
The Daily Mail Stole My Visualization Twice - thehoff
http://flowingdata.com/2016/02/19/the-daily-mail-stole-my-visualization-twice/
======
NelsonMinar
A few years ago the Daily Mail ran an article about a visualization I made.
They obeyed my CC license, so I have no complaint as serious as Yau's. But the
article was just full of errors, including spelling my name wrong in three
different ways. I wrote the article author and pointed out all the errors and
he responded "No copy editing! It's a tight budget."

The Daily Mail truly doesn't give a shit. About quality, about copyright,
about decency. It seems to be working for them.

~~~
minikites
The free market in action, I suppose.

~~~
jdimov10
Yes! Why is this a problem?

The Daily Mail is SHIT. The majority of people LOVE to read about shit.

It's not my thing, so I don't read it.

That's what free market means.

~~~
madaxe_again
We have a closed market, however. It's free for incumbent massive media
organisations like DMG who only exist because Lord Rothmere and descendents
have The Right Friends. You and me, however, can pucker up, pay, and play by
the rules the free ones make.

Keynsian economics does not equate to "good and right" \- it equates to
Keynsian economics - and nepotism. So much nepotism.

~~~
notahacker
I know Keynes is the default bogeyman in some circles of economic thinking,
but I'm really struggling to see the link between established corporations
having brands and governments running countercyclical policy...

Bearing in mind most newspapers' circulation is crashing and Buzzfeed got very
big very quickly peddling similarly lowbrow content, I'm not even convinced
the market power of print media is that high.

~~~
mahyarm
I'm guessing the nepotism argument goes as so:

Keynes gov't economic stimulus is created by the gov't, and people with good
connections to the gov't are the recipients of this stimulus, causing nepotism
to flourish. The stimulus is not distributed evenly to the economy and thus
increases economic inequality.

The entire bank bailout & QE seems like a similar situation in the USA. Who
got all the QE cash? The banks, not everyone.

~~~
madaxe_again
Correct - today it's a congressman or mp, 100 years ago it was a lord or
governor, before that, the aristocracy.

We still have an aristocracy, or plutarchy, in fact. I come from deep within
the belly of the beast and know the people who know the people and you would
not believe how bent it all is. Everuthing happens behind closed doors, we
just see the punch and judy show after the event.

------
nicky0
Send the Daily Mail an invoice for their use of your work. Pick a reasonable
price and bill them. Then if you don't pay you've got something tangible to
sue them about.

~~~
werizuwe
This. This is a standard procedure for photographers.

Writing a blog post does not help anybody. Ask for money and you not only get
money, they are more likely to not do it again.

------
ollybee
I use this plugin (also available for Chrome) to redirect to pictures of tea
and kittens should I accidental click on a Daily Mail link.
[https://addons.mozilla.org/en-GB/firefox/addon/kitten-
block/](https://addons.mozilla.org/en-GB/firefox/addon/kitten-block/)

~~~
inetsee
It would be nice if this plugin could be configured to do the same for a list
of websites, and not just the Daily Mail.

~~~
dickbasedregex
I would be better if it just dresses the link in CSS so you know never to
bother clicking in the first place.

------
andy_ppp
What does the law say about putting a license on use of things like this
"Embedding this content into your site without written permission from the
author will involve a £100000 fee for it's use. You agree by embedding this
content that you abide by these terms."

Is something like this enforceable?

~~~
saganus
I think the problem with this, like with most routes that involve a lawyer, is
that this isn't about being enforceable or not, but whether you can actually
pay in time and money to try to enforce it.

That's why typically only companies try to enforce licenses.

The author said that even writing the blog post was hard because he had not
much time to spare.

Imagine what it would cost if you sue and demand a newspaper like The Daily
Mail.

~~~
samstave
What if you just start invoicing their AP department?

