Code theft: Asciimo: Where have I seen this before?

http://patorjk.com/blog/2010/06/21/asciimo/

by RBerenguel • 16 years ago

172 97 16 years ago

RBerenguel3• 16 years ago

I submitted here yesterday the original asciimo link, now you can read here where the code cames from and the opinion from the real author.

papertiger• 16 years ago

Thanks for posting this update.

fsniper• 16 years ago

I don't get it. If every change is tracked by github and he gives links and attribution to TAAG what is the problem? Is there any license issues involed that i can't grasp? What is the original codes license? In what license the new library is distributed?

almost6• 16 years ago

The original code was not open source. It just happened to be JavaScript so it was possible to steal it.

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.

_delirium3• 16 years ago

If you want to take a hardline attitude towards it, then TAAG itself is in iffy territory, because many of the fonts it uses were just thrown on BBSs or the internet with no explicit open licenses. He seems to have just assumed (probably correctly) that if they were put online, or as part of "figlet font packs", then a BSD-style license was intended, but there isn't an explicit one on most of them.

RBerenguel3• 16 years ago

The original code had no license, thus without asking it is code theft. If you publish something somewhere, without stating otherwise it is © you and IP you. If someone picks this up, without asking for permission, works on it (moreover says it is shit and makes fun in the first comment in a post where you complain) and then says it is theirs, it is IP theft.

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.

almost6• 16 years ago

Wow, what a dick this Marak guys seems to be. He steals someone's code (possibly laboring under a mistaken idea of how copyright law works) makes snarky comments about the original and then when he's called on it instead of just admitting his mistake he is rude and nasty about it (and still doesn't bother to check what the actual law is, which just makes him look like a total idiot).

bnoordhuis• 16 years ago

> Wow, what a dick this Marak guys seems to be.

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...

RyanMcGreal• 16 years ago

I rather enjoyed this reply:

> To be fair, Marak is from New York. This, I'm told, is how they talk out there.

alrex021• 16 years ago

>http://groups.google.com/group/nodejs/browse_thread/thread/c...

Wow, that guy really is a dick.

sh1mmer• 16 years ago

Also a regular in the Node irc room (JimBastard). I just connected the dots. He won a ticket to JSConf by winning the pre-conference talk in a bar about JavaScript competition.

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.

supporting• 16 years ago

If you'd like to see him in person, here's Marak, rapping on YouTube:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IrkDqh9ZVog

More Marak facts:

  * Rich kid from the Hamptons.
  * His website: http://www.jimbastard.com/

almost6• 16 years ago

C'mon, the guys been a bit of a dick but this is going a little too far I think. Let's reign back on the Internet Mob Justice.

marak• 16 years ago

hell yaa! post more of my internet rap videos please.

tlack• 16 years ago

He was on Reddit being a total douchebag too when I and others notified him that his great feat of engineering was just FIGlet done 20 years too late.

petercooper• 16 years ago

Hmm, total dick, says controversial things, is supposedly "cool" in person, and hacks a lot of code.. Sounds like he could be HN's next flavor of the month.

ErrantX• 16 years ago

Or Zedshaw's JS cousin.

thecircusb0y4• 16 years ago

If I'm reading this right he took messy javascript someone wrote, and ported it to a php library... If he didn't give original credit to the OP, then yeah thats rude, but don't we all end up porting old code at sometime or another?

almost6• 16 years ago

He took (possibly messy, although that doesn't have much to do with it) JavaScript code which he didn't own and had no rights to without asking and made changes to it. No PHP here.

thecircusb0y4• 16 years ago

Okay.. but Javascript is free to view through the client machine no matter what. It brings up that question "if its easy to cheat, will people do it?" and the answer is, usually yes. Sure theft really sucks, but was there a way to prevent this other then trusting someone not to steal?

jqueryin• 16 years ago

Personally, I'd be more okay with the fact this dude was posting some code on github had he properly credited the original author and posted a link to the original project. IMO he probably should have also asked for permission to post the author's code in the first place.

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.

Aegean• 16 years ago

if this code was licensed with an open source license and he adhered to terms, this would be perfectly valid. You _can_ indeed copy such code and write whatever snarky comments you want about it.

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).

kmfrk2• 16 years ago

You are indeed correct; the copyright no longer needs to be mentioned explicitly by the owner.

steveklabnik2• 16 years ago

Just picking some nits, but "But in this case this code is copyrighted" is wrong. In _all_ cases, code is copyrighted, even open source code. It's just that with F/OSS, someone has given you a license to use something they've created.

Other than that, carry on.

lutorm2• 16 years ago

Actually no, you can put code in the public domain, thereby explicitly waiving your copyright. I believe, for example, that all code written by the US government is in the public domain.

alextingle5• 16 years ago

Taking a step back, I think this is an excellent example of how most people are woefully ignorant about copyright. The vast majority of people think nothing of infringing copyright - they use images from Flickr without bothering to check the license, they forward e-mails, they post & repost videos to Youtube, they download & share music & video & software with their friends without a care in the world.

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.

