Tuesday, October 11th, 2005 |
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I guess I should be flattered … |
A colleague of mine just pointed me to an example on the FlashProjector web site. The example is on their front page, labelled “Web browser inside Flash” in the Showcase section. Immediately I gasped. Not at the functionality because SWF Studio has had that since version 2. I gasped at the sight of my own Flash component being used without my permission. I recognized it immediately because he didn’t even bother to change the look of the resize and drag handles.
A while back I posted a Flash example for someone in the Northcode forums who was asking about a way to create a resizable movieclip - including handles for moving and resizing. It wasn’t the best code I’ve ever written but it was only meant to be an example.
It was intended for a user of our forums. I can understand that others would want to see example code. I started out by looking through examples and asking for help from the very supportive Flash community. When I got a little better I tried to help out where I could as well.
That being said, using code that is not explicitly stated as open for anyone to use anywhere is not actually open for anyone to use anywhere. There is a strange assumption that seems to be commonplace across many Internet users that if they can get access to it, it must be free for them to use. Well, that’s simply not the case.
But for a “professional” to use code without permission is just a dumb move. I downloaded the example and, sure enough, the code is exactly the same, along with the look, and bugs.
The big thing in projector tool makers seems to be copy from Northcode. I guess I should be flattered but instead I’m entertained by the fact that the FlashProjector developer can’t even write his own resizable movieclip code and that he resorted to ripping off an example on a competitor’s forum, not even a really good example!
This is just another move that shows the “professionalism” of this company/developer. His forum apparently censors the words SWF Studio and Zinc. While we don’t like people linking directly to competitors’ sites from our forums, we don’t mind that people mention other products when discussing features or asking about functionality. We don’t hide the fact that there are competitors. FlashProjector is displaying the professionalism and maturity of a recent highschool grad.
FlashProjector seems to be missing what people are looking for when they look for a product that they are willing to spend their money on: Professionalism. It’s great for a product to have functionality X but people who are serious about what they do for a living want a company with the people who are equally serious.
You get zero respect from the Flash community if you are unethical and unprofessional, no matter how great you may think your product may be.
I may not understand this well but what you are upset about are :
1) Your code beeing stolen ? Used without your permition ?
2) Sample of the resizeable MovieClip ? (a child’s toy)
3) A stupid company behaveour ?
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( 1 ) - I do not agree with this two possilbe positive answers. You gaved your code to the comunity to help them, to get them inspired … to make their lifes easier.
( 2 ) - This only shows the degree of their flash programmers proffesionalism. as you say it … by me equals to 0.000PI
( 3 ) - You have your point here, and a really strong one if you say they are doing that thing on their forums. Is shitty, and for this i blame the entire company.
Maybe a highschool student real is the creator of those samples? Or maybe a hungry
university student did it. Maybe they hired people in Romania like I am … and they work remote … while not knowing the other side intelectual possibilities … who knows.
Dunno what tricks they used but they got in the market.
Now answer me to this :
I have may projects for me to work on … most of the customers are people from US and they ask me “I want you to do me a project exactly like that” and for a reasonable amount of money ( reasonable for me … for you it may be lunch money ) i mostly say yes.
Then, regarding of my selfesteam & selfrespect … and with respect for others work I start building it from the ground up. Without looking how that competitor did it.
What do you say about this behaveour, whos fault is it ? Because obviously something wrong is happening.
Legally, I think, you own the copyrights to anything you publish on the net - meaning you could probably try to sue them. But it would be sketchy because you didn’t post your intentions in the code or in the original post (I just looked). Stating, either in the code itself or where ever you posted the code, what you intend it’s usage for would have made this cut and dry thievery. As it stands, it almost sounds like you want someone to use it as a base.
While I see your point (I’ve had the same thing happen several times), if that guy got the code from a guy who got the code from a guy who got the code he/she may not have any idea where it came from. It makes it easier to justify stolen code by giving you the ability to say, “it says right here it’s for example only and reproduction must give credit where credit is do”.
The responsibility is on the code user to find out if there are copyrights / IP on the code, but in the future you might want to try to help them
@ion gion,
Yes I gave the code to the community, not to another company to use without my permission.
There is a big difference between using someone’s code to better understand some functionality and using it for commercial purposes. If someone takes my code to better understand how to do resizable movieclips then that’s fine - that was the intention. The problem is with taking the code and passing it off as their own. I don’t see any credit to me being the author of part of their code. I also didn’t get an eMail asking if they could use it. That’s where the problem is.
If someone asks you to build something “just like site A”, and they’re willing to pay, then of course you should accomodate them - just not to the point of stealing someone’s code or infringing upon any copyrights, patents, or trademarks.
@rob,
Yeah, I don’t put copyright info in my sample code since I am giving out for people to use. However, I couldn’t help blog about this blatent copy for a commercial product.
I should start including something in my posts or the code itself. Perhaps only for samples where I provide the FLA or AS files (typically larger than one-off code samples in the posts themselves).
Your code is copyrighted as soon as it’s in a saved format. Because your code was in response to a question, there really isn’t much you can do. It’s posted, and it’s available. You can protest, and tell them to cease and desist as they are trying to make money on your code but there’s probably not too much beyond that that you can do. Good luck.