~~~
esquivalience
I'm a lawyer in the UK. Here, you can start your own claim online in a few
minutes.

~~~
andy_ppp
Yes, if it's under £5000 as I understand it?

------
squeaky-clean
> I made an alert pop up that said “poop” whenever someone loaded the
> Stuff.co.nz page. Like I said, I'm sophisticated.

I would probably have handled this much less maturely, haha. What would be the
legality of displaying some really graphic image (like goatse) to only 10% of
users when you detect you're within an iframe? :P

Ripping the source code of the visualization is so scummy though. I wish I
could say I can't believe the Daily Mail, but this article isn't even
surprising...

~~~
lostlogin
I think the NZ Herald is worse than stuff. A meaningful percentage of their
content is now Reddit stories.

~~~
grawlinson
Real journalism is dead.

What passes for journalism these days is just edits of media releases.

Sad state of affairs.

------
jrs235
How would the Daily Mail feel about (and what would they do) if someone
constantly scraped their website and redistributed the content? Perhaps a fun
side project called TheLessAdsDailyMail.com?

~~~
watty
Copying an entire site is a bit different, if you copy one of their articles I
doubt anything would happen. Maybe a sternly worded email.

If you copied their entire site, used their name, and removed their ads I'm
sure they'd get lawyers involved.

~~~
madaxe_again
Oh, but you could have something in the footer that says "full credit for
content to daisy mayall", which is on par with their citations.

It's a fun idea though - seo bomb them until their bottom line aches.

------
6stringmerc
What I Would Do: Find out what law firm represented the Beastie Boys when they
went after GoldiBlox.

Why I Would Do That: They were successful in their defense of the rights of
the Beastie Boys and reached a settlement that included a public admission of
guilt.

Long-Term Goal: To discourage such behavior through numerous examples of
punishment using established rules.

~~~
untog
Something tells me the Beastie Boys have a little more money to spend on
lawyers than this guy does.

And that's a significant problem - most of the time organizations like the
Daily Mail are ripping off small-time practitioners of data visualizations,
comics, whatever... if it's something produced by a large company with lawyers
you can bet they wouldn't touch it.

~~~
whistlerbrk
Class action, if that applies then maybe?. I think if this is really a repeat
behaviour enough people would come out of the woodwork to say they too were
stolen from and signup.

~~~
Brakenshire
As I understand it, we don't have class action in the UK.

------
andy_ppp
The morally corrupt posing as moral guardians.

I know people who have had other things like photos from flickr stolen by
them.

They are disgraceful!

~~~
madaxe_again
Well, what does one expect - they are the hateful paper for hateful people. In
the 30's they ran many pieces about the wonderful Mr Hitler and his brilliant
solution to the Jewish problem - and today they trot out the same rhetoric re:
Muslims and immigrants.

This _is_ relevant because the kind of person who wants to work for a paper
that espouses such views is _very_ unlikely to care about your human, never
mind intellectual property, rights.

~~~
gadders
The Daily Mirror also supported Hitler in the 30's.

They were also the first paper to publicly accuse the murderers of Stephen
Lawrence.

------
cookiecaper
This kind of thing is beyond rampant at all levels.

I think the people most concerned about following the rules are small-medium
businesses that are big enough for someone to try to sue, but not big enough
to have an army of lawyers that makes them practically invincible from all
claims that don't originate from a similar Super-Massive-Corp. Business
insurance is pretty meaningless for practically any claim that doesn't involve
unsafe facilities, and they often include clauses similar to "If you lose in
the wrong way, you owe us all the money we paid for your defense".

There's an impression that since big media outlets are such big targets,
they're careful about this type of stuff, but it's not true at all. They're
only careful when it's another SuperMassive's copyright. They know that a
legal fight with them is not possible for any other creator, and they know
that they can get an immediate benefit by violating your copyright. They'll
rip your stuff off, they _may_ take down the thing they didn't have a license
for after you complain, and they'll just laugh at you because they know an
attorney is going to charge tens of thousands to _even start_ proceedings
against someone as big as them.

