
The New York Times Told Me To Take This Down - gluejar
https://medium.com/meta/503b9c22080b/
======
geuis
I want to address the common demonstration of "it took you N * X hours to make
something, but I replicated in N hours".

We see this statement very often. When Pinterest got popular, how long until
we saw replicas? When Medium and Svbtle were introduced, wasn't it just a
matter of hours to me-too replicas came along? There was one fellow who's name
escapes me that came up with the hidden-left interface menu that you swipe
into view from the top that's now commonly used in the Facebook app and many,
many mobile sites.

None of this is new, and there's nothing wrong with it. Copying is the biggest
form of flattery as is often said, and its a validation of your idea.

What happens very often is that we see great ideas in their finished, polished
form. Someone's showed us the path.

When you show me how to build a bridge, I don't have to invent a bridge. In
many cases, I see your awesome bridge and figure out even better ways to build
it. But coming up with that first bridge, doing the engineering and testing
and iterations on it, that's hard.

That's _really_ hard.

So yeah, you can recreate what someone else made in a lot shorter time than it
took them to invent it. But invent something new and you'll see it takes you a
long time too.

~~~
TeMPOraL
The point that majority of the work goes to figuring out how to execute well,
and only a tiny amout towards the execution itself can be generalized to more
than just copying website ideas. It applies to formulating hypotheses when
solving problems. Most of the work is spent on figuring out the right question
to ask, and only the little part is needed to actually answer it. It was
nicely described on LessWrong:

<http://lesswrong.com/lw/jn/how_much_evidence_does_it_take/>

<http://lesswrong.com/lw/jo/einsteins_arrogance/>

Relevant quotes from the second post:

 _(...) you need an amount of evidence roughly equivalent to the complexity of
the hypothesis just to locate the hypothesis in theory-space. It's not a
question of justifying anything to anyone. If there's a hundred million
alternatives, you need at least 27 bits of evidence just to focus your
attention uniquely on the correct answer._

 _At the time of first formulating the hypothesis - the very first time the
equations popped into his head - Einstein must have had, already in his
possession, sufficient observational evidence to single out the complex
equations of General Relativity for his unique attention. Or he couldn't have
gotten them right._

~~~
stephengillie
> _Most of the work is spent on figuring out the right question to ask, and
> only the little part is needed to actually answer it._

That sounds like operative part of the Feynman Algorithm:

 _1\. Write down the problem.

2\. Think real hard.

3\. Write down the solution._

Where the harder part is in actually defining the problem which you're trying
to solve, then writing that down.

------
tinco
Catchy title, but:

" I used their images/video to make a point. I can see how the video could
fall under Fair Use"

Frankly I don't see _at all_ how that would fall under Fair Use, and The Times
is absolutely right to C&D him.

Also, "A statement of fact about a company is not a copyright infringement."

No, but a statement of fact about a company that is not backed by public data
is slander. NYT doesn't even claim that the reference is copyright
infringement, the author just assumes that.

edit: ok, I actually thought he had put a demo _website_ online in which he
used the images, so it would look like the NYT's page (but with lorem ipsum
for text or something) but he just made an educational video of it, I can see
that could be fair use. So I retract my absolute statement. (as should be done
with absolute statements in general! (absolutely)) I still think the 'hundreds
of hours' remark isn't cool, but perhaps the law is on his side there too.

~~~
betterunix
The use of copyrighted material for criticism or comment (e.g. "to make a
point") is, in fact, considered fair use:

<http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/17/107>

Additionally, the video was _educational_ (it demonstrated how to create
something), further bolstering the claim of fair use. The NYT is entirely out
of line with the C&D, and it is particularly troubling that a newspaper --
which _frequently_ engages in fair use, _frequently_ reproducing material as
part of their journalism and their criticism -- would send such a letter.

~~~
a_bonobo
I disagree, this video was educational about _his product_ , so there was a
commercial interest behind it.

As such, this isn't a fair use case; there have been cases in the past where
copy-shops copied parts of books for educational purposes, but because there
was a commercial intent behind it US courts ruled that _not_ to be fair use.

See: Princeton University Press v. Michigan Document Services, Inc., 99 F.3d
1381 (6th Cir. 1996).

