Within a month of releasing my very successful iPhone app TextPics, there were several Chinese clones using a slightly modified icon, all of my content, my design, layout, and with names like "TextPics Pro" and "TextPics(R)" or "TextPics+". As annoying as this was and confusing to my customers, it got even worse. Theft in China does not stop at the dev level, oh no. Comparing my Google analytics app usage to my Apple purchases in China was even more depressing. It turned out China was by far my biggest country for usage... And just about at the bottom of my list for revenue. The Chinese were simply stealing the app with their cracked iPhones. I see no way to win here.
And this is no blind hate for the Chinese. I have a Chinese wife from the mainland, I study Chinese Rosetta Stone daily, and I've been to China multiple times for pleasure. I know these people. As a culture, they consider it laughable and stupid to pay for something they could otherwise steal. I've had this conversation with enough Chinese at this point.
So seriously I don't see how I can take that country or it's people seriously from a tech biz standpoint if I can't trust their ethics.
Genuine question: how is pirating PC games, songs and movies acceptable while pirating apps is not?
Edit: this is not a question toward parent, but rather the general public, as I kind of get the sense that pirating is somewhat acceptable under certain circumstances while not others. Where is the line?
- Ok, it was not obvious to me from first reading of this. The content was copied and not the code. So there are many copycat versions of your app in the store.
- Copying is an issue everywhere (Zynga games, dating apps, camera apps, texting apps, twitter clones anyone?) Maybe not as blatant as your case. Your idea is easily copyable and I've learned elsewhere on HN that if the uniqueness of your idea is the only selling point of your product then you will not succeed against competitors. And you should expect competitors. Maybe complaining to Apple will help.
- Yeah, pirating is an issue everywhere (thepiratebay.org anyone?) and not just in China
- I'm just getting the impression that some areas of app development are not profitable. If you're trying to sell to consumers it could be a huge uphill battle on many fronts. Crowded app store, race to the bottom on pricing, copycat products (not just from the Chinese)...
[Edit]
- I recall reading a success story on HN about an app developer that created a better version of another app (iphone app of a talking elf or something) and made a profit on it. He was celebrated too. So that's the flip side of your situation. The developer was from Silicon Valley and not China.
You have to understand that certain applications are prone to be "cloned" - there is 7B people on the planet and there is big chance if something is successful and can be easily cloned WILL BE cloned.
It really does not matter if it is Chinese or not. If your thing is REALLY successful then Samwer brothers will clone it.
I had a similar issue a few years ago when someone from Asia had modified and resold my ecommerce application for years as his own. I lost at least $50,000 in sales to US customers who purchased this guy's copy of my software.
The big problem that I ran into is the cost to litigate international issues. I contacted a bunch of law firms and they all pretty much said it would be a six-figure cost to pursue any international action and the hopes of collecting would be almost zero. Fortunately, the copying was so blatant that I didn't have a problem getting the US web host to pull down his site.
Partially as a result of the incident I decided to open-source the code base. Other than locking up the code in a SaaS platform there isn't a 100% foolproof way to protect IP so why not embrace the copying and build a business model around reality.
I know it's a bit late to suggest this but for future reference you could have always followed the VBulletin model of sending DMCA/Legal threats to people who purchase the bootlegged software.
I realize this doesn't make you any friends but if enough of those customers disputed the charges with the person who had stolen your software you may have been able to put him out of business.
As much as I hate the DMCA, when this happens and a U.S. host starts ignoring legitimate DMCA notices, start emailing their upstreams. Softlayer is probably doing this because they have an inexperienced tech handling your request.
Email ATDN, Global Crossing, Cogent Communications, and many of the other companies they peer with and say the website has not been shut down despite emails sent to Softlayer. Those companies may threaten to nullroute the website's IP.
If they don't do anything (unlikely) get an injunction.
It's trivial for this guy to get it hosted elsewhere, however. This is just me, but I wouldn't expect to build anything in HTML5 that couldn't be copied-- the platform is inherently open. If the only creative and useful properties of your work is built in the open, there does not seem to be a compelling reason why you would be protected by copyright. This person could build a website around your "copyrights" in little time.
If Softlayer ignores the DMCA complaint, thats good news from a monetary standpoint, because now they have fallen out of the safe harbor and there is someone to collect money from. Then they get to do the hard work of collecting from "Long Yang."
The OP wrote that "I prepared a DMCA and sent it via fax to Softlayer. I never heard back and finally gave up on the whole thing."