We need to fix the way legal costs work.

------
azalutsky
You must be really good at creating visualizations. :) way to go sir!

------
adjohu
autorespond *@dailymail.co.uk I hereby deny permission to reuse content from
my website.

------
beckler
sounds like someone needs to set his X-Frame-Options header.

~~~
drostie
Unfortunately that would not work in this case: in this case they created an
unauthorized copy of the work on their own server for the purposes of
redistribution; therefore they had full control over the HTTP headers.

~~~
nkrisc
Encode and eval the alert code so it's at least harder than searching the
source for "alert"? It's not good, but it might be enough to annoy them into
not doing it. Probably not.

------
fixermark
It suddenly occurs to me that in addition to it being rude to deep-link
someone's content via <iframe>, it may be dangerous to Daily Mail's security
model.

I wonder if they've configured everything correctly to ensure that an embedded
iframe can't find its way to the user's Daily Mail cookies or credentials?

~~~
scriby
The browser's built-in same origin policy will prevent the iframed content
from being able to access cookies in the containing frame because it is being
hosted from a different domain.

------
tonyle
This reminds me of the days of flash. There use to be a ton of sites stealing
other people's flash games. You could buy flash obfuscater and de-obfuscate
programs. People would steal your game code and re-skin the game,etc. Then the
new strategy was to put the ads inside the video game.

------
wnevets
the daily mail is awful, I wish people would ignore their garbage.

~~~
fixermark
They had a story about the Orion capsule project recently
[[http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-3432512/Orion...](http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-3432512/Orion-
Capsule-someday-humans-Mars-ready-begin-structural-testing-ahead-2018-lunar-
flight.html)], that included an infographic comparing rockets throughout space
history.

Take a look at that last one; fans of space simulators will recognize it.

Seriously, they are garbage journalists. Editorial oversight and quality
control is, at best, a hobby for that publication.

~~~
saganus
Wow. I can't believe this passes as a newspaper.

Where are the editors? Can't they even screen the things they steal at least?

~~~
anentropic
they don't care

~~~
saganus
Yeah, I agree.

But still... I mean, if I'm going to steal a diamond, I would make sure it's
the real deal, instead of some Snatch's moissanite...

------
alex_hitchins
I would suggest doing something like Nanex does with their graphs and images,
use watermarks or some other identifying mark that is clearly unique to you.
This way, they may think twice about clearly showing work that is not theirs.

------
eddiecalzone
The Oatmeal was recently linked to without permission by the Huffington Post.
Matt Inman had a predictably brilliant response.

[https://i.imgur.com/WDDH8wj.jpg](https://i.imgur.com/WDDH8wj.jpg)

------
suyash
First things first: How did you even track who was using your Visualizations?
Can you explain so others can learn from the lesson as well.

------
jwatte
If they actually downloaded and republished your dikes, then that is clear
copyright infringement. Which is both a crime, as well as cause for civil
action. You could report them to the DA (or whatever is the equivalent where
you or they live.) It would be interesting to see how that went!

------
vermontdevil
The Flowing Data is great. Yau really builds great visual charts of various
data.

------
Sir_Substance
Remember to disable your ad blocker when on dailymail.co.uk to fund this high
quality content, it's not cheap to make! Wouldn't want them to have to close
up shop!

------
autotune
Perhaps the solution would be to embed a link to your site within the content
you create itself, be it visualizations or whatever else?

------
TheLogothete
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5eBT6OSr1TI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5eBT6OSr1TI)

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hjek
Why is it any worse to link to a page than to put it in an iframe? (The
author's page header was still on there, so there's a clear attribution.) Why
is the author so dissatisfied with his page getting so many views? I'd assume
that's the point of putting things on the internet.

~~~
livingparadox
Who is saying that its worse to link to an iframe? The author's issue was that
they asked permission, then took no response to mean "do as you will!"
including downloading, modifying, and redistributing his work.