[http://copyright.columbia.edu/copyright/fair-use/case-
summar...](http://copyright.columbia.edu/copyright/fair-use/case-summaries/)

Of course, that one sentence they told him later to take down is a different
thing I can't understand.

~~~
betterunix
The difference is that his product does not compete in with the New York
Times; it may be valuable to the Times' competitors, but nobody will watch his
video and then _not_ read the Times article as a result. The criteria for
judging fair use include the potential impact on the market value of the
copyrighted work; in this case, it seems that the impact is basically nil,
because there are two separate markets. It is not about commercial _intent_ ,
but rather about the _effect_ in a particular market (and even that is not
cut-and-dry).

The case of textbook publishing is different, because the copies compete with
the original in the same market.

Really though, my point was not about the educational nature. Even if we
assume there is _no_ educational value to the video, it is still a case of
criticism/commentary, which is still fair use. The author is not in any way
reducing the value of the Times article. The article was not copied in full.
These are all things that support the claim that this is fair use.

------
pixelmonkey
If this isn't a "native advertisement" for scrollkit, nothing is. I can't
believe a piece of content marketing has gotten the #1 spot on HN.

~~~
resu_nimda
Yeah really. Way too self-promotional and "hey everybody get mad at how I was
wronged by BigCo" for my tastes.

As others have noted, the hundreds of hours vs. one hour claim is very
disingenuous. Cutting and pasting an existing work into your toolkit is not
even close to designing and creating an original piece of investigative
journalism.

And, at the end there, actually calling on the NYT to advertise this scrollkit
on panels? Because...why? The creator thinks it's really cool?

~~~
aptwebapps
Use of succinct language requires context and common sense. Would anyone
actually think he was describing a magical content generator?

------
gamache
This is equivalent to a Youtube video where someone demonstrates how to play a
popular song on a guitar.

Anyone against that is not on the same team as me.

~~~
jlarocco
I don't agree at all because the scrolling effect isn't the issue. The content
is the issue.

The guy could have used any generic content in the world to demonstrate
scrollkit. He could have used "lorem ipsum" and random Creative Commons images
from Flickr. He could have done his own investigation about the avalanche and
created his own article. He could have made an article about some other event.
He could have written an article about scrollkit and used it to demonstrate
scrollkit. There are practically an infinite number of ways he could have
avoided this.

Instead he used very specific copyrighted content from an article by a huge
media company.

I almost want to say the guy is just trolling for page views. He copied an
entire NY Times article, and he's surprised the NY Times has a problem? Who is
that dumb?

~~~
pyrocat
Did you stop reading after the first couple sentences? He took down the
content. The NYT then came back and said even having the text "The NYT spent
hundreads of hours hand-coding “Snow Fall.” We made a replica in an hour." on
his site was copyright infringement.

~~~
itafroma
> The NYT then came back and said even having the text "The NYT spent
> hundreads of hours hand-coding “Snow Fall.” We made a replica in an hour."
> on his site was copyright infringement.

No, they didn't. They took issue with the fact that he merely set the video to
"private" instead of taking it down and with the continued use of their name.
They did not make the claim that the use of their name was copyright
infringement: in reality, the new claim they make in the second C&D is
trademark infringement. It's still specious (nominative use of trademarks is
generally fine), but not nearly as absurd.

~~~
sp332
That's only the first part of the request. The highlighted part of the email
says they need to remove all mention of them from the site, and specifically
calls about that bit of text as something that needs to be removed.

~~~
itafroma
> That's only the first part of the request. The highlighted part of the email
> says they need to remove all mention of them from the site, and specifically
> calls about that bit of text as something that needs to be removed.

What I wrote in my comment is in reference to the entire request, including
the highlighted part of the email. Asking someone to remove something or cease
and desist is not solely the domain of copyright infringement. The only part
of the second C&D that deals with copyright infringement is the first
sentence, where they state that changing the video status to private is
unacceptable.

The _other_ claim they make, starting at "Further, you need to remove any
reference..." and ending with "...We made a replica in under an hour" is a
claim of _trademark_ , not copyright, infringement, contrary to GGP's belief.
Nowhere in the C&D does the NYT assert copyright over the use of the quoted
text: they only made a claim of copyright infringement in the first C&D with
respect to "any New York Times _content_ ", not the text referencing their
name.

This situation really isn't that hard to parse and requires no speculation:
just read all of what the New York Times sent instead of relying on the OP's
misinterpretation that everything the NYT is claiming is all just something
absurd about copyright infringement.

~~~
sp332
Only the first letter even mentions copyright. The second letter does not
mention either copyright or trademark. I think the claim wouldn't make any
sense under either set of rights, and since the letter doesn't specify, you're
basically just guessing.

------
6d0debc071
When lawyers make demands they often don't have the law backing them. When
there's no consequence for making spurious and vague legal threats, the system
is going to be abused.

Edit: It's unfortunate, but ... yeah. It might be worth forwarding your story
to some legal blogs that specialise in free speech I suppose, but other than
that. _shrug_ I'm afraid I'm not sure what you can do if you don't have the
money to fight them.

