My Regrets About the ‘copyright dispute’

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As I’ve had more time to think about this issue, the more regret I feel for taking part in it, and realize that whether I think New Media Maze responded to me correctly, doesn’t matter.

When the issue first came to my attention, there were plenty of people telling me “not to back down”, and that I “should speak to a lawyer”, etc. I realize now that I got way too caught up in this.

When I first spoke to Dave from NMM, I felt like he patronized me, and didn’t hardly give me an opportunity to speak. It made me mad. Maybe I took him wrong, maybe I didn’t. Either way, I should have left the issue alone, because in the grand scheme of things, it’s just a WordPress theme, which honestly, are a dime a dozen.

To Dave: I’m publicly apologizing for the part I took in this. My pride is not worth trying to make you look bad. You told me what happened, and I wish I had just taken your word for it. I don’t need to examine the code to say that.

Someone left a comment that they thought I was trying to milk this for all it’s worth. I can see how it looks that way, but that’s not what I want, and I don’t want to try and get attention by making someone else look bad. So Dave, staff of NMM, and people of the blogosphere, I hope you will overlook my prideful behavior.

33 thoughts on “My Regrets About the ‘copyright dispute’”

  1. I can understand why you have said what you have, but as it looks from here NMM have behaved dreadfully and highly incompetently. Their work is so publicly contaminated by your work (in the IP sense) that they don’t have a leg to stand on. Nobody was in doubt of the fact their theme was substantially different from your, but they messed up, and messed up big time; and they really do seem to have treated you very shabbily, out of their own mouths on their own website.

    That you got upset was entirely understandable, flowing from their unprofessional behavior in the first instance (even they have hinted at that) and their subsequent treatment (manifest from their own defense).

  2. You had better leave it alone, or you might find yourself shot a few dozen times in the head the next time you are on the tube.

  3. Anthony, I don’t see how you owe anyone of us any sort of apology. If you feel that you are somehow at fault for what’s arisen between you and NMM, that’s one thing, and you have offered them a graceful exit from the situation (whether it’s deserved will be determined by people far smarter people than me). But I can’t see how you need to offer anyone else an apology.

    There are such things as pride of ownership and pride of authorship (not always the same thing). Since your original theme was released under a Creative Commons license, I think you exhibited a proper amount of pride of authorship, along with a well-developed sense of fairness — you stood up against a much larger concern that seemingly took advantage of someone else’s (in this case, yours) work. You should be applauded for those things.

    If you’re OK with the folks at NMM and how they work, that’s good enough for me. But don’t feel bad about defending yourself — if you won’t, who will?

  5. Anthony – I think you are selling yourself one short here… As a fellow WP designer (and a first-time visitor of your blog), I would’ve most probably done exactly what you did and I would’ve tried to get some marketing value from the excercise. And that is not because I’m greedy or that I’d do immoral things to promote myself, but big corporates / organizations always gets a way with these type of things, whilst the little guys like us are sent to hell and back for the same mistakes.

    Fact is, they should’ve at least attributed some credit to you. But they’d never do that, because that would be telling Gordon Brown that instead of paying us thousands of quid, you could’ve downloaded a free theme which we did anyway…

    So to each his own. It shows a true man to apologize in this fashion and hats for that. But don’t beat yourself up for it; I fail to see how you have suddenly become the party that wronged someone else. NMM deserves all the bad press they get from this IMO.

    You could always try request a cup of tea with mr Brown himself… :P

  6. @Chris – I’m not saying that they’re completely innocent in this. But I’ve decided to take the man at his word.

    @Person calling yourself Gordon Brown – thanks for you insightful comments.

    @Bruce – Thanks for the encouragement. I don’t feel bad for defending myself, I just don’t want to continue pushing this.

    @Alan – I’m not completely down on myself, just the possibility that I may be fanning the flame. I still don’t like how the whole thing went down, but would rather not be involved any further.

