This whole episode has underlined a few major differences among developers and (current) designers. Developers are more open, contribute code and discuss about bettering each other.
While Designers seem secretive, ego-filled and seeking pointless exclusivity.
The distinction I think I've seen is that designers are often more inclined to assert ownership of an abstract idea, whereas developers tend to assert ownership of the concrete and often revile the notion of owning ideas.
I say this because (in general), whilst developers would not violate a license or steal code, they would often happily implement the same idea someone else had from scratch without any qualms. You can see this in how the notion of patents are despised in software far more than other industries.
Perhaps for developers, ideas are easy and implementations are hard, whilst for designers the reverse is true.
In any case, copyright is about the concrete. You can't - or at least shouldn't be able to - use the DMCA to prevent people expanding on your ideas or being inspired them. Unless an artifact has been copied, there is no copyright violation.
This seems counter-intuitive to some designers, but at the same time seems obvious to developers.
In this particular case, there is no copying and no copyright violation. That is obvious. There is also as much evidence that FlatUI was inspired by LayerVault's work, as there is that LayerVault was inspired by other work already created.
The DMCA takedown was wrong legally, and strategically, but despite the reaction LayerVault don't seem to realise this. Sadly for them their business will probably suffer for it, and they've probably made FlatUI a lot more popular.
> they would often happily implement the same idea someone else had from scratch without any qualms
There is only one MD5. There is only one preorder traversal of a binary tree. Creativity is essential, but unless you do those kinds of things the same way as everyone else, you're doing them wrong and will get the wrong results.
>There is only one MD5. >you're doing them wrong and will get the wrong results.
I don't guess you're a developer or coder.
Being that the speed of MD5 has increased greatly on the same hardware over the years has shown there are many, if not infinite ways of finding an md5sum. Essentially code is math and number are infinite. You could calculate a number with multiplication and call it NumberTwizzle(TM), I could then look at your formula and write a new formula with bit shifts that runs twice and outputs the exact same answer. I could not call it NumberTwizzle though.
>Creativity is essential, but unless you do those kinds of things the same way as everyone else,
This partial sentence, I don't even. Creativity is looking at what other people are doing and coming up with a 'better', 'cheaper', or 'faster' (maybe all) solution to an existing problem. doing 'things' the same way as everyone else is the exact opposite of creativity.
I think you've missed the point. There are dozens different of implementations of each.
As far as I know, nobody got DMCAed by the inventors of either for writing one.
Yet here, we have designers trying to claim ownership of a particular set of colours and a vague notion of style. Both of which were around before their "implementation" was.
I think that's too broad of a generalization. I happen to walk the line between designer and developer and I know a lot of my fellow designers are very open about their process and work. Designers often share their tools and techniques openly. See the multitude of CSS frameworks, free fonts, PSDs, etc. I think the notion that they're more secretive less open comes from these cases where a designer does make a stink about "theft", "copying", or whatever the terms they use may be. The thing about that is, well, first design is a very personal thing. Yes, there are rules and best practices, tools, and techniques that apply universally but at the same time good design also carries with it a piece of the designer. We take our designs personally. It's very hard to release an open source piece of design work because you need to make it in such a way that it can be effectively customized or used in such a way that the larger context makes it a unique work unless of course it's a rare case of the designer not caring if everyone in the world uses the design verbatim (see: Wordpress themes).
I know for me, personally, I've put many design projects on GitHub - from the mockups to assets to the code to put a site together - knowing there's a chance someone will use it verbatim but hoping it gets used as a jumping off point or customized to make it someone else's.
With design, you can see when someone has ripped you off very obviously most of the time. You can't own design elements of course but its a very subjective thing that you just know when you see it. Developers and designers also think very differently in some areas. With developers everything is logical and black and white. With designers, much of their work is vague, fluid, and incredibly subjective. Emotion plays a role in the success of design often times whereas a developer's code will be just as useful and functional no matter how anyone feels about it. As a developer, when I open source something, I know that I can't own the concept of a loop or a database query or whatever. What makes my code unique is the way in which I solve my problem and how it solves a problem that other code has not solved. I'd be happy if someone forked my code, made it better, and started a new project from it that became popular. However I'd be upset if someone took my design, added on to it, and passed it off as their own. The difference? On the surface there shouldn't be one. But beyond the surface it's all about the piece of yourself you put into design work.
