

How our tribute to “The Hacker Way” pissed off a Facebook designer - flexterra
http://elweb.co/hacking/how-our-tribute-to-the-hacker-way-pissed-off-a-facebook-designer/

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imajes
Hey.

As the hacker behind the version at <http://print.imaj.es/> \- I figured I'd
share my response here too.

Ben's response is understandable - designers and hackers alike are proud of
their creations and often are quick and strong-willed in defending their work.

However, the project that he's been running internally at FB itself aped the
original British Ministry of Information project during wartime - the keep
calm and carry on meme.

Ben's sentiment to keep focused is good. It's so good that when I saw it, I
felt a resonance, a reminder that I should be shipping - so that I wanted to
right there and then, make it, produce it, ship it.

So I went to work with my (legal) copies of illustrator and photoshop, and
crafted my version. (see it here: <http://print.imaj.es/products/stay-
focused>).

The comparison ends here, though. I took the sentence, sure.

But my process is letterpress, with really awesome paper, all made by hand (by
me) locally.

So, I think at this point there's a valid conversation about what is art, what
is originality, and how that can be defined - my work can easily be seen as
derivative, implied.

I don't make a comparison here with Andy Warhol (who's work will far outstrip
anything I'll ever make creatively), but Ben's argument here extends to the
notion that Warhol's Campbell's soup work is theft; whereas many others
(myself included) see it as a valid expression of the modernity the cans
represented. I see the poster as a valid expression of the notion of being a
developer-entrepreneur, of needing to keep on the track and ship - a mantra we
can all live by.

Ben accused me of theft, suggesting I should donate profits to charity. He
used language such as this being a rip-off, and worse.

I have thought about it and frankly I don't see it as theft, but as the normal
course of art. Theft would be to make it and not reference the original - to
ignore the ancestry and pretend it doesn't exist.

And, for the record, I'll donate any profits to charity- if there are any. As
it stands, there's little chance the project will even get printed, as there
is not yet sufficient orders.

~~~
brennannovak
So @benbarry made some cool posters. Solid idea. Good job buddy. But
seriously, everyone involved in this needs to contemplate the ridiculousness
of these whiny teenaged first world problems. Print your posters. You can't
copyright text on a page.

~~~
georgemcbay
"You can't copyright text on a page."

uh... what? Of course you can.

Granted, Fair Use may or may not come into play depending upon the length of
the text being reused, but "text on a page" is exactly what copyright was
invented for in the first place.

~~~
Zancarius
> Granted, Fair Use may or may not come into play depending upon the length of
> the text being reused

Sort of. Judging by a cursory glance at the USPTO indicates that there's no
real hard-and-fast rule on just how much you can use, legally, before
copyright kicks in. It's really something that has to be decided on a per-case
basis:

<http://www.copyright.gov/help/faq/faq-fairuse.html>

In short: You can copyright text on a page. That much is obvious--that's why
we have copyright, as you pointed out, but it doesn't just depend on length.
It depends on presentation, typography, stylistic decisions, and so many other
things that this particular situation is probably a legal gray area. That
said, I very much doubt a judge would be willing to hear this, and I seriously
doubt the designer would bother himself with pestering Facebook to take it to
court.

Another argument worth considering is this: At what point does it become
copyright and at what point does it become protected speech?

------
trotsky
Article A: Geeks super pissed off about someone daring to copy their work

Article B: Nerds insisting that content producers are too dumb to understand
that piracy is just a marketing channel.

(repeat ad nauseum)

~~~
rickmb
Article C: Wiseasses that don't distinguish between the ethics of copying and
the ethics of (enforcing) copyright.

(stop repeating, please)

------
jrockway
The key to successfully using the Internet is to ignore people that type in
all caps. Everyone hates everything; no matter what you do, someone is going
to claim that it is ruining their life. The key is to ignore them and do what
you think is right.

Making a sign that you saw in a photograph is not much different from sticking
a clever caption on a picture of Homer Simpson. No, you didn't create the sign
or the Homer Simpson character. But that doesn't mean it's not cool or funny.

------
mbrzuzy
Am I missing something here? Are they mad that they use their tag line, "Stay
focused & keep shipping"? Because the design of the actual poster is
different.

~~~
jrockway
Yes, that's what they're mad about. It's the Internet. People are mad about
everything.

------
camerondaigle
As a designer, I am impressed with how graciously Collazo handled the
situation, and disappointed that he had to go to such lengths to satisfy
Barry.

I'm hoping that the inherent bluntness of Twitter exaggerated Barry's
response; the poster being sold was a different layout & typeface, not a
"straight ripoff".

I'm not saying Barry doesn't have a case, just that if I were in his shoes I
wouldn't have reacted in the same way in the least. He's reinforcing a
stereotype of designers that I'm not particularly proud of.

~~~
imajes
Unfortunately he also replied in a similar fashion on his FB page.

------
yock
The ever-present danger of assuming intent rather than establishing it
directly. Sites like Twitter seem to have an uncanny ability to enable a
person to shove their foot directly in their mouth.

