
Dear Al-Jazeera: thank you for doing the right thing - signa11
https://www.scrollytelling.io/al-jazeera-all-good.html
======
echelon
This seems way more embarrassing to storytelling.io. The only take aways I
have are how easy it is to switch to a free, open source alternative, and how
loudly and publicly storytelling will complain about you. They should have
handled this matter in private instead of blogging about it.

~~~
AndyNemmity
Absolutely. They handled it like they took joy in catching someone out
publicly, and really tried to rub their nose in it.

The end result is, I now know there is an open source alternative, and if the
need were to arise would use it.

~~~
danso
This felt like a completely pyrrhic victory. Not only did they expose how
unnecessary their own product was, but they exposed how unprofessional of a
shop they were by leveling accusations over Twitter [0].

I'll take scrollytelling at their word that they were doing this to take a
stand for software copyright. Sure, I can respect that. But if you're fighting
for a world where SaaS/PaaS developers are properly paid and valued, the most
convincing victories are when developers (particularly ones that depend on
open-source) and such platforms attract loyal, deep-pocketed clients who show
everyone else that such a business can be viable.

This isn't like the case when The Oatmeal burned the HuffPo [1] for
hotlinking. The Oatmeal presumably doesn't survive by syndicating to places
like Huffpo. But clients who are somewhat unskilled at web production/hosting
are the sole source of potential customers for ScrollyTelling, and
ScrollyTelling demonstrated that it would rather burn them than mediate
technical fuckups.

[0]
[https://twitter.com/Scrollytellio/status/769971459263459328](https://twitter.com/Scrollytellio/status/769971459263459328)

[1] [https://www.theguardian.com/media/2015/oct/28/cartoonist-
the...](https://www.theguardian.com/media/2015/oct/28/cartoonist-the-oatmeal-
trolls-huffpo-over-images-published-sans-permission)

edit: fixed typo in Oatmeal/Huffpo

~~~
pyre
> ScrollyTelling demonstrated that it would rather burn them than mediate
> technical fuckups.

From what I understand, they tried contacting them directly, but were given
lots of promised callbacks / actions that never materialized. Is your opinion
that the "professional" way to handle that just to ignore it and move on?

~~~
danso
I asked them on Twitter what the timeline was for the DMCA and they never
replied. Their original post is vague on the timeline of when they attempted
friendly contact and to whom:

[https://twitter.com/dancow/status/777702314475819009](https://twitter.com/dancow/status/777702314475819009)

The earliest public Tweet I see about the issue is this, on Aug. 28, just a
few weeks ago:

[https://twitter.com/Scrollytellio/status/769971299317911552](https://twitter.com/Scrollytellio/status/769971299317911552)

So it looks like they've been emailing them at least before Aug. 28. But I
disagree with the idea that there's nothing in between polite private emailing
and then hostile subtweeting. Did Scrollytelling try the kind of gentle public
shaming where they direct mention a few AJ editors about the matter? I don't
see it.

Don't get me wrong, no matter what their intentions, AJ was in the wrong to
host copyrighted frontend code, and in an ideal world, the wronged party
shouldn't have to Google for Twitter contacts to get them to comply. But we
don't live in an ideal world of instant feedback and retribution.
Scrollytelling has the right, of course, to blow it up as they did. I'm just
pointing out that it was not just limited to surrender vs. going nuclear on
the blogosphere. And in the media world, media people are very quick to act on
Twitter, even when they don't respond to emails. I once complained on Twitter
about WSJ's paywall and immediately got a response from the executive editor
of the WSJ. It ended up with him blocking me for probably being snarky, but
the point is that media people up the chain can be reachable without Herculean
effort.

And if you are a company whose customer base is completely reliant on media
clients, it seems prudent to go for the constructive public outreach way
rather than jumping right into "FUCK YOU PAY ME" discourse, especially when it
seems that incompetence and not malice is the cause.

~~~
pm90
This is a good summary. Their market is not very big and they really need to
face what the market realities are, however unfair they may be. Which means
acting in a constructive way. Snark is very much the last thing that comes to
mind when I see "professionalism".

------
spotman
With all the kerfuffle, I would not have imagined it would be so easy to
replace.

So, after poking around, it looks like pageflow is the actual creators of this
stuff, and scrollytelling, has built a business around supporting it and
hosting it?

While concurrently, it appears pageflow can also be paid to support and host
their own product?

Weirdly, pageflow appears cheaper too!

Am I missing something? Would this be equivalent of someone opening up a
competitor to wordpress.com, powered by wordpress?

~~~
octaveguin
There was quite a common scam a while ago about selling open office.

It actually was completely legal because they were (in the fine print) selling
support - the software was free, of course.

A lot of bigger companies sell support for OSS products they don't build. This
can be legitimate. It just depends on how forthright you are with who built
what.

~~~
h1d
You sound like selling an open source software someone else made is
inappropriate. Apparently nothing is wrong with that as long as the license is
applied.

