
Chinese dev steals US HTML5 Game engine, US hosts won't close down the copy - hoi
http://www.techinasia.com/chinese-net-user-steals-game-engine-sells-price-hosts-silent/
======
ftwinnovations
Within a month of releasing my very successful iPhone app TextPics, there were
several Chinese clones using a slightly modified icon, all of my content, my
design, layout, and with names like "TextPics Pro" and "TextPics(R)" or
"TextPics+". As annoying as this was and confusing to my customers, it got
even worse. Theft in China does not stop at the dev level, oh no. Comparing my
Google analytics app usage to my Apple purchases in China was even more
depressing. It turned out China was _by far_ my biggest country for usage...
And just about at the bottom of my list for revenue. The Chinese were simply
stealing the app with their cracked iPhones. I see no way to win here.

And this is no blind hate for the Chinese. I have a Chinese wife from the
mainland, I study Chinese Rosetta Stone daily, and I've been to China multiple
times for pleasure. I know these people. As a culture, they consider it
laughable and stupid to pay for something they could otherwise steal. I've had
this conversation with enough Chinese at this point.

So seriously I don't see how I can take that country or it's people seriously
from a tech biz standpoint if I can't trust their ethics.

~~~
analyst74
This is very interesting.

Genuine question: how is pirating PC games, songs and movies acceptable while
pirating apps is not?

Edit: this is not a question toward parent, but rather the general public, as
I kind of get the sense that pirating is somewhat acceptable under certain
circumstances while not others. Where is the line?

~~~
rodly
Where did he say pirating anything was okay?

~~~
chimi
It is funny how if it's copying a developers HTML5 game, it's stealing, but if
it's a movie or song, well... that's just copying, because the creator still
has a copy -- _that's_ not stealing.

The level of hypocrisy around here is incredible. The only occurrence of the
text string "not stealing" in this whole tread is in my post right here.

~~~
lindenr
You didn't answer the question. No-one ever said pirating was okay (or "not
stealing").

Also, I think you're wrong: pirating a movie/book/whatever will _at most_
result in the price of one movie/book being lost from the creators (given that
I may or may not have bought it legally otherwise). Copying an app, on the
other hand, can result in a (theoretically) unlimited number of apps being
purchased where the money doesn't go to the original creators. That is more
like ripping a dvd and posting it to a torrent site.

I'm not saying pirating is defensible, but downloading something illegally is
_far_ less harmful than copying someone's app.

~~~
simonbrown
What about posting movies/books/whatever to trackers in the first place?

------
mmcconnell1618
I had a similar issue a few years ago when someone from Asia had modified and
resold my ecommerce application for years as his own. I lost at least $50,000
in sales to US customers who purchased this guy's copy of my software.

The big problem that I ran into is the cost to litigate international issues.
I contacted a bunch of law firms and they all pretty much said it would be a
six-figure cost to pursue any international action and the hopes of collecting
would be almost zero. Fortunately, the copying was so blatant that I didn't
have a problem getting the US web host to pull down his site.

Partially as a result of the incident I decided to open-source the code base.
Other than locking up the code in a SaaS platform there isn't a 100% foolproof
way to protect IP so why not embrace the copying and build a business model
around reality.

~~~
shiftpgdn
I know it's a bit late to suggest this but for future reference you could have
always followed the VBulletin model of sending DMCA/Legal threats to people
who purchase the bootlegged software.

I realize this doesn't make you any friends but if enough of those customers
disputed the charges with the person who had stolen your software you may have
been able to put him out of business.

~~~
mmcconnell1618
I actually contacted most of them because the software was sold in a small
community. I offered them immunity from legal threats in exchange for
registering with me so that I knew how many people had purchased. The plan is
to sell them official upgrades as their current unsupported versions become
outdated.

Thanks for the suggestion.

------
ewillbefull
As much as I hate the DMCA, when this happens and a U.S. host starts ignoring
legitimate DMCA notices, start emailing their upstreams. Softlayer is probably
doing this because they have an inexperienced tech handling your request.

Email ATDN, Global Crossing, Cogent Communications, and many of the other
companies they peer with and say the website has not been shut down despite
emails sent to Softlayer. Those companies may threaten to nullroute the
website's IP.

If they don't do anything (unlikely) get an injunction.

It's trivial for this guy to get it hosted elsewhere, however. This is just
me, but I wouldn't expect to build anything in HTML5 that couldn't be copied--
the platform is inherently open. If the only creative and useful properties of
your work is built in the open, there does not seem to be a compelling reason
why you would be protected by copyright. This person could build a website
around your "copyrights" in little time.

