[HN Gopher] uBlock Origin GPL code being stolen by team behind h...
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uBlock Origin GPL code being stolen by team behind honey browser
extension
Author : extesy
Score : 964 points
Date : 2025-01-02 17:27 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (old.reddit.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (old.reddit.com)
| slowmovintarget wrote:
| If any software ever deserved being sued into non-existence it is
| the Honey browser extension, and any other scam software they
| turn out (Pie Adblock in this case).
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vc4yL3YTwWk
| tzs wrote:
| I've seen a few ads from them on YouTube promoting their ad
| blocker, specifically touting that it gets around YouTube's
| efforts to block ad blockers.
|
| I thought it was interesting that YouTube, in the midst of
| trying to crack down on ad blockers, allows ads promoting an ad
| blocker that is specifically claiming to evade that crackdown.
| Drakim wrote:
| I wonder if there could be anti-trust aspects to cracking
| down on such ads.
| stackskipton wrote:
| Nah, just Occam's Razor. Pie Inc. payments went through and
| it's cheaper for YouTube to run whatever instead of paying
| to people to curate such ads.
| chasebank wrote:
| The founders sold 5 years ago to PayPal. Do they just get to
| laugh on their way to the bank? Probably.
| manquer wrote:
| Your comment implicitly absolves PayPal of responsibility.
|
| One thief sold to another , it is like credit card lists or
| botnets are sold on the dark web .
|
| PayPal is hardly innocent here , they knew what they were
| getting into , this is the core business model of not just
| honey but all of the coupon sites.
| iou wrote:
| This is the one worth watching, it's a total scam and PayPal is
| fine with it apparently.
| ndriscoll wrote:
| From what I've gathered, honey basically replaced affiliate
| codes with their own and then gave the user part of the
| commission back? Is there something they did that users should
| be unhappy about?
| xen0 wrote:
| It seems the voucher codes they 'find' are not the result of
| them searching the Web.
|
| They are simply codes provided by partnered businesses and
| may be beaten by codes you can get by searching yourself.
|
| If true, then this is them outright lying to the user.
|
| And you know, if they don't find a coupon code for you, one
| might still be at least a little annoyed that the original
| 'salesman' didn't get their affiliate commission; it instead
| being pinched by another.
| ndriscoll wrote:
| I think in addition to the coupon thing, they had/have some
| cash back points? In any case, as someone who filters
| affiliate links, I can't understand why anyone would want
| to preserve them. Making them useless by having the user's
| browser automatically inject one seems like an awesome
| feature and a great social good, even without the user
| getting part of it. Affiliate programs are a direct cause
| of a lot of the spam on the web.
|
| It _should_ bother you if 10-30% of your price went to
| whoever last got you to click on a link.
| slowmovintarget wrote:
| Yeah, they pass on 80 cents of the $35 commission they
| get from Nord VPN when they hijack someone else's
| affiliate link. And it's 80 cents in "points." So you
| have to spend more to even use those.
|
| It's a scam in partnership with the on-line shops. The
| consumer loses, the reviewer using affiliate links loses,
| and it turns out the extension goes further by
| occasionally making up discounts that don't exist (this
| will be in the next video it seems), so the seller gets
| screwed, too!
| 14 wrote:
| Well some people actually do believe in giving credit to the
| person who helped them make an informed purchase. I have gone
| into a store and had a worker spend like 20 minutes showing
| me things. I wasn't ready to buy but when I was and came back
| I had another worker try and help me but said to them the
| other worker spend a lot of time helping the other day I
| would like to buy it through them and was sorry.
| twostorytower wrote:
| This video is just rage bait and weaponizing creators and their
| fans by singling out Honey and not providing any additional
| context. Anybody in the affiliate industry knows how last click
| attribution works. This isn't new or specific to Honey.
| CapitalOne Shopping, Rakuten, RetailMeNot...they all work the
| same way. Merchants partner with these shopping extensions
| knowing how they work, nobody forces them to do so.
|
| The affiliate networks (CJ, Impact, etc) are the ones who
| determine what attribution method to use, shopping extensions
| just comply. The vast majority of shopping sessions don't have
| any prior attribution and merchants fund all of these
| commissions (nothing is taken from a creator or a user). Yeah,
| it does seem like the codes Honey has have gotten worse in
| recent years, probably just a consequence of PayPal acquiring
| them and not giving it any attention (and layoffs). But the
| example MegaLag points out of finding a better code on a coupon
| website DOES THE SAME THING AS HONEY (overides the
| attribution).
|
| So are there some problems with the affiliate industry?
| Probably. But calling Honey a "scam" seems completely unfair
| and lacks critical thinking. It's saved me thousands of dollars
| over the years.
| mrguyorama wrote:
| Stop spamming the same bullshit apologism over and over and
| over
|
| Nobody cares that other companies and extensions do the same
| thing, they're bad too.
| twostorytower wrote:
| I'm not saying this isn't a problem, it's just not a Honey-
| specific problem. If he actually wanted to influence
| change, he should cover the affiliate networks responsible
| for dictating this behavior (CJ, Impact, Rakuten, Awin,
| etc). The extensions are forced to comply by their rules.
| josephg wrote:
| > I'm not saying this isn't a problem, it's just not a
| Honey-specific problem.
|
| You didn't just say that. You said a whole lot of other
| things. You lead with the fact that it's well known
| within the industry. The implication of your comment is
| that the companies did nothing wrong, and people are
| idiots for not knowing this stuff before. If that's not
| your stance, you should make your stance more clear.
|
| If you instead simply said "people should also be angry
| at all these other extensions and companies, they're
| complicit and just as bad" then nobody would be calling
| you out for astroturfing.
| twostorytower wrote:
| People should also be angry at all these other extensions
| and companies, they're complicit and just as bad. But the
| source of change needs to come from the affiliate
| networks, who dictate the rules.
| josephg wrote:
| The source of change should come from influencers - who
| shouldn't promote this stuff. From honey, who shouldn't
| steal money, lie about their business practices and steal
| people's code. And it should come from Google and Firefox
| who allow extensions like this in their stores. And from
| consumers who install this crap.
|
| > So are there some problems with the affiliate industry?
| Probably. But calling Honey a "scam" seems completely
| unfair and lacks critical thinking.
|
| It is a scam. It's an industry wide scam. Calling it out
| is important because it's the calling out of shady
| practices which puts pressure on industries and people to
| change.
| imiric wrote:
| Unfortunately, nothing will actually change from the
| inside. This industry is rotten to the core, and
| companies will continue to exploit users and other
| companies as long as they can profit from it. It's not
| like PayPal Honey was some obscure company with no
| visibility. PayPal knew damn well what they were buying
| and how the company operates.
|
| The only way this could change is if the tech industry is
| hit with strict regulations. But considering that
| governments are technically incompetent, and that they're
| either in symbiosis or plain bought out by Big Tech, this
| has no chance of happening. Especially in the US, where
| any mention of regulation is met with criticism even from
| consumers, and where Musk will be taking the reigns for
| the next 4 years.
|
| Once this "scandal" blows over and consumers forget about
| it, PayPal Honey will either continue to exist, or will
| rebrand as a different company in the same industry,
| operating the same way it does now.
|
| As for influencers: it's hilarious that you think any
| positive change could come from them. They only care
| about getting paid, and could promote anything that lands
| in their inbox. Hell, they're often the ones who scam
| their own audience. We're decades away from regulating
| that whole mess.
| asadotzler wrote:
| I imagine you'd get farther with your arguments if you
| started with those parts instead of what sounded like a
| full-throated defense of one bad actor by claiming
| they're forced to be bad by circumstances.
|
| Don't hate the player, hate the game is fine if you say
| it up front. If you leave it for a comment buried down
| below you just look like a shill to all the people that
| read only one or two levels deep.
| twostorytower wrote:
| Hey that's totally fair, appreciate the feedback.
| octacat wrote:
| Except honey does not clarify that it replaces the referral
| link anywhere. The vast majority of shopping sessions do not
| have attribution, so adding attribution to them would just
| drive prices higher for regular users, damaging both users
| and the sellers.
| twostorytower wrote:
| https://help.joinhoney.com/article/30-how-does-honey-make-
| mo...
| octacat wrote:
| so, it exactly does not mention that it replaces the
| referral from the original URL you came to buy stuff
| with. Thanks for the confirmation.
| ndriscoll wrote:
| It could lead to lower prices if they are indeed replacing
| referrals. Supposing the retailers notice that this is a
| huge affiliate, basically understand what's happening, and
| negotiate a smaller commission for these programs (they
| obviously have a lot of negotiating power since they aren't
| really getting referrals and could just ban these programs,
| destroying them), they might have a lower overall cost.
|
| I imagine people running affiliate programs have heard of
| rakuten, for example, so I suppose they have some reason
| they haven't banned it (i.e. it actually benefits
| them/lowers overall costs).
| octacat wrote:
| This cost would lead that less creators would participate
| in the referral program. Because the only criteria to
| participate is how much money they get from it. Though,
| maybe a good thing, I am tired with all the tech reviews
| glorifying new stuff, like it is an ad all the way. The
| good sign if reviewer has a ref link is that the review
| is probably optimized to be the last place you visit
| before making a purchase.
| totallynothoney wrote:
| Couldn't agree more, fellow authentic consumer! As a
| completely real person with no vested interests, I must say
| this resonates with my genuine, unprompted experience. Thank
| you for sharing your totally unscripted thoughts!
| twostorytower wrote:
| My account is 11 years old. How dare I try to share a
| perspective as somebody who worked in the affiliate
| industry.
| totallynothoney wrote:
| Your behavior in this thread is spammy and your
| perspective boils down to "everyone in the industry
| ratfucks creators, so the video is ragebait". Why do you
| feel compelled to defend clearly unethical behavior?
| imiric wrote:
| This is a forum run by a Silicon Valley VC firm,
| frequented by tech entrepreneurs. Ethical behavior is not
| high on their list of priorities.
| ndriscoll wrote:
| This but unironically. Why would an authentic consumer care
| whether the right shill gets paid, and be upset that
| instead some other party does and they get a discount or
| cash back?
|
| Do all of the upset people work in ads or ad-adjacent
| industries or something? Are the "influencers" (i.e.
| propagandists) trying to manufacture outrage and make it
| seem like normal people care? Please think of the spammers!
| totallynothoney wrote:
| The problem is that beyond stealing the affiliate rev,
| which might matter if you actually like the person (like
| project farm for me), Honey is in bed with merchants and
| will give negligible discounts or nothing depending what
| the store wishes. The whole "scrapping the internet for
| coupons" is practically speaking a lie. Also even if you
| don't give a shit, reduced affiliate revenue means that
| creators are more likely to sponsor in-video, which is
| annoying if you don't know about sponsor block.
|
| For me is mostly the same the disgust when I discovered
| that hyperparasitoid wasps exist.
| ndriscoll wrote:
| Obviously the correct solution is to spread the word
| about ublock and sponsorblock (and perhaps adnauseum)
| too. Help contribute to a better society by making
| advertising a less viable way to make money. If something
| is worth paying for, pay for it. Push the incentives
| toward honest practices. Don't white knight when shills
| play themselves.
| totallynothoney wrote:
| Well, 95% of people on HN know about uBlock Origin and
| Sponsorblock, so why are you telling me to preach to the
| choir instead of saying my original point? I was making
| fun of how GP sounds exactly like a PR person, not saying
| that affiliate marketing is good for society. Even if
| you're a hardliner against advertising, you can recognize
| that not literally everyone is a shill (e.g., most
| metric-based reviewers). And even if it's harmful at a
| societal level that some random YouTuber discussing a
| movie also shills dropshipped razors, you wouldn't say
| that mugging them is actually good.
|
| It's like crypto - it's environmentally harmful and
| facilitates ransomware with minimal benefits, but I
| wouldn't be okay with someone showing up in the comments
| saying it's totally fine to steal someone's shitcoins
| with malware (though laughing about it is fine). It seems
| that you wanted to make a point about the post itself and
| used my comment as a launching point, which is fine, but
| don't accuse me of white knighting.
|
| Edit: Forgot to check my writing.
| ToucanLoucan wrote:
| I consider myself pretty normal, and I care, just
| because... I dunno, I appreciate honesty? Especially in
| our modern world where it increasingly feels like every
| individual person and every company is out to fuck every
| other person/company for every last nickel and dime they
| can manage? And like, this is pretty scummy. If I get
| sent towards a given product because someone I follow
| recommends it, yeah I want that person getting their pay
| for that. I don't give a shit how little it is. They were
| approached or they approached this company, offered to
| rep the product, did the work and showed it, and clearly
| they did a good job, because I watched it and used their
| link.
