Curebit’s at it again, stealing more than code this time

http://venturebeat.com/2012/01/30/curebit-random-rab/

by benjlang • 14 years ago

110 50 14 years ago

shareme2• 14 years ago

a solution, investors need to fire Grant's ass immediately..

benjlang2• 14 years ago

Curebit's demo video was created in 2010 so it's not as if they went about using the music illegally after the previous incident. Random Rab tweeted the founder of Curebit yesterday, he deserves some time. This seems like a hatred campaign...

whatevafoo• 14 years ago

It's not a hatred campaign, it's the being put under the microscope that comes with fucking up.

It's also a case of two points making a line.

rhizome3• 14 years ago

It also appears to be a case of the musicians using Twitter instead of existing laws like DMCA takedowns. For some reason.

evo_9• 14 years ago

How does the fact that they did this in the past make it any better? This just shows that their lack of judgment isn't a recent issue, or a fluke.

This looks terrible because it is terrible.

benjlang2• 14 years ago

The fact that they're being put under the microscope for everything they've done is unfair. They deserve time to change and improve. After all Random Rab only tweeted them yesterday, for all we know once the founder of Curebit sees it he will remove the video. Haven't even given him a chance.

_delirium• 14 years ago

It's weird that it's news, though; if "startup didn't license music for their demo video" was news, we'd have these stories every week. I've even seen one with a Michael Jackson backing track, which I'm guessing they didn't license from the Jackson estate...

shareme2• 14 years ago

there is no love for stealing..none..this is not kindergarten..he now has to face the consequences

iamjustlooking• 14 years ago

If they deserve some time does that mean we are free to take other peoples music so long as we take it down as soon as they find out?

steventruong• 14 years ago

Even if the vid was created in 2010 doesn't necessarily mean the artist knew about it until recently. I'm sure he isn't purposely choosing to attack Curebit just because they recently got called out

vineet• 14 years ago

It is not the responsibility of owners to police their assets. Stealing is a crime. Part of the job of startup founders is to make sure that their team is careful.

I do feel bad for all the bad news that Curebit is getting for small issues. But I am glad that such issues are being highlighted.

patrickod• 14 years ago

I'm not trying to excuse this but I don't believe Curebit are the only startup to have ever done something similar. As benjlang said it seems a bit more like directed hatred.

diegogomes• 14 years ago

Man, their new investors will go crazy. 2 scandals, just a few days after landing new funding...

huhtenberg• 14 years ago

Oh, common. This is getting ridiculous now. This is just some random people jumping on a free PR wagon while it rolls. It's neither interesting nor it's news. Flagged.

(edit) Feel free to downvote, but do tell me - do you really think this belongs to the front page of HN? And do you not think this looks even a little bit like a group bashing now?

johnrob• 14 years ago

An internet company did something wrong. We'll make them pay by boosting their google page rank.

AznHisoka• 14 years ago

doesn't do them much good when potential customers Google them, expecting to read reviews only to read about their theft.

nicksergeant• 14 years ago

Not all PR is good PR: http://cl.ly/1p0D1i1J3U133f0R3G1i

pekinb• 14 years ago

The glee with which people are piling criticism on these guys is disturbing.

cageyjames• 14 years ago

Could be a rough couple weeks for Curebit. Clearly the Internets is going to go through all their work with a fine tooth comb. I doubt any company could be 100% sure they haven't used non-licensed materials.

That said, Curebit seems to have a bit of a problem on their hands. Smoke, meet fire...

sudonim• 14 years ago

This is a tough situation for Curebit. People are now looking for a pattern of behavior, and unfortunately for them, they're finding it. The company hasn't been given the opportunity to change their behavior. Should they? If you find a spouse cheating, should a history and pattern of dishonesty be ignored because they say "I didn't know it was wrong"?

I think the lesson here is to behave with the same integrity and respect for other people's work before funding as you would when you're a big and successful company.

dangoldin• 14 years ago

It's a matter of degree. It's somewhat similar to the GoDaddy support of SOPA/PIPA and reversing their position after the online protests. On one hand they reversed their position but on the other they supported the shitty legislation in the first place.

How should GoDaddy be treated?

nathanpc• 14 years ago

Here we go again...

pg2• 14 years ago

Not to diminish this problem, but do the people upvoting this realize how pwned they are by these journalists? The journalists know (1) HN is a giant pipe of page views, and (2) any story they write with new revelations about some misdeed by Curebit will be reflexively upvoted by enough users to rise high on the frontpage. And so they write said story, people upvote it as predicted, and this fluff is our news for the day.