~~~
DannyBee
If there were non-criminal consequences for making spurious and vague threats,
lawyers would just make legal threats involving those consequences as a
response to threats made to lawyers.

------
lucisferre
This Daft Punk article might be a suitable replacement for the author.

<http://pitchfork.com/features/cover-story/reader/daft-punk/>

~~~
caycep
I wonder why we haven't heard as much from the development team at Pitchfork.
The masthead lists Development team as:

Matt Dennewitz Neil Wargo Andrew Gaerig

They do amazing work with the Cover Story series. A blog post from them
showing off their techniques would gain a huge amount of traction, at least
here on HN

~~~
mattdennewitz
hey, matt here. we (pitchfork's dev and design teams) have traditionally kept
a low profile, but that time is quickly moving behind us. i'd love to talk
about how we build our cover stories, our philosophies on integrating
_tasteful_ advertising, etc. what would you like to hear about?

edit: here are our cover stories: <http://pitchfork.com/features/cover-
story/>. we've been at it for a while, and you can see where the idea grew
legs, learned to walk, and took off. pretty neat.

~~~
ZaAaV
Hey matt, thanks for that story, it is truly beautiful (both in content and
container)... just wanted to mention it!

~~~
mattdennewitz
thanks for the kind words! my team is nothing w/o the incredible teams --
design, editorial, biz -- we work with every day. few names make it into the
bright parallaxing lights of the final product, but really, everyone touches
it, even if indirectly or tangentially.

------
peterwwillis
Bad writing. Bloggers that start talking about something as if I know what it
is, and never even take 2 sentences to describe it, really grind my gears. I
_still_ don't know what the story is about or why newsrooms would refer to it.

On top of that, the piece is the most vain attempt at generating controversy
for the sake traffic i've ever seen. Please, can't blatant attempts at
advertising be taken off HN?

~~~
spullara
I prefer this style. For those that don't know what it is there is Google. For
those of us that do, we don't have to skip over it and find the start of the
article.

On your second point, I can concur.

------
PonyGumbo
About ten years ago I was working for a company that was featured in a (fairly
glowing) article in the NYT. We linked to it from our media page, and a month
or two later received a similar letter from their legal department instructing
us to either remove the link, or pay them some outrageous amount of money
(something like $4500, if I recall correctly). So we changed the link to an
"I'm feeling lucky" search on Google that took you directly to the article.
Never heard about it again.

------
prawn
Surely if the tool is good, it can stand on its own?

The author could easily have used greeking or content promoting ScrollKit to
fill the site. Ripping off NYT's material is a dodgy way to start things IMO.
Hell, write your own feature about a pet, or your grandparents' legacy or soup
up a page of Wikipedia content with Creative Commons and attributed Flickr
photos.

I almost don't care what happened after that (the private YouTube video, the
leveraging of their brand, etc). The reaction to the initial contact could've
been overwhelmingly apologetic - complete removal of the video, no leveraging
of Snow Fall and so on - but instead makes for linkbait.

Even now, going to the demo gives the big "they made me do it" message when
any text could've replaced their content very easily. You know, replicated in
an hour...

This story might've got the tool excellent publicity, but I don't view it
positively as a result.

------
jrochkind1
It is especially ironic that a NEWS organization would claim that facts are
protected by copyright, and one needs someone's permission to report factual
claims. Such a legal theory is rather inimical to the business of news.

~~~
donohoe
No - they claim Snow Fall is protected by copyright and that it us being used
to promote a service.

~~~
jrochkind1
No - the copyright in the Snow Fall article indeed protects him from _copying_
the Snow Fall article (unless it is fair use). Yes, he may have violated
copyright by doing so.

The copyright in the Snow Fall article does not give anyone the rights to
prevent someone from saying "The NYT spent hundreds of hours hand-coding 'Snow
Fall'. We made a replica in an hour." That quote from their letter is the part
I was referring to.

