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Flat UI DMCA Takedown
- domrdy 14y agoOh man, I was looking forward to use this in my upcoming weekend project.
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- kombine 14y agoJust read the DCMA notice. Does it really mean anyone can write this sort of message, without any details or proof and you have to oblige to it?
- nwh 14y agoPretty much. Google gets hit with so many that there's no way they even read them, let alone verify them. http://www.google.com/transparencyreport/removals/copyright/ http://www.google.com/transparencyreport/removals/copyright/
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- dagw 14y agoBasically. But if someone files a fraudulent or incorrect notice, they open themselves up to having to pay damages and legal fees to the injured party.
- capisce 14y agoOnly if the injured party can afford expensive and not necessarily open-and-shut legal action.
- pyre 14y agoThe basic idea is that for a provider (Github, Google, etc), to keep their Safe Harbour protections, they have to act like a 'dumb pipe' and just obey these notices. Just like how the phone companies trying to keep their Common Carrier status[1]. Even without the DMCA, if the service provider interjects itself into the dispute they risk legal action against themselves. For example, they could evaluate the claims wrong, and get sued to allowing actually infringing material to stay up. It goes like this: 1. DMCA is filed by a person/entity with the service-provider. 2. Service-provider takes down offending content. 3. The person/entity that submitted the offending content now has the option to file a counter-notice with their service provider claiming that they feel/know there is no infringement. If they do file a counter-notice, then we continue on. If they don't file a counter-notice, then the story ends here. 4. The service-provider notifies the person/entity that filed the DMCA notice that a counter-notice was filed. The service-provider can now restore the content, but there is some weird stipulation that they need to wait something like 10 ~ 14 days before doing so. 5. The person/entity that filed the original notice now has to take legal action against the person/entity that they feel has infringed their copyrights if they want anything more to happen. The party that files the DMCA notice stipulates that they believe that their work has been infringed under penalty of perjury. [1] For a long time, people on the Internet believed that 'Common Carrier' provisions applied to ISPs, but it really only applies to phone companies. The Safe Harbour provisions of the DMCA are meant to give something similar for ISPs, though there are different rules.
- AliAdams 14y agoThanks for the full explanation. So are there no repercussions on the filing party unless the defending party seeks legal action? If the system is blind and you have a somewhat decent legal team you could surely hamstring your competition particularly on more subjective cases like this. 15 days can be a big hit (eg taking a site off google around Christmas)
- emn13 14y agoYeah, that waiting period is pretty ridiculous.
- roevhat 14y agoApparently...
- gfosco 14y agoTakedown notice commit with comments: https://github.com/github/dmca/commit/735e17614cca63102b8414ed2846c3effbfe9535 https://github.com/github/dmca/commit/735e17614cca63102b8414... Counter notice commit with comments: https://github.com/github/dmca/commit/6a33a213e04e7fc5e74ce3cab80fee778f641acc https://github.com/github/dmca/commit/6a33a213e04e7fc5e74ce3...
- jared314 14y agoI have never seen the inside of LayerVault. The demo page only has vague outlines of similar controls. Does anyone have screenshots of LayerVault in action?
- nwh 14y agoAll I could find. http://i.imgur.com/yFHlGVH.png http://i.imgur.com/yFHlGVH.png http://i.imgur.com/VX1h4Xj.png http://i.imgur.com/VX1h4Xj.png http://i.imgur.com/oyAYDM8.png http://i.imgur.com/oyAYDM8.png http://i.imgur.com/ZUlf0hF.png http://i.imgur.com/ZUlf0hF.png http://i.imgur.com/QMSTZ8k.png http://i.imgur.com/QMSTZ8k.png Given that they don't show it off on their demo page, it's either incomplete or clunky.
- enra 14y agoThose are pretty old pictures, and for sure it's not clunky. You can try out the 30-day trial for free. Nowadays it looks like this: http://cl.ly/image/1k230I2l421S http://cl.ly/image/1k230I2l421S
- nwh 14y agoFree as in give us your credit card details and cancel before we change you. Not happening.