This is probably not the most effective way to handle a DMCA notice. While it would be nice if every company's compliance team was responsive and open, this task is often outsourced and because the DMCA is fundamentally a legal process, review and action can be very conservative. If you want to fast-track action, certified or registered mail beats facsimile every time. A follow-up letter including a copy the certified delivery receipt is very effective. This is even more true if it's on law firm letterhead or company letterhead and professional in tone.
Presumably, if this is a big enough issue to post on HN and if there's some lost revenue, it's probably worth the time to follow up on the DMCA takedown request(s). It may also be worth the time to ask an attorney to prepare a sample letter you can use for this and future takedown procedures.
I'd encourage the OP to not give up on the DMCA process, as it can be very effective with a little bit of followup.
Just because a product uses open technology, it doesn't necessarily undermine the labour and creative skill that a person puts into creating a product from the open technology available. This could be the same skill put into a non-open source piece of software, just that the opportunity to copy isn't so readily available.
Also, saying that the person who copied the website could build around the website in no time at all rather assumes that they have the skill to do so.
That's like saying a book is not copyrightable because anybody who understands that language can easily copy it. Of course things built on the web in HTML5 can be copyrighted, regardless of how easy one can copy them.
Protecting them is another matter and I agree with you on that. You can go to great lengths to obfuscate the code or whatever but in the end anybody with enough skill and motivation will be able to copy your work.
Hopefully I (as the only SoftLayer employee in this thread that I'm aware of) can provide a little insight. Before addressing the specific issue in the post, I want to share a quick overview of SoftLayer's Abuse Department and the processes of handling complaints.
The [email protected] address functions as more of a notification system than a medium for conversation. You don't have to be a SoftLayer customer to contact that address, and when reports of verifiable abuse are received, the abuse team will work with the customer responsible for the infringing server to get it resolved as quickly as possible. If the DMCA is properly formatted, the abuse team will work with our customers (who may, in turn have to work with their customers) to have the infringing material removed.
If a complaint is submitted to that address that doesn't meet the legal guidelines of documentation we need before we can take action, we cannot take action. If we can't take action because of an incomplete or invalid complaint, we also can't provide any visibility or feedback to the complaining parties about what was incomplete/invalid, as that could fall into the "legal advice" category.
Abuse tickets aren't handled by technical support, and they people creating and responding to the tickets are only responsible for abuse-related issues. Not only are they a distinct team, they fall in an entirely different part of the organization (alongside the legal, internal security and systems teams). As such, the way they respond needs to be extremely consistent from one issue to the next, and they're only able to make decisions based on the reports/evidence they have.
I don't have visibility into the specific complaint that was submitted, so the only assumption I can make is that the complaint wasn't properly formatted or it didn't have the legal evidence we need to take action. Whether or not the copyright infringement is "obvious" or "unquestionable" from an outside perspective does not change our legal requirement of having a properly formatted DMCA complaint to take action. If there's a lawyer in the building who is willing to offer his/her services to the game developer, a resolution might be a lot quicker. When the DMCA is submitted, I'd love to be copied on it ([email protected]) so I can immediately have it investigated and acted upon.
Reading this and the related stories of other products like Cloudstone [1] I'm immediately reminded of another, recent HN post [2] which suggested covering about half a dozen markets/languages with your initial releases.
On the other hand, it's sad that so many startups are ignoring the huge market that China is. People on HN often critique the music/film industries for claiming to lose ridiculously huge amounts of revenues due to piracy. In this case, I am willing to bet that 99% of people buying from the Chinese website wouldn't have bought the original. Anyways, I'm not trying to justify what this guy did but simply suggesting that more startups should consider serving the Chinese market.
What would a positive outcome of serving a group be when you know 99% of them won't buy anything from you?
I'd be very impressed if any outsider managed to sustainably serve the Chinese market, without the very hungry local competitors improving on the solution. Support by itself would be quite a challenge.
As many people have said - with HTML5, you basically give your IP away and hope for the law to keep people honest. Making money is those conditions is the old open source conundrum.
I would suggest the OP to sell support contract (sponsored features, priority bug fixing, ...) to the Chinese customers of his copycat.
If the situation gets worse (eg: the chinese firm translate their website in English), the engine can be open sourced and try to recover with the support.
If the Chinese site is selling the minified/uncommented JS code that you would get from "view source" then he probably wouldn't be in business for long.
In this case, it sounds like he bought a copy of the engine/level editor/build scripts/documentation and is selling that. Is that any different than buying the Unreal Engine Source Code and reselling it for 50% off?