~~~
donohoe
Gotcha. My bad. I'll re-read the post

------
cimorene12
Snow Fall (video/images) is protected by copyright, but ‘The NYT spent
hundreads of hours hand-coding “Snow Fall.” We made a replica in an hour.' is
nominative fair use. He might have to say something about not being affiliated
with the NYT in any way, but he should be able to make that claim. Truth is a
perfect defense.

~~~
jrochkind1
You are confusing your legal theories.

It does not violate copyright, it is true, to say "The NYT spent hundreds of
hours..." It is not 'fair use' though, because it is not a use of copyrighted
material in the first place. 'Fair use' means fair use _of copyrighted
material_, it is a defense against using copyrighted material without
permission.

'Truth' is not in fact any kind of a defense against copyright. If you really
_do_ copy someone's copyrighted work without permission, and it is not fair
use, then it is completely irrelevant whether the text you copied was 'true'
or not. But if did not copy someone's copyrighted work, then you can't
possibly have violated their copyright.

For instance, if someone else had first written an article that began "The NYT
spent hundreds of hours...", and went on, and you copied that entire article
yourself without permission, and you did not have a fair use defense -- you
would be violating their copyright, regardless of how true or false the
article was.

'nominative fair use' is a legal theory of _trademark_, and what you say may
actually be more applicable to trademark, aha, okay. Important to be clear
though.

~~~
itafroma
> 'nominative fair use' is a legal theory of _trademark_, and what you say may
> actually be more applicable to trademark, aha, okay. Important to be clear
> though.

This part is the only part that matters here: the second C&D about the use of
_New York Times_ mark is entirely about whether it's fair use to use it.

------
js2
How Snow Fall was Made: A Q&A with the NYT team

<https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5747788>

------
ChuckMcM
This is an interesting question, I can see the argument that the NYT has the
rights to do what ever they want with the Snow Fall story material but it
seems an over-reach to ask Scroll kit to remove a reference to them in their
description.

That last bit seems like fair use. If I write a book "in the style of Rudyard
Kipling's 'Just So Stories'" by what reasoning would the Kipling estate
ownership of that style?

~~~
jrochkind1
It is not 'fair use', because it is not copyrighted in the first place.

'Fair use' is a legal defense to make copies of copyrighted material. Yes, it
is copyrighted, but it is a fair use anyway, if X, Y and Z.

Facts and factual statements are not copyrightable in the US in the first
place. Nor does copyright, in the US, prevent someone from comparing something
to Rudyard Kipling's Just So Stories. So you are correct that there is no
legal basis under copyright to prevent such a comparison, but it's not about
fair use.

~~~
itafroma
> It is not 'fair use', because it is not copyrighted in the first place.

> 'Fair use' is a legal defense to make copies of copyrighted material. Yes,
> it is copyrighted, but it is a fair use anyway, if X, Y and Z.

> Facts and factual statements are not copyrightable in the US in the first
> place. Nor does copyright, in the US, prevent someone from comparing
> something to Rudyard Kipling's Just So Stories. So you are correct that
> there is no legal basis under copyright to prevent such a comparison, but
> it's not about fair use.

This is simply incorrect: I wish you'd stop replying to everyone who mentions
"fair use" with this. _Nominative_ fair use is the ability to use someone
else's _trademark_ for the purposes of comparison. Thus, NYT's second demand,
to cease referring to "The New York Times" on Scrollkit's website is
_entirely_ about fair use. It has nothing to do with NYT's copyright claims.

~~~
greenyoda
But according to the three criteria described in this article on nominative
use[1], it looks like using the New York Times' trademark in this case would
be perfectly legitimate:

 _The nominative use test essentially states that one party may use or refer
to the trademark of another if:

1\. The product or service cannot be readily identified without using the
trademark (e.g. trademark is descriptive of a person, place, or product
attribute).

2\. The user only uses as much of the mark as is necessary for the
identification (e.g. the words but not the font or symbol).

3\. The user does nothing to suggest sponsorship or endorsement by the
trademark holder. This applies even if the nominative use is commercial..._

[1] <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nominative_use>

~~~
itafroma
Oh, I totally agree this appears to be prima facie nominative fair use: using
a competitor's name for the basis of comparison has a strong history in US
trademark law. It'd be interesting to find out why The New York Times thinks
otherwise.

My issue was with GGP's insistence that it had nothing to do with fair use or
that people talking about fair use were necessarily talking about NYT's
copyright claims. Fair use also applies to trademarks.

------
hkmurakami
_> ‘The NYT spent hundreads of hours hand-coding “Snow Fall.” We made a
replica in an hour.