I usually err on the side of not killing stories criticizing startups we'd funded, but if this was about a startup we didn't fund I'd kill it in a second. (Though of course I wouldn't have to, because few would upvote such a story, which means no journalist would bother writing it.) So I'm going to bury it. I'd rather seem like I'm censoring bad news about startups we funded than let Venturebeat fill HN with crap like this.

jvandenbroeck• 14 years ago

Well I think people are interested in the story, it's like girls that like to watch a girls serie, like to gossip.

That said the "tech" relevance of the story isn't that big & I feel bad for Curebit, I read DHH 's post on twitter about it yesterday & although they are making incredible stupid mistakes, one public flame is enough, they're also just trying to start a company.

rhizome3• 14 years ago

I don't think this story's presence on VentureBeat indicates that "people are interested in the story."

tptacek4• 14 years ago

Please, then, don't be selective: ban the site. You ban lots of other sites. Venues that "pwn" HN shouldn't be allowed space on the front page. If they write something uncharacteristically excellent, someone is sure to blog it, and that person can collect the pageviews.

Also, Venturebeat is far from the worst offender. At least they (ostensibly) have reporters.

dpritchett2• 14 years ago

Here's my favorite O'Dell article, from last March: http://mashable.com/2011/03/10/node-js/

I'm not going to say that her having written a decent article a year ago confers a ton of respectability on VentureBeat but it's not all bad.

nicholasjbs• 14 years ago

I agree. I'm in favor of banning any sites that consistently write linkbait like this. Anything exceptionally good will still find its way to HN.

pg2• 14 years ago

It generally takes multiple offenses before we do something like that. From a comment you made elsewhere on this thread it sounds like you've noticed multiple instances of VB baiting HN, but this is the first I can remember.

stouset• 14 years ago

Clearly this is the sort of story the Hacker News community finds interesting, worthwhile, and informative. If they did not, they would not have upvoted it.

As you sow so you shall reap, and all that.

dpritchett2• 14 years ago

From the HN submission guidelines [1]:

Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity.

Curebit's follies definitely interest hackers in two ways:

- How far is too far when 'Keeping It Lean'?

- How important is design to startups?

Off-Topic: ... If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic.

Can't really prove a negative here, but this is certainly the sort of inside baseball that belongs on a startup-focused medium and not on broadcast television.

Edit:

It could be that this is the ballyhooed YC naughtiness [2] at work:

Though the most successful founders are usually good people, they tend to have a piratical gleam in their eye. They're not Goody Two-Shoes type good. Morally, they care about getting the big questions right, but not about observing proprieties. That's why I'd use the word naughty rather than evil. They delight in breaking rules, but not rules that matter. This quality may be redundant though; it may be implied by imagination.

[1] http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

[2] http://paulgraham.com/founders.html

amirmc• 14 years ago

The two questions you've asked are interesting. It would be nice to read some thoughtful posts on those topics.

The article here does not try to tackle either of those questions.

stevefarnworth• 14 years ago

Yes, the story may be written in a slightly sensationalistic way to go along with current sentiment, but that's how most news, from all verticals and from most news sources from TV, newspaper and radio all the way to one person blogs, is presented in modern times.

The fact is that this is an incredibly pertinent tale for startups, especially those launched by these high-profile programmes where the spotlight will be on from day one, and the lessons it brings, along with the negative publicity is extremely important.

Sure, you can bury the story and say that it's the fault of the community (that YC has fostered itself, organically) for taking an interest in a story, that whilst presented as fluff, contains (as far as we can tell from the comments made by all parties) very solid facts that compound those in a current thread of news, but hey, it'll blow over soon.

staunch• 14 years ago

I think it'd be a lot better if you just killed submissions or banned sites outright. Burying submissions is as bad as if Google started manually tweaking search results. Google only deindexes webspam, they never manually adjust PageRank.

People already think HN is a YC propaganda machine, which long time users know isn't true, and this kind of thing just fuels the conspiracy theories.

rockarage• 14 years ago

For those of you who think people are piling on, understand that things could be much worse. They are company operating USA where copyright infringement is illegal, punishable by a fine and/or jail time. They can also be sued in court and cost the investors thousands on dollars. An internet mob lashing is not their biggest problem, a lack of integrity is.

gravitronic• 14 years ago

So during the SOPA protests the HN comment threads had a lot of people stating that copyright should be abolished, or that IP theft is a market failure, torrenting should be legal, etc, etc, etc...