It would be more believable that FP mistakenly used my code if I hadn’t seen blatent copying from our site before. FP doesn’t have any other obvious code or text copied from our site, that I can see.
However, mProjector had EXACT text from our affiliates page for quite some time. Once we posted about the copying, their affiliates page mysteriously disappeared. Although, you can take a look at the WayBackMachine for evidence of their affiliates page text and our affiliates page text. What you need to do is look at the sites going back to 2004, then keep going back to see that our page was there first. They even left the wording in about using Order1, which we used, and they never did. Us (2003) Them (2004)
Jugglor was also guilty of using text from our site, but at least they made it just different enough to be questionable.
I guess the problem is that each of these companies is in the same line of business, so to say they just happened to use the same text is just being naive. Some text will be similar or even the same of course seeing as how we are using similar technologies. But, unfortunately, that’s not what I’m talking about here.
I also don’t want to make the impression that everyone is copying from us and that no one else is capable of doing anything original. It’s just sad when blatent copying occurs because someone doesn’t make the effort.
As for my code and FP, I’m not going to sue anyone or kick and fuss beyond this blog. I don’t want to waste anymore time on this.
Jay Cherabi (FlashProjector) goes to great lengths to tell everyone how much better his company and software is and then he turns around and swipes code (that Derek wrote) from the northcode forums to use in one of his examples? Lazy or just incompetent? He could probably get away with claiming ignorance about where the code came from but the examples are so simple he HAS to be writing them himself, if not he should fire the example guy like yesterday and try the infinte number of monkeys thing.
>> Your code is copyrighted as soon as it’s in a saved format. Because your code was in response to a question, there really isn’t much you can do.
Not true. The copyright protection of a work starts from the time it was first publicly published. Posting on a forum amounts to publishing, and is definitely protected by copyright.
One option is when you post to a forum, include in your standard footer the appropriate Creative Commons badge to represent how you intend to protect your work. The badge makes it clear what others can and can not do with the material. The badge can be obtained by going to http://creativecommons.org/license/ and specifying what protections that you wish to allow your code.
Anyone who has read the 3rd party projector forums will notice that there seems to be quite a bit of back and forth. The truth is that not everyone can be right. The other side of this of course is that people are being less than honest. Thanks for pointing out a specific example. Maybe they should all duke it out.
P.S (’nother example) It was stated recently on the MDM forums that NC had a sole employee … apparently you don’t exist. (On a further note, they had a few people at their booth at FFWD NY a couple of years back)
Well isn’ that lovely. Do you really need to go to the whole trouble of declaring a CC badge to get credit for your work? Its not that they used your code, lots of us do- because you’re generous with you’re time and help. Its the fact that the idiot used it on a competitors site for a competitors product that just shows a total lack of respect for you. So i know that altho the code is a sore point, its ultimately the implementation of it and its final use that makes it just horribly ignorant.
Sorry dude. If you need me to whip out the verbal or physical kung fu, I’m here for ya
Hey everyone,
After posting in FP’s forums I have been informed by their forum Support that the example on their front page was actually a user-contributed example. The example was given to them and they asked permission to post it. Appologies to FlashProjector for misplacing my anger in this regard.
I would like to say that had the example been credited to a user, whether specifically or by indicating that the example(s) is(are) contributed by users, I would have in fact asked FP to remove the example or remove the component from the example.
As it stands I have asked FP to drop in some commented text with my name and site reference. The other choice is to remove the component.
My fault I guess for not having this kind of text in there in the first place, although nothing would have stopped whomever copied the code from just removing the comments. Again, if the examples weren’t displayed with the implication that FP was creating them then I would either not have written this post, or it would have been targetted at someone else, or as a general rant of the issue.
Perhaps a lesson learned for both of us.
You posted non-copyrighted code and content on a public site. Yet you never explicitly provided a terms of use, thus you basically gave everyone permission to use it as they please, when you made it public. It’s too late to bitch and moan now, live and learn.
Next time you want to maintain a valid rights claim you may try including a licensing statement such as, “Copyright © 2005, YOURNAME. This content is provided for private educational and evaluation use only. Redistribution in whole or in part or as part of another application commercial or otherwise is strictly prohibited, without the authors expressed written authorization.”
You never placed any restrictions on it therefore you have nothing to complain about. About the only thing you can do now complain, but that doesnt really speak well about your own character.
Thanks for the copyright example.
I did admit that the code did not have copyright text and that it was my fault for not doing so. However, if something doesn’t have a copyright statement, it doesn’t mean you can or should use it as your own. Especially if you are using material from a competitor - at the very least it rings of bad taste.
As I stated in my blog entry, if there was not such rampant unethical behaviour with our competitors I probably wouldn’t have been so quick to jump on this. I’m not normally one to go off the handle publicly.
It looks like crime doesn’t pay. Not very well anyway! The flashprojector site has been shut down for not paying their ISP. Apparently nobody from the company had answered a question in the forums since May. That’s twice Jay Cherabi has disappeared and left his users hanging (Flash N’ Pack and Flash Projector V2), which ties him with Edwin van Rijkom (SwiffCanvas and ScreenWeaver). Any bets on whether Jay thinks the Flash community is stupid enough to go for one more round?