
Twitpic Blocks Posterous’ Import Tool; Out Come The Lawyers - nirmal
http://techcrunch.com/2010/06/29/twitpic-posterous-lawyers/?utm_source=TweetMeme&utm_medium=widget&utm_campaign=retweetbutton
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OoTheNigerian
Because of this move, I will move from twitpic. They have the guts to tell me
I have no right to do what I want with my pictures.

Twitpic made a blunder with their service, they decided not to innovate and
did not build a community around their service. It may not be too late, but,
am out!

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bombs
How many people use TwitPic as a blog?

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c1sc0
This whole thing is seeming more and more like a brilliant PR move by
Posterous. Don't the twitpic guys realize that lawyering up is just stoking
the fire at this point?

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olefoo
This doesn't do anything for twitpic other than make them look fearful and
weak.

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kmfrk
This also seems to send a signal of "get your TwitPic photos while you still
can". What if TwitPic went broke at some point with all your images on it?

I can't see what TwitPic would get out of this. I could see a problem if
Posterous deeplinked, but the images are the legal property of the users, so
of course they're entitled.

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fleitz
It's brilliant marketing. Everyone knows their tool is going to get blocked
anyway but like clockwork even small companies send in the lawyers which
inevitably leads to great coverage.

By writing the tool they either get users or coverage. Win-win situation.

~~~
Aaronontheweb
It's like an intentional version of the Streisand Effect

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chc
Twitpic is within its rights to block Posterous, but the threats to bring
"trade secrets" laws into play are totally nuts. A technology company like
Twitpic should know as well as anyone that if a human can access their content
with a computer, a computer can access their content just as well with the
proper direction.

~~~
gte910h
Yeah, I hope they get slapped with court costs for this ridiculous argument

~~~
fleitz
They are threatening legal action at this point. This is more like a C&D than
a case. No case, no court costs.

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dkberktas
Its my data. I should decide where to keeo it!

~~~
dedward
You should. Twitpic isn't obligated to help you, though.

~~~
dkberktas
Correct,but twitpic shouldn't try to stop others that provide tools for the
data migration

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sh1mmer
Posterous should spend a day creating an easy export from their own service to
prove they aren't afraid of competition. Then they would come out of these 2
weeks not looking like jerks.

The blog post to Tumblr users still rankles me.

~~~
ttrashh
One of the comments from the techcrunch post:

 _there is no hypocrisy here. We have an API that gives users 100% access to
all their content on Posterous, including the original media that was
uploaded, in it's full size.

This API can be found here: <http://posterous.com/api/reading>

There is nothing stopping people from writing Posterous exporters that go to
other services. In fact, Wordpress released a Posterous importer a few months
ago.

We support data portability. It's the user's content, not ours. It's our
privilege to host it for our users, and we are working hard to be the best
service out there._

~~~
sh1mmer
I think it's great you have an open API. That's awesome.

But I think it's also not about what users theoretically could do (if they
were able), it's about making it as easy to get data out as you are making it
to get data in.

If you did that you'd look awesome. Actively demonstrating that you aren't at
all afraid of the competition could be as powerful as all the import
functionality.

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vibhavs
I thought this was a valid point brought up by Anil Dash on Twitter
(<http://twitter.com/anildash/status/17380509761>):

"Of course Twitpic should allow export, but Posterous calling others "dying
platforms" is an unnecessary dick move. Hence, pettiness."

Here's where they used the term "dying platforms":
<http://blog.posterous.com/make-the-switch-to-posterous>

~~~
stoney
Yeah, Posterous are playing a little bit rough, but Twitpic shouldn't respond
to that by making it look like they want to make it difficult for users to
export their data. If something Posterous have said is untrue (maybe the dying
platform part) then call them on it - post growth stats, demand a retraction,
whatever. Don't alienate your users to get back at another company.

~~~
masklinn
> Yeah, Posterous are playing a little bit rough

A bit rough? They're complete assholes about it.

> but Twitpic shouldn't respond to that by making it look like they want to
> make it difficult for users to export their data.

They're not, they haven't blocked anything (not even Posterous's IP block) and
clearly said they don't plan on retiring the data export features.

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naner
Haha, it's just using the RSS feed... trade secrets my ass.

TwitPic should be embarrassed, this is just anticompetitive BS.