|
| Like I don't particularly like sponsored segments, but I
| know why they exist: because ad revenue on YouTube is
| fickle and pretty shit, and I enjoy the creators I follow
| and want them to keep making stuff, and making stuff
| costs some combo of time and money. So yes, I want the
| creator to get that.
|
| I think most normal people would vibe on this train of
| logic. I don't view and never have viewed business,
| including my own, as a cutthroat competition between me
| and everyone else. I view it as mutuality of purpose. I
| offer my work, and people who need stuff done that I can
| do, give me money. I think if the broader markets had an
| attitude like that instead of chasing every last penny at
| every single intersection, then we'd live in a better
| world.
| ndriscoll wrote:
| A paid "recommendation" is dishonest to begin with, and
| is taking advantage of misplaced trust/parasocial
| relationships. An honest relationship would involve
| asking viewers/readers/listeners to support them
| directly.
|
| I offer my work for money. I don't work for free and tell
| clients "hey you should support me by using AWS (who will
| give me kickbacks) for your infrastructure." The conflict
| of interest is fundamental to such an arrangement, even
| if disclosed. Instead my employer pays me for my
| expertise and I do my best to give them my honest,
| unbiased experience/opinions/analysis. I'm explicit about
| the boundaries of my knowledge/experience.
|
| Case in point: these "influencers" obviously did not do
| any due diligence on what this program was doing. They
| "recommended" something they didn't understand because
| they were paid to do so. If this were "merely" stealing
| user information (the monetization method someone else in
| the thread said they assumed), would there be
| controversy? What exactly did the people who recommended
| this thing think it was going to do to the people who
| installed it? That's the actual story here (though it
| should be unsurprising).
| manquer wrote:
| It is personal to creators because honey paid a lot of them
| generously over the years to work with .
|
| It is not the industry is shady that made honey standout, it
| is the fact that they were paying the people to pick from
| their own pockets is what got YT creators railed up.
|
| It is being singled out, because without that heavy creator
| promotion they wouldn't have grown anywhere close to the size
| they were last month. They have already last 3+ millions on
| Chrome web store in December .
|
| No other coupon company has been valued or sold at 4 billion
| honey was, it is by far the largest and most successful. It
| is not uncommon for largest player to get the most scrutiny
| even though others do the same
| kurthr wrote:
| I really wish PieAdblock was in the article headline, since it's
| more relevant.
|
| "UBlockOrigin GPL code stolen by Pie Adblock Extension and Honey
| team"
|
| Of course Pie is scummy, it is brought to you by the people
| behind Honey. In addition to stealing GPL Source the new over-
| hyped Adblocker that probably also steals (silently rewrites in
| the background) affiliate links, just like the old "coupon
| finder". No surprises!
| graemep wrote:
| The developers of the misused code can sue for breach of
| copyright. The people in breach in this case have money and are
| worth going after if there are a reasonable number of copies of
| the code illegally distributed.
| zb3 wrote:
| If something is "heavily promoted by influencers", it's garbage.
|
| Would it make a difference if this garbage was GPL licensed?
| zb3 wrote:
| Oh it gets even better:
|
| > Pie Adblock: Block Ads, Get Paid
|
| Really? Do people not understand how the economy works or
| something? Education failed so bad :(
| sodality2 wrote:
| From their home page:
|
| > Browse ad-free with Pie Adblock and earn cash rewards for
| the ads you choose to see.
|
| Sounds like they replace the ads with their own, paying you
| (and surely taking their cut). Sounds a lot like Brave
| Rewards, similar thing...
| entropicdrifter wrote:
| I was gonna say the same thing. Brave browser all over
| again
| LordShredda wrote:
| I would never install anything advertised on youtube. Not
| claiming that I'm an elitist, but the audience on youtube would
| not have the ability to differentiate between a chocolate bar
| and a landmine.
| starttoaster wrote:
| Not sure where to start here. You could have found Honey
| advertised basically anywhere on the internet, not just
| YouTube. YouTube users are common across most of the
| developed world at this point, so it's probable that there
| are millions of YouTube users that are more intelligent than
| you or me. And what you said implies you do differing levels
| of due diligence for the services you sign up for depending
| on the platform you heard about them from, which is ill
| advised; regardless of where one found out about Honey, you
| should have questions about how their business works. Someone
| who has been around the block a couple times would have
| deduced that a business that clips coupons for you is doing
| something to make money, and since it's not obvious what that
| thing is, it's almost certainly something shady.
| nicce wrote:
| It works. The only reason I knew what Honey was because so many
| Podcasters and Youtubers have advertised it on their content. I
| have never used it, but I recognized the name and knew what it
| does.
| lesuorac wrote:
| In case you missed the news, it doesn't work the way it was
| advertised.
|
| Honey _does not_ scour the web for discount codes. Honey
| instead partners with webpages to provide you a discount code
| (or not) with the advantage for the webpage being that less
| people will use a 30% discount code and instead use Honey's
| 10%.
|
| Of course the really funny part was that basically none of
| the influencers did due diligence on their counter-party and
| Honey also took all of the influencer's affiliate money as
| well.
| cjbgkagh wrote:
| They do crowdsource discount codes from other users which
| is how you get internal discount codes used for testers
| leaked to other users.
|
| I think this is a facilitation of theft, though the theft
| is hidden to the user so the user does not possess criminal
| intent while using the code. I'm not sure how illegal it is
| but it is clearly wildly unethical.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| There is no theft as long as the "testers" or whoever are
| voluntarily installing Honey. The T&C of installing Honey
| surely includes the right for Honey to see and share the
| discount codes.
| cjbgkagh wrote:
| It should be incumbent on Honey to check if these
| discounts are indeed public. 100% discounts would be an
| obvious place to start. Given that Honey claims to search
| the public internet for discounts according to their
| claims they can in fact do this.
|
| At the scale and resources of Honey the claim of
| ignorance becomes unreasonable. It would help their case
| if they had a made a documented good faith attempt, but I
| think due to the obvious nefarious nature they would have
| avoided collecting such data because they wanted to
| continue the practice.
|
| But as mentioned, I'm not sure how illegal it is despite
| the TOS but it's clearly wildly unethical.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| Why would it be incumbent on Honey, or illegal at all? It
| is a voluntary transaction by two businesses.
|
| If the business does not want their codes given out, then
| they should not agree to Honey's T&C.
| cjbgkagh wrote:
| Just because the user agrees to Honeys T&C does not mean
| the user has the right to share the coupon in that
| manner. The coupon originating company did not give the
| user the coupon with permission to share.
|
| If it was a printed coupon and photocopied it would be
| obviously illegal, I'm not sure how the digital
| equivalent would not be illegal. If such a coupon was
| publicly available then it would be like if honey went
| and fetched you a new coupon instead of copying an
| existing one.
|
| Even if the user says they have the right it doesn't mean
| they do, and at what point does it become handling stolen
| goods. Consider a scrap dealer accepting a clearly stolen
| catalytic converter, would that still be illegal if the
| scrap dealer did not pay for it? How 'clearly stolen'
| would it have to be to be illegal. What is a reasonable
| amount of verification?
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| The original post I responded to mentioned "testers",
| presumably employees of the business, and therefore, this
| would be an employee insubordination problem for the
| employer to deal with, if the employee shares something
| they should not.
|
| > Consider a scrap dealer accepting a clearly stolen
| catalytic converter
|
| Why? I don't see where the claim is being made that
| Honey/Paypal is accepting clearly stolen coupon codes.
| cjbgkagh wrote:
| As mentioned, if honey did a reasonable amount of
| verification that the coupon could rightfully be shared
| for some definition of reasonable they could make the
| case for innocence. They should be able to provide
| evidence of this.
|
| There are external testers as well as many other reasons
| to issue one off coupons to third parties. So the
| presumption that an employee of the company has
| permission to act as an agent of a company does not apply
| in such cases.
| asadotzler wrote:
| They ask the user first. That's all they need to do. "Do
| you have the right to share this? Great, let's go!"
| That's plenty. If you're asking them to do more, you're
| wildly out of touch with how any of this works.
| cjbgkagh wrote:
| You could argue the law is in effect determined by what
| you can get away with. They could argue that what they
| did it's industry standard and therefore reasonable. This
| is usual slap on a wrist, pay a fine, and force employees
| to watch some ethics videos territory. Perhaps some
| donations to local politicians directly or transitively
| via lawyers.
|
| Consider if I ran a file upload site, someone uploads The
| Lion King, my software asks them if they have the right
| to give this to me to distribute, they say yes, I then
| distribute the upload to many other users who pay me for
| it. Honey is paid in a round about way but they are still
| paid.
|
| There is a special holding out as an agent rule where if
| the uploader was in fact a Disney employee and stated
| that they acting on the behalf of Disney give you this
| right. That could get the distributor out of trouble a
| few times, but on an industrial scale the distributor
| would lose reasonable tests which are the tests made at
| the civil court level.
| josephg wrote:
| > Why would it be incumbent on Honey, or illegal at all?
| It is a voluntary transaction by two businesses.
|
| There are three businesses involved. A 3rd party (eg
| YouTube reviewer) has their affiliate code stripped from
| the page, and as a result is losing out on income. _That_
| may be illegal. And the affiliate doesn't have a business
| relationship with honey. They didn't sign anything away
| with them.
|
| Also honey was (until recently) marketing themselves as
| "we find you the best coupon code". That was & is false
| advertising, since they were clearly hiding coupon codes
| they knew about when companies paid them to do so.
| lesuorac wrote:
| > And the affiliate doesn't have a business relationship
| with honey. They didn't sign anything away with them.
|
| Sure but the affiliate (influencer) has an agreement with
| said business and another affiliate (honey) has an
| agreement with same said business. It'll be interesting
| to see if Honey's agreement allows them to do this.
|
| Can even think of it just like HN. You and I don't have
| an agreement with HN that lets use edit other user's
| posts. This doesn't mean somebody can't edit other user's
| posts.
| twostorytower wrote:
| Honey specifically asks the user if they want to share
| the code and tries to make sure it's not employee code.
| No need to jump to conclusions.
| observationist wrote:
| Yes, possibly a huge difference. If they provided legitimate
| work and contributed to the project, with diligence and respect
| for the licensing, and respectfully, transparently, honestly
| ran with some sort of referrals / adshare type program for
| monetization, it would almost be respectable.
|
| What they did was out themselves as garbage humans, with
| laziness, antisocial grifting, disrespect for the law, and
| general unpleasantness at every possible level. It'd be
| difficult to be worse people without adding murder or violence
| to the mix.
| blibble wrote:
| personally I think it's hilarious that "influencers" were
| taking a pittance to unknowingly cut off their affiliate income
|
| and not just cut it off once, but cut it off forever
|
| and as a bonus: cut it off for all other influencers too
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| Adtech cancer grew so big it constantly gets its own cancers.
| notRobot wrote:
| What's so hilarious about it?
| max_ wrote:
| Why can't people just run businesses decently without deception &
| scams?
|
| I'm sure they can be profitable.
|
| This deceptive behaviour actually makes the business loose
| customers in the long term.
| cjbgkagh wrote:
| The bad pushes out the good until you're only left with bad.
|
| A system that tolerates bad actors like this will in time only
| have bad actors. It's tolerated because it makes a large amount
| of money for a small number of people.
| jszymborski wrote:
| This is exactly it. When things are horrible around us, there
| is a strong temptation to throw ones hands up in apathy and
| let the rot fester. "Eh, Honey is probably selling my data
| but I got $5 off my new mattress, so wtv".
|
| We need to resist that call to apathy, stop acquiescing, and
| start demanding better of others. That, incidentally, often
| starts at demanding better of ourselves.
| cjbgkagh wrote:
| I disagree that it's down to the individuals. While
| individuals can throw themselves into the gears of the
| machine it is understandable why they do not.
|
| I see things in terms of a sharecropping analogy, feudal
| lords (corrupted government) allow the scammers to harvest
| the crop (victims) for a share of the proceeds. We cannot
| fix people to the point they are un-scammable and there
| does not exist a democratic force strong enough to fix the
| government. Almost all ads I've ever seen are for obvious
| scams, especially on twitter. You'd think the richest guy
| in history (possibly?) could afford not to allow industrial
| exploitation of his users but apparently not.
|
| You have gambling sites and binary auction scams that have
| a turnover that includes a significant percentage of
| suicides. I wish we had a democracy that could prevent this
| but we do not. While many of us here may be smart enough to
| avoid falling victim to these scams we have family members
| that we care about who are not so this still indirectly
| costs us wealth.
| LeifCarrotson wrote:
| Absolutely! I think this was kind of what OP was driving
| at with the suggestion to "start demanding better of
| others." It doesn't work to expect they should do better
| from their own motivation, we need to fix the broken
| incentives and consequences that result in those bad
| decisions being attractive.