DanielStraight3• 16 years ago

I think in the end, as sad is it is, what you said about "blank incomprehension" is the take home lesson from this. I've tried for months, if not years, to get people to understand that SO is violating copyright by not asking for permission to re-license user-submitted content under cc-wiki, but no one seems to get it. The basics of copyright law are not very complicated. I think the big problem is all the misinformation and rumors out there on copyright law. That and the fact that copyright law has historically not kept up well with new technology.

edanm2• 16 years ago

Can you expand on that SO statement? I know you said you've already been talking about it for months, but I've never heard anything about this.

kmfrk2• 16 years ago

Using pictures unlawfully is sadly the trend on internet forums and to a large degree on big blogs. This is particularly prevalent when it comes to videogame magazines which are scanned and uploaded and is either showed on the videogame-related site or referenced by a link. Everyone basically does it. It's ridiculous and appalling.

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.

alextingle5• 16 years ago

What about e-mail forwarding? That's just as illegal as copying a picture, and everybody BAR NONE does it without a second thought.

wmf• 16 years ago

Maybe game magazines aren't the best example given their habit of whoring out good reviews in exchange for "exclusives" which mostly contain marketing material. Hardly bastions of creativity.

cdr• 16 years ago

It's self-serving "ignorance" - some people tell themselves that whatever is most beneficial to them is how things must work.

woogley• 16 years ago

Meanwhile, the author of this blog post is using South Park images without permission (or attribution for that matter)

btilly• 16 years ago

At least he's not insulting them about it.

tlrobinson2• 16 years ago

Not just ignorant, but willfully ignorant. The copyright violations have been brought to his attention yet the project is still available and he's acting as if he's done nothing wrong.

hxa7241• 16 years ago

I feel uneasy about the sense that the music industries appear on the side of right here. And this is a situation where we should hesitate to call things wrong simply because they are illegal.

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.

alextingle5• 16 years ago

The recorded music industry are not in the right here. The law is on their side, but they are trying to swim against an overwhelming tide.

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.

0wned• 16 years ago

This is why I stopped releasing source code. Idiots who want 15 mins of fame and constant attention but cannot create, so they consume what others create.

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.

qeorge2• 16 years ago

Great to see Patrick Gillespie is still around, I remember him from the AOL programming community (1999!), nice guy and very sharp.

His API spy is still the best I've ever used: http://patorjk.com/downloads/patorjkapispy51.zip

jeremymcanally• 16 years ago

Wow I totally did not put 2 and 2 together until now. Now we just need someone to release "gothic nightmarez" for IRC and revive KnK and it'll be like it's 1995 again.

qeorge2• 16 years ago

Wow, KnK! That takes me back. What a great site.

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.

cduan• 16 years ago

If it really is the case that this is copyright infringement, the easiest step may be to send a DMCA complaint to GitHub. The purpose of the DMCA complaint mechanism was to make it cheap and easy to deal with online copyright infringement without resorting to the courts. I know we're used to hearing about silly and illegitimate DMCA complaints, but this would seem like a reasonable use of it.

(This isn't legal advice, of course; I don't know enough of the facts to be sure what applies.)

tbrownaw• 16 years ago

So is this a good place to be slightly pedantic and point out that "theft" as a concept doesn't apply to non-rivalrous goods?

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.

chc3• 16 years ago

It is always a good time to point that out. Big content owners try to twist the meanings to their benefit, but while both are illegal, they are not the same thing, and it's not to society's benefit to confuse them.

madair7• 16 years ago

Ah yes, Mob justice, bring the pitchforks plz.

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.

houseabsolute6• 16 years ago

> nor is there some universal morality to consider

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.

madair7• 16 years ago

1. Agreeing on it doesn't make it moral. [Edit: although it does create a moral majority, aka, the tyranny of the majority]

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]

chc3• 16 years ago

You start by eschewing the idea of "universal truth" and "morality" in order to show that we don't have the right to act so high-and-mighty, but then you attack us for our "questionable priorities." I can't really figure out your standpoint, unless it's just "What I believe is correct and anybody who holds a contradictory view is immoral."

madair7• 16 years ago

In the absence of an absolute, we have to deal with what we have, there are people who wish to grant monopolies and claim a moral prerogative, all the while assuming or claiming that the inequalities created are justified. I suggest that those assumptions or claims are faulty.

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.]

patio11• 16 years ago

I have a brilliant PR move for the content industries: we will wrap all their stuff with four lines of Javascript and then suddenly the Internets will rediscover copyright.

gojomo• 16 years ago

The creator's path should be clear:

(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.

Semiapies2• 16 years ago

I love that there are people trying to conflate an blog's image use that falls under a lot of concepts of "fair use" with a particularly obnoxious act of code plagiarism.

alextingle5• 16 years ago

What on earth makes you think it's fair use? It's not commentary about the image. It's not educational. He reproduced the whole image, not a part of it. I suspect that you need to go and read up about copyright law.

Semiapies2• 16 years ago

I suspect you need to read up on fair use and will leave it at that.

drewcrawford• 16 years ago

While IANAL, I read copyright law books for fun.

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

chopsueyar• 16 years ago

Write it and we will read it!

Groxx2• 16 years ago

Since apparently nobody has yet posted here about it, the current state of all this is that Patorjk sent an email to Github, and they've taken the project down.

http://github.com/marak/asciimo/

Groxx2• 16 years ago

OK, they... brought it back?

* shrug * not interested enough to investigate deeply.

fictorial• 16 years ago

FYI the Node.js IRC channel is logged.

http://nodejs.debuggable.com/2010-06-21.txt

Code theft: Asciimo: Where have I seen this before?

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