

MailChimp threatens legal action against an open source side project - lukechesser
http://imluke.me/post/56195948472/popular-uis-meets-mailchimp

======
jrochkind1
Regardless of who is in the right, their letter was more professional and
polite than this OP response. The author is mistaken to think this is a pushy
or aggressive letter, compared to an actual pushy or aggressive legal letter.

PS: In the U.S. (if not the rest of the English speaking world?), if you want
to use an honorific for a woman but don't know which she uses, always use
"Ms.", never ever "Miss." "Miss" implies a woman is unmarried; "Mrs." implies
that she is married and the surname is her husband's; "Ms.", appropriately for
professional communication, makes no assumptions about her marital status.

~~~
lukechesser
Arguing on HN is probably a moot point, but I'll try anyways. Don't get me
wrong, I'm aware they could have gone about this in a much more aggressive
way. But to go through their lawyers right away was a much more aggressive
response than what I would have expected from MailChimp. I guess that's the
totally correct legal response, but why not just send me a quick message?

~~~
connortomas
Who would you expect to receive a message from? Presumably this happens more
often than you think, and the company protocol is to get legal to deal with
it. I think you've misinterpreted this as in any way "aggressive" \- this is
just a company trying to tie things up as efficiently as possible. Sure, you'd
like an informal response, but when a company is operating at the scale of
Mailchimp, that doesn't seem realistic.

I was also quite impressed by the tone of the message from Mailchimp legal -
probably the clearest, most polite takedown request I've seen.

------
zensavona
What a dick move by the OP.

MailChimp made it very clear they realise his intent was not malicious, and
the language of the letter further shows this. He reproduced their UI
(branding included) without permission and posted it online as open source.
The way he has handled this (especially the ranting blog post naming
MailChimp's lawyer) is extremely unprofessional. If anything needs to be
boycotted it's his consulting business, not MailChimp.

------
jronald
The response to MailChimp's letter is distasteful at best. I don't know how
MailChimp found out about Luke's work, but I imagine having a Dev contact
someone infringing on their work is not normal procedure for any company.
Lawyers are paid to do this professionally, however Ms. Danin's letter goes
above and beyond, illustrating the issues they have and their reasoning behind
it. They could have had court documents (in the US anyways) show up at your
door, or the site / files could have been forced offline by working with the
host.

Your response reflects poorly on you. I would say it was fair to mention your
employer as it's listed on your public github profile, and it isn't clear that
your employer isn't aware. Additionally, I'd imagine you'll be receiving more
removal requests from the other sites you replicate.

Also, releasing your files under the MIT license prohibits you from
restricting them to "educational purposes", at least to my understanding, but
I could be incorrect here.

~~~
etchalon
That's basically true. The MIT license generally doesn't provide for any
restrictions. That's why it's so awesome.

But ultimately, there's no legally binding rules about using the MIT license.
I can "use" the MIT license and then say, "Only cats who can ride motorcycles
can use this code", and then, while MY license is "based" on the MIT license,
it now has a totally valid motorcycle cat restriction. Cause I added one.

~~~
jronald
Thanks for clearing that up. I'm a little fuzzy on where that can be done - ie
on github, if you set it to the MIT license, can you define the additional
rules within the license section? does putting the "educational use only"
anywhere on the page apply? I'm not a coder, and this normally would not apply
to the work I do, but it is interesting seeing how these things play out.

------
nwh
The letter from MailChimp seems completely fair.

Publishing PSDs of someone else's website—regardless of who made the PSD—is a
dick move. Doubly so given that the authors resources contain _the original
companies branding_ and image resources ripped right from the original pages.

~~~
lukechesser
Legally, I completely agree, they're allowed to. But by that same token,
hundreds of PSDs are posted on Dribbble every day. As Allan, the designer for
Designer News and Layervault, said when I asked him if he wanted me to take
the resources down, he said 'Why? It's wonderful'. Same thing from Heroku. I'm
not saying that MailChimp isn't allowed to have the resources taken down. I
never presented them as anything other than a learning resource — something
that is extremely common in design.

~~~
nwh
Every day tens of thousands of pirate TV episodes are posted to Usenet, but
that doesn't make it legal.

There's nothing in your little agreements—or lack of one with MailChimp—giving
you the right to parade around as if they have harmed you.

------
citricsquid

        Had someone from the MailChimp design or development team reached 
        out and asked me to take the resource down, I totally would have understood. 
        I greatly admire their work and respect their talents immensely.
    

It's like they teach this in asshole 101. You can tell someone is being
unreasonable every time this argument arises, "I'm not upset about the bigger
picture, I'm upset about meaningless-detail x!".

~~~
rhizome
It's a tone argument, which is toward the bottom of PG's hierarchy of
disagreement, not to mention many other places (e.g. random google hit
[http://lucereta.wordpress.com/2011/06/30/tone-argument-as-
lo...](http://lucereta.wordpress.com/2011/06/30/tone-argument-as-logical-
fallacy/)).

