
An open letter to Jason Calacanis - jobenjo
http://blog.fluther.com/blog/2009/06/01/an-open-letter-to-jason-calacanis/
======
anonn
Calacanis and Mahalo are growing more and more desperate. They raised a huge
amount of money for a huge valuation but their traffic has stalled and been
going down.

For a while, they've been spamming search results with their keyword-rich
pages full of links to other sites (no different from what Adsense spammers
have been doing for 5+ years [http://www.seobook.com/official-mahalo-com-spam-
according-go...](http://www.seobook.com/official-mahalo-com-spam-according-
googles-internal-spam-documents) ) and then they started paying websites to
distribute their keyword spam widget ( [http://www.seobook.com/mahalo-caught-
pagerank-funneling-link...](http://www.seobook.com/mahalo-caught-pagerank-
funneling-link-scheme) ).

Now they're even more brazen at stealing content from other websites and have
not only started taking Fluther's content but also content from few other
sites.

And all the while, Google has been giving Mahalo a free pass. If you tried any
of this, Google would have slapped you down and put your site into a sandbox
or supplementary index bucket. And Mahalo is still spamming the web and
Google's doing nothing.

~~~
staunch
There are downsides to being a great salesman. Sometimes you get what you
want. Raising tens of millions of dollars and starting a company has got to be
fun. Facing the reality of building a boring ass SEO company? Not so much.
Fortunately, he's got enough runway and personal wealth to procrastinate for
the next couple years. Maybe a few cheap tricks and shortcuts will keep his
traffic growing enough to keep his investors off his back. No? Shit.

------
ryanwaggoner
Wait...so a Mahalo user manually selected a public Tweet and said they wanted
to answer it, and therefore the question ended up Mahalo with a link to the
Twitter profile that asked it? And Fluther has their knickers in a twist over
this?

You've got to be kidding me. The tone of the blog post makes it sound like
Mahalo is scraping the web looking for questions to steal (which is itself
kind of laughable), but what it sounds like they're actually doing is just
allowing users to select questions from public Twitter and answer them,
including a link to where it was found on Twitter. How the fuck is that a
problem? If you don't want users doing that, don't post your shit to Twitter.

This now just strikes me as whining from people looking for attention. Well
done, you got some free PR. And I now have zero interest in using your
product.

~~~
jobenjo
I think the mechanism is a bit different than what you described... if it's a
user who wants to answer a question, why would
[http://www.mahalo.com/answers/education/does-anyone-have-
any...](http://www.mahalo.com/answers/education/does-anyone-have-any-
suggestions-for-my-graduation-speech) have no answers?

From the same page: Did you ask this question via Twitter? We create a Mahalo
account for everyone who asks a question via Twitter.

So yes, the tone of the blog makes it sound like Mahalo is scraping from the
web, because Mahalo's pages make it sound like they're scraping from the web.

It's really not an issue about copyright as it is about plagiarism.

~~~
aaronblohowiak
They are scraping from the web _and_ removing links in the scrape.

------
JimmyL
For the record, Calacanis has given in to Fluther's requests in a comment
(<http://is.gd/LXUp>):

 _We’ll take down the account for you if it’s such a big deal. It’s like a
half dozen questions that were imported by our user.

Just so you know we’re not importing every question from your site or anything
we’re let our users import questions from the public timeline and answer
them... _

------
gojomo
Fluther accuses Mahalo of stealing the _questions_ asked by Flutter users, not
any of Fluther's _answers_.

I'm not sure Fluther has a case under copyright law. Especially if short and
to-the-point, questions are unlikely to be considered copyrightable.

If your company's 'righteous mission' is building the biggest question and
answer database, scraping all public sources of questions allowable by law
seems a legitimate tactic, even if it peeves some of the sources.

~~~
jerf
You can have a copyright on a compilation of works that are themselves not
copyrightable. For instance, a recipe is not copyrightable, but a collection
of recipes is, even without additional commentary.

You can google "compilation copyright", or see
<http://www.pddoc.com/copyright/compilation.htm> for example (second hit).
Note that it gives you much more limited protection than a traditional
copyright, in that you only have a copyright on the _collection_ , it does not
give you a copyright over the parts. However, it sounds like the potential
infringement in question is for the entire collection.

Whether or not Fluther could claim a compilation copyright would probably be a
matter for lawyers to work out in court, by which I mean, it's an awfully
close call. The courts have interpreted the word "creative" fairly liberally,
but I could see a court saying that simply passing through the posts of other
people with no editorial oversight and collecting them together does not
itself meet a standard for creativity. Who knows, though? The list of things
courts have judged to not meet the creativity criterion is quite short.

~~~
gojomo
That might be Fluther's best claim. But it hardly seems Fluther is adding much
originality (via "selection, coordination, or arrangement") in the raw log of
questions. (Perhaps, in the editing and rating of answers -- but Mahalo isn't
taking the answers.)

And Fluther's very complaint against Mahalo -- the removal of Fluther's full
context -- suggests Mahalo isn't infringing the aspects showing originality at
all.

------
jsz0
As much as I do not like Jason Calacanis I think he's 100% right. If I
publicly ask the question "Why is the sky blue?" does that mean I basically
own the intellectual property of that question? No one can ever ask it again
without crediting me? If that's the case I'm just going to preemptively
copyright "Why?" and "What?" right now suckers.

~~~
jobenjo
We're not saying that other people can't ask or answer those questions
elsewhere... we're saying that copying questions verbatim, and simply removing
the attribution link, is not okay.