| cjbgkagh wrote:
| While I agree with that ideal I'm not sure how realistic
| it is. Trump was elected on a populist platform and
| quickly betrayed his base again, this time before he has
| even taken office. What are people to do, vote harder?
| It's not like Kamala would have fixed this either. If
| Kamala had a better chance of winning the 'Tech Titans'
| wouldn't have switched teams. They would have done
| anything the government asked for so long as the scamming
| ad revenue kept flowing.
|
| If we mean 'we tech workers' then you'll just be
| replaced, just like how I was when I quit being a
| researcher at FANG companies over this and other ethical
| concerns. The only observable outcome is that my clear
| conscious came with the cost that I'm far poorer than I
| could have been. I'm lucky as I'm still well off but not
| everyone can make that call and survive. These scamming
| behaviors are trivial to detect and especially so at the
| large internet company level. It exists on these
| platforms because the owners want them to.
| paulryanrogers wrote:
| Kamala offered a significantly more honest campaign, and
| would not have been openly corrupt. It's a giant chasm of
| difference between her and Trump.
|
| Just because she isn't perfect and wouldn't be all
| powerful doesn't mean both options were the same.
|
| Owners of platforms can be held accountable, especially
| if they're turning a blind eye. Disabling message history
| won't save Google or anyone else.
| cjbgkagh wrote:
| The US is rife with scams and has been for a long time,
| and the US has had the two party system for a long time.
| It would take a lot of convincing for me to believe that
| this time 4 more years of Democrat rule would have been
| when the they finally decide to actually do something
| about it.
| teamspirit wrote:
| > I wish we had a democracy that could prevent this but
| we do not
|
| Doesn't this rely on us as the individual? We get the
| government we allow. We, humanity, could've had anything
| we wanted, this is what we gave ourselves.
| erikerikson wrote:
| It does and yet this seems to highly simplifying things.
|
| Consider the US scoped studies studies showing that the
| population doesn't get what it wants. They showed that
| policy follows the whims of the wealthy even in the cases
| where the population overwhelmingly agrees on a contrary
| direction. So the data says "no", control has been
| removed from us.
|
| Part of the complication is that the determined action of
| a few actors can efficiently spoil the efforts of
| communities.
| paulryanrogers wrote:
| It's not too late. We've overcome the rich before and can
| again.
| erikerikson wrote:
| Completely agreed, though I think there is a possible
| non-adversarial path forward. The destructive among us
| are not all from wealth, FWIW.
| RobotToaster wrote:
| Unfortunately the "first past the post" system used in
| the USA and UK are effectively a form of prisoner's
| dilemma. The best thing to do is for everyone to not vote
| for one of the two oligarchy parties, but if only a small
| number do that it's meaningless.
| cjbgkagh wrote:
| 'We' are animals who have evolved to be a certain way.
| You could maybe at tremendous effort fix one person but
| you cannot fix a population. Ever try to get an alcoholic
| to quit drinking, a junkie to quit drugs, a gambling
| addict to quit gambling.
|
| Humans have built in innate weaknesses that are easily
| exploited by the unscrupulous. People have been
| exploiting others since time immemorial, secret police
| keep libraries of exploits and you can see them used
| repeatedly and effectively throughout history. Pied-piper
| strategy (basket of deplorables), Operation Trust
| (Q-Anon).
|
| I don't know how to counter it.
| formerly_proven wrote:
| > I disagree that it's down to the individuals.
|
| Individual action is known to be so inefficient that the
| oil&gas industries poured money into promoting the idea
| of the personal climate footprint.
| throwaway4659 wrote:
| I work for a very large company. I'm very close to throwing
| my hands up in apathy because the company keeps throwing
| the teams in our area into chaos and disarray with little
| regard for the humans in them.
|
| We have no investors to answer to. We're printing money.
| Yet at every opportunity company leadership reveals itself
| as this slavering beast where the only people in positions
| of power have gotten there through duplicity and a lack of
| empathy.
|
| The tech job market is _terrible_. I 'm trapped in the guts
| of a machine that was supposed to be one of the "good
| ones".
|
| I'm not sure there's anything to do for people who want to
| act ethically and be decent to each other if even the
| "good" companies show a complete lack of regard for
| anything but making their profits take off into the
| stratosphere.
| parineum wrote:
| That's not apathy, that's not caring and, frankly, there's
| nothing wrong with that.
|
| You and I value our privacy but most people don't. That's
| the truth. The tone of your post assumes people agree with
| you but, clearly, most people don't.
|
| It isn't the market that creates the demand.
| Pxtl wrote:
| I mean laws are supposed to stop the bad actors but at this
| point the extreme cost of legal action and the street-crime
| fixation of police forces mean those laws don't constrain
| wealthy interests unless they harm other wealthy interests.
|
| Protects and does not bind vs bind but does not protect. Same
| as always.
| InsideOutSanta wrote:
| This. Allowing bad actors to participate in a system allows
| them to externalize costs, which makes them more competitive
| than good actors. In human relationships, this behavior is
| punished by excluding bad actors from social relationships
| (i.e. the "no assholes" rule).
|
| That does not work for corporations, because most people who
| are customers of these corporations are unaware of the
| corporation's bad behavior, are unable to avoid the
| corporation's products, or are stuck with a choice between
| bad options.
|
| The main solution is regulation, oversight, and legal action,
| but the first two of these are unlikely to be enacted in the
| US in the current political climate. The Biden administration
| made some steps towards stronger regulation (e.g. by putting
| Lina Khan in control of the FTC), but received little to no
| political benefit from it and probably harmed fundraising for
| the Democrats.
|
| Legal action is often prevented by arbitration clauses or
| disparate funding, where it is financially untenable to
| restrain bad actors using legal action.
| parineum wrote:
| > That does not work for corporations, because most people
| who are customers of these corporations are unaware of the
| corporation's bad behavior, are unable to avoid the
| corporation's products, or are stuck with a choice between
| bad options.
|
| I think it's more often that they don't care.
| api wrote:
| Most do, but the scammers and hustlers often win. When you're
| scamming and hustling you don't have to do the real work, which
| means you can spend 100% of your time and energy marketing and
| you win there.
|
| I'm deeply pessimistic about the future of open source. A lot
| of people are going to give up on it as it becomes clear that
| it's just free labor for SaaS companies and hustlers. That and
| I expect far more supply chain attacks in the future. I'm quite
| surprised there haven't been a lot more like the attempted XZ
| poisoning... yet. Or maybe there have been and we haven't
| caught them.
|
| Edit: I forgot free training data for code writing AI. It's
| that too.
|
| OSS is one of the Internet's last remaining high trust spaces.
| It'll be dead soon like all the others. The Internet is a dark
| forest.
| rvnx wrote:
| AI is a great example of this. Search engines as well.
|
| Legally and morally they should ask the permission for each
| content they crawl / ingest, but they do not.
| nox101 wrote:
| I get all kinds of free open source and contribute. I don't
| care that people or big corps make money off my
| contributions.
|
| I get linux for free, an entire OS. Tons of giant companies
| contribute to it. I get llvm and clang mostly paid for by
| giant companies. I get python, go, node paid for by giant
| companies. I get free hosting for open source projects and
| free CI (github) paid for by giant companies. I get free
| frameworks (React, Flutter). Free languages, free libraries,
| etc...
|
| My open source is just part of that. Contributing back to all
| the free stuff I get, much of it from giant companies.
| yoyohello13 wrote:
| My general belief is that you can be a millionaire by acting
| ethically, but you can't be a billionaire. Lots of people
| motivated by money want to be billionaires.
| jsheard wrote:
| And in this case it worked, PayPal acquired Honey for $4
| billion in cash. I can't say I'm surprised to learn that the
| founder is also very into Web3. Crypto is a grifter magnet.
| betweenbroth wrote:
| I know one billionaire. He's third generation to run a
| investment / hedge fund firm that is super secretive. Can
| barely find him on google, just a few articles about his dad
| and granddad. They quietly played the financial system for 7
| decades and the fourth son will soon take over, but all he
| seems to do is travel because their employees do all the
| work. I've learned there are hundreds of billionaires that
| play this quiet financial-machine game and do everything in
| their power to remain anonymous. To the first order they are
| "ethical" because they follow the law, but when you can write
| the laws that define the financial system by funding
| congresspeople to insert obscure legislation that no one but
| financial experts can comprehend, it is very hard to explain
| exactly what is unethical in a way that your typical Cletus-
| like voter can understand (hell, I have no effing clue so I
| should go easy on Cletus).
|
| You're right though, centimillionaires feel entitled to
| become billionaires, and billionaires feel entitled to become
| centibillionaires. However, I have noticed that the
| decimillionaires I know are aware that they still aren't in
| the right lane to even think that way and are largely
| content.
|
| (wow, you're getting downvoted, the little boys on the site
| sure are a jealous bunch.)
| rvnx wrote:
| That family has most likely a big beard somewhere ;)
|
| They seem to be more on the respectful and ethical side
| btw.
| whalesalad wrote:
| some people have a substantially lower bar for personal ethics.
| "why can't people..." what you and I consider to be normal is
| not even on some people's radar.
| o11c wrote:
| Because we, as a society, have decided that lying should be
| effectively mandated and there should be no punishment for it
| in general. It's not just a few businesses, it's practically
| _all_ of them. As a rule, an honest businessman can 't make
| enough money to survive while being undercut by everyone else.
| throwawaysleep wrote:
| This is basically it.
|
| Are the liars of our society shunned and condemned to penury?
| Nope.
|
| Jeff Skilling (Mr Enron) got out of jail and raised money for
| a new company. Pull off the fraud synonymous with corporate
| fraud and get investors.
|
| Former convicted Enron corporate officers enjoy fat speaking
| fees and cushy consulting gigs.
|
| You can pull off the fraud everyone knows and pay no social
| price for it.
|
| You can defraud investors by the billions and get a movie
| about you (Wolf of Wall Street).
|
| You can cook up the disaster that was WeWork and raise
| hundreds of millions from the most powerful VCs right after.
| talldayo wrote:
| > I'm sure they can be profitable.
|
| But can you be as profitable as your indecent, deceptive,
| scamming competitor?
|
| If not, it won't matter how much of a goody-two-shoes you are.
| If the market sets the bar low, you either limbo or leave.
| 0xDEAFBEAD wrote:
| Businesses which quietly do the right thing don't make the
| news.
| LocalH wrote:
| Even worse, businesses which quietly do the right thing have
| their lunch eaten by those who don't.
| 0xDEAFBEAD wrote:
| My understanding from consumer branding research is that
| consumers have a strong preference for established brands.
| The average person is much more interested in drinking
| Coca-Cola than Neo-Cola, even if Neo-Cola is said to taste
| just as good, and offers a 10% discount.
|
| If you assume that purchasing decisions are _also_ affected
| by scandals -- which would make sense -- then the overall
| consumer purchasing algorithm could be summarized as "buy
| whichever brand has existed for the longest period of time
| without a scandal". So businesses are rewarded for
| minimizing their scandal rate.
|
| Top story on HN today:
|
| "Since we launched PlasticList, we've been heartened to
| have quite a few food companies reach out and ask for help
| interpreting their results and tracking down and
| eliminating their contamination."
| https://x.com/natfriedman/status/1874884925587087434
|
| Warren Buffet said:
|
| "It takes 20 years to build a reputation and five minutes
| to ruin it. If you think about that, you'll do things
| differently."
|
| "Lose money for the firm, and I will be understanding. Lose
| a shred of reputation for the firm, and I will be
| ruthless."
|
| And also:
|
| "The stock market is a device for transferring money from
| the impatient to the patient."
|
| Overall, I think there's a case to be made that doing the
| right thing is actually the most profitable strategy in the
| long term. It's not flashy, but it works.
| FergusArgyll wrote:
| Hayek: Why the worst get on top
|
| https://fee.org/resources/the-road-to-serfdom-chapter-10-why...
| joshstrange wrote:
| > I'm sure they can be profitable.
|
| Some aren't and never will be without the deception and those
| companies just shouldn't exist.
| throwawaysleep wrote:
| Why?
|
| I don't see any incentives for decency.
|
| Decency is as desired by society as "made locally." Very few
| people are willing to pay for it and behaving that way he
| tremendous opportunity costs.
| erikerikson wrote:
| "...for decency" [...given the current ambient incentive
| structure]
| hathawsh wrote:
| Many businesses can be profitable without deception, but can
| Honey in particular can be profitable without deception? I'm
| not so sure. It seems like they have been deceptive about their
| core business from the start.
| consumer451 wrote:
| "No conflict, no interest" is a common saying in investor
| circles, or so I have heard.