- DanBC 14y agoRobots are generic, but that 50s style robot looks pretty similar to this 50s robot: (http://fineartamerica.com/featured/robot-from-50s-carlos-monteiro.html http://fineartamerica.com/featured/robot-from-50s-carlos-mon...) (t-bar eyebrows, analogue gauge on chest). "The Son of Man" was painted 1964. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Son_of_Man_(Magritte) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Son_of_Man_(Magritte))
- natesm 14y agoUh, is that a direct copy of the iOS "share" icon?
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- overshard 14y agoThis was a big article already not even two days ago on HN: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5331766 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5331766 Why is this being upvoted a 2nd time in the same week to the top of the homepage...
- usaphp 14y agobecause they actually took it down.
- overshard 14y agoIt was actually down at the time of that post too. I know because I was using Flat UI in a new project and had to ditch their vector illustrations which were the items in question from this DMCA.
- minimaxir 14y agoThey took it down, but you used to get a 404 when you visited the repo. This is the first time that it explicitly says that a DMCA request was executed.
- mynameisvlad 14y agoNo, I definitely had the DMCA notice when I tried it two days ago. I remember because I was trying to get it not having heard of the takedown, and it wasn't working, and, after getting to the page, saw the notice.
- capisce 14y agoI was not aware from the original post that the project had actually been taken down, and now thanks to pyre's comment I know a bit more about how the DMCA takedown process works. It seems to me that the process is quite vulnerable to Denial-of-service attacks, as demonstrated by the case in question.
- tjoff 14y ago
- mrspeaker 14y agogrumble... I didn't grab it the other day for a prototype I am going to make because "it's on github when I need it" ;)
- abcd_f 14y agoLayerVault, the same people who brought you DesignerNews. If that's indeed them who sent the notice, they are just shitting all over their reputation and alienating a lot of people. Talk about "starting off on the wrong foot"... and for what? A design that is border-line trivial. It would seem that their best option for getting the situation under control is to release their own version of the toolkit. A version that is sufficiently different from their original background-color, border-radius and icon @font-face. If not, they are bound to repeat the clone wars of Svbtle. Edit | LayerVault actually appears to be a pretty useful product, clearly with a lot of thought sunk into it. Which makes it twice as unfortunate that they decided to pursue something like this. Google "LayerVault videos" if interested.
- salmanapk 14y agoDamn people are so dumb.. way to ruin your reputation. This is why I should start my own start-up :| Oh and did the developer of Flat UI file a counter takedown notice? Edit: Sorry if I offended anyone, just posted what I thought.
- forwardslash 14y agoThey did: https://github.com/github/dmca/blob/master/2013-03-06-LayerVault-counternotice.md https://github.com/github/dmca/blob/master/2013-03-06-LayerV...
- Karunamon 14y agoSo why isn't their repo put back up? I thought the standard procedure was notice-takedown-counternotice-restore?
- papercrane 14y agoThere is a minimum waiting period after counter-notice (10 days I think.)
- SmeelBe 14y ago
- askimto 14y agoSomething can be a "rip off" and not infringe.
- zizee 14y agoMy feeling is that you should be able to imitate something without infringing on copyright, but not everyone agrees: http://www.dpreview.com/news/2012/01/25/Imitated_Image_Copyright_Case http://www.dpreview.com/news/2012/01/25/Imitated_Image_Copyr...
- krichman 14y agoOh, hey, I remember being angered by that story. That was a UK case and so hopefully it's irrelevant to the US. The US is IMO more reasonable than that with respect to parody and imitation. LayerVault should have gotten a design patent. That works pretty well regarding trivial bullshit like corner radii, so it probably covers icon similarity also.