I'm guessing those people are also against Curebit doing what it's done? Is there a rallying cry of "HTML is easy to steal and therefore it's a market problem and not Curebit's fault since it is so easy"?

I'm not saying it's a 100% parallel, but you see can see it. One one hand we have "IP theft is ok" and on the other "IP thieves! Get them!"

I know the difference is Curebit's potential profit motivations vs. "I'm a movie collector who wouldn't have bought these overpriced DVDs", but the irony is still present given the close timing between the two events.

bermanoid• 14 years ago

One one hand we have "IP theft is ok" and on the other "IP thieves! Get them!"

People don't care too much about "stealing" IP for your own viewing/listening enjoyment.

They do care if you're stealing it and re-publishing it as part of your own product without the proper permissions.

There's no contradiction here.

drostie• 14 years ago

I think it's important to scope the word "against" here. When one is "against" copyright, one is usually against extortion-esque tactics and expensive punitive judgments from courts against individuals in a campaign of intimidation. That's not really at play here, even discounting "potential profit motivations." There's just no threat of a lawsuit, and so that's probably why they'll be reasonably quiet on this article.

If you're a comedian, there is a professional artistic courtesy that you do not steal another comedian's joke -- that if you do, then you are "taking credit" for something which you did not produce. It strikes me that this is the same sort of irritation. The corporations who get mad that you've been seeding the Bourne movies on BitTorrent don't pretend to any sort of artistic outrage, and if they did it would be absurd, because you're faceless and not claiming to any sort of artistic innovation. But we're quite clear, I think, on the fact that (a) they're executives, (b) the government gave them a monopoly on copying these films, and (c) they're upset because end-users didn't care about the monopoly and shared anyway.

Given all that, I'm not sure I find the discrepancy particularly ironic. Actually, I think I'd more or less expect it -- if only because developers have clear human faces, while the RIAA's lawyers and executives do not.

natep• 14 years ago

Why is this a story? 4 clicks, and the artist can report the video on Youtube. Flagged.

memset• 14 years ago

One advantage that YC-funded startups have over everyone else starting businesses on the side is the coverage. Lots of eyeballs to admire and try out your work, give feedback, etc, without having to spam your twitter feed or beg family to try out your prototype yet again.

The flipside of starting a business under the limelight is the tabloid-like press that you get, which seems to intensify if you're YC, because a lot of people with seriously great hacker cred have basically personally endorsed your company and its people.

This is a good thing; it gives folks the chance to be a business on a hill and display exemplary ethical practices.

It is not okay for any business entity to break copyright law, and if one has found themselves to be in error (people make mistakes) then one must immediately remedy the situation. This applies to all businesses, and YC companies happen to be under the microscope.

So take advantage of the enviable perks of having press and use the limelight as an opportunity to show stellar maturity and ethical behavior!

ldn_tech_exec• 14 years ago

this is boring now. leave them alone

asdf333• 14 years ago

Hi everyone,

One of the curebit cofounders here. We spoke with the artist as soon as we got his message and began discussion to get the music licensed on Sunday. (Its possible Jolie O'Dell had some stale news as it was posted monday).

As of an hour ago, we have come to an agreement on acceptable licensing terms with Random Rab for the music we used, and an apology.

https://twitter.com/#!/randomrab/status/164070854433570817

We've been combing through our assets and code to make sure we have all the appropriate licenses (and obtaining/replacing) for any assets we do not. It may take some time to get through everything, but this is our first priority.

Meanwhile, if you'd like to bring anything to our attention, please let us know at support@curebit.com. We'll act on it promptly.

bootload• 14 years ago

"... As of an hour ago, we have come to an agreement on acceptable licensing terms with Random Rab for the music we used, and an apology. ..."

It's not that you stuff up that matters, but how you recover. A tick in my book.

sheldonh• 14 years ago

Quite a few people expressed confusion around the strength of emotion with which people were reacting.

One part of the answer is that the software company and the artist that Curebit stole from are both darlings with strong fandoms.

I know I wouldn't have cared if they'd stolen from Oracle Corporation and The Jonas Brothers.

Curebit’s at it again, stealing more than code this time

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