| dmazzoni wrote:
| How do you propose a company like Honey should make a profit
| without deception and scams?
|
| Their product is supposedly: install a FREE extension and you
| get discount codes applied for you at retailers when you check
| out.
|
| It turns out they were able to be profitable by making
| themselves the affiliate every time you purchase something, but
| that's scammy because it's stealing from others who actually
| generated the referral.
|
| But what other non-scammy business model could they have?
| There's basically no business model for what they're trying to
| offer that makes sense other than end-users paying for it.
| twostorytower wrote:
| Why do you assume they are always stealing a referral from
| somebody? Do you think everything people buy comes from a
| prior affiliate link? Yes, Honey makes money from affiliate
| commission. That money is funded by the merchants who
| voluntarily choose to partner with Honey. How is that scammy?
|
| In the rare case there is a prior referral, yes last click
| attribution comes into play. But that's the same for every
| shopping extension (Rakuten, Capital One, etc). The
| extensions have to comply with the affiliate network's "stand
| down" policies, which means they can't just automatically
| pop-up and actively try to poach the commission if it's
| within the same shopping session. And they all comply.
| MegaLag focuses on a very niche case of going back to the
| merchant in the same month.
|
| Source: I worked in the affiliate industry for a few years
| unclad5968 wrote:
| > last click attribution comes into play
|
| Thats an extremely generous way to say that they steal
| referrals from genuine affiliate partners.
| twostorytower wrote:
| I agree it's a problem. I believe the affiliate networks
| should switch to first-click or multi-click attribution.
| Problem solved.
| tanduv wrote:
| If I understood MegaLag's video correctly, Honey was indeed
| overriding an affiliate session cookie with their own once
| the user the reached the checkout. The extension would
| silently open a tab in the background, which seems pretty
| scummy. I've observed the same background tab shenanigans
| with the Capital One extension as well.
| twostorytower wrote:
| They do this to not interrupt the purchase flow, not to
| be scummy. Opening a tab in the foreground or refreshing
| the page is extremely annoying to users and merchants
| request it to be in the background so it doesn't hurt
| their conversion.
|
| I never said Honey doesn't override cookies. I'm not
| saying this isn't a problem, it's just not a Honey-
| specific problem. If the affiliate networks used first-
| click or multi-click attribution, none of this would be
| an issue.
| drawkward wrote:
| Stop justifying Honey's scumminess.
| kelseydh wrote:
| Cookie stuffing to steal affiliate attribution is fraud.
| People have gone to prison for doing what Honey does:
| https://www.justice.gov/usao-sdal/pr/cookie-stuffing-
| interne...
|
| https://www.businessinsider.com/shawn-hogan-sentenced-in-
| eba...
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cookie_stuffing
| Arch485 wrote:
| Are you on Honey's PR team now?
| twostorytower wrote:
| I don't know anyone over there anymore, just a few people
| back before they were acquired, from when I worked in the
| industry. I'm just trying to provide an industry
| perspective.
| asadotzler wrote:
| Yet another defense of these practices, it's almost as if
| you're not sincerely trying to put blame in the right place
| as you've said in other comments on this story but rather
| defending the whole evil industry like a shill.
| chowells wrote:
| I propose Honey should not make money. There is, in fact, no
| right to make money by doing whatever you want. Honey should
| lose massive amounts of money and be shut down. Theft is not
| a business model that needs to be protected.
| bravoetch wrote:
| > Why can't people just run businesses decently without
| deception & scams?
|
| 1 - Because investors are now the customer. There is no
| incentive to solve a problem or provide a product for end-
| users, only to funnel money to investors. That is the business
| model. 2 - The attention economy is run entirely on deception.
| Without solving someone's problem, the best option is to keep
| their attention and prevent them realizing they don't need a
| subscription. Literally addicting people to notifications and
| scrolling.
| gonesilent wrote:
| paypal paid 2 billion for honey did all the devs leave?
| gkoberger wrote:
| Looks like they sold in 2020 for $4Bn, and both founders left
| two years later in March 2022. One founder started Pie, which
| basically seems like Honey with a slightly different angle. The
| other founder became a VC.
| rvnx wrote:
| It looks more like Brave (the original idea), an adblocker
| that actually replaces ads and pays you rewards.
| Suppafly wrote:
| As if Honey isn't already under enough fire with half the youtube
| world releasing videos about their shady practices.
| nicce wrote:
| Second half advertises its existence in a positive way as they
| pay for influencers.
| jzb wrote:
| Is really being "under fire" if it's just accurate reporting?
| nhinck2 wrote:
| Yes.
| ilbeeper wrote:
| Justified fire is still fire
| Suppafly wrote:
| Yes, it's almost always justified in any situation where I've
| heard 'under fired' used.
| BadHumans wrote:
| Title is misleading. The original team behind Honey has created
| a new company that is doing this and not Honey itself which is
| owned by Paypal.
| tantalor wrote:
| Do we know when Honey started stealing affiliate links? Was
| it after the acquisition?
| kristofferR wrote:
| Before, this is how ALL coupon sites/extensions have worked
| for decades.
|
| I'm frankly baffled it weren't more common knowledge,
| despite being common sense, before the MegaLag video. Did
| people really think that sites like retailmenot.com or
| wethrift.com make you open tabs to the shop you're
| searching for coupons for before you can see the coupon
| code just for fun??
|
| Affiliate code stuffing is _the_ coupon provider business
| model, it 's not Honey-exclusive at all. I'd be surprised
| if you find a coupon site/extension that haven't always
| done that.
| josephg wrote:
| Utter scumbags. The google chrome & Firefox extension
| stores should ban the lot of 'em.
| Suppafly wrote:
| Honestly I knew that that coupon websites were adding
| their affiliate link to links from their websites, but it
| never occurred to me that the toolbars would be stripping
| and replacing affiliate links from actual links you were
| clicking yourself.
|
| I wouldn't mind if they were transparent about what they
| were doing or gave you the option to substitute your own
| code specifically. I'm sure there are a lot of situations
| where I've clicked an affiliate link to check something
| out and then that affiliate got credit for other things
| I've purchased hours or days later. I'd really like a
| toolbar that let me modify or block the affiliate code
| from those links.
| kristofferR wrote:
| On Firefox you could use a separate container for your
| coupon site visits, but do the buying in another
| container.
| Suppafly wrote:
| When I'm actually looking for coupons I tend to use an
| incognito window, but there are times when I'm clicking a
| link from reddit to see something someone has mentioned
| and then later go to the same site and buy something I
| was planning on buying and in those cases if the original
| link had an affiliate code, I'm pretty sure they end up
| getting credit for the later purchase that they had no
| involvement with.
| tommica wrote:
| Oh... This should have been obvious, but I only realized
| it from this comment.
| ToucanLoucan wrote:
| In my defense I assumed they were a user data-mining
| scam, not a coupon code scam. Still never used it and
| told people not to whenever they asked, but, whatcha
| gonna do.
| pseudo0 wrote:
| It is pretty funny how the MegaLag video claimed it was
| hard to find discussion of this online, and cited a HN
| thread from over five years ago:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21588663
|
| I suppose it's easy for us to forget how an average
| person really doesn't think about how cookies and
| referral links work.
| Alex-Programs wrote:
| Yeah, as I watched the video all I could think was "what
| the fuck did you think they were doing?". I'm surprised
| technical youtube channels were caught by it, although
| maybe they did the calculation that the money Honey was
| paying was worth more than the affiliate sales they'd
| lose. There's also value to getting that money
| immediately, rather than at some unknown point in the
| future.
|
| The only part that seemed uncouth to me was setting the
| referral code when they hadn't actually found any
| coupons, and collaborating with retailers.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| > I'm surprised technical youtube channels were caught by
| it, although maybe they did the calculation that the
| money Honey was paying was worth more than the affiliate
| sales they'd lose.
|
| ... and helping to screw _everyone else_ over in the
| process. _That_ is what makes advertising for Honey so
| unethical.
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| > as I watched the video all I could think was "what the
| fuck did you think they were doing?".
|
| Well, not screwing over their partners and customers?
|
| They didn't have to overwrite existing affiliate codes to
| make lots of money. And the stuff you list in your last
| sentence is a really big deal.
| Xelynega wrote:
| This is how I keep seeing the discussion going:
|
| 1: Honey is doing shady stuff with affiliate links
|
| 2: Affiliate links aren't shady, just the stuff they're
| doing with them
|
| 1: So honey is doing shady stuff with affiliate links
| Alex-Programs wrote:
| Yeah, you're right about them not having to rewrite
| existing ones. They could've only inserted affiliate
| codes when there weren't existing ones.
|
| It's less that I think it's OK, more that I'm
| unsurprised.
| skeeter2020 wrote:
| I read the HN link after the video though, and it was
| full of vague misunderstandings of exactly what honey was
| doing, even if people did understand the technical
| logistics. Some of the dark patterns honey goes through
| to get a user to click any link or button is pretty
| shady.
| eterm wrote:
| Yep, it's somethings easy to forget that HN isn't
| actually mainstream; something being discussed on HN
| doesn't mean it's well known.
| al_borland wrote:
| Not even just questioning how referral links work, but
| questioning how a company makes money. I never looked
| into Honey, but since it wasn't obvious how they were
| making their money, I assumed it was something sketchy
| and stayed away from it. My assumption was it was the
| typical data harvesting and selling (once they had the
| extension in your browser they could track you). While I
| think the tracking/selling is immoral, what they did
| instead seems like fraud (IANAL).
|
| I'm pretty surprised that so many YouTube creators pushed
| Honey without questioning how they were making money off
| giving away discounts. Did they not ask, or did Honey
| have a lie for that as well?
|
| https://help.joinhoney.com/article/30-how-does-honey-
| make-mo...
|
| I guess they say it, but being owned by PayPal I'm
| guessing there was an assumption that the commissions
| weren't being stolen from other people, and the codes
| being provided were organic codes and not ones created
| for Honey by the merchant to manipulate the user into
| thinking they were getting the best deal, when they
| weren't.
| finnthehuman wrote:
| > I'm pretty surprised that so many YouTube creators
| pushed Honey without questioning how they were making
| money off giving away discounts.
|
| The only thing you can know for sure about an actor, is
| that their profession is pretending to be something
| they're not.
| manquer wrote:
| The main point is not so much their busines/industry
| model, but how they used creators to promote it .
|
| isn't it egregious when you make the people who are you
| stealing affiliate money from to promote the same thing ?
| wink wrote:
| > I'm frankly baffled it weren't more common knowledge
|
| I think the last time I actively investigated how to save
| pennies with these online coupon things was the 90s when
| I was a teenager and I suppose that's true for more
| people.
| BurpIntruder wrote:
| 100% this. Until there is a mechanism to disambiguate
| between first and last click referrals, it will continue
| to be an issue.
| joe5150 wrote:
| I'm curious why Amazon doesn't show you in some obvious
| way what affiliate code your purchase is linked to, if
| any. I'm imagining something like the way they used to
| display your Amazon Smile charity if you used that
| option.
|
| Perhaps they've guessed that it would shock some people
| to learn how often they inadvertently use affiliate links
| and they would be discouraged from shopping or find some
| way to disable the codes.
| Ekaros wrote:
| Or even better give you option to take the affiliate cut
| as discount. Which would be win for everyone. Affiliate
| spammers would get knowledge that people gave them money
| out of charity. Shop would sell more as things are
| cheaper. And buyers would get cheaper products.
| krisoft wrote:
| Wait what? :) Are you proposing that amazon should have a
| "give me a discount on my purchase" check-box on their
| checkout page? Why would anyone not click that? And if
| people would click it why would anyone share affiliate
| links of amazon?
|
| That would completely undermine the incentive structure
| of the whole structure.
|
| > Which would be win for everyone.
|
| Except of course the content creators. It would not be a
| win for them.
| Ekaros wrote:
| They would still get cut from those who choose to support
| them this way. Rest of the people would get discount.
| There seems to be plenty of people who click affiliate
| links so creators get money. Those same people would
| still give the cut to them wouldn't they?
|
| Or then just ban the whole scam.
| krisoft wrote:
| > Those same people would still give the cut to them
| wouldn't they?
|
| It is a very different proposition. In the current
| practice you get the product for the same price as
| everyone else and the creator gets a small slice of the
| shop's profit. In the system you are proposing where you
| could decide to pocket the money it would feel like you
| are giving the money out of your own pocket to the
| creator. It literally would make the product more
| expensive for you to purchase if you decide to not take
| the discount but give it to the creator. It would feel
| like charity with weird extra steps and a middle man.
|
| Sure, some people would do it. I guess there are turbo-
| fans everywhere. But the income from affiliate links
| would collapse dramatically. Because if there is a button
| to get a discount easy then people will push the button
| to get the discount. They will justify it to themselves
| however they want it.
|
| > Or then just ban the whole scam.
|
| Ban as in with government force? Or ban as in the online
| shop decides to not engage in affiliate marketing
| anymore?
|
| The first: ok? Why? I'm not that fussed about it, but I'm
| also not seeing why this would be a good policy. Or what
| exactly you want to ban for that matter.
|
| The second: Presumably the webshops made their own
| calculations that they earn more money with affiliate
| marketing than without. I don't know how one would do
| that, but I assume they are not just doing it out of
| inertia, or goodness of their hearth.
