MailChimp threatens legal action against an open source side project

MailChimp threatens legal action against an open source side project(imluke.me)

36 points by lukechesser 12 years ago | 39 comments

jrochkind1 12 years ago |

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.

coverband 12 years ago | |

Absolutely... This was the nicest lawyer's letter that I have ever seen, making sure not to slight the recipient, explaining their reasoning in clear terms and trying to be fair all around. If I ever need their type of services, I'll be choosing MailChimp.

lukechesser 12 years ago | |

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 12 years ago | | |

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.

inselkampf 12 years ago | | |

Once its come to their attention, no manager/director is going to go to one of their dev's or designers and say "Hey, go ask person x to take that down...".

If this situation escalated it could look sloppy on their part if they didn't handle it properly with the correct resources from the beginning.

There is no reason why this issue at hand can't be handled in a professional manner - in this case by an actual lawyer.

I've received a number of C&D and this to me is by far the most level-headed and polite that I've seen in a long time.

Just because you didn't expect a response form a lawyer doesn't mean its "aggressive" by default.

nwh 12 years ago | | |

The letter you got is a friendly request ("quick message"), not a legal demand. Why does it matter who it came from?

autodidakto 12 years ago | |

You're right, with one clarification: Miss. isn't an abbreviation, it's the full word. Ms. is short for Miss but is used for professional communication nonetheless. [Source: I transcribed documents intended for lawyers]

losvedir 12 years ago | | |

Huh, I guess I never stopped to think what "Ms." is short for, and it very well could be "Miss". However, for those non-native English speakers on HN, it's pronounced differently: "Miss" is pronounced with an unvoiced "s" at the end, "Ms." is pronounced "Mizz".

darkstar999 12 years ago | |

The fact that we have to worry about womens' marital status when addressing them is sad.

jronald 12 years ago | | |

I'm off topic here, but I think this is more an artifact than common place anymore, right? While Mrs and Miss still exist, I've never seen them anywhere aside from formal invitations. (except my third grade teacher who required 'Mrs.', but that was almost 20 years ago)

dandrews 12 years ago | | |

darkstar999, read Douglas Hofstadter's "A Person Paper on Purity in Language", his clever 30-y-o essay on sexism in writing.

http://www.cs.virginia.edu/~evans/cs655/readings/purity.html

zensavona 12 years ago |

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 12 years ago |

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 12 years ago | |

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 12 years ago | | |

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 12 years ago |

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 12 years ago | |

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 12 years ago | | |

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.

mpyne 12 years ago | | |

> 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'.

That is Allan's right, and Heroku's right. But Allan can only speak for himself, Heroku can only speak for Heroku. So while it's good that you've asked them for their opinion, they have no agency and confer no expectations as to what MailChimp does or does not do.

You're not really giving people a choice if you expect only one answer when you ask them for permission, you know. ;)

subpixel 12 years ago | | |

I don't think posting PSDs is a dick move - they're just gussied-up screengrabs as far as I can see. Obviously you can't sell them or misattribute them, etc.

But you need to decide whether you're asking permission or getting offended. I don't think you can have it both ways.

edit: you do misattribute them (e.g. "Facebook Timeline UI by Luke Chesser" https://github.com/lukechesser/Popular-UIs/ )

citricsquid 12 years ago |

    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 12 years ago | |

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...).

jerrya 12 years ago | | |

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.

Karunamon 12 years ago | | |

First off, this isn't a debate. Secondly, this completely ignores the use of tone in communication.

People get defensive when it appears they're being attacked. The "if you'd have asked nicely" response is, in my experience, the best response to give to a random being an asshole. Either they'll double down (confirming your suspicions), or they'll realize they came across wrong and rephrase.

codva 12 years ago |

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 12 years ago |

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

timtamboy63 12 years ago |

> 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 12 years ago |

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 12 years ago | |

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 12 years ago |

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 12 years ago |

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.

narrowingorbits 12 years ago |

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 12 years ago |

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?"

simonhamp 12 years ago |

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

tuananh 12 years ago |

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

mintplant 12 years ago |

    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 12 years ago |

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.

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.