    @Adii – I’m quite familiar with who you are. Thanks for the visit. I don’t disagree with what you’ve said here. The whole thing never would have started had they not made their mistake in the first place. But the bottom line is, I have other things in my life that deserve my focus more than this, and I don’t want to be guilty of affecting someones career negatively if they are telling the truth. I’m sure they’ve learned a lesson from the whole thing.

  7. As an advocate of CC it pains me to see a CC work being pulled to pieces and “re-written” without a simple credit to the original author. My CC field is more music than design, however I’ve seen a lot of instances where a CC musical work has been built from many other works – from 4 seconds of a crash symbol to an entire 6 minute tune – and for the most part the spirit of the license is usually upheld.

    Something which is starting to become an issue is the way licenses work in terms of cross over and inheritance from one license type to another. This is also true of your story here, from GPL to CC is a tricky transition. We’re all in a learning curve because we don’t all have expensive lawyers to call on, and when our rights are infringed we’re not focused enough as a collective to lobby government in the same way as the huge corporations.

    Creative rights are an emotive subject, it’s little wonder you responded as you did, and I’m sure some of you comments in context weren’t quite as cynical as NMM make out on their blog. I’m quite disappointed with their response to this, they could have managed it in a more professional way by adding a credit to the footer of the site.

    Even if they did “sample” only elements of your style sheet, it’s still sampling, again comparing this to a musical context you only need look at NWA’s 2004 court case in the US to determine how a minuscule sample can cause all manor of litigation.

    http://www.mtv.com/news/articles/1490830/20040908/index.jhtml?headlines=true

  8. Hi Anthony,

    Sorry to learn about your theme adventure. I think that, in the end, Alan’s last views on the issue are the best analysis and advice available.

    I think the story has several interesting aspects to it. None of them are “lessons for you to learn” — I believe that you have, indeed, been patronized enough on the issue.

    My first thought was that it’s always stunning how being right on a legal basis has strictly no value when you enter an arena where people have a corporate or political agenda. Both infringers in this story — the designers and the ones who endorsed their work and copyrighted it — cannot afford the slightest form of public criticism, and it’s amazing that they would shield themselves for you to apologise being robbed and proud of your work.

    A lot of the advice you received in comments does not take into account that legal righteousness is a blank bullet here. The only avenue for harming either infringer is/was the media. The courts might repair the initial damage, not the least because going to court instead of going public is a sign of what you want to do (repair a tort, not plunder a party or a company), and that is susceptible to play in your advantage. But only the media can create the damaging headlines and shortcuts.

    As regards your response, I believe you did the right thing regarding Number 10. What is the point in running after them for endorsing botched WordPress theming? None in my view. I suspect that your opinion of No. 10 is made of more substantial things — which might amount to the same conclusion that they are wreckless idiots, but that is drifting off-topic.

    However, still in my view, you did the wrong thing about the careless company that infringed your rights, and most importantly (who cares about rights anyway?), your work, which is part of you and your identity. That’s the Hegelian rationale for creating copyright: infringing the work of someone’s spirit damages this spirit.

    Still in my view, you should have framed your name-and-shame post around that company — which I have not cited once here, as a counter-example of what you should have done. In the blogosphere, you are given only one shot: the initial post, that will get linked everywhere and show up in Digg, Google and so on.

    My advice would have been: add a preliminary comment that names the company clearly, and make a backup copy of their statement in which it recognises that one of their designers acted haplessly and should be today’s laughing stock of corporate web design. Come on–ripping off a free design, what does that tell you of how professional these people are.

    I think your templates are great stuff that show great talent, which comes with some measure of pride – which is natural. People who do not credit others for their work are selfish bastards who do not realise that what gives us value as mere mortals is what we share with each other.

  9. thanks Anthony, apology accepted, and once again, I’m sorry for the confusion and distress the whole matter caused.

    If you’re ever in London, the invite for the cup of tea stands.