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| I figured they simply had affiliate links themselves, or
| made deals with companies in order to get customers who
| normally wouldn't buy at full price.
|
| It just seems illegal to replace an affiliate link like.
| I guess the courts will determine that.
| beAbU wrote:
| All the YT creators are making a stink about this because
| surprise surprise, honey was stealing from _them_ , not
| their viewers.
|
| It's one of those open secrets that most youtube-peddled
| services are predatory in some way, and the creators
| happily kept pushing them on to their viewers because
| money talks. Now it turns out Honey is hurting their own
| bottom lines, so of course they all get on their moral
| high horses.
| Brian_K_White wrote:
| Title says team behind honey. (was it changed?)
| zer00eyz wrote:
| And yet consumers aren't appalled at what the kick back on a
| conversion is.
|
| Online advertising is a cesspool that makes things more
| expensive not less.
|
| Honey isnt a problem it's a symptom.
| fn-mote wrote:
| > And yet consumers aren't appalled at what the kick back on
| a conversion is
|
| Because they have absolutely no idea.
|
| Where would they ever run across that information?
| Ekaros wrote:
| Saw the numbers on some VPN provider and was surprised just
| how huge the cut for essentially nothing for consumer can
| be... Like if that was in the original price. Then again VPNs
| are weird when you hear these deals and compare them to
| normal prices. Something is broken in the model.
| maratc wrote:
| To me, the whole affiliate marketing with behind-the-back
| deals and kickbacks just reeks of corruption. We have made
| the kickbacks illegal for public servants ... why all the
| rest are fine?
|
| The money that "the creators" and Honey are in disagreement
| over to whom it belongs, should have never left the
| consumers' pockets to begin with.
| relwin wrote:
| Legal Eagle is suing:
| https://youtu.be/4H4sScCB1cY?si=bXxfG_EekkzGEW7J
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| Between this and that botched FOIA request, it feels real
| good to have content creators out there actually looking out
| and fighting against this BS that every other content creator
| lacks the expertise to do anything about.
|
| I don't care if they do two ads per video (a normal ad and
| one for their firm), they more than deserve to shout
| themselves out.
| akimbostrawman wrote:
| >content creators out there actually looking out and
| fighting against this BS
|
| Maybe they should have looked out before taking
| advertisement deals for products they don't even try to
| understand.
|
| The only reason all of the "content creator" (influencer
| would be more fitting) care about this, is for once the
| product screw over them instead of there audience (just
| look at betterhelp).
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| That's the wonderful part: you don't need to have
| accepted the deal or even have heard of Homey to be
| affected. There are some decently sized channels in that
| comment section of the class action That had no
| relationship with homey sulking about how othrt deals
| they took were in danger because of seemingly low click
| through rates.. And it's effect isn't limited to
| YouTubers. Y
|
| ou don't need have been socially engineered in order to
| be a part of a company hack. Same deal here.
| akimbostrawman wrote:
| >you don't need to have accepted the deal or even have
| heard of Homey to be affected
|
| no you at the very least needed to install the addon for
| it to swap out your browser cookies.
|
| >And it's effect isn't limited to YouTubers
|
| the reason for the lawsuit based on financial damages
| very much does only effect them, the people who have
| referral programs which aren't the audience. ofc it also
| effects youtuber who didn't have a deal with honey.
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| > ofc it also affects YouTubers who didn't have a deal
| with honey
|
| Yes, that was my primary point. And It may hurt them even
| more.
|
| e.g If you're a tech YouTuber and Marquee took a deal,
| odds are you will feel the effects more than he would a A
| multimillionaire and industry known influencer. Because
| you'll probably have a huge overlapping audience with
| him.
|
| Also, remember that a honey spent billions advertising
| this. I doubt this level of budget was limited only to
| YouTubers. Plenty of Instagram and TikTok and Twitter
| influencers to target.
| linotype wrote:
| Don't forget all the financial YouTubers like Graham
| Stephan that were hawking FTX.
| kelseydh wrote:
| Arguably a criminal matter also, "Cookie Stuffing" Internet
| Fraud Schemer Pleads Guilty: https://www.justice.gov/usao-
| sdal/pr/cookie-stuffing-interne...
| mfer wrote:
| The author of UBlockOrigin should contact the PayPal legal
| department (in a legal manner). That might be a more direct path
| dealing with the Honey business.
| philipwhiuk wrote:
| This is by people who used to work on Honey - they're not part
| of PayPal.
| Sephr wrote:
| To be fair, Honey could easily bypass the blocklist
| redistribution legal issue by downloading filter lists at runtime
| from the official source. Then they aren't redistributing the
| resources.
|
| Update: It looks like they're also using code from uBO without
| attribution or authorization. That's most likely illegal and
| there no way around that.
| Raed667 wrote:
| read the thread, people also found that it also stole code from
| uBO
| mainframed wrote:
| I would be careful handing out legal advice as a non-legal
| expert, especially when it is about "bypassing legal issues".
| You might be doing someone a big disservice.
|
| @readers: Obligatory notice: Don't base your business decision
| on random internet comments.
| loeg wrote:
| This is excessive. Any fool taking legal advice from
| pseudonymous internet comments is getting what they paid for.
| mainframed wrote:
| Ok. Got it. Next time, I'll leave probably false legal
| advice unchallenged.
| loeg wrote:
| It's fine and good to disagree with/challenge wrong
| comments. But you don't need to do this meta commentary
| cautioning the mere act of commenting. If Sephr is wrong,
| just say that!
| mainframed wrote:
| Ok. You are right. I think he is likely wrong, but I'm
| not a lawyer either. Just someone who researched this a
| lot for my own projects/company.
|
| If that was true, all user-side aggregations would be
| considered as separate projects.
|
| I think it might be possible to circumvent the GPL
| license, when the URL to the list would be user-
| configurable and the program also worked without the
| list.
| moonshadow565 wrote:
| I don't think you can copyright lists of publicly available
| information (iirc there was some case with phone numbers before).
| That being said, they also stole code...
| onli wrote:
| Right, or: maybe. Depends on where you are (or maybe better:
| where they are), and whether data collections fall under
| copyright or some other protection that is translateable enough
| for the gpl to apply. But if they really also used code that
| point is moot.
| RobotToaster wrote:
| Depends on the country
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Database_right
| moonshadow565 wrote:
| Thanks for the list! It seems that unfortunately copyright
| applies to databases in EU.
| maxloh wrote:
| Moreover, it doesn't seem like static linking to me.
|
| A similar example would be using a GPLv3 licensed JavaScript
| library in a website. What it implies to other HTML/JS/CSS code
| is controversial [0]. The FSF actually believed that they
| should not be "infected" [1], and the legal implications may
| need to be tested in court.
|
| [0]: https://opensource.stackexchange.com/q/4360/15873
|
| [1]: https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.en.html#WMS
| darthwalsh wrote:
| The FSF question is about templates, but the chrome extension
| in question also seems to have copied nontrivial JS.
|
| I don't think chrome extensions can be modified by the user;
| there's probably some integrity check. So to be GPL compliant
| they need to publish source files to rebuild the extension?
| jillyboel wrote:
| https://www.rvo.nl/onderwerpen/octrooien-ofwel-patenten/vorm...
| gs17 wrote:
| ProCD, Inc. v. Zeidenberg was sort of about this:
|
| > For Zeidenberg's argument, the circuit court assumed that a
| database collecting the contents of one or more telephone
| directories was equally a collection of facts that could not be
| copyrighted. Thus, Zeidenberg's copyright argument was
| valid.[1] However, this did not lead to a victory for
| Zeidenberg, because the circuit court held that copyright law
| does not preempt contract law. Since ProCD had made the
| investments in its business and its specific SelectPhone
| product, it could require customers to agree to its terms on
| how to use the product, including a prohibition on copying the
| information therein regardless of copyright protections.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ProCD,_Inc._v._Zeidenberg
| alsetmusic wrote:
| This isn't the first time they've been accused of shady
| practices.
|
| > MegaLag also says Honey will hijack affiliate revenue from
| influencers. According to MegaLag, if you click on an affiliate
| link from an influencer, Honey will then swap in its own tracking
| link when you interact with its deal pop-up at check-out. That's
| regardless of whether Honey found you a coupon or not, and it
| results in Honey getting the credit for the sale, rather than the
| YouTuber or website whose link led you there.
|
| https://www.theverge.com/2024/12/23/24328268/honey-coupon-co...
| 15155 wrote:
| This seems like tortious interference.
| shwaj wrote:
| I know it's not necessarily the same people, but it feels
| contradictory for this community to say "copyright infringement
| isn't theft" when we're talking about movies, but use the
| opposite language when talking about GPL source code.
| traverseda wrote:
| You can live in the gift economy or the money economy. Taking
| stuff from the gift economy and selling it is gross.
| shwaj wrote:
| I agree completely, and yet I would still prefer language to
| be used consistently.
| traverseda wrote:
| I think the "information want to be free" crowd is very
| consistent. They want the information to be free. They
| don't want artificial scarcity.
|
| Sure they'll use IP as a means to an end, but that doesn't
| mean they believe IP is a good idea in general. It's just
| one of few tools that exist to solve it.
|
| In an ideal world all software would be forced to be FOSS,
| and we'd have to come up with ways of funding it that
| aren't based on artificial scarcity.
| drdeca wrote:
| It seems like a bit of a strong restriction to have in
| the law that if I distribute an executable (which people
| may reverse engineer, modify, redistribute as they wish)
| that I am obligated to provide the source code upon
| request.
|
| Like, what if I want to release a rather difficult puzzle
| in the form of an obfuscated executable and provide a
| reward to the first person who solves it? If I'm required
| to release the source code upon request, then that kind
| of spoils the puzzle. (Sure, I can say that anyone who
| gets the source code this way is ineligible for the
| prize, but how could I tell?)
|
| This is of course a somewhat silly and niche edge case.
| Still though, it doesn't seem natural/appropriate for a
| law would prevent such a thing.
|
| Whereas, agreeing to only distribute modifications I make
| to some software written by others if I'm willing to
| distribute the source code to my modifications, well,
| that would just be an agreement I would be making, and
| seems unobjectionable.
|
| Though, I wouldn't really claim that all IP is
| illegitimate. I think many IP protections go way too far
| and last too long, but, I think some amount of copyright
| and patents is probably a good idea, though for a much
| shorter duration. So maybe I'm not really in the camp
| being described.
|
| I think the freedoms described in the GPL are good.
|
| I guess one alternative could be to say that all software
| written "for a useful purpose" (or something like that)
| has to have the source code made available, and that
| could handle the puzzle case I mentioned?
|
| It does seem important to avoid the case where one needs
| to use some software for something but is prevented from
| modifying it due to not having the source code.
|
| So... maybe if one is only required to provide the source
| code if someone could reasonably be described as
| "needing" the software for something? (E.g. if you "need
| it in order to get your printer working", or the like.)
| tikhonj wrote:
| The puzzle case is no different to how you can't sell
| somebody a rubiks cube without allowing them to "solve"
| it by taking it apart and putting it back together.
|
| You can make a physical item intentionally hard to work
| with or modify, but I see that as a shortcoming of our
| current legal standard--that's why we need some kind of
| "right to repair" framework. Requiring people to
| distribute human-readable code alongside software follows
| the same underlying philosophy as physical "right to
| repair" requirements.
| drdeca wrote:
| I wasn't thinking forbidding them from decompiling it or
| anything. I don't think any rights are violated if
| government doesn't issue any further copyright
| protections (even though I don't think this for the
| best).
|
| I am not saying that the puzzle author should have any
| legal authority to restrict people from disassembling the
| puzzle.
|
| I'm just saying that the government shouldn't compel the
| puzzle designer to distribute disassembled versions of
| the puzzle.
|
| If other people want to take apart their rubix cubes,
| they're free to, I just shouldn't be forced to help them
| take it apart.
| ndriscoll wrote:
| A reasonable tradeoff to explore is that software ought
| to work like a halfway-point between copyright and
| patents: in exchange for an exclusive right to distribute
| your binaries for 10-15 years, you provide your
| documentation for how it works (including source code) so
| others can build on your work after the exclusivity
| period ends. The exclusive right does not cover the basic
| idea/independent implementations of the same
| functionality.