I highly doubt he'd complain if they just linked to his content. This is
pretty straightforward copyright infringement.

------
joepie91_
They embedded/copied/proxied it. They did not 'steal' it.

Regardless of whether you find their behaviour acceptable, those are two very,
_very_ different things.

~~~
chrisbennet
And when someone "steals" your identity, they didn't really steal it right?

------
teachingaway
If you put a lot of effort into a project and don't want it stolen, please
REGISTER THE COPYRIGHT.

0\. Register the copyright within 3 months after you publish the project.

1\. Register online at
[https://eco.copyright.gov/](https://eco.copyright.gov/) \- it costs $35 (or
so) and is not particularly difficult to do.

1.1 registration is not difficult, but it is tedious and involves navigating a
super-old government website that kinda sucks.

2\. You can also hire a lawyer to register for you, which costs around
$200-300.

3\. Once you have the copyright registration, you can write a polite letter to
whomever is stealing your stuff (or write a nasty letter, depending on your
mood).

4\. You can force them to pay you compensation for stealing your copyrighted
content.

5\. If your stolen stuff is being hosted by a third party provider (like imgur
or whatever), you can send the host a DMCA takedown request, and the host will
quickly remove the offending content.

that is just US law. Milage may vary in other countries.

edit - a lot of downvoting on this comment. Too snarky? Too anti-open-source?
i thought this is useful info. Sorry to offend!

~~~
wise_young_man
You don't actually need to register in order to be protected by copyright
laws. The benefit to registering is that it is needed in order to sue. [1]

1: [http://thompsonhall.com/does-a-copyright-have-to-be-
register...](http://thompsonhall.com/does-a-copyright-have-to-be-registered-
to-be-valid/)

~~~
teachingaway
I used to litigate copyright cases. While your comment is technically true,
for 98% of cases, you will need the copyright registration for any amount of
meaningful copyright protection.

------
fixermark
I can't help but think that it would make sense for Mr. Yau to either (a)
Change the server setting to emit the X-Frame-Options: DENY header or (b)
monetize views on his graphic.

In general, you can't assume people won't deep-link your content, and that
includes embedding. Taking steps to protect against or take advantage of
traffic spikes is the responsibility of a content provider.

This, of course, wouldn't protect against DM just straight yanking all his
assets and hosting them itself, which should be clearly immoral (and possibly
illegal, depending on jurisdiction). But "framers gonna frame" is a fair thing
to assume about the nature of web content, along the lines of "<img> tags are
cheap and if people see something funny on your site, they're gonna use 'em to
share it."

~~~
untog
> I can't help but think that it would make sense for Mr. Yau to either (a)
> Change the server setting to emit the X-Frame-Options: DENY header

The article states that the Daily Mail scraped the files and uploaded them
separately, to avoid his iframe detecting JS.

And "just monetize it" feels like a... simplistic approach. Even if the Daily
Mail did a normal iframe embed, how would the author monetize, exactly?

~~~
DanBC
> And "just monetize it" feels like a... simplistic approach. Even if the
> Daily Mail did a normal iframe embed, how would the author monetize,
> exactly?

Send them an invoice for using his material, with an additional fee for not
getting permission in advance.

Then take it to small claims if DM doesn't pay.

~~~
TheOtherHobbes
This is a viable approach. Small Claims is a simple process, you don't need a
lawyer, and you can claim for a non-trivial sum plus damages and costs.

The DM gets sued regularly, so it's not as if they're invincible.

------
lmm
As soon as you searched you saw that many other people had written this kind
of thing, and yet that hadn't done any good. What made you think this post
would make any more difference than the previous ones you found?

If you want to actually make a difference, talk to your solicitor. You might
even get some money out of it.

~~~
rco8786
That's a pretty silly thing to conclude.

I, for one, didn't know about any of this. So that's at least 1 more person
aware of this practice because OP chose to write about it.

I imagine I'm not the only one.

