How Email On Acid stole our work

http://stampready.net/blog/digital-theft/index.html

by f4stjack • 13 years ago

62 61 13 years ago

pettycash• 13 years ago

awful stuff.. good job calling them on it...

Blahah• 13 years ago

This is a case of potential piracy, but it isn't theft. And it isn't 'over $20,000'. If would have been over $20,000 if the number of downloaders that the author guessed downloaded the pirated version would have definitely been going to pay for the paid version, but of course that's not true. Call it what it is, and by all means get mad about it, but don't call someone a thief when they're at worst a pirate and don't pretend pirated downloads equate to lost sales.

zeidrich• 13 years ago

That would be the case if stampready were selling it and emailonacid were giving it away for free.

Instead, Stamp Ready is a mac app which sells for about $30. Emailonacid is a subscription based service that goes for free to $70/month.

Neither simply offer the theme on its own. Both require some sort of purchase or subscription at which point the theme is made available.

That said, I agree that it can't really be considered lost sales. If I wanted to use StampReady I can't in general because I don't have easy access to a Mac, and the only build they have is a mac app.

Likewise, without this blog post, there is no way for me to know that either stampready or emailonacid host that theme. Neither of them advertise it on their site. I wouldn't ever choose one over the other because of the existence of that theme; I don't even know it's there until I've already got a subscription to one of them. In that way it's even more ephemeral.

I mean, sure, there is IP theft going on, but the actual impact is really hard to gauge. You're not losing customers; you're not losing sales. You're providing the other company with some marginal perceived value that they didn't have to put the same effort into building.

However, the most ironic thing about this is: without your blog post, I didn't know about emailonacid. It's actually a service that I haven't investigated and looks like it can solve some issues I've had with other mailing services. I can't make user of StampReady as I said because of the limitations of being a mac app.

I can't say I'm going to use emailonacid, but you've definitely increased my awareness of the brand, and provided an amount of free advertising that I would have never got before. I've hunted around their site looking for evidence of that theme and actually got a bunch of information about them.

If this was a ploy to advertise for them, then it worked very well. If not, then I think it was very counterproductive.

gojomo3• 13 years ago

The claimed original work sells as a template separately from the (optional, Mac-only) StampReady app.

jt2190• 13 years ago

  > This is a case of potential piracy...

I think you're correct. As I understand it, one can not legally protect a page layout. (Imagine how difficult it would be to publish a book if people could protect things like "black times roman typeface on white background with one inch borders.") The description of a layout to a computer can be copyrighted as a form of expression, so one can copyright their specific CSS description of a page layout. It's interesting to note that the benefits of even this form of copyright protection is contentious: If a layout can only practically be expressed to the computer in a few different ways, then the odds of accidental infringement are very high.

pvnick2• 13 years ago

Some damning evidence you've shown. One small suggestion I would make is to compare the md5 hashes of the images. Obviously they appear to be the same as per the evidence you've shown, but I would see that as extra convincing.

I see only a handful of people have pressed the tweet button. Hopefully the front page of hacker news is a welcome bit of exposure that you weren't expecting ;)

Now the question is: Will email on acid man up? Or should you lawyer up?

MichaelGG4• 13 years ago

If emailonacid's explanation is correct, they were "inspired" and wrote their own HTML and CSS. They could have easily designed the same image.

Given the pixel dimensions of a triangle, and the same software, should we expect the antialiasing or JPEG compression to be unequal? I'd be interesting in knowing which part of, say, Photoshop, adds randomness to such a deterministic process.

Now if there's EXIF data with timestamps or names, sure, good evidence. But this post seems like they're really stretching the "evidence". It's still very plausible that the other company looked at things, perhaps took some pixel measurements, and "recreated" it.

Edit: Also, check out where that triangle is used. The three images beneath it are very differently aligned. By their level of evidence, this disproves their point.

I'm surprised how HN is so uncritical in evaluating evidence and alternative explanations.

pvnick2• 13 years ago

Yes but notice the mistakes the developer made when adding extraneous whitespace. Also the use of the same class names. At the very least some of the code was copied verbatim without attribution.

Kudos• 13 years ago

A triangle of exactly the same height and width and at exactly the same anti-aliasing and exactly the same jpeg compression. Have you heard of Occam's Razor?

Xylakant4• 13 years ago

I'm not going to comment on wether I believe the infringement claim or not, but let's have a look at the way they calculate damage - it's the same way the music companies calculate damages for illegal downloading: They take a number with questionable origin (27 commenters), multiply it by a factor that appears from thin air (assume 1 of 50 downloaders commented) and then pretend that everyone of these would have bought the template and next thing assume that's the low-ball figure. Given that per their own claim the template sold 361 times in half a year I find it hard to believe that there was a sudden rush of I-Must-Have-This-Template.

This "I'll just conjure a number" method of claiming inflated damages just ruins the credibility of the whole post for me.

whatshisface• 13 years ago

When a big emotional upset is involved, it is important to separate the faulty math from the real evidence. They could claim millions of dollars in loss and it still wouldn't change the fact that they were stolen from.

svenkatesh• 13 years ago

So would you agree that the exorbitant losses the media industries claim is excusable, since their IP is also being stolen?