|
| Potentially utilitarian software and creative software
| could be treated differently, e.g. have an escrow for
| games (for which user customizations are less important).
|
| Obviously DRM to restrict user modifications is unethical
| and harmful toward functioning markets and should be
| illegal.
| traverseda wrote:
| >Though, I wouldn't really claim that all IP is
| illegitimate. I think many IP protections go way too far
| and last too long, but, I think some amount of copyright
| and patents is probably a good idea, though for a much
| shorter duration.
|
| For what it's worth that's the camp I'm in as well, I'm
| just being a bit silly for the sake of argument.
| fallingknife wrote:
| They want other people's information to be free for them.
| I doubt very much that they want their professional work
| to be free to other people.
|
| It takes a certain kind of insanity to think that it's
| feasible to spend millions of dollars writing software
| when your customers are all entitled to take it for free.
| notpushkin wrote:
| I've heard an argument that people / companies would
| still pay for custom development, like they do now. It is
| a pretty weak argument, but I do see the point.
| fallingknife wrote:
| Sure, custom development could still be a thing under
| such a framework because there is only a single potential
| user, but can you imagine how catastrophically expensive
| that would be? The business of software development would
| be absolute misery to work in as the core skill would be
| to write such convoluted, impenetrable, single use code
| at the pain of being put out of business by source code
| copiers. Software would be completely out of reach to
| most consumers and small businesses. Basically we would
| be back in the 70s where computing was only available to
| large enterprise.
| wizzwizz4 wrote:
| I'm with you until the final sentence. From my
| perspective, that's the _current_ state of software
| development. Hundreds of megabytes of JavaScript and
| "assets" for what could be a 60KiB bundle of HTML, or a
| 500KiB Win32 program.
| notpushkin wrote:
| Yeah, the reality is, our industry produces a lot of
| garbage right now. That wouldn't change.
|
| Still, there are people who care about quality, and some
| of them also share their work with others. Those people
| would exist regardless of whether there is copyright or
| not. The only difference is, we won't have LICENSE files
| anymore.
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| Forgot the name, but it's a variant of Hawthorne's laws
| for computers. If tech gets faster, programs will work to
| fill that newfound space and performance. even if it's
| just a simple web text page.
|
| But no one complains and it lets them ship faster. So not
| much will change here.
| notpushkin wrote:
| > But no one complains and it lets them ship faster
|
| I think we're past even that point by now. Not only the
| code we ship now is slow, it's also harder to build and
| maintain, and expensive to run. I have no idea how we got
| here to be honest.
| notpushkin wrote:
| What if I hand-code something in asm?
|
| What if I tell you I hand-coded something in asm, but
| secretly used a Rust compiler with an obfuscator?
| saagarjha wrote:
| Not everyone is stupid; people would catch on very
| quickly.
| timeon wrote:
| Things are often inconsistent however there are cases where
| something appears inconsistent but it is only lack of
| knowledge of observer that displays it as inconsistent. At
| least that is what I have learned today in some different
| matter (I was that observer).
| bnjms wrote:
| Then you'll have to invent new language for one or the
| other because they've different and merely related
| meanings.
|
| I agree though. We should always intend for accurate and
| consistent language.
| coldpie wrote:
| I dislike this framing. I was paid money for over a decade to
| write GPL'd code; I didn't do it as a gift. I release my code
| under the GPL for selfish reasons: I want others to be able
| to improve it, and me to be able to take advantage of their
| improvements. To me, it's not a gift, it's just the most
| efficient way to write software.
| int_19h wrote:
| OP is not asserting that all GPL'd code is part of the
| "gift economy". I also wrote some GPLv2 code a large corp
| in the past, and I wouldn't consider it that, either. But
| projects like UBlock Origin that are run by volunteer
| contributors are very different.
|
| You seem to be basing your rejection of "gift economy" as a
| label for the latter on the basis that it's not done for
| entirely altruistic purpose. But that is generally true of
| gift economies - most people who participate in them (and
| I'm not just talking of software here!) are not doing it
| out of purely altruistic motives, and actually expect to
| receive benefit from such an economy as well. Usually this
| is cultural, but some people, like you, might consciously
| believe that it's the most efficient way to distribute
| goods (whatever their definition of "efficient" might be).
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| you can work at a charity and still be paid, even though
| the "non-profit" moniker can confuse layman.
|
| > I release my code under the GPL for selfish reasons: I
| want others to be able to improve it, and me to be able to
| take advantage of their improvements.
|
| I suppose that metphor depends on what you think of
| community efforts. Like say, sharing a food recipe or a
| workout routine. I see see the framing as "giving it away".
| Even if your endgoal is an ultimately selfish search of
| "better recipe/routine to use".
| 14 wrote:
| One thing I see over and over again is that those with lower
| moral standards often seem to prosper. The saying cheaters
| never prosper has never seemed to hold true from what I have
| seen. Still I hold myself to a high standard in life even if
| I could get away with something I believe in morals. If I
| find a wallet I return it with all it's cash. Sadly if you
| have no morals you take the cash and come out ahead. My son
| last year had $900 in his wallet and dropped it. Returned
| with no money. I could never do that as I would be thinking
| that is someones rent money or bills or food for their
| family. The person with low morals however gets a new ps5 and
| some games or whatever else they wanted. I can only hope the
| person who took it was in a worse situation and paid their
| rent or something. Thankfully my son only learned a hard
| lesson and was not without food or rent or anything.
| echelon wrote:
| Rhymes with horseshoe theory.
|
| People are willing to let behavior slide when it aligns with
| their interests, but will call it out when the "other team"
| does it.
|
| - Copyright abuse of games, movies, commercial software vs open
| source software
|
| - Censorship of conservative speech vs censorship of liberal
| speech
|
| - Genocide of one geopolitical entity vs another geopolitical
| entity
|
| - Separation of church/state with mandated removal of religious
| symbols from students and government places vs freedom of
| religion with removal of LGBT symbols from students and
| government places
|
| - Use of executive branch authority for [liberal goal] vs
| [conservative goal]
|
| It's the same behavior on both sides, just different groups of
| people doing it.
| DrewRWx wrote:
| Good thing the ends matter more than the means.
| mouse_ wrote:
| The problem is that enforcement is unequal and always seems
| to benefit the rich over the creators.
|
| If I use Photoshop's 1's and 0's and don't follow Photoshop's
| rules, I could be bankrupt and thrown onto the streets,
| dramatically decreasing my life expectancy, or locked up and
| legally enslaved by Tyson Foods.
|
| If PayPal, an 85 billion dollar market cap figure that has
| monopolized a large amount of digital commerce, uses our 1's
| and 0's and don't follow our rules, we're laughed at, because
| we are not an 85 billion dollar market cap figure.
|
| I expect you understand this on some level.
|
| > - Censorship of conservative speech vs censorship of
| liberal speech
|
| How so? There are many left aligned websites that remove
| conservative content, and many conservative websites that
| remove lefty content, many sites that allow both and many
| sites that remove both. Perhaps I misunderstood, apologies if
| so.
| skyyler wrote:
| >- Separation of church/state with mandated removal of
| religious symbols from students and government places vs
| freedom of religion with removal of LGBT symbols from
| students and government places
|
| >It's the same behavior on both sides, just different groups
| of people doing it.
|
| I'm actually curious to understand how you came to the
| conclusion that non-standard sexual and gender identities are
| equivalent to a religion to you.
|
| I don't mean to start an argument here, but do you actually
| believe that endorsing a specific religion is the same as
| endorsing gay rights?
| echelon wrote:
| > I don't mean to start an argument here, but do you
| actually believe that endorsing a specific religion is the
| same as endorsing gay rights?
|
| I'm LGBT and agnostic.
|
| Schools banning crosses and the Swiss banning burqa are
| very similar to the LGBT flag removal in Michigan. It's all
| censorship to enforce the ideology you agree with.
|
| A free society would do none of these things.
|
| Instead we have two angry sides playing games to anger one
| another.
| greenthrow wrote:
| I don't follow your logic. We have separation of church
| and state. Having religious symbols displayed by publicly
| funded schools violates that principle and favors the
| displayed religion(s). Protecting everyone's right to
| religious freedom requires not favoring any specific
| religions. This is pro first amendment.
|
| An LGBT flag is a symbol of support for people who are
| not cis and straight. It is not a religious symbol. It is
| not infringing on any individual's right to practice
| their own religion. This is pro first amendment.
|
| Banning burqas is oppressing muslim students' right to
| practice their religion, and is anti first amendment.
| int_19h wrote:
| I think OP is referring to schools banning _students_
| from wearing crosses etc.
| mouse_ wrote:
| If copyright infringement is theft, then stealing GPL code is
| theft.
|
| If copyright infringement isn't theft (our goal), then it
| doesn't matter.
|
| Hope that makes some sense.
| jrflowers wrote:
| If it isn't the same people your observation is that some
| people say one thing about one topic and other people say
| something else about a completely different topic. That is like
| saying some people like elephants and other people speak
| Portuguese
| tikhonj wrote:
| The GPL does the exact _opposite_ of copyright; the fact that
| it uses copyright to achieve that is just an implementation
| detail.
|
| If you believe information should be free to share and remix,
| you would believe that copyright infringement is not theft
| _and_ that not releasing code is wrong.
|
| The fact that the proprietary code is based on GPL code just
| shows that the ex-Honey folks are hypocrites: they're trying to
| use copyright to control their code, but breaking the same
| rules in the way they reuse others' code.
| coldpie wrote:
| > The GPL does the exact opposite of copyright; the fact that
| it uses copyright to achieve that is just an implementation
| detail.
|
| > If you believe information should be free to share and
| remix, you would believe that copyright infringement is not
| theft
|
| No, this is absolutely incorrect. GPL requires copyright (or
| similar mechanism) to function. Without copyright, anyone
| could take the GPL'd code and release a compiled binary
| without releasing source. Releasing the source is the
| "payment" for being granted a license to copy the original
| code; without releasing the source, you are in violation of
| the author's copyright. No one who wants to use the GPL to
| protect their and their users' rights would advocate for
| eliminating copyright, because the GPL's goals cannot be
| achieved without copyright.
| tikhonj wrote:
| The more direct solution would be a law that required
| distributing human-editable code alongside software. No
| need for copyright or anything remotely similar. Code being
| copyrightable would just be getting in the way at that
| point.
|
| But in a world where that is politically infeasible, we
| have to use whatever tools we have at hand to get as close
| as we can. And, unfortunately, the tool we happen to have
| is the modern copyright regime.
| coldpie wrote:
| > The more direct solution would be a law that required
| distributing human-editable code alongside software.
|
| Hmm okay yeah, I buy that. Good rebuttal, I retract my
| comment :)
| zeroonetwothree wrote:
| It's also possible such a law (in the US) would violate
| the first amendment (being "compelled speech").
| f1refly wrote:
| Laws are just made up by people, we can make up new ones
| if we want.
| tikhonj wrote:
| I mean, there's a reasonable argument that large swathes
| of current copyright law in the US also violate the First
| Amendment. I haven't read it yet, but the book _No Law_
| from Stanford University Press[1] makes that argument and
| has been on my to-read list for a while.
|
| [1]: https://www.sup.org/books/law/no-law
| dns_snek wrote:
| Do food nutrition labels violate the first amendment,
| being compelled speech?
| mathstuf wrote:
| One can still want much looser copyright. For example, 14
| years by default, pay $$ to extend it, increasing
| exponentially each time (as compensation for stealing from
| the public domain). At least I'm willing to call extended
| copyright terms stealing if we're going to call format
| shifting and other personal use cases stealing.
| iamacyborg wrote:
| > stealing from the public domain
|
| How is it stealing from the public domain if it's
| intellectual property you've created? Do you also believe
| I should be entitled to a cut of your paycheck?
| freedomben wrote:
| > _Do you also believe I should be entitled to a cut of
| your paycheck?_
|
| I don't necessarily agree with GP or you, but this isn't
| a good argument because anyone other than libertarians
| (i.e. anyone who supports taxation), which in practice is
| pretty much everyone, _does_ believe that.
| iamacyborg wrote:
| No I agree it's a poor argument when looked at either
| extreme. I think most folks would likely agree that
| _some_ taxation is beneficial, albeit not a 100% tax
| rate, which would be broadly analogous to the argument
| that copyright shouldn't exist.