~~~
grabeh
Just because a product uses open technology, it doesn't necessarily undermine
the labour and creative skill that a person puts into creating a product from
the open technology available. This could be the same skill put into a non-
open source piece of software, just that the opportunity to copy isn't so
readily available.

Also, saying that the person who copied the website could build around the
website in no time at all rather assumes that they have the skill to do so.

~~~
davidw
> non-open source

"Open source" does not mean "you can view the source". It means software that
is freely usable and redistributable:

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Debian_Free_Software_Guidelines...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Debian_Free_Software_Guidelines#The_guidelines)

~~~
grabeh
Thank you for the correction. Is there a term to describe code which although
freely viewable is not open-source?

~~~
ewillbefull
Proprietary.

~~~
grabeh
But that for me doesn't capture the aspect of it being freely available to
examine/read - perhaps such a term doesn't exist!

~~~
davidw
I don't think there's one term. "An application with exposed/visible source
code", maybe.

~~~
bigiain
The term "shared source" exists, and sort-of covers this scenario:

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Reciprocal_License#Mi...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Reciprocal_License#Microsoft_Reciprocal_License_.28Ms-
RL.29)

------
khazard
Hopefully I (as the only SoftLayer employee in this thread that I'm aware of)
can provide a little insight. Before addressing the specific issue in the
post, I want to share a quick overview of SoftLayer's Abuse Department and the
processes of handling complaints.

The abuse@softlayer.com address functions as more of a notification system
than a medium for conversation. You don't have to be a SoftLayer customer to
contact that address, and when reports of verifiable abuse are received, the
abuse team will work with the customer responsible for the infringing server
to get it resolved as quickly as possible. If the DMCA is properly formatted,
the abuse team will work with our customers (who may, in turn have to work
with their customers) to have the infringing material removed.

If a complaint is submitted to that address that doesn't meet the legal
guidelines of documentation we need before we can take action, we cannot take
action. If we can't take action because of an incomplete or invalid complaint,
we also can't provide any visibility or feedback to the complaining parties
about what was incomplete/invalid, as that could fall into the "legal advice"
category.

Abuse tickets aren't handled by technical support, and they people creating
and responding to the tickets are only responsible for abuse-related issues.
Not only are they a distinct team, they fall in an entirely different part of
the organization (alongside the legal, internal security and systems teams).
As such, the way they respond needs to be extremely consistent from one issue
to the next, and they're only able to make decisions based on the
reports/evidence they have.

I don't have visibility into the specific complaint that was submitted, so the
only assumption I can make is that the complaint wasn't properly formatted or
it didn't have the legal evidence we need to take action. Whether or not the
copyright infringement is "obvious" or "unquestionable" from an outside
perspective does not change our legal requirement of having a properly
formatted DMCA complaint to take action. If there's a lawyer in the building
who is willing to offer his/her services to the game developer, a resolution
might be a lot quicker. When the DMCA is submitted, I'd love to be copied on
it (khazard@softlayer.com) so I can immediately have it investigated and acted
upon.

-Kevin Hazard

------
incision
Reading this and the related stories of other products like Cloudstone [1] I'm
immediately reminded of another, recent HN post [2] which suggested covering
about half a dozen markets/languages with your initial releases.

Something to think about.

1:
[http://www.reddit.com/r/gaming/comments/yc02l/some_company_i...](http://www.reddit.com/r/gaming/comments/yc02l/some_company_in_china_stole_my_game/)

2: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4389468>

------
olalonde
On the other hand, it's sad that so many startups are ignoring the huge market
that China is. People on HN often critique the music/film industries for
claiming to lose ridiculously huge amounts of revenues due to piracy. In this
case, I am willing to bet that 99% of people buying from the Chinese website
wouldn't have bought the original. Anyways, I'm not trying to justify what
this guy did but simply suggesting that more startups should consider serving
the Chinese market.

~~~
richardw
What would a positive outcome of serving a group be when you know 99% of them
won't buy anything from you?

I'd be very impressed if any outsider managed to sustainably serve the Chinese
market, without the very hungry local competitors improving on the solution.
Support by itself would be quite a challenge.