Hopefully this makes sense and doesn't just sound like rambling. I'm sure I may need to clarify a few things I said so please ask if I said something vague.
I'm a designer/developer too, and this has been a long-time observation of mine. While there is openness in design (and a whole sub-culture which is dedicated to making life easier), there isn't much among Designers (afaik).
I've been inspired by many and have inspired a few designs as well, but rather than being bitter about it, I follow the thought process of my primal developer instinct - Did they make it better or worse? If they did make it better, what did they do differently, What can I learn from them, etc.
While I do get pissed off about blatant copying, I can't condone what LayerVault did in this instance - Block DesignModo's original designs which were allegedly[1] inspired by LayerVaults icons.
[1] - Various other entities (The Noun Project, Facebook, etc) have had similar icons (Settings Cog, Man Speech bubble, Newsfeed icon) a lot earlier than LV.
I think what LayerVault has done is awful too! I wasn't trying to defend them at all. I just didn't agree with the idea that designers are less open than developers. Flat-UI and LayerVault may be riding a trend but neither one can claim ownership of anything except the exact assets they've created. There might be a fine line where a color scheme is used in such a way where it can be construed as plagiarism or maybe the icons were recreated from scratch to look exactly like LayerVault's but still preserving plausible deniability and those cases I might be able to get behind Layervault being upset. I liken it to Queen suing Vanilla Ice for using their riff in 'Ice Ice Baby' or how that one One Direction song sounds almost exactly like the Clash song whose name escapes me right now. In those cases it's just plain obvious the artist was trying to sample someone else's music but changed the riff just enough to be able to call it their own. And that brings me to the subjective part. The developer in me hates that there's not an exact answer to the question "When does inspiration become plagiarism" but that's life.
The design world is heavily tied to fashion, trends and business, hence your idea of designers as secretive ego-guzzlers. The design world is open enough in certain areas, once you find them, on the surface from far away I understand why you have that image of the design world. Dribble and Forrst are circle-jerking hell holes. Critical discussion on design doesn't happen very well online, because, everyone thinks they're a designer. California University being a recent example. Design has a shit brand online unless you know where to look.
Bloody lol at your Dieter Rams, Jonathan Ive quip. They were famous before people asked them for their design values to big-up in the media.
But you raise a good point, the design world is very different to the developer world and hacker values could very well be valuable if implemented in the design world, just not sure how one would go about such things.
I think that this is part of a bigger problem; a lot of people find design to be "easy" in that it's subjective - Client A doesn't like your work but Client B does. Can't even get a job in the field? No worries, people flock to 99Designs and Fiverr for cheap, tacky work that validates the crummy designer. Working for someone with no morals? They'll show you some styles they like and tell you they want it "exactly" like that, and if you want a paycheck, you'll do it and maybe you'll learn something about the technique that you can translate into more original works. Some people just honestly don't think they'll ever be caught or that they have a right to be "heavily-inspired" because "you don't own that".
http://youthoughtwewouldntnotice.com/blog3/ has been around for awhile, but now with Pinterest, Dribbble and other resources, it's becoming a lot more common to find the people who are making it difficult for designers to feel like they can truly stand out.
Outside of flat copying/pasting code, it takes a little more to get it to be functional. By nature, lots of developers are working in teams where collaboration/pair programming is promoted to begin with. You work on projects where it is essential to team up to figure out what's going on and what could make it better. In order to ensure the project continues to move forward and work, there needs to be a method to the madness that everyone understands. At the agencies I've worked at, while everyone was a designer, we all had our specialties and we didn't really work together much outside of talking about general branding guidelines/techniques, etc.
In design, all it takes is having the same software to mimic something. So when someone that is actually doing honest-to-goodness original, clever stuff gets jacked by the hacks-at-large, it is easy to get defensive and want to lock it down, particularly when you make your livelihood getting clients that like your style and it is suddenly watered down by clones and you're not getting paid to do what you made popular anymore. On Dribbble, I've seen it go so far down the hole that people have both claimed the original artist was the hack or said "Really reminds me of [hack]'s work.." on someone's copy of a copy.
I think the problem is people confuse design and aesthetics a lot. Design is inherently meant to be universal, and obviously if something is really well designed it does make the product compelling and attractive.