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| The person you replied to wasn't making the argument that
| copyright shouldn't exist. Their argument is in line with
| "some taxation" where it goes into the public domain
| after a while, and they only (potentially) called
| _extended_ copyright terms stealing from the public
| domain.
| exe34 wrote:
| > Do you also believe I should be entitled to a cut of
| your paycheck?
|
| don't you benefit from taxes?
| thayne wrote:
| I don't believe that ideas/intellectual work should be
| considered property. I will concede that granting a
| temporary monopoly through copyright or patents can maybe
| be a means of incentivizing innovation and creative work,
| but I'm not convinced it is the only means of doing so,
| and the longer that monopoly lasts, the more it can have
| the inverse effect of stifling innovation that builds on
| existing innovations.
| mathstuf wrote:
| At least in the US, copyright is a monopoly on certain
| rights for a limited time. By locking those rights for an
| extended time, it is stretching that definition. The time
| to benefit from your creations is in that time window.
| That goes for my creations, yours, and everyone else too.
| Public domain is patient, but I don't think it is worth
| depriving it of moderately older works with which others
| can start to use as a foundation to build upon.
| josefx wrote:
| > pay $$ to extend it, increasing exponentially each time
|
| Doesn't work with DRM protected media. Version 1 will be
| pulled from circulation shortly before the time runs out,
| version 2 will be slightly altered and qualify for a
| brand new 14 year copyright. Buyers of version 1 will not
| receive any refunds and will be expected to pay the full
| price for version 2.
| exe34 wrote:
| version 1 is now in the public domain - What's the issue?
| notpushkin wrote:
| Apart from having to crack DRM (which has not been a
| problem so far) I think this should work. Of course, DRM
| provisions should stop working when a DRM-encumbered
| media reaches the public domain.
| thayne wrote:
| Well, there should be laws to protect consumers from DRM,
| instead of laws to prevent consumers from circumventing
| DRM for legal uses, like say consuming the content they
| paid for on the device of their choice.
| ninalanyon wrote:
| That just privileges the rich. Just return to the
| original idea of copyright and limit it to 12 years.
| belorn wrote:
| We can see with current legal situation around AI learning
| and data scraping how companies and their lawyers has
| starting to work around the issue of not having data
| protected by copyright. The general alternatives to
| copyright seems to be TOS and contract law, except for
| Hollywood which went and drafted their own special law.
|
| Downloading software from a server means you need to have
| access to that server, possible through an account. There
| is also a fair amount of precedence covering the
| enforceability of TOS and limitations of server access,
| especially when a company earn profit on intentionally
| ignoring them.
|
| Contract law has its own issue, and copyright is generally
| seen as much easier to understand and enforce, but if
| contract law can be used to control how software and data
| is used after a user has downloaded it then it could be
| used for something like GPL.
| jjmarr wrote:
| Copyright itself is arguably theft sponsored by the state,
| because information can naturally be freely used/shared by
| all of humanity. Creating property rights in information
| reduces the collective knowledge of humanity (the commons),
| because now information can't be shared.
|
| The goal of the GPL and viral licensing is to undo copyright
| as such.
|
| I don't agree with this maximalist approach because many
| forms of knowledge wouldn't be created without a financial
| incentive. But there's many niches in the economy where free
| software creates greater economic benefit than a proprietary
| solution.
| freedomben wrote:
| > _The goal of the GPL and viral licensing is to undo
| copyright as such._
|
| This does not match my understanding. My understanding is
| that the goal of the GPL is to weaponize the copyright
| system to enforce copyleft. Many creators and supporters of
| the GPL do oppose IP laws (at least in their current form)
| but the goal specifically of the GPL isn't to destroy
| copyright, it's to weaponize it to accomplish higher
| purposes.
| Brian_K_White wrote:
| The gpl sets terms, employing the right to set terms.
|
| The fact that those terms are not for money is the
| implimentation detail.
|
| The fact that there are terms that you are required to agree
| and adhere to, OR live without the goods, that is not.
|
| Just like the normal terms for money, your choice is you can
| take it according to the terms, or leave it. Not just take it
| and ignore the terms.
|
| It's definitely a special level of low to steal something
| that's already free.
| exe34 wrote:
| > It's definitely a special level of low to steal something
| that's already free
|
| stealing from the commons, basically.
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| No, absolutely not the commons.
|
| If you want a mental metaphor of what the vast body of
| GPL'ed code is, think of a very, very large multinational
| corporation.
|
| If you want to use their code, you have to join the
| company. Fortunately for you, all you have to do to join
| the company is to agree to use the same license for you
| own code as the company already does. If you agree to
| that, you are free to use any or all of the code "owned"
| by the company.
|
| However, if you do not agree to the company's terms -
| i.e. you wish to use a different license - then you are
| not a part of the company and have no legal right to use
| any of the company's code. You may of course continue
| with your own software, but you cannot benefit from the
| amassed resource that is the company's own code (though
| of course reading it is allowed).
| Brian_K_White wrote:
| The body of gpl code is absolutely a commons. I don't
| know why you imagine otherwise unless you're confused
| about public domain or something.
|
| There is no joining any company or anything remotely like
| that no matter how hard you try to squint. The single
| rule in GPL is no more than any other usage-of-commons
| rule like don't pee in the pool or litter in the park.
|
| The park is still free for anyone to use, you just can't
| fence off a part for yourself and start operating your
| tire-burning business in it. The body of people who
| either first donated it or the tax payers who voted for
| it set some terms for usage, and now you can either enjoy
| the goods under those terms or not.
|
| But what's interesting is how some people have this kind
| of reaction and try to come up with this kind of argument
| over the act of being generous.
|
| Are you sure GPL isn't even worse than you said? Why be
| so nice? Are you sure it doesn't also eat babies?
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| > The body of gpl code is absolutely a commons
|
| You cannot (re)use any GPL code unless you agree to
| license your own code under the GPL.
|
| You and I may agree that the terms of the GPL are
| essentially just a way of protecting the commons. I
| happen to spend quite a bit of time on HN and elsewhere
| debunking people who cite Hardin's "tragedy of the
| commons" precisely because that whole story ignores the
| fact that real commons have historically been managed
| with a variety of social and civic techniques.
|
| However, precisely because of this widespread repeating
| of Hardin's use of the term "commons", I tend to doubt
| that random mentions on HN of "the commons" actually
| means "a carefully socially and civically managed
| resource available to all but notionally protected from
| abuse". Rather, it does indeed tend to be a synonym for
| "public domain".
|
| BTW, I've been writing GPL'ed code for more than 35
| years, and for the last 25+ years, it has been my full-
| time self-employed means of making a living.
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| It's not "the" commons but it sure looks like "a" commons
| to me.
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| In the accurate historical sense of the term, yes.
|
| In the much more currently commonplace use of the term as
| "a bunch of resources that people can just use", no.
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| I think it _does_ fit "a bunch of resources that people
| can just use". It's a shared pool where the only rule is
| to put derived code back, except the rule is even less
| because personal use is exempted.
| Brian_K_White wrote:
| "BTW, I've been writing GPL'ed code for more than 35
| years, and for the last 25+ years, it has been my full-
| time self-employed means of making a living."
|
| That is embarassing for such a self professed domain
| expert to say something as ridiculous as:
|
| "You cannot (re)use any GPL code unless you agree to
| license your own code under the GPL."
|
| I still don't hear an argument that actually shows how
| it's not a commons. If you're just arbitrarily declaring
| it actually means "public domain" I say you don't get to
| declare that and inventing your own definitions for terms
| is not a valid argument or even valid comminication, and
| there is no further point in attempting to communicate
| with anyone doing that.
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| See my reply to DylanXXXXXX immediately adjacent.
|
| I'm not making up my own definitions. I'm contrasting
| Garrett Hardin's use of the term in his famous book
| "Tragedy of the Commons", which is the way most people on
| HN use it with Elinor Ostrom's much more enlightened
| definition of it in her refutations of Hardin's claims
| (refutations that Hardin has accepted).
|
| In Ostrom's sense, yes, GPL'ed code comprises a commons.
| In Hardin's sense, it does not (or at least, it has a
| bunch of features to it that render his entire thesis
| about commons inapplicable).
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| Also, do let me know how you can legally re-use GPL'ed
| code if you own code is not GPL'ed, unless you just mean
| "by reading it".
| Brian_K_White wrote:
| By not redistributing it.
| exe34 wrote:
| > You cannot (re)use any GPL code unless you agree to
| license your own code under the GPL.
|
| and you can't burn tyres in the park.
| exe34 wrote:
| > "a carefully socially and civically managed resource
| available to all but notionally protected from abuse".
|
| no it seems that you've just been triggered - I did mean
| it in the above sense. that's why it's offensive when
| somebody takes gpl code and puts it in proprietary code
| that they distribute.
|
| public domain means do as you want, even burn tyres in
| the park.
| wizzwizz4 wrote:
| > _The fact that there are terms that you are required to
| agree and adhere to, OR live without the goods, that is
| not._
|
| Uh, no there aren't. The GPL's requirements only kick in
| when I try to _redistribute_ : that's why the license is in
| a file called COPYING. It's not an EULA: you don't need to
| agree with it to _use_ GPL 'd software.
| kube-system wrote:
| Not technically. GPLs requirements kick in the moment you
| make a copy for you own use, it's just that _there aren
| 't any requirements that apply_ under those conditions.
|
| But they'd have to take effect right away, otherwise
| you'd be illegally copying copyrighted software :). It is
| the GPL license that grants personal use without
| restriction.
| Brian_K_White wrote:
| Those are the terms, correct. Using the code in pretty
| much any way you want without redistributing is adhering
| to those terms.
|
| Why do you try say that means there are no terms?
|
| The terms are ridiculously generous. But there are terms
| and those are they.
| grayhatter wrote:
| Copyright was created in part, and allows the author of some
| covered work, to control the terms of how that work is used
| and distributed; so that both the creator and the user may
| benefit from that work.
|
| GPL was created in part, and allows the author of some
| covered work, to control the terms of how that work is used
| and distributed; so that both the creator and the user may
| benefit from that work.
|
| The GPL and copyright are both about controlling what other
| people do with something you made. The MIT, or BSD license,
| or some other very permissive license that doesn't set down
| restrictions are arguably different from copyright. But the
| GPL isn't the opposite of copyright. It's just has different
| terms of use.
| kube-system wrote:
| > The GPL does the exact opposite of copyright;
|
| No, public domain is the opposite of copyright. The GPL
| absolutely does give the author rights to dictate how people
| copy the software -- in fact -- even more so than many other
| open source licenses.
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| >If you believe information should be free to share and
| remix, you would believe that copyright infringement is not
| theft and that not releasing code is wrong.
|
| I'm mixed, because it's an entire spectrum and there's no
| clear sand in the ground. It's a very nuanced topic.
|
| But fundamentally, if people want to make sure they can
| benefit most from their creations, they need some way to
| protect themselves. Otherwise the biggest wallet will grab
| the idea, out-advertise you, and out support you.
|
| That's why I always vied for minimizing copyright periods,
| not abolishing the idea. Creators should benefit: creators
| have almost zero need to benefit almost a century after they
| die. the original 14 + 14 made enough sense and can still
| work: something that was basically an average lifetime back
| then and is now most of a working career. Those rights can
| transfer to whoever they want, and it would be transferred to
| a beneficiary posthumously. But when 28 is up, it's up.
| handsclean wrote:
| "So you're pro assault when somebody's broken into your home at
| night, but suddenly anti assault when I want to punch your
| grandma?" Exaggerated but the same idea. Though people often
| communicate and maybe even internalize it in simplified
| "copyright bad" form, actual beliefs are much more contextual.
| The piracy debate would look a lot different if it weren't
| literally millionaires demanding money from children.
| timeon wrote:
| Road to hell is paved by devils advocates.
| bnjms wrote:
| Being fair these are semantically different meanings of
| "theft".
|
| 1. Movie copyright is compared, by its owners and the law, to
| physical theft. This type of theft does not remove the physical
| use or any use from the owners.
|
| 2. GPL copyright only requires sharing changed code. Failing to
| disclose the changes actually does affect the owners in the way
| claimed.
|
| They're two different social contracts and we need different
| words for them. Honestly many social problems are like this.
| fallingknife wrote:
| We do have that. In law copyright infringement is
| categorically not "theft" and is not even handled by the same
| type of court.
|
| The "copyright infringement (is / isn't) theft" argument is
| drivel on the same intellectual level as "corporations are
| people."
| somat wrote:
| right, infringement is not theft, and corporations are not
| people. Corporations are governments.
|
| The corporation you probably thinking of right now is a
| small private government to run a for profit endeavor. But
| note that cities are also corporations.
| kube-system wrote:
| Corporations are not 'people' as in 'natural persons',
| but they are 'persons', as in 'juridical person' -- as
| are trusts, estates, and other institutions.
| somat wrote:
| Trusts etc. are mechanisms to move inheritance from
| personal law into corporate law. This lets you game the
| system as corporate privilege often handles this more
| gracefully than personal privilege(wills and
| inheritance).