- xcasex 14y agoBut then the question arises, is the person consciously aware of his influences or is he/she just building upon cultural memory? I mean were the DM designers at or about the moment where they released or designed their products had conscious exposure or borrowed either consciously or unconsciously using any of the imagery of LV. There's a lot of unknown unknowns in this whole mess, well to be fair in all affairs of this sort, you'd have to know what the artist and designers were actually thinking when they were going through their creative process, which you nor I cannot do. For all we know, some of these items could be their inspiration. We also don't know the reading habits or exposure to culture that they may or may not have had as young adults, or even as adults where they may have, for example, forgotten specific elements of exposure, and that's sort of one part. the other part deals strictly with derivatives (creative meaning, not legal) What I mean is that strictly speaking, the new art movement influenced the "flat ui" movement, a folded newspaper is clearly an influence for the nuon project, dribbble iconry, DM flat ui representation and the LV icon. In much the same way a set of gears are derivative of a set of.. gears, which has been represented in too many ways in art that it's lost the entire concept of originality. and Originality, due to Barthe's work on the Death of authorship, is quite moot at this point.
- donpark 14y agoI think these are the icons in question from LayerVault, DesignMode, and similar icons from Noun Project. http://imgur.com/IH1osAD http://imgur.com/IH1osAD
- pkorzeniewski 14y agoSo they have taken down the whole project just because of three similar looking icons? That's ridiculous
- moondowner 14y agoAnd the colors used are exactly the same: http://pixxel.co/feed/layervault-issues-dmca-takedown http://pixxel.co/feed/layervault-issues-dmca-takedown
- mootothemax 14y agoAnd the colors used are exactly the same Google uses the same: http://i.imgur.com/qJXJUaH.png http://i.imgur.com/qJXJUaH.png
- cientifico 14y agoI think they copy that from kuler from adobe. It is not the first time i see that colors for sure.
- pkorzeniewski 14y agoThey are very similar, but not exactly the same - you could as well say that LayerVault used Google's pallete: http://i.imgur.com/JaR2foO.png http://i.imgur.com/JaR2foO.png There is no doubt that the Flat UI was highly inspired by LayerVault, but c'mon, you can't restrict a certain style or color pallete from being used.
- moondowner 14y agoI agree on that. I mentioned the colors, becaue the parent comment said that it was only about 3 similar looking icons. The DMCA takedown request senders thought there's more to it. It's true that all these flat UI themes are really similar, so It's really interesting how this will turn out and will the Flat UI repo will be brought back.
- kbar13 14y agowoah look at what happens when you try to fork it.
- Lord_DeathMatch 14y agoyikes
- onto 14y agoWhat happens?
- micheljansen 14y agoThis happens: http://cl.ly/image/2X2c1T1X043a http://cl.ly/image/2X2c1T1X043a I was secretly hoping that it would act recursively when clicking the second "fork" button, creating a "fork bomb" of sorts, but no cigar :P
- akakey 14y agoquestion is, whom do I send a DMCA notice about a person who is slightly younger but looks like me, not even exactly like but, uh, like me.
- mproud 14y agoYou can try a lawsuit for anything, about anything. It comes down to how likely it will be held up in a court of law, and generally, it helps if a precedent already exists. As unlikely as it may sound, there have been lawsuits somewhat like what you describe. Perhaps most notorious is a tattoo artist claiming IP on Mike Tyson’s face tat visibly shown on Ed Helm’s character’s face, being used without permission. The artist sued Warner Bros. (I believe) for damages and asking to be taken down. IIRC the judge was very close to issuing an injunction against /The Hangover 2/. Not sure what ended up happening; probably settled out of court.
- mariallery 14y agoupvote for good sense of humor :-)
- pyalot2 14y agoGood luck Layervault, you might want to think about this some harder. Github search found 116 repositories: https://github.com/search?q=flat-ui&ref=commandbar https://github.com/search?q=flat-ui&ref=commandbar There are 48 forks alone of this single fork: https://github.com/iurevych/Flat-UI/network/members https://github.com/iurevych/Flat-UI/network/members The project itself shows 129 forks. You really prepared to piss off hundreds of people by sending a DMCA takedown to each and every one? Really? Do you know when to stop digging? Is the hole deep enough yet? Found some suspicious odorous dark substance? I can tell you, it's not oil.
- cientifico 14y agoAnother reason to not do business with an American company. DMCA, patent trolls... I will be really afraid if someday I launch a service in the UUSS.
- phryk 14y ago"Good faith belief" sounds totally tangible. m(
- newishuser 14y agoIf you want to speak up, don't hesitate to contact LayerVault's support ( support@layervault.com ) and let them know, respectfully, how you feel. You can also tweet your opinions @layervault. I stress respectfully. Try to be well spoken and sincere.