The un-obfuscated code and the level editor isn't available though. I believe the thief bought a copy of Impact to get all the source files - this could have happened with any product.
How is this different than any other commercial software library - once you have a copy, what prevents you from reselling it illegally?
While HTML5 games can be easily copied wholesale somewhere else (as can Flash SWF files generally) - the code is usually minified and not terribly useful to try to do development on.
This is interesting as I have had similar problems with hackers/copy catters, and it is true that the majority do come from an asian region, but I think its still important to note that the majority of the world's population is also in asia. For me, this article seems to concentrate the online IP problem specifically in asia/China, which in my opinion is simply not the case. For instance, are the Samwers really that much different from what the developer in the article just did? I think the real question is how do you respect IP at a global level where governmental laws can differ largely from one country to the next.
> I think the real question is how do you respect IP online and at a global level where governmental laws can differ largely from one country to the next.
It's probably a hint that Copyright is a stupid way to sell software, but perhaps that is high jacking this thread.
One of the biggest issues with this stuff in Asia/China in particular is the attitude of governments toward IP there. The problem isn't just that there's a large population there, and that its another country. Maybe its naive of me, but I think if there was something that was blatantly stolen like this in Canada or the UK, I could go through the channels to have it taken down, and a case pursued against them fairly easily.
The situation is unfortunate, but basically inevitable at this stage in China's development. Take a look at the Chinese book publishing industry and you'll see a glimpse of the Chinese way - most books are put online for free by the authors (mostly in their entirety). The publishing companies pick the most popular ones, who get deals to have their books printed & sold in stores. Totally different from the west.
Doing business in China, I have noticed that there is somewhat of a "creativity gap" (as I call it). I believe that as their society evolves and begins to create more of their own IP, the laws will eventually adapt to protect such developments. In the meantime, it's very difficult.
But still, Cisco has had everything copied (down to the model #s) by you-know-who and yet still makes billions (also powering the great firewall). Like Microsoft & Cisco, there are ways to penetrate and dominate the market in the midst of the piracy.
However, if your IP is some "easily de-obfuscated" javascript (and you're a startup), it's a very difficult position and my heart goes out to them.
As a Chinese, I feel ashamed about these people. They said on their [forum][0] that "The controversy is inevitable. We offer services only for China so that Chinese customers can buy the same product with a low price."
But please believe me there are a lot of good guys, contributors in China and many of them are so reclusive that you cannot recognize they are Chinese.
Html5 code is so easy to be copied, and it seems not trivial to prove who copied who. If my website is totally copied, how can I prove that my one is original? Any idea?
I hope the op realizes that, by posting this on HN, he/she has just promoted the much cheaper copycat product to the very target market that alleged thief wants to reach...
The opposite view is they are alerting potential customers to the counterfeit. If, somehow, you only knew about that version, it would be helpful to know you won't get support, but that a supported version is available.
The unfortunate reality is that even if Softlayer comply with the DMCA request, the site could be moved to a host in a more infringement-friendly jurisdiction.
Perhaps a letter from a Chinese law firm could help to escalate matters. A basic cease and desist letter would be relatively cheap, but then again, from the infringer's stance so far, I can't imagine it would receive a particularly positive response...
The difference is that this is not plagiarism; this is just piracy. The Chinese studio does not claim authorship for this. They have even stated their upstream, making them look like an authorized distributor. They claim to be selling a localized "cracked" version. Shamefully, piracy with a price is not uncommon in China.
It's not quite straightforward why they decide to sell a pirated version. They seem to be specialized in web game development, based on Impact and other framework. I guess they had used Impact for game development, during which they spent some time doing the localization, integration and documentation and felt that was a justification for selling for a price. Their customers, if there are any, are not unaware of the piracy, as in their product forum.
[+] [-] ftwinnovations|13 years ago|reply
And this is no blind hate for the Chinese. I have a Chinese wife from the mainland, I study Chinese Rosetta Stone daily, and I've been to China multiple times for pleasure. I know these people. As a culture, they consider it laughable and stupid to pay for something they could otherwise steal. I've had this conversation with enough Chinese at this point.
So seriously I don't see how I can take that country or it's people seriously from a tech biz standpoint if I can't trust their ethics.
[+] [-] analyst74|13 years ago|reply
Genuine question: how is pirating PC games, songs and movies acceptable while pirating apps is not?
Edit: this is not a question toward parent, but rather the general public, as I kind of get the sense that pirating is somewhat acceptable under certain circumstances while not others. Where is the line?