It’s an unreasonable and baffling request for the New York Times to tell us to
take down this statement. A statement of fact about a company is not a
copyright infringement._

Can something like this be considered defamation? (or did NYT come out and
publicly say that they spent hundreds of hours hand coding this?)

~~~
itafroma
The main reference I found to the amount of time it took came from a Q&A[1]
that appeared after it was published:

> [...]I spent much of the summer getting to know the people involved
> (sometimes with the photographer Ruth Fremson and the video journalist
> Catherine Spangler in tow) and the loved ones left behind, and attended the
> 2012 International Snow Science Workshop in September to help understand the
> world of avalanches and snow. And I started writing, which took a few weeks.
> By then, The New York Times had committed to telling this story through
> multimedia. And, as I hope people see in the credits at the bottom of the
> article, it was quite a team of graphic artists and designers and editors.
> Unlike me, they all had plenty of other duties this fall — the presidential
> election, Hurricane Sandy — but really devoted much of the past month to the
> publication.

Based on that, it seems the NYT is claiming it took a team working part
time—in an unusually busy news time—about a month to complete. The credits for
Snow Fall list 11 people on the design team: to get to 200 hours, the minimum
needed to qualify as "hundreds", it'd be 18 hours per person. Plausible, but
it would be better if he could cite that claim.

I couldn't find any claim to the part about "hand-coding" (whatever that
means). In fact, in a different Q&A[2], they mention using a mixture of prior
custom work and off-the-shelf components:

> We used a number of custom components that we’ve used in other projects in
> the past like the modal slideshows. But some tools/libraries include jQuery,
> underscore, jPlayer, HTML5 video, jQuery Reel, and jQuery address. In
> triggering scroll-based events, I took inspiration from Remy Sharp’s inview
> jquery plugin.

[1]: [http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/22/sports/q-a-the-
avalanche-a...](http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/22/sports/q-a-the-avalanche-at-
tunnel-creek.html) [2]: [http://source.mozillaopennews.org/en-US/articles/how-
we-made...](http://source.mozillaopennews.org/en-US/articles/how-we-made-snow-
fall/)

------
ben0x539
Does the NYT have a right (before we get into fair use or w/e) to demand that
a video be deleted off youtube rather than made private? I thought copyright
was (roughly) about limiting distribution, so even if NYT's copyright claims
apply to that video, can they control what the OP does with it if its not
being published?

~~~
nness
If it were uploaded to YouTube servers, and shared across CDN's around the
world, would that not be distribution in the finer sense? Additionally,
"private" is different than unlisted, and the video can still be shared
publicly, just in a limited sense.

~~~
ben0x539
Ah, I thought youtube only had public/"only with link"/none sharing. Cheers.

------
taylodl
Well played sir! You've managed to take a run-of-the-mill little David vs. the
Big Media Goliath story and use it as a sales pitch for your _scroll kit_ and
made the front page of HN to boot!

------
peripetylabs
The fact that their website still doesn't have a viewable demonstration of
their software suggests it actually isn't so easy to make interactive content
like _Snow Fall_.

The only thing I could find was this very annoying video:
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vUA62gHzVpA>

------
larrys
"but we don’t have the resources to fight the Times’s legal department"

My personal opinion (based on years of observation of this type of thing) is
that it is well worth the money to invest in an IP lawyer to review and to see
if you have a leg to stand on with respect to fair use.

The reason being is that this is a tempest in a teapot [1] and has the
potential to deliver gross amounts of publicity to the startup as it is
discussed and dissected ad infinitum. As such if the IP attorney decides that
there is a basis for fair use I would go with it if at all possible and keep
the page up. In the end the Times isn't going to want the negative publicity
over this (even if they have a reasonable case) and may very well end up
backing down. Could end up being a Streisand effect as well.

[1] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tempest_in_a_teapot>

~~~
bediger4000
_invest in an IP lawyer to review_...