Design cannot be copied, while aesthetics can.
One can copy a single design - say an icon for example, but they cannot copy the original designer's workflow and thought-process in coming up with the final design, it is and always will be unique to each individual. A copy-cat can't come up with an entire icon-set after copying a single icon, whereas the original designer can. And I seriously doubt good designers not getting work due to scummy photocopiers grabbing up jobs.
In regards to 99Designs & Fiverr:
The only requirement of a client on there is that it needs to look good. And it's easy to make something look good, but does that work with their overall product? Does the product even have a design language of its own?
And usually the clients are low-budget shops which even if they wanted to can't afford a decent designer. The same problem exists for developers as well - Do we see top developers crying foul about their code being re-used?
I totally agree with you re: design vs. aesthetics (even went on a tangent about it some weeks ago).
> And I seriously doubt good designers not getting work due to scummy photocopiers grabbing up jobs.
Knowing some very well-known designers, I can assure you that they are losing work. Big companies reach out to these artists about their style and how much it would cost, and after not hearing anything for a few months, these companies magically show up with a new ad campaign or line of t-shirts that looks all-too-familiar. I know a good illustrator that works for a company where he is asked to copy works created by his own friends in the industry. Not all of them are bad at what they do, which is why they are hired instead. It's slimy work, but if you're good at it and can churn them out, it makes for easy income until you can break out on your own. I would wager that a lot of designers begin their careers this way. Some eventually make their way out of it to stand on their own two feet while others get comfortable with the fact that they are essentially paid to plagiarize based on what's hot right now.
> Do we see top developers crying foul about their code being re-used?
This is irrelevant, but when we're talking about front-end stuff, yes. We just saw a witch hunt here the other week. But as far as the rest it's not really comparable; developers are being paid to come up with solutions that work within a set of rules we all have to adhere to given the technologies available. Designers are being paid to come up with solutions that are intentionally unique. Code is on the web as-is, and outside of not giving credit where credit should be due, there's not really much you can do about someone copying a few lines that are part of languages that can only be written effectively so many different ways. With visuals, there really are no rules; how I created my illustration may have been an entirely different way than someone who copied it did, but it doesn't matter because the end product is the same. As we progress into using SVGs for artwork instead of images, it'll be interesting to see how these worlds collide and if we begin diffing code on a large scale to find copycats rather than use tools like TinEye.
While this means that remixing pieces will be easier and I hope that's the direction we go (and embrace), it still means the originals are a simple copy and paste away from being stolen in their full vector glory. Can't wait!
While there are cases (like you mentioned), it's also the designer's part to hustle a bit. If one has the skills and the know-how, they can be unstoppable if they want to.
Tangential to your example: I knew an illustrator who used to sketch animals in a cartoon-style, but she kept at it and eventually got hired by Rovio. But she didn't get the role just for her skills, she got it because she hustled - made an Angry Birds' fan-video and made a physical copy of it and mailed it to Rovio.
Talent alone won't help in succeeding, only persistence will. Heck, talent can be acquired, persistence on the other hand, mostly isn't.
Also, original art/design will always get credit if it is promoted properly.
This has nothing to do with the hustle; this is post-hustle - that's why these companies are even reaching out to the artists directly. The ones that know exactly who they're trying to copy are the worst offenders.
> Also, original art/design will always get credit if it is promoted properly.
This is simply not true, which is why Twitter is often a platform used for calling people out.
Yep, designers sell their designs whereas developers sell their expertise. It's this way because that's what the market wants right now. When companies start to hire designers because their good and not because their portfolio contains stuff they've never seen before, designers will become more open.
Pretty much true. FlatUI is great, but as a designer, you will want to build something more unique and while FlatUI could be a good start, it will not be the end product.
For a developer, fast prototyping and building normally means that one simply utilise the top layer element from repo like this(FlatUI) and focus more on the underlying code.
We developers get the credit when someone is using our code. The open source libraries usually require keeping the copyright notice at least in the source file. Anyone looking at the code will know who wrote it. Putting myself in the shoes of the Layervault people, I can understand that it's very hard to accept that someone is presenting as his own work something that it took me years to arrive to via iteration. Remember also the rage of Steve Jobs when he called Android a rip-off and of Dustin Curtis when people started copying the Svbtle designs. In all cases, I think the copyright law is not on their side, and perhaps not even any ethic law, but I can understand why they are pissed.
