I'm as disturbed as you are.

Having seen the shenanigans of a bunch of Bay Area startups, and based on the tone of the responses in this thread, I'd gather that this quote from the article is a bit off base:

> "Your conversion rates or, you know, your credibility and integrity and the ability to have lunch in Silicon Valley ever again."

It would seem that, based on the tone here on HN, that these people will be able to have many, many more lunches in Silicon Valley. Hopefully they won't dine and dash.

In what way is the world a better place when you have to reimplement the design from scratch - as opposed to a world where anyone can copy a design (assuming some credit is given)?

Sounds like the latter world will free up a lot of resources for more useful creative work.

Design done well is fantastically useful, fantastically creative work.

It is an art, and you do not reward those who are good at it by copying not just their ideas but their actual works.

I agree, as a developer who does not have much talent for design, that it would be a 'better' world for me if I could just grab the html from places that do have that talent and not suffer for it.

It is hard in an area where you dont have much to offer, to accept that you do not have a right to take from those who do, but accepting that and learning to work within those constraints will make you both a better person and a better developer.

I haven't tried design, so I don't know if I have talent for it or not. But I do have talent for programming, and I don't mind people copying my knowledge and work there, assuming: A) a world where everyone does so, B) credit is given.

Fair enough. I am also happy to share my knowledge, such as it is, with whoever wants it. Some of my code I am happy to share, some I make money off and I would rather nobody copy wholesale to compete, some I have done on behalf of clients and cannot make the decision on. The nice thing about the world as it is, is you and I mostly have a choice about how we share our work and where/when we make our source code available.

The interesting thing about designers is that on the whole, they have less of a choice. Everything that they do is out in the open and - if they do their job well - lots of people see it and want to copy it.

One of the bad things about the world as it is, is it encourages people to release things closed, because they can make more financially that way -- and we get a very closed world.

In an open world, we could all be making derivative works of awesome works and advance the state of the art, rather than having to duplicate it first, before advancing it.

Without copyright (the law) there would be an even bigger incentive to obfuscate things or move them to the cloud. DRM only exists because the law by itself doesn't work. This is not an easy problem to fix.

DRM is backed by the law, and without its backing it would become a laughable measure that is completely ignored by everyone after the first hacker releases a DRM-free version that is completely legal.

Because of the fundamental concept of property, and ownership, and the right to control your own creations?

It's one thing to voluntarily release something into the public domain (or enable its direct re-use via licenses like Creative Commons).

It's another thing to say that all work should be public property, usable as long as credit is given. Or are you suggesting that everything belongs to the People, comrade?

Even disregarding the profit motive for a second here - if I created a successful web page, should, say, the Westboro Baptist Church be free to take my web page and use it to support their (IMO vile) efforts, so long as they gave credit?

True, it is another thing, but I'll say it: all work (obviously, in this context of digital "intellectual property") should be public. I left "property" off the end of the sentence for the same reason I put "intellectual property" in quotes: I don't believe that property rights make sense when applied to abstract, non-scarce things like ideas and digital works. 

This really isn't about controlling the fruits of your labor, because creative works are really only valuable if they're distributed. If you want to design a website and keep it secret on your local machine, then by all means property rights protect it (i.e. it's illegal to steal your laptop). But if you distribute it on a global network where people freely trade bits, I don't believe you should have the right to control which bits people can copy and which bits they can't.

Both choices (keeping the website secret or publishing it) constitute your legal rights to the fruits of your labor. But once someone gets the bits onto their computer with your consent (by visiting your public website), I don't believe you should have the right to control what they can do with those bits. 

If you like, I believe you have the right to perform any obfuscation you want to with your digital works, or find ways of providing scarce (non-copyable) value. DRM and software as a service are examples of these, respectively.

This is the same argument that was had about whether it was OK to make photocopies of content in books and magazines at the library, or record a radio broadcast or TV program. I would agree with you that up to a point it is: the content is made available to or broadcast to the public, and that implies a certain license to personally do what you want with it once you receive it. Hence copying or scanning printed material for later reference, time-shifting TV programs and sports events with DVR is generally and legally recognized as "OK" (I believe that "fair use" is the legal term here).

Likewise when you put your creative content on the internet, you are implicitly granting some license to people who view that content. They can view the source, study your CSS and javascript, save it for offline viewing if they want.

But when you take someone else's content, be it a book, a TV broadcast or a web site design, copy it either completely or substantially, and then proceed to personally profit from that work without the permission of the creator, you've crossed the line. Granted the distinction between copying (bad) and imitation (flattery?) can be fuzzy, but in this case it seems very clear.

Do you ever wonder why law is so complicated? Maybe it's because the people who make them have a vested interest in complicating matters such that lawyers become necessary. The same logic that you are advocating is what is necessitating the existence of IP law and IP lawyers.

If we simply say that with regards to information, no laws except the laws of nature are necessary, then some lawyers will lose their jobs, but there will be less friction and eddy currents in the system. Overall our endeavors will be more productive and quality of life will generally improve.