------
catshirt
i can't even see the problem here if they were selling them for $0 profit.
let's assume for a second they sold them for $5 each and that is the actual
cost of production. would ben show the same hostility to individuals who spent
$5 to make the poster for themselves?

that said, i'd think it was a silly response even if they were selling it for
profit. do you really want to focus your creative energy defending your
authorship of a white poster board with red lettering?

~~~
irondavycole
Promoting their own event is not without self-interest, even if the poster
sales aren't directly profitable.

Also, it's not authorship over "red on white" as a concept, it's authorship
over this specific combination of type, size, layout, & copy that implies
_association_ with Facebook. If they just wanted to maintain the message, and
not the association, they wouldn't have kept the visual style. Implying an
association (with Facebook, or Ben) that isn't really there is the dishonest
part.

~~~
catshirt
no one, for all intents and purposes, would associate these signs with
facebook.

~~~
irondavycole
And why wouldn't they? They're explicitly an homage to a photo that hundreds
of thousands of people (especially those in the startup scene) saw.

------
motoford
This Barry guy is seriously mad about a sign using his unoriginal slogan?

Here is a solution:

I release the following to the public domain:

STAY FOCUSED AND KEEP SHIPPING

There you go, just copy and paste this into your design program of choice,
pick a big font, and send it to the printers.

Crisis averted

------
rickmb
The most astonishing part in this whole story seems to me the fact that people
apparently think that it is a good idea to hang "inspirational" slogans in
uppercase on the walls of a modern tech company, in a way that is clearly not
meant ironically.

I would run like hell from a company that did this.

~~~
chippy
hah! Yes!

Better to have read:

IPO TIME.

YOU JOB IS AT RISK.

WORK HARDER.

~~~
Zancarius
Seeing your post brings the following to mind:

WAR IS PEACE

FREEDOM IS SLAVERY

IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH

------
pavel_lishin
Doesn't kinko's handle fairly large prints? Seems like it shouldn't be that
hard or expensive to print off a large sheet of paper with some big words in
red Impact.

~~~
j_c
Do you not see this as immoral and disrespectful to the original artist?

~~~
pavel_lishin
Not really. As far as I can tell, the original artist wasn't selling his
works, right? And apologies in advance to all the designers reading this, but
the posters are a sentence fragment in a standard font. They're not printing
off bootleg copies of the Mona Lisa here.

I suppose I'm being immoral and disrespectful, myself. Should I send Dos Equis
a letter of apology, see if KC Green sells prints of his comics, and try to
track down both the artists working on the Spiderman show as well as the
person who placed text on this image? <http://imgur.com/3CHhp>

Let me know if I'm factually wrong in any of my statements.

~~~
j_c
"But the posters are a sentence fragment in a standard font. They're not
printing off bootleg copies of the Mona Lisa here."

\---

A 63-year-old Picasso got out his pen and paper and sketched the woman, who
passing by had asked for a quick self-portrait of herself.

It took him 30 seconds, once finished, he asked for 500,000 US dollars.

'Why? It didn't even take you a minute!' she replied.

'Madam, that sketch took 63 years."

And off he walked, with the sketch in his pocket.

~~~
fossuser
I think many people on hacker news recognize good design skill takes years to
develop, but this is an extreme. They took a simple four word sentence and
printed it in red. Do you think the public benefits by having this designer
have a ~150 year copyright monopoly on something as simple as this sentence?

It's a simple poster people were excited about and when it was unavailable
went out to make it themselves.

------
taykh
Apparently, Ben Barry just released the posters under Creative Commons.

<https://twitter.com/#!/benbarry/status/165493765526667264>

------
tyrelb
as lame as it sounds, i was looking to buy these posters as inspiration for my
'hacker way' office :(

------
tyrelb
originals were here:
[http://www.designforfun.com/display.php?id=115&e=1](http://www.designforfun.com/display.php?id=115&e=1)

~~~
rplnt
It's linked from the blog.

------
kenrik
"Error Establishing database connection" I think we killed the site.

 __Edit, it's working for now __

I can understand how making a profit off of something like that could rub you
the wrong way. However I think I personally would just be happy the message
was worthwhile to other people and leave it at that.

------
j_c
"The Hacker Way" is no excuse to steal.

Your intentions are irrelevant. Unless somebody has clearly stated you can
reproduce their creative work you shouldn't, nor should you want to.

Please do not use the guise of a 'hacker mentality' to mask your lazy and
disrespectful actions.

~~~
coryl
Good artists copy, great artists steal?

~~~
j_c
Good artists copy, greats artists steal and make that they've stolen their
own.

We are all influenced by the same things, it's what you do with that influence
that matters.

~~~
emp_
Why do I think that by your tone and anonymity you are the offended designer?

~~~
j_c
I'm a designer (and developer, depending on the task).

Not the designer.

~~~
angersock
So, are you a good designer, or one who's work has never been used by others?

------
ja27
Did they also pay "tribute" to Adobe by downloading a copy of Photoshop from a
torrent site and using it?