As a developer, I get to _chose_ how someone uses my code. I can release my code, and attach one of any number of licenses, which give another developer _permission_ to use my code, while laying out restrictions.
If that license is violated, there is a legal recourse for me (and one which is used quite often to enforce things like the GPL, etc.)
Within the development community, this is the accepted protocol for how you "borrow" code from another developer. Violating this protocol is pretty much universally reviled.
But the same universal revulsion doesn't exist for design.
Unless you literally copy and paste someone's actual file.
And I think that's where the disconnect comes from.
In development, the hard work is in the typing, not the idea, really. If I see an animation effect I like, or a feature from a competitor's product, there's still a massive effort I have to undertake to recreate it. The "work" in development is in the work itself, not in the idea.
Obviously there are cases where this isn't true. Novel design patterns, component compositions, etc. exist. But I'm going for an 80/20 discussion here.
In design, the work itself is generally secondary to all the upfront effort work of the "idea". A designer will throw away a dozen, if not more, failed attempts at an idea. Minor things like color, shape, typeface, will be iterated on over and over again, until something takes form that looks "correct". Once they've reached that climax though, the actually complexity of the end product might be minimal.
Recreating all of that designer's choices is beyond simple, so long as you have the software. Even if you don't literally trace their image, all of the "work" has been done for you.
Usually the developers creating open source libraries benefit from the popularity of their projects. The more people using their code, the more well known they are. If nothing else, they feel proud when their software is downloaded N thousands times. In this case, Layervault can expect hundreds of sites to show up around the web looking just like their own.
Regarding the comment in the HTML, you are right, it won't make them feel better, because the design really is meant to look at. It doesn't matter how clever the source code is. That's the disadvantage the designers have, I was just saying I can understand them.
"Any designer" is a bit of an overstatement, but your point about being open is true.
Designers at the caliber you speak of rely on, and can articulate, their (timeless) fundamental principles more than your average designer, who heavily relies on their moment in time where their work is relevant before fading into obscurity.
That does seem anecdotally true in my experience. For example, I've heard an experienced designer argue that all the patent lawsuits between Apple/Google, Apple/Samsung, etc. are good for the industry and the design discipline.
If what you were saying were true, there would be no tutorials on how to use Photoshop, Illustrator, etc. There would be no tutorials on how to create specific effects in the above. There would be no Noun Project. There would be no schools for Graphic Design. There would be no open source icon sets, or free typefaces.
Interesting point of view.
Although a bit dramatic I do think the two think differently about their work.
To the point, we actually started a repo for Sketch.app Templates, and the Sketch team is working on making their files non binaries so that we can better merge.
I think it's more about that design is personal, identifying (which also brings up emotions easily) and that the problem here is about the rights for those personal things. Since design is actually _more_ open, visible and made for people, inherently there isn't any way to hide or obscure it (like you can do in some level with code or technology). It's about having rights or giving permission. You share the code or design you want to share, but should have a right not to do it as well.
You design something for your loved one, and see it end up as campaign for a multimillion dollar business. You design your product with love, just with the right and personal style and see it to end up as commodity. Those things feel like worst kind of abuse if you didn't expect or want them to happen. There is bit similar kind of outrage when corporations use open source code and don't share it back.
Design and brands are also identifying and they build trust and value, so copying design is bit like stealing your identity, name or face. If someone somehow uses your code without your permission, almost no-one will notice that it's _your code_ running in the backend.
And this is not the same discussion as pirating music or movies, those are products made to consume, and their value doesn't decrease when people use it more. But for example using Bootstrap default design doesn't really bring up trust or anything positive anymore since some many people are using it, so usage decreases the value of a specific design.
As a final note, fashion and design of course runs on getting inspired by other people's work and that's how it should be be. However even something isn't illegal, it doesn't mean it's ethical or nice.
(You may also notice that both Rams and Ive talk about their designs or process post-mortem, so they can choose the parts and the way they want to talk about it.)