- xcasex 14y agoI actually did. I was told by @Allan -- the founder of LV -- that I was "trolling", "writing inflammatory blog posts", that my "entire base of argument was based on the wrong facts". All in all, a very obtuse strawman argument, so being well spoken, sincere in many ways, will only lead to that sort of reaction from LV.
- martinced 14y agoI disagree with this. When you have an issue with a company, that company is going to try to use all the little power it has to turn the issue in its favor. If you contact them, you're giving them power (the power not to answer your emails, the power to reply privately in a harsh way, etc.). So go public. On a medium which the company doesn't control. And then they're not in control anymore. It's exactly the same with SO: everytime someone comes up with a very valid criticism about SO there are SO officials (or high-rep users) saying "Put this on meta". But no, that's precisely the point: do certainly not put it on meta because once it's on meta it's the same little clique who's in control. My opinion is that something like this reaching several times the front page of HN is the best way to make people aware of the problem (including the people at the company/ies concerned).
- xcasex 14y agoThis all relates to trade dress, not copyright per se. there's also the question of originality i.e: Two men are wearing suits. Both suits originate in previous suits. The similarities that they therefore share would be those attributes of the suit that is not encompassed by previous works. So therefore, even though the two suits the two men may be wearing appear virtually identical, they are indeed not and do not share any substantial similarities to one another. it's trés bothersome when designers behave like this when they're themselves just un/consciously influenced by previous artmovements and designers (florian freundt(2003), matias duarte spring to mind).
- Nyarlah 14y agoI hope that won't set a precedent on Github and we won't start seeing abusive and/or automated dmca's on repositories all around because "similar images were matched", youtube-style.
- kyro 14y agoSo, both sides have pretty much spoken, and what irks me the most is that the LayerVault guys haven't provided any concrete evidence to support their claims; they've posted vague responses and joked about DMCA'ing their friends on Twitter. There's also the question of why they would even pursue something like this. A simple Risks/Benefits analysis would've surely led most people not to issue a DMCA over a few icons they felt were stolen. It's hard not to lose a little respect fo the LayerVault guys, even if the icons in question were direct copies. I get you're protective of your art, but this doesn't really make sense from a business standpoint, and their response has been less than convincing. It's really disappointing.
- FooBarWidget 14y agoYou can lose your rights if you don't protect them. Given this, businesses pretty much have to protect their work, or they'll run into bigger problems later.
- ahupp 14y agoThat only applies to trademark, not copyright.
- mortenjorck 14y agoIf you'll indulge a little contextual Show HN, I made a single-page site that lays out the differences between the three major IP law domains: http://iplaws.info http://iplaws.info
- Smudge 14y agoSorry, but your site uses a gears icon: http://iplaws.info/img/mechanical.png http://iplaws.info/img/mechanical.png Clearly this infringes on LayerVault's copyright.
- xcasex 14y agoHello. The way that works, you have to infer the existence of A for the existence of B and the existence of B for the existence of A. Direct copies only work as an argument if the item is an Original, as in the idea of a thing wholly onto itself without an external influence of any sort. you might argue that it's derived as in Originated from, borrowed from, a sourced to, an antecedent of, an allusion towards. I could continue. sort of like how Star Wars Episode II and Star Wars Episode I are derived from Star Wars Episode IV. :)
- rplnt 14y agoSo it seems that you have to provide exactly zero proof and your word (in a good faith) is enough to take a repository down. There is no way to verify anything and in order to stay safe they (github in this case) have to take the content down. Now imagine I file a takedown notice for every aspiring project posted here on HN that is hosted on github. They take a pretty good hit from it I'd assume, to be silenced on the launch. Of course I open myself to litigation with false takedown request... but what do I care? I'm not a citizen of United States and I don't really care what laws are there. So what now? How can this work?
- rrouse 14y agoHonestly, I have never seen or heard of anyone actually being sued for a false takedown notice. They happen all the time though.