You can't eat bits. When everything else is non-scarce, you can reasonably argue that everything should be freely available. Until then, the right to control licensing is the simplest and most fair way for a creative professional to convert their effort into scarce resources.

> * You can't eat bits.*

True, but you're implying that if someone offers a product that's not inherently and nearly universally valuable (like food), then the government should step in and enforce a monopoly for them to distribute their product. Why should manufacturers of scarce goods have to come up with their own ways to differentiate their product to prevent people from turning to competing firms, but artists get a free government-enforced monopoly on distribution?

> the right to control licensing is the simplest and most fair way for a creative professional to convert their efforts into scarce resources.

I'm not saying that it is simple, but artists need to realize that digital works are inherently almost completely free (libre and gratis), and figure out ways to offer scarce products that have value. The obvious example is concerts and merchandise. Another example is dead simple digital downloads that can compete with pirated content. There are problably more examples I can't think of, and even more that no one has figured out yet.

To have no rules is the simplest and most fair way for a creative professional to convert their effort into scarce attention, which leads to scarce resources.

If you do not do anything new and worthy of my attention tomorrow, I do not want you to have my bread.

People should have control over their creations long enough to make it worth the effort. I might as well go do something more profitable if I can't make a living from my own creations in the way that's most efficient (licensing). Encouraging creation is the point of copyright. We shouldn't throw the whole system out just because a few rogue organizations are abusing it.

> People should have control over their creations long enough to make it worth the effort.

We don't actually know that it would enhance authorship. Current restrictions on copying also heavily restrict authorship -- because most authorship could have been derivative works, and those are disallowed.

So it is not clear whether we're helping authorship or destroying it, and I'm betting on the latter.

Also, authors have control over their works until they distribute them -- and that is enough to make money. Maybe it would make significantly less money, but that too isn't clear that it will not be enough to be worth the effort.

The reward of creation for me is the act of creation itself and the giving of my creation to others to build upon. It is an interaction, not a transaction.

I prefer not to consume your copyrighted work. The nature of copyright is such that it becomes abusive. If you are the creative type whose bread depends on your ability to restrict others from copying or modifying your work, you inevitably become abusive.

I encourage the kind of positive creation that breaks out of or transcends such a system.

You still haven't made a case for your position. "The system will be abused, so we need to get rid of the system" is not a sound argument. Why do you think we should toss the system and not adjust it to help protect the public from abuses? Copyright worked fine for centuries before the RIAA and MPAA showed up. Its protections gave creators incentive to create in a world where money is exchanged for scarce resources.

Where is your case? Your "creators" aren't helping the very real scarcity problem that you refer to. My case is based on simple mathematics. By adopting a radically simple and natural law, (that information should not be regulated at the federal//global level) we as a society free ourselves from the burden of having to manage the artificial scarcity of "intellectual property", and we gain additional man-power to focus on real problems.

Let me paint a picture for you. A bunch of people on earth need bread, and there isn't enough to go around to satisfy all the demand for bread. In order to feed the "creators" the people made up some notion of "intellectual property" so that these "creators" can be guaranteed their daily bread. Since it costs next to nothing in today's technological world to copy information, the "creators" have devised a legal system and an army of lawyers whose job it is to interpret the written law such that the "creators" are paid their due in accordance to "intellectual property" law. The people spend a significant portion of their time either (1) recreating works that already had been created (to abide by these laws), (2) paying lawyers to sue other "infringers", (3) devising new methods of DRM or anti-DRM hacking measures or (4) lobbying the lawmakers to change the law in their favor, all the while (5) complicating the system even further, and (6) leaving the real problem of natural scarcity (bread) unsolved because the "intellectual property" required to innovate in bread-making is locked away and controlled by the existing bread making industry.

This society is diseased with the obsessive dwelling upon past memories, and it is adversely affecting its ability to tackle current and future problems. I don't know what copyright was like before the RIAA and MPAA, but I do know that the nature of copyright per se has changed relative to the advancement of technology. Whether or not the old laws used to be Ok does not matter because the environment is completely different.

Your argument holds some ground against Communism, where ALL property is considered common. The mathematics of human motivation, human needs, and natural resource limitations do not appear to add up. But when it comes to resources of information, I dare to think that sharing as much as possible is better and more efficient overall, even considering game theoretic dynamics in our capitalistic system.

I understand the beauty of the system of capitalism where those who create are rewarded by their toil and the virtue of voluntary transactions, but "intellectual property" goes against free trade by creating an artificial scarcity where the consumer is barred from certain voluntary transactions for the sake of "protection". As far as I can tell these IP laws only serve to protect existing established IP right holders, who are but a tiny portion compared to the magnitude of potential creators if only everybody else had the freedom to improve upon existing works unencumbered by patents or copyright.