One related example is the sculpture in downtown Portland, Oregon, called Portlandia. The City owns the sculpture, but the artist owns the rights to any images of it, and he does not allow pictures to be taken and reproduced. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portlandia_(statue)
Regarding Jony Ive, I disagree that he has been very open about his work and process. I think he rightly has become a legend, but it has happened without him seeking the spotlight. The spotlight has found him, instead.
Personally I think this takedown notice is questionable to say the least (it looks to be a case of inspiration rather than blatant copying), but here is my devil's advocate opinion on design:
When you say that designers seek "pointless exclusivity", it's a lot like saying that hackers spend their time doing "pointless tweaking". Exclusivity is the currency of design. When you design something, and ten million people already have crappy variations of the same design, your design has lost all of that currency.
It's funny that you actually say that "Exclusivity is the currency of design", while living in a well designed non-inclusive world (Well designed Signs, Roads, Cars, Mobile devices, etc).
Good Design will and always strives to be universal. It's funny that the recent Flat-design trend was triggered by Microsoft's Metro UI, which is inspired by Modern Cities' signage (universal design).
Also, isn't the point of icons to be iconic? How can one seek exclusivity over an icon, the Settings Cog, which is almost universally used.
LayerVault and the people behind it jumped at this for cheap publicity and to assert themselves over a new and upcoming design firm.
It's always a combination of universality and exclusivity. The latter creates a "gradient" which causes a particular design to spread. Watch the documentary "Helvetica". At it's peak in the 1960s, Helvetica had high-end "international" aura and small brands everywhere were scrambling to redesign their signage to what they perceived was a new customer-friendly yet high-end image (probably best visualized as a smiling and good-looking Swiss airline flight attendant with a noticeable accent).
> it's a lot like saying that hackers spend their time doing "pointless tweaking"
I'm a hacker and I think most hackers (including myself) often spend too much time pointlessly tweaking things.
Your emacs shortcuts are okay. Promise! Just get to work.
Your linux kernel is fine. Yes all the network drivers are configured well enough. Yes samba shares are working, yes rsyinc is copying stuff around. Just get to work.
Yes, X is perfectly configured and compiz is doing its thing. Yes it is! Just get to work.
I promise your IDE has the perfect amount of widgets in just the right place! Start coding.
Exclusivity is the currency of the mainstream western world. Graphic Design (currently and in the past) is the vehicle through which this desire for exclusivity is encapsulated and pushed to the masses. The old graphic design title of Commercial Artist rings true here. Your point on originality is lost on me also, doesn't the startup world of all places say that even if people have done an idea, that you can add value in other areas?
Why not just respond to the initial dcma rather than playing a game of cat and mouse. No one is going to use it while it has dubious copyright status anyway.
Github per the DMCA needs to wait 10 days before reenabling it.
"[...] replaces the removed material and ceases disabling access to it not less than 10, nor more than 14,
business days following receipt of the counter notice, unless its designated agent first receives notice from the person who submitted the notification under subsection (c)(1)(C) that such person has filed an action seeking a court order to restrain the subscriber from engaging in infringing activity relating to the material on the service provider’s system or network."
Is there a (non-malevolent) reason for this clause? It seems to be something put in to deliberately slow down proceedings and apply a penalty to the accused regardless of what happens.
I'd be interested to know about the distinction between US and UK copyright here.
In the UK, copyright will only vest in something if it is an "original work"[1]. Taking LayerVault's claim, there are only so many ways one can represent a "settings" option and the use of gear symbols is so common as to mean that no copyright attaches simply because it is not original. How much skill and effort was invested in thinking about what symbols to use?
I expected a fork, but not from the author. I don't know that this is a good idea since it could cause a termination of his account. I think that is at github's discretion.
I'd never heard of LayerVault before, but based on what I've seen of the "infringing" design which amounts to 3 similar (but different) icons, they are clearly wrong to issue the DMCA. This is what I'll remember about LayerVault. Not all press is good actually.
I'm glad that @iurevych is filing a counter notice, but what is too bad, is that links from press like Smashing Magazine and CSS Tricks are not working. This will hurt FlatUI.
I really hope that LayerVault drops it at this point, but if they pursue a lawsuit, I would like to see it fought.
The original was on DesignModo's Github account, but was taken down due to an unjustified DMCA takedown request from LayerVault. Github's DMCA policies prevent that from being made available again within 10 days.