~~~
jerrya
It's not a tone argument.

An argument from a legal department is a threat. And if it's not actually a
threat, it's certainly a very significant perceived threat.

And lawyers and society definitely understand that.

The letter itself wasn't terrible, but it definitely contained a threat, and
claiming it is a tone argument denies that.

Also, do you have a reference to PG's "hierarchy of disagreement"? Sounds
interesting.

------
codva
That was as polite and professional a take down letter as I've ever seen.
Although the OP might prefer to get the request from the lead designer, that
is not the designer's job. It's the lawyer's job, and this lawyer actually
does seem to have way more of a clue than most that write these letters.

------
badclient
MailChimp just set an example for how to craft a strong legal notice while not
sounding like a dick. Color me impressed.

------
timtamboy63
> However, they chose to go through their legal department, and for that I’ve
> lost respect for their company. I’ll no longer be managing my project’s
> email lists from MailChimp.

Of course they chose to go through their legal department, it's their job, not
the designers. You can't seriously have lost respect for MailChimp because a
lawyer was doing her job. Maybe the designers were too busy, oh I don't know,
designing?

------
topherjaynes
What a great paragraph: clean, logical and completely valid.

"Further, while your intentions appear good, those who download the UI file
may not act so altruistically. For example, a nefarious downloader may use the
file to set up a fake website to lure unsuspecting users to log in or to try
to trade off their own service or product as part of our brand (5). We’ve seen
both of these situations happen before, so they aren’t just products of our
paranoid imagination."

~~~
nwh
I'm quite impressed by how well it was written actually. You'd be very
unlikely to get a response like that from any other company.

------
jesseddy
I personally can't blame them. It's an exact copy of their site, which makes
further replications very easy and encouraged. Their letter to Luke was very
nice, hardly pushy at all.

------
etchalon
I agree with just about everyone here so far.

What the OP has done is take someone else's work, duplicate it, and post it
online for free without their consent. Then get all bothered when the company
did what companies do, ask their lawyer to sort it out.

And the lawyer sorted it out in the nicest possible goddamn way I've ever seen
a lawyer sort something like this out.

That others were OK with it doesn't really matter. That's up to each team,
each company, and one saying "OK" doesn't automatically make every other
company obligated to say OK.

All that matters is the OP took someone else's hard work, copied it, and
posted it online without consent.

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narrowingorbits
OP is on flaky legal ground reproducing and distributing other's designs
without permission as it is; but then to suggest that MailChimp is in the
wrong, simply for, in a very polite, even friendly, letter, acknowledging
their brand and their legitimate copyright, and asking OP to play fair...wow.

Also, he wanted someone from MailChimp's design or development team to reach
out to him? Really? Maybe they're busy, you know, designing and developing
things! This is not a design or development issue. They have legal council to
worry about copyright and brand dilution issues.

------
tonywebster
I've seen much more aggressive emails and letters, although I think this could
have been better-resolved with a phone call to attempt clear up the immediate
issues (e.g. proper attribution, terms and conditions) before even bringing up
the word 'legal.'

MailChimp's concerns are _quite_ valid, and to an extent you _have_ to enforce
IP issues, but OP is right that this happens all over the internet. If you
lookup 'Dropbox' on Dribbble, you'll see tons of reproductions and remixes of
their UI. I see OP's PSD as something made out of respect, and something
provided to the community as an educational resource.

That doesn't change MailChimp's legal rights -- but regardless of who is right
and wrong, I think a lot can be accomplished among adults having collaborative
conversations. I think MailChimp is asking "How can we protect our IP?"
instead of "How can we protect our IP while continuing to engage the designer
and developer community?"

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simonhamp
Deny yourself using one of the best products on the market because you
overreacted? That's normal

------
tuananh
I found the email from MailChimp is highly professional and very reasonable,
even though it's their right to get mad.

------
mintplant

        Had someone from the MailChimp design or
        development team reached out and asked me
        to take the resource down, I totally would
        have understood.
    

This is what happened, and yet here we are. You did something they weren't
comfortable with. They sent you a friendly, personal letter asking you to
please not do that. You responded with an irate blog post and ran to HN for
support. Why should anyone be sympathetic?

------
MetaCosm
First of all -- I think the letter from MailChimp was very polite and
straightforward. The posters expectations (hopes?) are insane

That said, what are the rights around "clean room" implementation of website
designs? If I simply pull up a site on another monitor, and build a clone of
it from scratch (omit the logos of course), what are my rights?

Sadly, it appears the Popular UIs guy didn't even bother removing obviously
trademarked and identifying logos. His argument that "sharing PSDs is a great
way to learn" doesn't explain why he left logos in the work.