I don't believe that ALL information should be shared. I believe in the right to privacy (for individuals and organizations) as long as you can reasonably keep the information secret to yourself. But when it comes to information that is easily copyable by virtue of technology, I believe it should be allowed to be copied freely. That is, Bradley Manning may have committed a crime by transferring information outside the bounds of the military complex, but once the information is leaked, it is anybody's data. The military has the right to secure its information borders, but it doesn't get to change the nature of the internet to censor sensitive information. Likewise, I believe consumers have the right to distribute files however they want regardless of what the content "creator" wishes.

I should also mention that my "common sense" often rejects what I said above, but after some deliberation it becomes clear that my sense are misleading when it comes to judging a system that is so different from the one that I am already used to. I did initially balk at what Curebit did to 37Signal's design code, but would in fact choose to live in a world where what Curebit did was acceptable, and it would not hinder me from innovating in any way.

You seem to be talking about lawyers, not creators. I send a simple email if someone is using my creations in an unreasonable way, and a DMCA request if it's serious. I don't use DRM on most of my ebooks since I'm fine with fair use, and I don't agree with the RIAA/MPAA's idea of "piracy."

I get that sharing creative works is like a tax. I pay it back to the society that made it possible so others have the same chance, and I'm fine with that. I don't support the infinite copyright extensions companies like Disney push for.

But handing my creations out to people for free won't solve poverty. As I said, you can't eat bits. It'll just force me to go do something I enjoy less, and keep me from having as much time to create.

What follows is my 2 cents, all my unsolicited yet thought-out opinion & advice tailored for you. I hope it makes a positive impact.

I see what you're doing. I don't know how successful you are, but it has to be suboptimal. You're publishing books in such a way that you mistakenly believe is optimized for monetary gain -- reusing content, publishing many small books for cheap etc.

Your last book is about how to gain blog viewers, yet you're not doing the right things in order to achieve real success. Market research is the old way. What you need to do today is say something new, talk-worthy, & something that really worked for you.

Make your webpage more navigable, polish your books and give them away for free (and have a paid donation option), market your books effectively, read what Cory Doctorow has to say about publishing success at craphound.com. I would love to read about future experiments with giving polished content away for free.

That you even used a DMCA takedown request tells me that what you write is not interesting. The DMCA is not really there to protect your works, friend. It exists to serve established publishers. You're not one of "them", and you're not going to become one of "them", because "they" don't want you. But no doubt you can be a wildly successful publisher on your own if you do the right things, but first you need to think outside the box.

ps I appreciate this thread we've been building up. I didn't know that you are a publisher yourself. I give you "legal" permission to use my words here on HN for your benefit as long as you give me attribution.

> Because of the fundamental concept of property, and ownership, and the right to control your own creations?

heh, good thing this crowd sincerely applies that ethic to music and visual art/entertainment.

I don't think the community in general objects to ownership of music and visual art/entertainment. The objection usually centers around the draconian and unethical ways of enforcing this ownership.

You can support the concept of intellectual ownership without supporting the draconian (and sometimes illegal) means by which some people would like to enforce said ownership. We can also accept the reality and futility of perfect control of your creations without relinquishing moral claim to our creative work.

But we're talking about ideas and expressions, not property.

Yes, the WBC should be allowed to copy if everyone else is.

The benefits seem to me to dwarf the downsides.

So you oppose the GPL, Apache, and BSD licenses? Or really, any software license? After all, they are conditions for the distribution and derivation of a creative work.

You support private companies taking this freely-given resource, creating products from it, profiting from them, and not release the source as the conditions demand?

Well, given that I oppose copyright, I support the GPL -- exactly because it uses copyright restrictions to neutralize copyright restrictions.

In other words, the only restrictions placed by the GPL are those that restrict use of copyright -- and I definitely support those.

Apache and BSD licenses are basically only anti-plagiarizing, afaik.

How would companies profit from a work that everyone can freely copy, in a way that does not add value to society and indeed to the original author?

BSD, Apache and many other licenses allow exactly this: derived works may be released under proprietary license.

In a world where anyone can copy a design, there is very little incentive for people to be creative. Why would I do the hard work of creating something if someone else can just appropriate my work for free?

In short, there would be no designs to worth copying in the first place. Incentive to work is fundamental problem in any communal property system.

Assuming credit is granted.

Creatives work on design to be creative; they don't outright steal it to save time and resources. It's what thy do and witness what happens when you cross them.

I think the OP is about copyright infringement and plagiarism, which is a form of fraud. I do not justify it but it is not theft.

I don't think the world has much to benefit from plagiarism, but I think the benefits of copying others' work and building upon them freely far outweigh the downsides.

>"It is frankly scary that a company can get $1M+ in funding and not realise they cannot just rip other peoples work..."

And more to come. This is an inevitably when your business model revolves around getting as many start ups money as you can in the hopes that some hit it big. It's inherent when you don't (and can't) vet all the people and ideas; you'll eventually end up with "people of poor moral character" in your system.

And there's no excuse for it. I wonder how it will be dealt with. I bet everyone involved was anti-PIPA.