~~~
iy56
99% of them would not have bought the original product because their English
skills are not good enough. They would buy a localized Chinese version, which
is what the Chinese site from the story was selling. The moral of the story
is, Chinese customers want a localized copy of your product. If you don't
provide it, someone else will, and that guy might not feel like paying you any
license fees.

~~~
slurgfest
You make it sound like someone who doesn't immediately produce a Chinese
translation deserves what they get when someone pirates their app and adds a +
to the end. Also, like translation is the only reason someone's app gets
ripped off.

------
gutnor
As many people have said - with HTML5, you basically give your IP away and
hope for the law to keep people honest. Making money is those conditions is
the old open source conundrum.

I would suggest the OP to sell support contract (sponsored features, priority
bug fixing, ...) to the Chinese customers of his copycat. If the situation
gets worse (eg: the chinese firm translate their website in English), the
engine can be open sourced and try to recover with the support.

~~~
hdctambien
If the Chinese site is selling the minified/uncommented JS code that you would
get from "view source" then he probably wouldn't be in business for long.

In this case, it sounds like he bought a copy of the engine/level editor/build
scripts/documentation and is selling that. Is that any different than buying
the Unreal Engine Source Code and reselling it for 50% off?

~~~
iy56
Yes. It would be like buying the Unreal Engine Source Code, translating
everything into Chinese, and selling that for 50% off.

------
pjmlp
While I condemn what they have done, this is what you're open to if you try to
create HTML5 games, as the whole UI is just one wget away.

~~~
phoboslab
The un-obfuscated code and the level editor isn't available though. I believe
the thief bought a copy of Impact to get all the source files - this could
have happened with any product.

~~~
guilloche
Is it possible to sell just obfuscated library?

~~~
TazeTSchnitzel
In theory, yes. In practise, developers wouldn't like it since they can't deal
with bugs in it or debug easily with it.

------
jfaucett
This is interesting as I have had similar problems with hackers/copy catters,
and it is true that the majority do come from an asian region, but I think its
still important to note that the majority of the world's population is also in
asia. For me, this article seems to concentrate the online IP problem
specifically in asia/China, which in my opinion is simply not the case. For
instance, are the Samwers really that much different from what the developer
in the article just did? I think the real question is how do you respect IP at
a global level where governmental laws can differ largely from one country to
the next.

~~~
franze
>For instance, are the Samwers really that much different from what the
developer in the article just did?

yes, stealing a product and selling a stolen product is quite different from
copying, iterating on and subsequent scaling a business model.

~~~
Volpe
It is only 'different' because we have defined/framed copyright in the way we
have.

Infringing copyright is not that different from copying a business model. (You
are still copying something from someone else).

~~~
franze
with this logic (and if it would have always applied) we would have 1
restaurant chain in the whole world, 1 car maker in the whole world, hey we
would have only one merchant in the whole world - and worst of all - only one
OS maker in the whole world.

~~~
Volpe
Reductio ad absurdum.

Care to try to explain 'why' for any of those assertions?

~~~
franze
the business model of a merchant is to buy something cheap and sell it at a
more expensive price. if this business model would be copyrightable than
nobody else would be allowed (not until he/she licensed it) to buy something
cheap and sell it at a more expensive price.

the one merchant who invented this concept would then be the only merchant in
the world, and as the other guy who invented "licensing" would probably not
have "licensed" licensing to the merchant (as the merchant would then have a
license on licensing and would have just licensed licensing to other people)
the merchant would be forever the only merchant in the world.

note: yeah i know this is absurd, but not as absurd as the notion, that
business models are copyrightable. (or should not get copied because of ....
whatever)

~~~
paulgb
Copyright would never apply to business models, patents would. Both copyrights
and patents expire, so the scenario you describe wouldn't happen.

I agree that business models should not be protected, though.

------
strebler
The situation is unfortunate, but basically inevitable at this stage in
China's development. Take a look at the Chinese book publishing industry and
you'll see a glimpse of the Chinese way - most books are put online for free
by the authors (mostly in their entirety). The publishing companies pick the
most popular ones, who get deals to have their books printed & sold in stores.
Totally different from the west.

Doing business in China, I have noticed that there is somewhat of a
"creativity gap" (as I call it). I believe that as their society evolves and
begins to create more of their own IP, the laws will eventually adapt to
protect such developments. In the meantime, it's very difficult.

But still, Cisco has had everything copied (down to the model #s) by you-know-
who and yet still makes billions (also powering the great firewall). Like
Microsoft & Cisco, there are ways to penetrate and dominate the market in the
midst of the piracy.

However, if your IP is some "easily de-obfuscated" javascript (and you're a
startup), it's a very difficult position and my heart goes out to them.

------
clippit
As a Chinese, I feel ashamed about these people. They said on their [forum][0]
that "The controversy is inevitable. We offer services only for China so that
Chinese customers can buy the same product with a low price."