~~~
pierrefar
There is a difference between data portability and, potentially, a denial of
service due to a large-scale import. Twitpic probably cares about all its
users and given that it does not control Posterous' scraper, it can only block
it.

Also, let's not forget Twitpic's terms of service:

 _Data mining, "scraping", and/or unauthorized crawling of Twitpic by any
means is prohibited unless explicit permission is given..._

I bring these up because I'm sure when it's convenient for them, Posterous
would point to their ToS to block something.

Had Posterous worked with Twitpic and got denied instead of doing an arrogant
marketing campaign ("rescue"?), I would be 100% behind Posterous. Right now,
it's Posterous posturing for the upper hand when they don't really have a
case.

~~~
cabalamat
> _unauthorized crawling of Twitpic by any means is prohibited_

Twitpic have a publicly accessible http server. Sending it http requests is
therefore something they've implicitly allowed.

~~~
dedward
Hypothetically, if I have something web accessible, and you are accessing it,
it becomes unauthorized as soon as I (the owner of the service) tell you that
you are no longer authorized to use my service.

Analogies rarely work -but it's sort of like how it's trespassing once I tell
you to never come on my property again.

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Aaronontheweb
Do users just not get a say in where their data lives anymore or what? Why in
the hell don't these companies stop freaking out over whether or not a user
can port his or her data someplace else and focus on WHY a user would want to
in the first place.

~~~
dedward
They absolutely get a say - they can choose to put it on posterous, or not.
They can also choose to put their data wherever they want.

What they don't get to do is force a business, unless it's part of a paid-for
contract, to spend it's own resources and bandwidth to help an unrelated
competitor (or anyone else).

~~~
natrius
If a user wants to move from TwitPic to Posterous and TwitPic decides to block
the simplest method of doing so, they are clearly in the wrong. Do you really
think Posterous-generated traffic is significant compared to their usual
traffic?

~~~
dedward
That wasn't really the point I was making - do I think it's a traffic problem?
Probably not.

My point was that it's not about user's "rights" about their data - none of
those are really being taken away - I don't like the sense of entitlement
everyone wants - it's just going to breed gigantic TOS documents and legal
hassles. Twitpic may very well be making a very bad PR move here (rather than
spending the money innovating and competing)

~~~
natrius
Ok, I see what you're saying. I think the expectation that users will be able
to get their data back out of a service if they choose to do so is a good one,
and that services that don't meet that expectation should be criticized and
avoided.

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nirmal
Looks like they are blocking more than just Posterous.

@jazzychad: " _ARGH. @twitpic is blocking the whole slicehost/rackspace cloud
IP block again. /cc @cloudsupport @posterous_ "

<http://twitter.com/jazzychad/status/17381172407>

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bigiain
Surely the "scan rss feed and grab all the photos" tool could be re-written as
a client side javascript app? Then they could only block it by blocking all
their users :-)

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jackowayed
That came to my mind too, but I don't think it's doable thanks to XSS
restrictions.

To prevent nefarious scripts, XSS (cross-site scripting) isn't allowed by
browsers. Thus, when you're on a posterous.com page, javascript can only make
requests to posterous.com. When you're on a twitpic.com page, javascript can
only make requests to twitpic.com. The way sites get around this is by making
the request to the external site from their servers, but then the calls would
still come from Posterous servers, so it would get blocked.

~~~
andreyf
Make it a Chrome extension? Doable in a couple of hours, and might get more
people to switch to Chrome. Goodness all around :)

~~~
megablast
Why the hate for firefox? I support firefox more, it started all the
improvements in browsers, is done by a small company, and doesn't have so many
fingers into my privacy pie.

~~~
helium
That is not hate for Firefox, it's love for Chrome....