    @adii – we’re not a “big corporate / organization” we’re a medium size web design agency that i set up with a friend in my spare bedroom a few years back and who couldn’t believe their luck to land the Downing Street project. In terms of ‘attributing some credit to Ant’, if you read around a bit, you’ll see we did.

    Dave Smith over and out.

  11. Pingback: 10 Downing Street WordPress Theme Copyright Spat is Settled without Bloodshed | The Rouseabout

  12. Look on the bright side:

    A bunch of free links to your blog.

    Exposure: I’d never heard of you before, and I imagine a lot of other people hadn’t.

    If this was my site, you’d be seeing a shitload of affiliate links and google ads everywehre for a while, strike whilst the iron is hot and all that ;)

  13. 1) I reckon that the NMM code was based on Antbag’s theme and that it was a blatent ‘cock-up’ on their part. However, this is just personal opinion, and only based on the publicly available evidence.

    2) I don’t think such a big deal should’ve been made out of this publicly – but maybe it was needed to outline how people should be (or shouldn’t be) using Creative Commons licensed content.

    3) I can’t help but think if the roles were reversed and Antbag had ripped the PM’s theme, the consequences would’ve been more damning. NMM clearly got payed lots of money for the job – and it’s a shame that Antbag won’t see a penny of this.

    4) I can’t think what compelled NMM to retort to all this with such a bitchy response. You’d think if they’re trying to act like a professional creative agency, they’d at least make an attempt at a professional response. http://www.newmediamaze.com/index.php/antbags-theme-the-facts

  14. Pingback: British Government Caught Pirating On Prime Minister’s Website | TorrentFreak

  15. Well, Anthony, I for one will applaud your words and heart attitude, and even venture an “amen.” Although we live in this world and have to be wise in our dealings with it, there is definitely a time and place to let things go. And even though the context here was a bit different, still the underlying attitude is the same:

    1 Corinthians 6:7 and etc.

  16. Hi,

    In my opinion you should press the point. Here in the US we just had a major victory that upheld the GPL and Open Source Licenses. The case was almost identical to this except, there wasn’t a government body involved.

    http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=2008081313212422

    If the terms of your license were not met, they should be found in violation of copyright. I believe if you ask yourself, “What would they do if the reverse happened?”, you’d find, judging from their response, they would press the issue.

    Understand, I’m not saying to do it for the money. Rather, to demonstrate to the government the complications that copyright brings to creativity.

    You are very noble to allow them to continue to use your work, and you deserve the attribution you seek. Either way you proceed, I’m glad you’re satisfied with the outcome. Your sharing nature is what makes the open source movement what it is. Just to clarify, I would not press on due to money, but to make a point and show the government how inhibiting copyright law can be.

  17. Hi Anthony!

    From across the Big Pond I congratulate you on ‘getting over it’. LOL I just went through the same thing with a knock-off of a concept of mine – and I was searching for the template they had used – it was yours! – But to their credit they had followed the license and it helped me determine that it was a case of parallel evolution and not ‘mirroring’ or plagiarization.

    I went through a day much like yours yesterday where I was incredibly angry at times, and had many heated discussions, and felt I had been used. In the end I decided to make the best of things, and to look for the author of their template and see what other good work had been done.

    Imagine how surprised I was to find your controversy!

    Good Luck – you have already won the war here by moving on, and those that wronged you will have to suffer the slings and arrows as he said…
    :-)

  18. A mark of a great man is to know when to apologize, even when it seems that he’s not at fault.

    My admiration for you grows, Anthony. I believe a better way to channel your energy is to create yet another kick-ass theme, which I’m sure you’re very capable of doing :)

  20. Anthony, I know you want to “move on” from this and I respect your decision immensely. It’s a far nobler action than the other party has made.