This version is hosted on iurevych's (the original creator of Flat UI) Github account.
So, to see an example, I have to build it and deploy an application? I don't understand this tendency of posting links to a github page that presents no screenshots or examples.
Sort of. It was taken down because LayerVault filed a DMCA notice, but you don't have to prove anything to file a DMCA notice (and yes, this is a broken system).
Well, I agree - I once filed a DMCA notice, but in that situation, the person actually copied some of my icons, instead of being deeply inspired. While I do agree there is a difference, there is a fine line - I do agree however that in this case, that the majority could easily be fixed. Even though it's not exactly a 1 on 1 copy, it's too inspired from the examples I saw, mainly being the design news icon.
IANAL, but I don't think that "too inspired" is really the sort of thing that is covered by the DMCA, and in any case, you can't file a notice to take down the whole project just because you think three icons are derived from your work.
As for the newspaper icon, it has already been pointed out that LayerVault's version is far more similar to this icon from The Noun Project (http://thenounproject.com/noun/newspaper/) than it is to the Flat UI version.
The other claims I've seen are that the gears icon (not even close), the "talking head" (not even close), and the color palette (not something you can copyright).
More importantly, this fork doesn't seem to contain any of those disputed icons, so I don't think there's anything improper here.
I did consider that they might have bought a license from TNP, but if they had, that would not grant them exclusive rights to the icon.
Let's suppose they had bought such a license, and let's call the shared similarity between the LV icon and the FUI icon "X". Let's also suppose that X is copyrightable. The problem is that X is also shared by the TNP icon. So LV wouldn't have ownership of X, and wouldn't have any right to file a DMCA notice based on it.
From the images we've seen all side by side this seems to be a rip of someone else's work.
Nicking people stuff isn't what Hacker News is about. I've had articles I've sent hours writing and issued DMCA takedown notices, just as the same as if someone stole my code.
To take down a site using your stuff, you use a DMCA takedown notice.
- That doesn't mean you're abusing the DMCA
- That doesn't mean that the party that nicked your stuff is in the right.
UPDATE: to those discussing individual works, the issue is that the icons are not individually similar but rather that the whole set copies design elements from the other.
If FlatUI has picked more sources to be inspired from, they'd be in a better position.
From the images we've seen side by side, it is not a copy of someone else's work. The artwork is not identical, and is not similar enough that you have to say "they just took a copy of the artwork and altered it a little bit." That's the standard that needs to be met for the DMCA -- not "he made icons that are similar to mine," but "he downloaded my icons and used them as his own."
>From the images we've seen all side by side this seems to be a rip of someone else's work.
C'om on man, We've all seen the images side by side and they are definitely not ripped off. Unless you've got a eye sight problem you should be able to see the differences.
If I drew a bracelet with round beads and you drew a bracelet with round beads does that mean I copied it from you? Of course not, If you look at the images you can see they're defiantly not ripped.
The current trend in web design is these ever-simpler icon designs. I can imagine there's only so many ways you can represent common icons using simple geometric shapes and (the infamous) rounded corners. LayerVault may feel they have a case, but I'm sure there's 5 other icon sets out there that could claim LayerVault is infringing on them.
The simpler and less colorful we make icons, the more we'll relalize we'd made the same icons 25 years ago with windows 3.1. LV may feel like they have a case, but only because they've put shudders on and are only looking at their own work and not the entire industry they are built upon.
Your assuming someone nicked your stuff. With millions of sites out there are a lot of layouts, icons, and whatnot that look similar that are not in fact copy's. Worse designers are rarely the type of people that think of the (millions) ^ 2 possibilities.
Honestly, unless your talking about a large file with a lot of entropy your probably in the wrong sending a DMCA take-down request.
You misunderstand, many people assume when looking at rare events you need to consider the direct odds but forget about the false positive rate. Which is really more the preview of drug trials than design schools.
Of course, if someone copy pasted your writing, you're entitled to protection. However, that is certainly not the case here. This is just about similar icons(some of which actually resemble other works) and colors.
While Designers seem secretive, ego-filled and seeking pointless exclusivity.
Eg: Developers: HackerNews / Github, etc Designers: DesignerNews / Dribble, Forrst, etc.
Any designer that has been open about his work and process has become a legend - Dieter Rams, Johnathan Ive, etc.