But please believe me there are a lot of good guys, contributors in China and
many of them are so reclusive that you cannot recognize they are Chinese.

[0]:
[http://www.kilofox.net/forum/forum.php?mod=viewthread&ti...](http://www.kilofox.net/forum/forum.php?mod=viewthread&tid=469&extra=page%3D1)

------
guilloche
Html5 code is so easy to be copied, and it seems not trivial to prove who
copied who. If my website is totally copied, how can I prove that my one is
original? Any idea?

~~~
Cyranix
If you're really that concerned about it,

1) Print source code 2) Get it witnessed by a notary public

~~~
Achshar
As a techie myself, printing and code lie on opposite sides of the spectrum.
Printing source code screams "wrong" in the back of my head. And how would one
deal with updates, esp nightly updates.

------
axx
The guy who made Impact is from germany, not the US.

------
zupreme
I hope the op realizes that, by posting this on HN, he/she has just promoted
the much cheaper copycat product to the very target market that alleged thief
wants to reach...

~~~
paulgb
I would bet that most of HN is ethical and aware enough to buy the original.

~~~
iy56
I bet most of HN isn't good enough at Chinese, so they'd rather pay more for
the original, because it's in English.

~~~
TazeTSchnitzel
And also to support the original developer and definitely receive good support
and updates.

------
grabeh
The unfortunate reality is that even if Softlayer comply with the DMCA
request, the site could be moved to a host in a more infringement-friendly
jurisdiction.

Perhaps a letter from a Chinese law firm could help to escalate matters. A
basic cease and desist letter would be relatively cheap, but then again, from
the infringer's stance so far, I can't imagine it would receive a particularly
positive response...

~~~
ceworthington
It may not help much but you'd like to think that Softlayer would at least
make the effort.

------
anuraj
How do you prevent HTML and JS code from getting copied - obsfuscation may not
help much. The standard had it coming.

------
tmh88j
There was a similar incident that someone posted on Reddit recently, however,
not using HTML5.

[http://www.reddit.com/r/gaming/comments/yc02l/some_company_i...](http://www.reddit.com/r/gaming/comments/yc02l/some_company_in_china_stole_my_game/)

~~~
xfs
The difference is that this is not plagiarism; this is just piracy. The
Chinese studio does not claim authorship for this. They have even stated their
upstream, making them look like an authorized distributor. They claim to be
selling a localized "cracked" version. Shamefully, piracy with a price is not
uncommon in China.

It's not quite straightforward why they decide to sell a pirated version. They
seem to be specialized in web game development, based on Impact and other
framework. I guess they had used Impact for game development, during which
they spent some time doing the localization, integration and documentation and
felt that was a justification for selling for a price. Their customers, if
there are any, are not unaware of the piracy, as in their product forum.

~~~
tmh88j
I said similar, not the same. Both people had their game ripped off by Chinese
companies without their consent who are now selling them. I'd say that's very
similar.

>The difference is that this is not plagiarism; this is just piracy.

How is one worse than the other ? Both people's products are being illegally
sold by a company in China. Either way, both are losing out on potential
profit. One product was straight up copied, the other was (most likely) re-
created. Even if the plagiarized game was completely re-coded from scratch,
they still stole their ideas, designs, etc...

~~~
xfs
I don't think I was disagreeing with you. It's purely relevant information on
the other side of the story.

------
hnewb
I am Chinese (who resides in Bay Area). Yeah, I feel shame.

------
csense
If the US-based hosting provider ignores DMCA requests, can't you sue the
provider?

You could also see if their payment provider is willing to help.

------
ashwinm
These Chinese copy everything !

~~~
thinkingisfun
It's such an outrage! Don't they know that some token glass pearls go a long
way?

~~~
thinkingisfun
The fact that the parent didn't even raise an eyebrow just makes this butthurt
reaction even more hilarious. Keep on trucking, and don't worry; there's an
idiot born every day, never mind silly old me. Hahaha.

------
TazeTSchnitzel
The blog's identical, by the way. No effort to translate it.

------
city41
This is an exact use case that SOPA was designed to address. We _vehemently_
hated SOPA, so what's the deal? We can't have it both ways.

~~~
mratzloff
Personally, I would rather not have SOPA and have this guy lose a few sales.

------
gubatron
How is this Hacker News, Chinese game portals are full of stolen games. No
matter what you will do, they will reverse engineer and remove ads and blocks.

It's china, the land of counterfeit.

