This is an honest question, I'd be curious to hear how you might differentiate this from music and movie sharing? I hope that people won't just down-vote me without responding. I am truly curious because I myself have mixed feelings about all of these issues as both a content creator as well as a consumer. It's hard for me to understand why certain types of art must be free for all, but others are defended vigorously.
I've seen this happen several times before where someone uses photos, design or article text without permission, gets busted and winds up on the tech forums. The tech community generally tends to get pretty noisy about how despicable they find it.
It strikes me as interesting because one of the piracy arguments is that it's not stealing because the original author didn't lose anything. In this case (well aside from the hot-linking bandwidth) the original authors didn't lose anything.
If all intellectual property should be free, shouldn't this be perfectly fine to use art and graphics and such as well? Why is it ok for 37signals to have any claim of ownership over these things when musicians who do so are criticized for not understanding.
Is the difference the way the material is being used? It because curbit is using this in a corporate setting? People who are in favor of file sharing, does that not apply to design and software? Does it only apply to individual, personal use? What about sites who host music and have banner ads, are they ok? What if I use a song in my YouTube video, is that the same thing? How about some photos for a YouTube slide show?
I am not sure if people here acknowledge stealing/pirating movies/music as an acceptable act. What we want is for the movies that we genuinely purchase (be it as a DVD or a direct download), to be more accessible and available on different platforms. Or we want services that make these resources free and yet make a profit to the creators (youtube/pandora).
I believe that something I have already paid for should not be constrained to a device/platform and so will find ways to make it more shareable between devices/platform. I differ with the draconian laws used by the movie industry.
The thin line that separates the two things you are trying to compare is: In the case of movie/video sharing we are a customer (hopefully) of a service that is sold (music/movie) whereas in the case of copying a website, neither is the website selling their design nor is it in public domain for use.
I think it is ok to be inspired and create a "similar" design, but to plagiarize, is probably as pathtetic as it can get.
I don't see a huge difference between this and music/movie piracy. I feel it's down to the financial/commercial nature of the infringement and also the scale. I think this is fairly consistent with the legal viewpoint, if the copyright owner was suing for damages what could they reasonably claim?
It's one thing for somebody to copy a DVD for a few friends or family members, worse if they put it on BitTorrent, and worse still if they start selling bootleg copies.
I don't think there would be such a big outcry over this if it was a personal website getting a few hundred hits a month, or even if it was a moderately successful non-commercial project. Curebit had already received funding from Y-combinator and I assume their team were working on it full time, so in my opinion that's rather different to somebody cutting a few corners on a weekend project.
There's a difference between downloading music (albeit illegally) and taking someone else's work and trying to pass it off as your own. When I download a Duran Duran album, I don't post it on my website and claim that I made the album and attempt to sell it as my own (as much as I wish I was Simon LeBon).
This isn't an issue of piracy -- it's an issue of plagiarism, which is quite different in my opinion.
How about we compare it to someone who put up a youtube video of themselves lip-syncing to Duran Duran? They're not necessarily claiming that the music is theirs, they're just using some random song they found to provide a background/prompt for their own performance.
Maybe its more fundamental? - People do it if they know they aren't going to be exposed (like downloading illegally) and they won't if there was a way to expose them (say via facebook/blog)? Just a theory.
I still believe downloading illegally is wrong, but thats my opinion.
I've seen this happen several times before where someone uses photos, design or article text without permission, gets busted and winds up on the tech forums. The tech community generally tends to get pretty noisy about how despicable they find it.
It strikes me as interesting because one of the piracy arguments is that it's not stealing because the original author didn't lose anything. In this case (well aside from the hot-linking bandwidth) the original authors didn't lose anything.
If all intellectual property should be free, shouldn't this be perfectly fine to use art and graphics and such as well? Why is it ok for 37signals to have any claim of ownership over these things when musicians who do so are criticized for not understanding.
Is the difference the way the material is being used? It because curbit is using this in a corporate setting? People who are in favor of file sharing, does that not apply to design and software? Does it only apply to individual, personal use? What about sites who host music and have banner ads, are they ok? What if I use a song in my YouTube video, is that the same thing? How about some photos for a YouTube slide show?
Thanks for any thoughts!