[+] [-] msie|13 years ago|reply
- Copying is an issue everywhere (Zynga games, dating apps, camera apps, texting apps, twitter clones anyone?) Maybe not as blatant as your case. Your idea is easily copyable and I've learned elsewhere on HN that if the uniqueness of your idea is the only selling point of your product then you will not succeed against competitors. And you should expect competitors. Maybe complaining to Apple will help.
- Yeah, pirating is an issue everywhere (thepiratebay.org anyone?) and not just in China
- I'm just getting the impression that some areas of app development are not profitable. If you're trying to sell to consumers it could be a huge uphill battle on many fronts. Crowded app store, race to the bottom on pricing, copycat products (not just from the Chinese)...
[Edit] - I recall reading a success story on HN about an app developer that created a better version of another app (iphone app of a talking elf or something) and made a profit on it. He was celebrated too. So that's the flip side of your situation. The developer was from Silicon Valley and not China.
[+] [-] tlogan|13 years ago|reply
It really does not matter if it is Chinese or not. If your thing is REALLY successful then Samwer brothers will clone it.
[+] [-] msie|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mmcconnell1618|13 years ago|reply
The big problem that I ran into is the cost to litigate international issues. I contacted a bunch of law firms and they all pretty much said it would be a six-figure cost to pursue any international action and the hopes of collecting would be almost zero. Fortunately, the copying was so blatant that I didn't have a problem getting the US web host to pull down his site.
Partially as a result of the incident I decided to open-source the code base. Other than locking up the code in a SaaS platform there isn't a 100% foolproof way to protect IP so why not embrace the copying and build a business model around reality.
[+] [-] shiftpgdn|13 years ago|reply
I realize this doesn't make you any friends but if enough of those customers disputed the charges with the person who had stolen your software you may have been able to put him out of business.
[+] [-] ewillbefull|13 years ago|reply
Email ATDN, Global Crossing, Cogent Communications, and many of the other companies they peer with and say the website has not been shut down despite emails sent to Softlayer. Those companies may threaten to nullroute the website's IP.
If they don't do anything (unlikely) get an injunction.
It's trivial for this guy to get it hosted elsewhere, however. This is just me, but I wouldn't expect to build anything in HTML5 that couldn't be copied-- the platform is inherently open. If the only creative and useful properties of your work is built in the open, there does not seem to be a compelling reason why you would be protected by copyright. This person could build a website around your "copyrights" in little time.
[+] [-] AJ007|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nroach|13 years ago|reply
This is probably not the most effective way to handle a DMCA notice. While it would be nice if every company's compliance team was responsive and open, this task is often outsourced and because the DMCA is fundamentally a legal process, review and action can be very conservative. If you want to fast-track action, certified or registered mail beats facsimile every time. A follow-up letter including a copy the certified delivery receipt is very effective. This is even more true if it's on law firm letterhead or company letterhead and professional in tone.
Presumably, if this is a big enough issue to post on HN and if there's some lost revenue, it's probably worth the time to follow up on the DMCA takedown request(s). It may also be worth the time to ask an attorney to prepare a sample letter you can use for this and future takedown procedures.
I'd encourage the OP to not give up on the DMCA process, as it can be very effective with a little bit of followup.
[+] [-] grabeh|13 years ago|reply
Also, saying that the person who copied the website could build around the website in no time at all rather assumes that they have the skill to do so.
[+] [-] wilfra|13 years ago|reply
Protecting them is another matter and I agree with you on that. You can go to great lengths to obfuscate the code or whatever but in the end anybody with enough skill and motivation will be able to copy your work.
[+] [-] khazard|13 years ago|reply
The [email protected] address functions as more of a notification system than a medium for conversation. You don't have to be a SoftLayer customer to contact that address, and when reports of verifiable abuse are received, the abuse team will work with the customer responsible for the infringing server to get it resolved as quickly as possible. If the DMCA is properly formatted, the abuse team will work with our customers (who may, in turn have to work with their customers) to have the infringing material removed.
If a complaint is submitted to that address that doesn't meet the legal guidelines of documentation we need before we can take action, we cannot take action. If we can't take action because of an incomplete or invalid complaint, we also can't provide any visibility or feedback to the complaining parties about what was incomplete/invalid, as that could fall into the "legal advice" category.