EDIT: I apologize for going against the popular opinion on HN.

Xylakant4• 13 years ago

See, I consider their case weak at best.

The template is nice, but I've seen templates like that before. It's clean and well done, but to be honest, it's not that unique either. That little ribbon on the dark background - I have that on my website. The class "plusIcon", I probably used all possible permutations of "plus-icon", "plusIcon", "plus_icon", ... somewhere over the last couple of years. The color is the same, but hey, the number of colors is somewhat limited. And then the html differs as well if you really look at it. The CSS differs significantly.

EmailOnAcid acknowledge the inspiration they used for a mostly educational article, and promised to change the design in the article. Now that could have been a peacefully and entirely fair resolution for the problem. Another option might have been for EmailOnAcid to acknowledge the inspiration and link back, offering the opportunity to rack up some sales to offset the damage.

But now the case has been blown out of proportion - they created a new blog to post this entry(!). I understand the feeling of rage, but that's not a good mood to write a blog article. And for me, personally, stampready just lost out. I'm not going to buy from a company that goes ballistic at the first possible opportunity - I prefer to deal with professionals.

keypusher• 13 years ago

They were not stolen from. If you have a thing and I copy the thing, it is not stealing. Copyright infringement, piracy, loss of theoretical sales, perhaps yes.

bdcravens2• 13 years ago

They should consider the % who look at their template and don't purchase (I do this all the time on ThemeForest). Apply that percentage to their imaginary number (nothing spectacular about it, so I'll guess 1%?) Email on Acid should send them a check for $200 and call it a day.

RossM• 13 years ago

Well, Email On Acid appear to have removed the blog post already.

Google Cache link: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://...

uladzislau• 13 years ago

It's back up with this update:

"May 27, 2012 Update: It has come to our attention that the original layout for our responsive template was being sold on Themeforest. We are truly sorry for any misunderstanding or misappropriation of content. We would like our readers to know that we had written all CSS on our own (which is the power behind responsive design) and our intention was only to share in those findings. As we stated in our response to the notification we had agreed to redesign the layout of our template so it does not match the layout of their template. We are currently in the process of updating the template and should be available shortly."

Legion• 13 years ago

Heh, they really did date it 2012.

da_maire• 13 years ago

Looks like someone stole a noun from their post title too. Crazy stuff.

kbanman• 13 years ago

And he seems rather eager to expend his company.

Xylakant4• 13 years ago

maybe a root-kit would have helped to prevent that.

renownedmedia• 13 years ago

It's quite obviously stolen. I'm surprised they didn't throw the sha sums of the images into the article for good measure.

$20k in damages is an exaggeration. It's not like stampready would have received an extra $20k in revenue if Email On Acid didn't exist. Sounds like Lawyer math to me.

gcb0• 13 years ago

On the other hand, if I'm researching companies, and see a small one trying to sell me something a bigger one is giving for free i just consider them scamers and move on.

How do you calculate the loss of sales for cases like this?

Edit: ...and this argument is totally invalid for what zeidrich said.

thomaslutz• 13 years ago

So, if they can prove it, why not sue them?

ams6110• 13 years ago

Assuming the $20,000 claim has some basis, it's borderline not---actually probably not---worth pursuing. Bigger than a "small claim" and legal fees will cost you more than that to actually get in front of a judge.

rickdale• 13 years ago

In your account, the funniest part is when the people from emailonacid explain to you that they have developed this theme with "tricks" that they have learned.

The only trick they are learning is borrowing other peoples code. In their minds they have done enough to change the content so it is not plagiarized or stolen. Seems like their definition of original is copy and paste into a blank text editor and then change the content. I think to them, they haven't copied you at all.

I am interested in these stories because for me anytime I build a website I do it based on the design from another website or two that I like. Usually I do copy some amount of code, but it has helped me to learn a crap ton about web development and design. With that said I have come across parts of javascript that will check what site is running it. It's interesting, but looks like you need to do a little more safe guarding.

f4stjack3• 13 years ago

Hi, just for clarification I am not affiliated with stampready and/or email on acid. Saw that, found it interesting and wanted to share. And there were quotation marks around the title when I posted, wonder why they disappeared?

edit: holy hell, whole title is edited! Original title was: "How Email On Acid stole worth over $20.000."

rescripting• 13 years ago

HN often automatically changes submission titles to the title of the submitted article. It prevents editorializing, although sometimes it leads to confusion.

f4stjack3• 13 years ago

But I submitted it with its original title. sigh

soperj• 13 years ago

The original title doesn't make sense. So many typos on their page too. Can't even spell internet properly in the screenshot. Gross.

f4stjack3• 13 years ago

But current title gives a wrong sense. I am not working with stampready nor their theme is my work. The title, now, suggests it so.

skatenerd• 13 years ago

"Even the typo's" :-)

emtee652• 13 years ago

I'm sorry to all the people who disagree with this but theft is theft.

Imagine you spent your time building something this elegant just for a bigger company to rip it off, and for them to reply with "oh it may look the same but we just used your template as "inspiration" and changed a few images." is pretty much an insult.