- tripzilch 14y agoIt means that hosting public data in a US-based cloud means opening up yourself to a single point of failure! I'm not entirely sure whether you can submit a DMCA takedown request if you're not a citizen of the USA. For once, you need to provide US-based contact info. However, I am not sure if the service provider needs to check whether this contact info is correct before takedown. So it seems that any public-facing data on any US-based server can be made to disappear for at least 10-14 days. But just because a country has crappy laws doesn't mean you should use those laws against them! ;)
- r00fus 14y ago> I'm not entirely sure whether you can submit a DMCA takedown request if you're not a citizen of the USA. For once, you need to provide US-based contact info. So you can't just have an agent do the request on your behalf?
- cbs 14y agoSo what now? How can this work? It doesn't. Our most recent copyright overhaul (which this is a feature of) currently works close-enough to OK to be tolerable to those who would otherwise fix it.
- dakimov 14y agoWhat was the subject of the copyright claims? Flatness?
- gklitt 14y agoFunny that the mods haven't fixed the typo in this title in the 4 hours since it was posted, they must be too busy messing up other titles by removing useful context and deleting swear words...
- Udo 14y agoSo I think the Noun Project should just send a takedown notice to LayerVault. Since the perjury clause only pertains to contact info and whether they can represent the project itself, that would have the same consequences for "accidentally" getting the actual allegation wrong (=none), right?
- mnutt 14y agoNo, in a DMCA notice you state under penalty of perjury that you are the rights holder for the content you want removed, not your own content.
- Udo 14y agoSure, but if LV can argue it owns the rights to a similar-looking "ripoff", then another icon project can claim likewise in respect to them. Got a newspaper icon, or a stylized human emoting something? That's enough, apparently.
- phsr 14y agoYou can do that, but you perjure yourself in the process, and won't take it down permanently. I could take down Rails by filing a bogus DCMA, but I'd have a lawsuit on my hands if Rails decided to pursue it
- mnutt 14y agoI'm not a lawyer, but it seems that the consensus here is that LV isn't allowed to assert that they own the rights, and therefore may be perjuring themselves.
- LogicX 14y agoFor those upset with LayerVault's behavior, but are intrigued by their product offering, I just found http://pixelapse.com http://pixelapse.com which appears to be the closest competitor: http://www.quora.com/Design/How-do-LayerVault-and-Pixelapse-compare http://www.quora.com/Design/How-do-LayerVault-and-Pixelapse-...
- mnicole 14y agoThose that have used both are bigger fans of Pixelapse because it doesn't automatically save a "version" every time you save the file in Photoshop. Their payment tiers are also much more consumer-friendly: https://www.pixelapse.com/pricing https://www.pixelapse.com/pricing vs. https://layervault.com/pricing https://layervault.com/pricing
- ThomPete 14y agoThere is an unfortunate tendency in the creative field (design, music etc) to think of ones ideas as unique and that others are stealing them. I never understood why people don't just embrace the idea of imitation being the biggest form of flattery. So you are doing something right, great continue with that. LayerVault lost me as a customer today.
- loudin 14y agoDid LayerVault try to contact Flat UI to discuss their grievances before sending a DMCA Takedown? If so, what was the result of that conversation. If not, why didn't LayerVault pursue that path before posting this to Github? We in tech need to be good to each other because other corporate interests and patent trolls won't be. We should always give each other the benefit of the doubt and try to resolve issues without menacing legal language and the threat of lawyers. We need to show we can thrive without this garbage. Otherwise, it will only embolden our enemies and cause this type of confrontation to happen more frequently in the future - to everyone's detriment.
- notatoad 14y agoLayervault emailed the flat UI creator to ask him to take it down, flat UI refused because they didn't believe their work was infringing. Layervault kept pestering the guy, and eventually he gave up and removed a couple of the icons. And then layervault took this cooperation to be an admission of guilt and sent a DMCA takedown notice.
- mratzloff 14y agoAnd this is the problem with cooperation. There is no "we in tech" between companies; it's a liability.
- Finster 14y agoQuick! Someone patent using the three bars as a link to a dropdown menu. Then, you can DMCA takedown ALL THE UI KITS!
- JungleGymSam 14y agoWon't someone correct the title?