discus...) , it is pretty clear that the OP misrepresented the situation. I wish you all the best as you muddle through this situation.
So far, I'm leaning slightly in favour of the guy sending out the DMCA takedowns, in that someone claiming to be him put his code on the internet first by about 6 months, if the internet's timestamps are to be believed, and OP hasn't provided a convincing rebuttal even to that.
Whether these guys are talking about the same code or whether there's some other evidence that clears the OP remains to be seen.
Because I am the person who sent him the DMCA Notice and if he does not drop this right now, i will use all of my evidence to prove that he's lying out of his bottom :)
I'm giving him the opportunity to drop this now before I provide this site among other news site, all the evidence and all my proof :)
It is beyond me why a person would take a lie this far as to start a thread on NH, especially when he knows the person who sent him the DMCA did create the code.
Now I'll give him the BOD and perhaps he didn't write the code himself and he is sticking up for a friend who is lying to him. But he's started digging now so i'm giving him one chance to stop and apologise.
Let me be clear on one thing. This is not a threat, I'm just not one to stir trouble - but I'm certainly not fond of being called a liar, or someone taking donations for code I've written.
http://www.class.pm/projects/jquery/classyedit/ use any cache on that domain and look at the "released date"
It was changed to May 2102 today so that it was 1 month before my release which was June 2012. Originally his was December 2012.
I'll get you started, heres googles cache: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:25Pk7Ix...
My plugin:
http://codecanyon.net/item/pure-rich-text-editor-lite/251264...
I'm saying this because if you muddy the waters now it just taints things for when this goes to court.