The only thing I don't agree with is that you can't price how much they would have lost, only estimate, and $20,000 is way over the top.

xordon• 13 years ago

Theft is taking something away from someone. Since EmailOnAcid didn't take OP's "possession" of the original template, therefore no theft has taken place.

What has allegedly happened is that a copy was made without permission. A violation of copyright law, much different than actual theft.

emtee652• 13 years ago

Ah so what you are saying is that if there is no victim and it's not stealing then it's ok?

skore3• 13 years ago

This article reinforces my opinion that the business of selling templates is a foolish one.

1. The price for templates has been diluted to comical levels.

2. Site design is an integral part that needs proper investment. Clients who invest a double digit budget into the design of their website are clients that you really, really don't want.

3. In most cases, templates are used as a start - since most websites need customization, the templates your sell will quickly become different from what you sold.

4. Likewise, if you pay 20 bucks for a template and then modify it to your site, the quality of the result is often about as good as if you had taken a free one and modified that.

5. The only good business models I've seen around templates are the sites who try to use the "buy in cheaply" model to get clients to something more sensible - where the provider ends up becoming a go-to cornerstone for design.

All this creates a thievish market that is bound to produce exactly the kind of situation we've read about in this blog post: Some people are douchebags who steal, some people are douchebags who whine about it in public.

Sorry, no sympathy. Not a reasonable market. If you set up shop in a hornets nest, expect to get stung.

radley2• 13 years ago

That's far from true. Many end-users don't need to make significant changes. We've used a few themes successfully.

As an Android App developer, we don't even need a website - we just keep one up for our blog and basic product info. 90% of our communication goes through our apps & Gmail.

skore3• 13 years ago

> That's far from true. Many

That appears to be a contradiction.

Furthermore: I'm a developer for software that is mostly used by people making their own website or by service providers who use software like mine and templates to build websites for clients. So I think the impression I got out of that is a little more precise than your N=1 impression.

ppradhan• 13 years ago

sorry to hear. i feel sorry for you guys because you have to fight someone stealing your work + waste time and resources chasing these people. on your website though, i noticed something I couldn't overlook (screenshot in link). you have also copied xcode's icon no?

http://cl.ly/image/2a412E0B0d3G

shizzy0• 13 years ago

If this is the downside of having a DRM-less, open web then so be it.

Isn't it the case that anyone who has purchased this template and uses it on their site that someone can then scrape the template? The source code is already out there. You're fighting the medium not the man.

ninjac0der• 13 years ago

I cannot for the life of me understand why this was down-voted. I think it points out why this kind of thing falls into a gray area that should really be addressed in a completely different way than I see the conversation falling here on HN.

onemorepassword2• 13 years ago

Wait, wasn't the discussion about Wordpress themes having to be GPL (being purely derivative works) over and done years ago?

You create a derivative work of GPL-ed software and call somebody else a thief for doing the same to you?

gojomo3• 13 years ago

The claimed original work here is not a WordPress theme.

onemorepassword2• 13 years ago

"Our template has as we speak been sold a 361 times within half a year and it's still increasing. Themeforest rated our template worth a $17."

Yes it is. Which basically means the author is refusing to acknowledge the copyright of the WordPress authors and the license rights of the ones he's calling thieves.

There's one pirate here, and it's StampReady.

Also, I think Email on Acid have a good case for libel. This is willful public defamation.

Edit: Apparently, I'm wrong about this being a WordPress theme. My apologies.

oddshocks• 13 years ago

It's obvious that whoever designed Email on Acid has never taken any good acid.

brandon272• 13 years ago

Where's the line between something being "stolen" and something being "inspired" by something else?

People say that as soon as you "copy and paste" a line of code that isn't yours, you're stealing. But it seems that without the "copying and pasting" that is inherent, not only in the learning process, but often in the process of innovation itself, we wouldn't have the products we have today.

And what's the difference between copying and pasting something and creating something similar, but not an exact copy with similar code that you viewed and then re-typed in a similar way? Can one be outright theft and the other be acceptable?

mwetzler• 13 years ago

same thing happened to our site design. We felt flattered rather than mad, but our business isn't selling templates. Sorry man. https://keen.io/blog/46309336554/the-highest-form-of-flatter...

yochum24• 13 years ago

Stamp Ready, I like how you could only cite 2 lines out of 1,000. If I had 10K for every line of code I write, it'd be a millionaire. You should probably share the entire source if you are making this type of accusation.

You said it yourself, you sold that ribbon image 300+ times, it is now circulated on the internet and there is no way to prove it came from your IP address.

Out of curiosity, did you obtain rights to profit from the art used in your template? Did you take a screenshot or just RT click?

http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2013/01/06/freebie-gemicon-i...

http://www.colorproprint.com/blog/design-freebies-brushes-fo...

http://dribbble.com/shots/676411-Free-Vintage-Icon-Set-gif

I believe it clearly states the following on dribbble.com:

Welcome to the hornet's nest. Slander is never the best option but judging from your tweets over the past 3 months, this is not your first time.

How Email On Acid stole our work

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