    However, if you are interested in keeping abreast of other’s continued interest, I have done a little more research: out of the 24 files in your original theme package, 21 of them are still present (in some form or another) on Number 10′s website.

    http://www.theopensourcerer.com/2008/08/22/timber-more-on-number-10/

    Best regards

    Alan

  21. Hi Anthony.

    This sorry mess is a real shame, and I just cannot fathom the mentality of that “other” party, but I have a couple of comments.

    1. It appears as though you’ve actually included the wrong licence in networker-10.zip. The file license.rtf is headed “Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0″, however the body of that document is actually version 2.

    2. For the sake of certain “people” who don’t know how to read and/or like to blatantly disregard licenses, I recommend you paste this comment into all your files:

    “Pursuant to the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 license (cc-by-sa) under which this software is licensed, please ensure that the following copyright notice is retained and displayed prominently on the site in which this software, or derivatives thereof, is published: NetWorker WordPress Theme, Copyright © 2007 Anthony Baggett, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 license.”

  22. @Kevin – You’re exactly right about the transition from one type of license to another. I’ve seen quite a few different interpretations.

    @Fr. – Thanks for all your comments. I understand why many folks think I should have tried to keep this in the public eye, but I have no regrets for moving on.

    @Greg – This is true, big traffic spike. In my past experience, this type of traffic hasn’t been “ad clickers” though.

    @coxy – I agree with everything you stated.

    @Jeri – Thank you. Hopefully I’ve done right in the Lord’s eyes.

    @eleete – Thanks. I’m actually in the US as well, and have heard of this case. I think I’m going to need to make some decisions on exactly how I want to license future work. As some have pointed out, the way my license reads, there may be some gray area. I’m sure this was never considered and interpreted this way during the design process of the PM’s site, but it doesn’t matter at this point.

    @JonB – Interesting! This certainly isn’t the first time I’ve seen a theme of mine used in similar fashion. The fact is, this fuss is not so much about the footer link being gone……..it’s about this being the website of the Prime Minister. If it was just another blog, nobody would raise an eyebrow.

    @Azmeen – Mark of a great man? Thanks. I’ve actually got quite a few themes that I’ve built, but haven’t released. I may do so before long. Thanks for you encouragement.

    @Dad – Thank you Dad for saying that, as it means the world to me.

    @Alan – I have read your other articles including this one, and certainly have no problem with you or others looking into the matter further as you choose to. I think that if NMM made a bigger mistake than they are willing to admit, it will cost them in the end, whether publicly or not.

    @Slated - I appreciate your advice, and will most likely incorporate that into future works.

  23. andrew it sounds all too fishy to me. you must have been payed off or threatened to be backing down like this. this is a government hell bent on stopping piracy all the while they have built their website on stolen property. can you not see how this is not just about you? you have them by the balls, fight for the people. if they are going to be underhanded about this little thing, think of what else they have done.

    ah well either way i hope you fair well. but i will be watching this story closely. the war on e-pirates is heating up.

  25. Hey Anthony,

    You gotta love the wild, wild west that is the internet.

    Anyway, I think this is a good resolution … your design work has gotten some exposure and I imagine NMM will tighten up their ship a little and become better for it too.

  26. Hey Shane,
    I’m sure we’ve both(NMM and I) learned a few lessons from this. If I decide to do more free themes in the future, I’ll either be much more specific with the CC license requirements, or they will be released under the GPL.

  27. I’m also using a CC licensed theme for my homepage and I don’t think the author of the style sheet would be happy if I only mentioned him in the source code of the website. Its not really going to help the business if only other web designers can see who did the work.

  31. As a British citizen I have found this an embarrassement. You don’t need to appologise for anything but my country owes you an appology.
    It’s sad that we have to live in a democratic country yet we have a government that thinks it can do what the heck it likes and not care about responsibility and justice.

  32. You’re definitely the bigger person in this dispute. That verse in Proverbs 20:3 definitely rings true here: “It is an honor for a man to cease from strife, but every fool will be meddling.” Kudos to you, sir.

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