Certainly lots of different people will ask the same questions all the time.
But this wasn't different people. It was the same people's questions, copied.

~~~
joel_feather
If you do not want your information aggregated across the web then make it
password protected and do not allow access to people who have not accepted
your terms of service. You are actively publishing text written by someone
else (not even by you), and placing it in public places. Trying to claim some
type of ownership on that question is counter to the principles of the web and
shows to me that your need for profit is more important than your principles.

And then following it up by publicly lambasting a figure rather than privately
clearing it just seems like a desperate tactic to gain publicity.

------
staunch
Who and when is anyone agreeing to Fluther TOS? If the questions are being
posted on Twitter, and Mahalo is taking them off there, the only TOS involved
is Twitter's.

~~~
jobenjo
But Twitter does give you copyright to your tweets, so repurposing a tweet and
removing attribution seems wrong.

~~~
edmccaffrey
Twitter doesn't do that--they don't have the legal authority to grant a
copyright to someone who is not the owner of the material--they say that what
_is_ yours remains so. Fluther is given right to reuse questions submitted, as
the submitter agrees when using the site; the original author owns the
copyright, even when reposted to Twitter.

~~~
jobenjo
I agree completely. That's why this is so frustrating--on Mahalo it looks like
the question is asked by a Mahalo user, not the actual Fluther submitter.

And since they strip out the link, it's very hard to find attribution.

~~~
tdavis
Yeah, but the user doesn't get real attribute on the Fluther site either,
beyond a screen name and a profile that (as far as I can tell) doesn't even
have a field for a personal link or bio about the author.

Most sites are essentially "stealing" content from their users -- the people
who submit it and retain the copyright on it (or _should_ , if they don't) --
so this forces me to ask the overriding question here: Who really cares?

------
edmccaffrey
Why does he keep prattling on about his site's TOS? When viewing something
from Twitter, you're not bound to the TOS of a site that you're not even
visiting.

Furthermore, I just posted a question there, and in no way had to agree to
_transfer_ copyright ownership to them--only rights to reuse the question.
Their cease and desist threats are fraudulent.

~~~
jobenjo
Yeah, fair enough. This is really more about Twitter's TOS than ours.

We're not trying to start a legal battle, but this feels like infringement.

~~~
mbreese
Of course you're trying to start a legal battle. You're using the words 'cease
and desist' and infringement.

At least that what is seems like to me from a quick read of the post and
comments here.

If you're not trying to start a legal battle, what's the point? Are you trying
to shame them into doing what you want?

------
JimmyL
Seems like somewhat of a jackass thing to do on Mahalo's part, but I don't
think it's anything illegal - the copyright-ability of a tweet is pretty
unclear (as in there's no precedent and disagreement amongst lawyers).
Additionally, the Fluther TOS has nothing to do with this; Mahalo is simply
pulling things off Twitter, without ever interacting directly with the Fluther
site, and hence never hitting anything covered by their conditions.

It is, however, somewhat of a dick move - especially since the two companies
are somewhat competitors. OTOH, Fluther is putting it out on Twitter, and
hence seems like they're accepting the risk of possible misuse for the reward
of greater distribution. If a tweet is indeed copyrightable, then it seems a
whole lot of other services (including, for example, today's hit almost.at)
would be screwed.

If this is so much of a thing, perhaps work out a licensing deal for the
questions with Mahalo?

------
joel_feather
This is cheap linkbait by the fluther people. A question is a question, and if
you make a question public, anyone can answer it if they want. Sending one
email and then publicly accusing a person of copyright violation to gain some
traffic is shoddy and dishonest.

------
callmeed
I once posted a random startup idea on Twitter:
<http://twitter.com/callmeed/status/1422601143>

Later that day, it was magically turned into a Mahalo Q&A (I've never used
Mahalo before this): <http://bit.ly/15HX9T>

Interestingly enough, Calcanis himself replied to the thread in Mahalo ...

------
alain94040
The beauty of 140 characters... When is short too short for copyright?

I'm pretty sure that Fluther's TOS doesn't apply here since Mahalo never used
the site.

~~~
jobenjo
Good question. Can you copyright a haiku?

If you tweeted a haiku and if that haiku later appeared in a book of poetry
without your attribution, would that be okay?

~~~
calvin
Technically, Twitter says you keep the right to your words.

If you wanted to give up the rights to your words, you could use something
like tweetCC (<http://tweetcc.com/>) to apply a Creative Commons license to
your tweets.

~~~
pingswept
Actually, Twitter just says that they don't claim any right to your words.
("We claim no intellectual property rights over the material you provide to
the Twitter service.")

Whether you can copyright text as short as 140 characters is at least
debatable-- it may be that nobody holds copyright over tweets.

------
js3309
legal or not....its a bitch move by Mahalo to copy fluther Q&A....regardless
where it is on twitter or fluther.com

~~~
sjs382
It may not have even been intentional; rather, its probably just a side-effect
of their twitter-scraping. They likely didn't have the other site in mind when
building their twitter-scraper.

------
dchest
An article on copyrights and Twitter was posted a few days ago:
<http://www.canyoucopyrightatweet.com/>

------
chanux
Forget TOS, legal stuff & all that crap. Still I believe Calacanis has a
serious problem with ethics.

------
calvin
To me, it makes good PR-sense for Mahalo to allow Twitter users to opt-out of
their automatic question-scraping system.

~~~
jsz0
I wonder though if any users actually care? Seems like it's entirely a
business issue between two competitive sites. If I were to ask a question I
would certainly welcome any and all answers and, personally, not care if I was
credited for asking the original question. (especially if the responses were
good and helpful)

~~~
anigbrowl
Fights are most bitter when the stakes are low. Let's face it, the value
supposedly comes from the quality of the answers rather than the
questions...although from the site owners perspective, the questions are time
candy which keeps the users hanging around the website.