Abuse tickets aren't handled by technical support, and they people creating and responding to the tickets are only responsible for abuse-related issues. Not only are they a distinct team, they fall in an entirely different part of the organization (alongside the legal, internal security and systems teams). As such, the way they respond needs to be extremely consistent from one issue to the next, and they're only able to make decisions based on the reports/evidence they have.
I don't have visibility into the specific complaint that was submitted, so the only assumption I can make is that the complaint wasn't properly formatted or it didn't have the legal evidence we need to take action. Whether or not the copyright infringement is "obvious" or "unquestionable" from an outside perspective does not change our legal requirement of having a properly formatted DMCA complaint to take action. If there's a lawyer in the building who is willing to offer his/her services to the game developer, a resolution might be a lot quicker. When the DMCA is submitted, I'd love to be copied on it ([email protected]) so I can immediately have it investigated and acted upon.
-Kevin Hazard
[+] [-] incision|13 years ago|reply
Something to think about.
1: http://www.reddit.com/r/gaming/comments/yc02l/some_company_i...
2: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4389468
[+] [-] olalonde|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] richardw|13 years ago|reply
I'd be very impressed if any outsider managed to sustainably serve the Chinese market, without the very hungry local competitors improving on the solution. Support by itself would be quite a challenge.
[+] [-] gutnor|13 years ago|reply
I would suggest the OP to sell support contract (sponsored features, priority bug fixing, ...) to the Chinese customers of his copycat. If the situation gets worse (eg: the chinese firm translate their website in English), the engine can be open sourced and try to recover with the support.
[+] [-] hdctambien|13 years ago|reply
In this case, it sounds like he bought a copy of the engine/level editor/build scripts/documentation and is selling that. Is that any different than buying the Unreal Engine Source Code and reselling it for 50% off?
[+] [-] pjmlp|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] phoboslab|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cykod|13 years ago|reply
While HTML5 games can be easily copied wholesale somewhere else (as can Flash SWF files generally) - the code is usually minified and not terribly useful to try to do development on.
[+] [-] jfaucett|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] franze|13 years ago|reply
yes, stealing a product and selling a stolen product is quite different from copying, iterating on and subsequent scaling a business model.
[+] [-] Volpe|13 years ago|reply
It's probably a hint that Copyright is a stupid way to sell software, but perhaps that is high jacking this thread.
[+] [-] tibbon|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] krickle|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] strebler|13 years ago|reply
Doing business in China, I have noticed that there is somewhat of a "creativity gap" (as I call it). I believe that as their society evolves and begins to create more of their own IP, the laws will eventually adapt to protect such developments. In the meantime, it's very difficult.
But still, Cisco has had everything copied (down to the model #s) by you-know-who and yet still makes billions (also powering the great firewall). Like Microsoft & Cisco, there are ways to penetrate and dominate the market in the midst of the piracy.
However, if your IP is some "easily de-obfuscated" javascript (and you're a startup), it's a very difficult position and my heart goes out to them.
[+] [-] clippit|13 years ago|reply
But please believe me there are a lot of good guys, contributors in China and many of them are so reclusive that you cannot recognize they are Chinese.
[0]: http://www.kilofox.net/forum/forum.php?mod=viewthread&ti...
[+] [-] guilloche|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Cyranix|13 years ago|reply
1) Print source code 2) Get it witnessed by a notary public
[+] [-] protomyth|13 years ago|reply
http://www.copyright.gov/help/faq/faq-digital.html#website
http://www.copyright.gov/eco/help-deposit.html
http://www.copyright.gov/eco/ under Literary
[+] [-] axx|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] zupreme|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] paulgb|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jbigelow76|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tedunangst|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] grabeh|13 years ago|reply
Perhaps a letter from a Chinese law firm could help to escalate matters. A basic cease and desist letter would be relatively cheap, but then again, from the infringer's stance so far, I can't imagine it would receive a particularly positive response...
[+] [-] ceworthington|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] anuraj|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tmh88j|13 years ago|reply
http://www.reddit.com/r/gaming/comments/yc02l/some_company_i...
[+] [-] xfs|13 years ago|reply
It's not quite straightforward why they decide to sell a pirated version. They seem to be specialized in web game development, based on Impact and other framework. I guess they had used Impact for game development, during which they spent some time doing the localization, integration and documentation and felt that was a justification for selling for a price. Their customers, if there are any, are not unaware of the piracy, as in their product forum.
[+] [-] hnewb|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] csense|13 years ago|reply
You could also see if their payment provider is willing to help.
[+] [-] ashwinm|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] thinkingisfun|13 years ago|reply