~~~
Dylan16807
It is inappropriate to imply that the value you provide is both development
and support, when you only provide support.

Especially in a consumer context, where support is usually a small fraction of
the cost.

------
shortformblog
They downplay it, but this situation was exactly what I said it was the other
day: AJ syndicated a piece from another outlet with whom they had an
agreement, and they understandably thought that the layout was part of the
deal.

Ultimately, it sounds like someone screwed up and used a tool they shouldn't
have to build the layout. (That tool being Scrollytelling.)

The lesson here, apparently, is that if you're syndicating content, open-
source tools are best.

~~~
frankydp
Yeah this outcome should ensure that no outlet will publish with the
proprietary platform again, and that there are controls in place to ensure
that it is not available for that to happen.

The "guilty" party in this scenario also seems to be EJC for not properly
licensing the original content.

Edit: It also seem very reasonable to think that AJ thought scrollytelling was
simply a host of the opensource resource, and removed all links backs except
the CDN file that was obfuscated.

~~~
frankydp
After looking at scrollytelling.io, I am now even more confused about their
claim. Their pricing model is based on hosting, with bandwidth and upload
limits. Along side that monthly hosting service they offer a one off service
for "in-house production" of a story. So. Their model is to collect the
production fee for a one off or let the user "produce" the story and profit
from the volume savings on hosting.

I can not determine how in either model having the story that has already been
paid for hosted remotely would be not a good thing, unless there is a license
were somehow scrollytelling retains the ownership of the product they were
paid to produce.

I am not sure why they would want to bare the cost of an AJ level distributed,
if they are a hosting company. But, if they are a content creation firm maybe
they are not actually creating content for the purchaser, but allowing the
purchaser to use scrollytelling content, which the purchaser already owned?

Edit: In short I don't understand why the purchaser would not be able to
redistribute.

Anyways, I have no idea how the model works inside its industry context, and
if I am confused even with the current context provided by the OP, I can not
imagine that a journalist would not be.

~~~
danso
As far as I can see, ScrollyTelling offers as a base service, an editor for
creating content and hosting of said content. This template and editor allows
a non-web-dev to create scrolly-format multimedia stories fairly easily with
the additional convenience of online hosting.

The journalist has to come up with the content and multimedia assets
themselves, unless they hire ScrollyTelling to do it. I'm assuming that's not
the case here as most independent journalists who cover these kind of stories
are capable of collecting video/photos and writing text themselves (I mean,
that's the whole damn appeal of being such a journalist).

So this journalist "sold" the story to one outlet who already had a hosting
deal with scrollytelling. Then the journalist sent the story over to Al-
Jazeera -- I'm not sure if anything was really "sold", per se, as Al-Jazeera
has a syndication relationship with the original outlet. Either way, someone
at AJ thought this meant that the assets that the original newspaper paid for
was fair game, and then apparently decided to copy some and hotlink other
assets from the newspaper's site.

Neither the newspaper nor the journalist nor Al-Jazeera realized that the CSS
design (like the little dots used to navigate) and cloud storage was meant to
be redistributed. Sure, that's on them, and AJ and the other parties are
definitely at fault for not acting sooner. But I could easily see this as
being a case of each stakeholder thinking that it's the other parties' job to
deal with what seems like a confusing technicality. And this is a case where
the stakeholders are a freelancer, a Dutch newspaper, and a global news
network, three entities that normally have communication problems.

~~~
frankydp
I agree that ignorance of scrollytelling existence was the most likely cause
for the situation.

If you put the CDN bandwidth tester file aside.

Wouldn't a paying client of scrollytelling be able to distribute that product
(CSS included) if they wanted to? If their platform is a content
creator/editor then the purchaser should be able to redistribute, and if they
are a production shop then the same would be true. If not wouldn't it be
similar to photoshop or sublime claiming copyright on something created with
those tools, and if they are a production shop something similar to a
commercial studio claiming copyright to something they produced and then sold
to someone after they resold it.

I understand they are providing a service and a value add, but wouldn't the
output belong to the purchaser? I assume scrollytelling could have a very
onerous license that prohibits this, but it seems if their customers knew
those limitation they would probably be hesitant to purchase.

~~~
danso
I'm assuming that scrollytelling has this as part of their terms. I mean,
that's the only way to get customers to pay the €399/month subscription fee
[0], which seems to be the minimum offering, i.e. there's no plan for just
using the editor and then exporting it as flat files that can be uploaded to
any file server.

[0]
[https://www.scrollytelling.io/#pricing](https://www.scrollytelling.io/#pricing)

------
the_duke
I don't really understand the negativity towards scrolytelling in other
comments here.

They are providing a hosting service and product, based on Pageflow. Which is
mentioned right on it's homepage!

They contacted Al Jazeera directly and were brushed off (can easily happen in
a large company, doesn't imply malice).

The page would probably never have been taken down without the media coverage.
And said coverage might have informed some devs about Pageflow, but it's also
good publicity.

People often forget that one actually has to make money too. If you do that
based on an open source product without violating any licenses, and even
contribute back, why not?

They have every right to shame companies using their product without paying
for it.