The problem I have with that is that only a trial can tell "fair use" from
"not fair use". A few billable hours with a lawyer probably won't tell you
anything more than that. Review is great, but it's not an absolute, as an IP
lawyer is most definitely not the final authority.

~~~
larrys
All I am looking at is whether there is a basis to hang a hat on.

And if that is the case then people will come to the defense of the accused
and the complainant may back down or reevaluate their position. _All with the
resulting publicity_ (which actually would happen even if he was wrong but
that's much more risky so I wouldn't advocate w/o some leg). In any event you
have to ask yourself what their game is and whether they would seek damages
(can't get blood from a stone you know) and whether they even want to spend
(they aren't exactly super profitable or anything) resources on this.

Consequently I don't care what would happen at trial because there isn't going
to be a trial. The NYT isn't going to spend resources on this.

This is all strategy based on my experience.[2] You ask 10 people you will get
10 opinions. All I'm saying is that it pays to have someone review before
backing down in "3 days". [1]

[1] Absolutely inconceivable that the NYT won't allow someone to locate an
attorney to review which in no case is 3 days reasonable. There is no imminent
harm to them. This is on the face the standard "scary lawyer letter" intended
to cause exactly the reaction that it did.

[2] I had two situations where both American Express and the NCAA came calling
with scary lawyer letters many years ago and was able to keep them at bay with
a reply letter from my attorney. And other things like this. Law and strategy
are two different things.

------
bowerbird
view-source on "snow fall" and you'll see that it's bloatware underneath,
through and through.

so i am pleased to see any kind of tool being offered to creative individuals
that will help to simplify the matter of creating such sites.

if i did a replica, i would scramble the text, and dummy the images and video,
so as to avoid any copyright issues. but that's a side-issue.

the important point is big-money corporations usually employ cost-inefficient
methodologies. it'd be a mistake for individuals to think that such wasteful
methodologies are the only route. so don't let the n.y. times bully you into
the incorrect perception that only it can create a lush presentation a la
"snow fall". you can too.

-bowerbird

------
pekk
Is it just me or has medium.com begun to dominate HN in the last month?

~~~
GeorgeTirebiter
It's not just you. It's done by people who, apparently, hate the iPad pinch-
to-zoom gesture --- since medium.com does not permit that.

------
ewest
This is the first time I have heard of Snow Fall - and no wonder - it's
nothing new. A bunch of moving pictures and some text. I don't see how this is
any different than sites with irritating flash video ads (or just video) on
them - text plus video/moving pictures.

If I were someone at NYT, I would be flattered that someone took the time to
replicate my stuff since it seems someone seems to think it's worth
stealing/borrowing/copying/etc

------
31reasons
They feel so outdated compared with the internet culture of open source and
sharing. You can almost feel the dinosaurs crumbling and dying!

------
sharkweek
I thought Snow Fall was great -- but I'd much rather tip my hat to
Pitchfork.com for their "Cover Story" series when it comes to compelling
online content publishing:

<http://pitchfork.com/features/cover-story/>

~~~
caycep
Their technical lead Matt Dennewitz seems to post here too. It's high time for
a blog post about Pitchfork Cover Story, Matt!

------
crisnoble
Did it really take NYT hundreds of hours to create that story or did he pull
that out of his hat?

~~~
crazygringo
Hundreds of hours coule be reasonable if you included conception, explorations
of alternatives, etc... Just think of multiple designers being involved.

It's incredibly easier/quicker to code something when you're just copying
someone else's end result.

~~~
crisnoble
I agree that it is reasonable, and the level of polish that they had in the
final result is worthy of their time. I am sure that scrollkit has spent much
more than 100s of hours creating the scrollkit toolbox and presumably the NYT
did it from scratch.

I am mostly wondering where he got that number from, was it a guess, did they
quote it at some point?

~~~
gluejar
God took centuries to write the bible; Gutenberg reproduced the work in a few
days.

------
GeorgeTirebiter
This "medium.com" site causes the "pinch to zoom" function to not work on the
iPad. This sucks. I refuse to read sites that break things like this. Why do
they wish to disenfranchise iPad users?

~~~
voyou
I've seen quite a few sites which prevent zooming on mobile browsers. I think
it's to do with:

"Mobile Safari often just zooms the page when changing from portrait to
landscape, instead of laying out the page as it would if originally loaded in
landscape. If web developers want their scale settings to remain consistent
when switching orientations on the iPhone, they must add a maximum-scale value
to prevent this zooming, which has the sometimes-unwanted side effect of
preventing users from zooming in." [https://developer.mozilla.org/en-
US/docs/Mozilla/Mobile/View...](https://developer.mozilla.org/en-
US/docs/Mozilla/Mobile/Viewport_meta_tag)

Whatever the reason, it's pretty annoying.

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rdl
I wonder if it's reasonable to put the snowfall replica back up now as it has
become closer to an element of a fair use political speech over copyright
overreach.

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perlpimp
seems news papers resemble entertainment companies closer and closer. Sad to
see NYT - respectable News publication stoop this low. It is that or legal
makes the company look like that.

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ZaAaV
just post it back already