~~~
hasenj
When I read their original story about AJ stealing their code, I thought they
basically custom built the entire thing.

Now I learned it was actually open source, and in my head I'm like .. lol that
must be embarrassing!

~~~
tilsammans
We're not embarrassed, and the_duke's comment is spot on. It's not a secret
we're built on Pageflow and I am the #5 overall contributor to it. We exist
thanks to Pageflow and will do everything to promote it. We've referred many
leads to pageflow.io. There's plenty of room for both models to happily exist!

~~~
bricestacey
For anyone else that doesn't know what it means to come in fifth place: 786
commits by the lead developer, then 58, 46, 34, and finally 24 by yours truly.

[https://github.com/codevise/pageflow/graphs/contributors](https://github.com/codevise/pageflow/graphs/contributors)

------
yaur
> We did notice you took some creative license and manually removed our
> copyright notices and replaced them with your own

looking at the story that was copied[1] I don't see a copyright notice
anywhere. What gives?

[1] [https://verhalen.volkskrant.nl/anti-armoe-
aubergine#2220](https://verhalen.volkskrant.nl/anti-armoe-aubergine#2220)

------
nxzero
Open Source Version referenced by AJ:
[https://github.com/codevise/pageflow](https://github.com/codevise/pageflow)

Given this is in fact the source code that the developer in question has
admitted was the basis for their code, it would be interesting to know if they
were correctly using the MIT License here:
[https://github.com/codevise/pageflow/blob/master/MIT-
LICENSE](https://github.com/codevise/pageflow/blob/master/MIT-LICENSE)

------
vachi
i dont think its fair to accuse and scold scrollytelling. On their homepage
they have a tech section where they state: "Our software is built on top of
the Open Source version of Pageflow. We are committed to giving back to the
community, which is why we are active contributors, and have open sourced our
software too." and they have put a lot of their software up on github.

Yes, this is very similar to Wordpress companies. However it is still their
source code, and scrollytelling's webpages are better... dare i say.

~~~
tilsammans
Thank you! :)

------
kofejnik
oh well thanks for telling me about pageflow

------
pbarnes_1
I would _never_ use this company's services after this.

------
oneloop
They even took the motto.

Pageflow - Interactive Storytelling

------
jimktrains2
> rewrote the publication in record time using the regular open source
> Pageflow (on which Scrollytelling is built).

I'm lost. Why wouldn't they then take this chance to tell me why I should pay
for them if I was in the market for heavy, non-free javascript?

------
chunkyslink
Al-Jazeera along with the Guardian are the most honest mainstream news outlets
on the planet. Put American journalism to shame.

------
oh_sigh
Was this a marketing win? Scroll telling got their name out there, but al
Jazeera response was that they apologized and switched over to the free/open
source equivalent to their product.

~~~
StavrosK
"Al Jazeera used our code without permission, so we made them switch over to a
competitor, showing everyone how trivially interchangeable we are, and we're
telling you about it!"

~~~
smacktoward
It's marketing pushed so far it becomes its own opposite. Bizarro Marketing.
Anti-marketing.

~~~
sparky_
Streisand Marketing (TM).

------
elberto34
maybe all of this was planned in advance ...maybe just a big PR stunt that
worked brilliantly. I hope the NYT steals the code from my website. I could
use the pR

------
wfn
Maybe next time just email them before issuing a DMCA request, and assume
charitable behaviour before evidence dictates otherwise? _edit_ I was wrong,
see below.

~~~
syntheticnature
Per the previous article linked at the top, they tried that:
[https://www.scrollytelling.io/al-
jazeera.html](https://www.scrollytelling.io/al-jazeera.html)

"In addition we contacted you directly too. After waiting patiently we
received no response. After many tries through your editorial office we got
hold of an editor who promised to return our call. This never happened either.
As a final measure we sent you a DMCA takedown request and waited patiently.
No response."

~~~
oceliker
The original version of the article said

"Initially we were taken aback and confused. We knew there must be some
mistake, so we quickly sent you a DMCA takedown requests and waited
patiently."

They "clarified" it after a while, but if someone read the original version of
the article and did not see the update, it could be easy to miss.

~~~
gknoy
> [W]e quickly sent you a DMCA takedown requests and waited patiently

That makes it sound like the DMCA takedown was the first response -- I'm
surprised that a gently worded e-mail wasn't tried first. "Hey guys, it looks
like you are using this ... I'm sure it was unintentional, but .... "

~~~
oceliker
The updated version does claim that they reached out before DMCA, but
something still feels wrong... That is why I put quotes on "clarified" \-- I
don't think it really qualifies as clarification. I'm more of the belief that
one of the two versions is factually wrong.