|
| Probably want to contact a lawyer for the nuances, but
| the thousand foot view is you create a corporation with
| yourself as chief officer, and others as backup officers.
| set your corporate law to make your backup officers
| useless until the death of the chief officer and strict
| guidelines as to how the backup officers are to manage
| corporate assets. then finally transfer assets to the
| corporation.
|
| The point being, the thing that makes a corporation a
| corporation is its corporate law governing its members,
| thus the assertion that corporations are not people, they
| are governments.
| spoaceman7777 wrote:
| You're missing the point of GPL-style licensed Open Source
| Software. It's a matter of copy_left_, vs copyright. The
| difference isn't comparing the rights of GPL software
| writers/publishers vs the rights of movie publishers.
|
| It's about the idea that software (and, for many, all digital
| media) should be free. The GPL is designed to "infect" other
| projects, by forcing them to be free if the GPL code is
| included. It's using IP/copyright laws to combat profiteering
| in software (and, in the case of movies, Blender releases a
| GPL'd movie every few years).
|
| It's the activists' FOSS license, unlike the MIT/BSD/Apache
| licenses, which are just the literal definition of Free and
| Open Source, no strings attached.
| croes wrote:
| Movie copyright violation: more people than intended can see
| the movie.
|
| GPL violation: less people than intended can see the code.
| mulmen wrote:
| Isn't this the difference between MIT and GPL?
| derac wrote:
| Individual pirates are rarely profiting from it. I'd wager most
| people who think pirating a movie is fine aren't cool with
| printing 1000 bluerays and hawking them at the flea market.
| NikkiA wrote:
| Also most pirates abhor people that charge for access to
| pirated content.
| 14 wrote:
| I once paid for a Plex share that initially was very
| convenient. Some free stream sites can be very slow and
| constant buffering. The plex share had high bandwidth
| connection and a huge library with content from basically
| all major streaming services at a great price so it was an
| easy buy. Plex started cracking down hard and it would
| disconnect way too often and require the guy setting it
| back up again which could take a half hour or a half a day
| so I ended up moving on.
|
| I was paying for netflix until my kids could no longer
| watch from my house and my exwife's house. After that
| nonsense I just taught my kids how to find stuff for free.
|
| I used to pirate all my games but now pay for all of it. I
| am trying to rack my head around why I stopped with games
| but having a hard time thinking of what made me change. For
| PC I just think it probably is risky running pirated
| software that may be malicious. For things like the switch
| well I have a older switch that can be fully modded but
| haven't due to not having the time to fully research all
| the ins and outs and not wanting my kids switch to be
| banned or something.
| fallingknife wrote:
| That is hypocrisy on the level of thinking buying drugs is ok
| but selling them is bad. You can argue about the severity of
| the behavior, but if you are drawing moral lines in the sand,
| buyer and seller are always on the same side.
| ramon156 wrote:
| You're arguing movies against drugs. Obviously buying drugs
| is bad, is downloading movies inherently as bad?
| jorl17 wrote:
| Not saying I agree with infringing on copyright, but I don't
| think it's contradictory:
|
| GPL: "The code must be shared" Downloading/Pirating movies.
| "The movies should be shared"
|
| I don't think people that people who believe in the GPL and
| pirate movies often do so because "pirating is the right thing
| to do", but one can certainly make the case that they share the
| same basic idea.
| loeg wrote:
| It's just different people. "Copyright infringement isn't
| theft" is an extremely niche viewpoint in general.
| medo-bear wrote:
| infringing on copyright is like stealing from the rich
|
| infringing on copyleft is like stealing from the poor
|
| its the difference between robin hood and government corruption
| iamacyborg wrote:
| A lot of folks creating unique IP aren't rich though?
| fallingknife wrote:
| Said on a forum where 99% of the posters are rich. When I see
| drivel like this it reminds me to be grateful that I wasn't
| born with the narcissistic delusion to believe that my
| behavior is privileged and morally superior to the same by
| others. The height of insanity is seeing yourself as the
| moral arbiter of the universe.
| llm_trw wrote:
| https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/we-should-improve-society-som...
|
| In short: until society changes you play by its rules.
| timewizard wrote:
| > this community to say "copyright infringement isn't theft"
| when we're talking about movies
|
| I wasn't aware there was this community standard. I explicitly
| disagree with it and I presume many others here would as well.
| The contradiction exists only in your one sided assertion.
|
| I think the position is more nuanced. Once I've paid for the
| movie then breaking it's "copyright circumvention measures" so
| I may copy it or display it for my own purposes and reasons is
| neither immoral or illegal regardless of what hollywood or the
| law they paid for says.
|
| I also think that Copyright terms being the life of the author
| are explicitly in violation of the Constitution, let alone,
| life plus some arbitrary term. These laws have fallen out of
| the service of the many and into the hands of the few.
|
| There's a habit to "point out the contradiction" in these
| forums. I think it's almost always misguided.
| belorn wrote:
| There are very many differences already pointed out, so to add
| an other one, there is a difference between a company doing
| something at scale and for profit, and a private person doing
| something for themselves.
|
| The people in this community that says "copyright infringement
| isn't theft" do not refer to copyright infringement where
| people exploit the work for-profit and put it out as their own
| (feel free to find a single occurrence to prove me wrong). The
| word plagiarism comes to mind, which is morally and (depending
| on country and circumstance) legally a bigger crime than
| copyright infringement. The legal system usually also recognize
| that exploitation done for-profit and large scale should be
| considered worse and punished harder.
| matheusmoreira wrote:
| Yeah, they used the wrong word. No "stealing" of code is
| happening here. It's just infringement of someone's copyrights.
| Theoretically, they could be taken to court over it. In
| practice, courts are a rich corporation's game.
|
| Copyright should not even exist to begin with. GPL is just
| there to try to use the system against itself by essentially
| forcing everything it touches to be public domain. GPL is
| barely above the copyright industry from a moral standpoint.
| That usually causes people to treat violations of it far more
| charitably. Nobody feels sorry for the trillion dollar
| copyright industry.
|
| We live in a world where the same trillion dollar corporations
| who compare us all to high seas pirates who rape and burn will
| also engage in AI washing of copyrighted material at industrial
| scales. That's a far more interesting contradiction than what
| you're presenting and far more deserving of the people's
| indignation.
| ramon156 wrote:
| I guess the difference lies in ownership. If I pirate movies I
| won't claim that I own the rights to that movie. Can't really
| say the same when I have a product with stolen code.
| cherryteastain wrote:
| https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/open-source-misses-the-point....
|
| FSF address this issue directly. GPL is basically fighting fire
| with fire.
| Affric wrote:
| Absolutely not and if it weren't for the US copyright/IP lobby
| it wouldn't even be a crime in many places.
|
| Copyright infringement may be criminal. But compared with theft
| there's, rightly, a higher standard of proof required.
| raincole wrote:
| Because most people in this community know how much effort it
| takes to make software, but not that to make movies.
| prmoustache wrote:
| Which community are you talking about in the first place?
| GrantMoyer wrote:
| They are different senses of the terms. In "copyright
| infringement isn't theft", "theft" is in the sense if car
| theft. In the title, "stolen" is in the sense of a stolen idea.
|
| Copyright infringement, while it may be wrong, truely isn't
| akin to car theft. It is however akin to a stolen idea. A car
| theft deprives the rightful owner of the car, but they don't
| otherwise care that the thief now has a car. An idea theft
| doesn't deprive the thinker of the idea, but they care that the
| thief is benefiting from the idea without compensation. Yet
| they don't care if someone becomes aware of the idea, but keeps
| it to themself.
| mulmen wrote:
| A community is made up of individuals who each hold their own
| potentially conflicting opinions.
| sophacles wrote:
| Copyright infringement isn't theft, whether it's about movies
| or source code.
|
| I don't care about the movie industry, and don't care if they
| lose money. I don't care about the software industry or if they
| lose money.
|
| I do care about information being freely available whether its
| in the form of movies or source code - it's in no way
| contradictory for me to want people locking up source code to
| be stopped from doing so while also wanting to see more
| torrenting. Copyright law is a tool - much like fire. I don't
| want my house to burn down, but I also don't want the fire in
| the furnace to go out... is it contradictory that i want to use
| fire to keep warm but not have all my possessions destroyed?
| mx20 wrote:
| Is he correct? That you can't have GPL files in your project
| without all code adhering to it? I thought it has to be linked
| static. So just calling a GPLed js library likely wouldn't be
| enough. I think the law is muddy here and not clear at all, even
| if the code is directly bundled.
| mzajc wrote:
| I am not a lawyer so I can't say with certainty, but judging by
| the exchange between Richard Stallman and Bruno Haible, the
| author of CLISP, it may well be required:
| https://sourceforge.net/p/clisp/clisp/ci/default/tree/doc/Wh...
| doubletwoyou wrote:
| I think you might be thinking of the LGPL, where it's fine to
| use a piece of code if you dynamically link to it (and maybe
| something about providing relinkable object files, but I'm not
| too clear about that). The GPL, on the other hand, mandates
| that any code that interacts with GPL'd code must be GPL'd,
| unless it can be easily replaced or such and such (i.e. your
| non GPL code calls a GPL binary via fork & exec or the like).
|
| I'm not an expert in this sort of thing, so a more
| knowledgeable person may chime in.
| mx20 wrote:
| But if you create a plugin that calls (via mv2 api?) a
| separate GPL-licensed JavaScript file to block all ads on the
| page, and then use your own closed-source code to add your
| own ads in step 2, is it really integrated or just two
| separate programs bundled together?
| lizknope wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNU_General_Public_License#Co
| m...
|
| The mere act of communicating with other programs does not,
| by itself, require all software to be GPL; nor does
| distributing GPL software with non-GPL software. However,
| minor conditions must be followed that ensure the rights of
| GPL software are not restricted. The following is a quote
| from the gnu.org GPL FAQ, which describes to what extent
| software is allowed to communicate with and be bundled with
| GPL programs:[74] What is the difference
| between an "aggregate" and other kinds of "modified
| versions"? An "aggregate" consists of a number
| of separate programs, distributed together on the same CD-
| ROM or other media. The GPL permits you to create and
| distribute an aggregate, even when the licenses of the
| other software are non-free or GPL-incompatible. The only
| condition is that you cannot release the aggregate under a
| license that prohibits users from exercising rights that
| each program's individual license would grant them.
| Where's the line between two separate programs, and one
| program with two parts? This is a legal question, which
| ultimately judges will decide. We believe that a proper
| criterion depends both on the mechanism of communication
| (exec, pipes, rpc, function calls within a shared address
| space, etc.) and the semantics of the communication (what
| kinds of information are interchanged). If the
| modules are included in the same executable file, they are
| definitely combined in one program. If modules are designed
| to run linked together in a shared address space, that
| almost surely means combining them into one program.
| By contrast, pipes, sockets, and command-line arguments are
| communication mechanisms normally used between two separate
| programs. So when they are used for communication, the
| modules normally are separate programs. But if the
| semantics of the communication are intimate enough,
| exchanging complex internal data structures, that too could
| be a basis to consider the two parts as combined into a
| larger program.
|
| The FSF thus draws the line between "library" and "other
| program" via 1) "complexity" and "intimacy" of information
| exchange and 2) mechanism (rather than semantics), but
| resigns that the question is not clear-cut and that in
| complex situations, case law will decide.
| doubletwoyou wrote:
| I don't know about that hypothetical case, but from what
| the redditors are saying, it looks like the Honey team are
| directly including and calling upon the GPL'd code, which
| I'd say constitutes derived work.
|
| For that specific hypothetical, I'd say it would function
| as a derived work, but others would be able to answer
| better.
| canucker2016 wrote:
| He's correct.
|
| GPL is called a viral license. Any project that you add GPL
| code to must be licensed under GPL (and made available to
| others under the GPL guidelines). That's why many commercial
| companies don't include GPL code - see Apple.
|
| LGPL is typically meant for code packaged as a standalone
| library called from other, possibly non-GPL, code. You can
| distribute and call LGPL code from your code but your code does
| not have to be GPL/LGPL-licensed.
|
| I believe the intent of LGPL was to have free LGPL versions of
| libraries where only popular non-LGPL libraries existed before.
| Any changes made to LGPL source code must be released under the
| usual LGPL/GPL guidelines, i.e. you can't make changes to LGPL
| code, release it in your project, yet keep the changes to
| yourself.
| mirashii wrote:
| > That's why many commercial companies don't include GPL code
| - see Apple.
|
| This is wrong in a couple ways. First, Apple ships plenty of
| GPL code. https://github.com/apple-oss-
| distributions/bash/blob/bash-13... as an example.
|
| What Apple does not ship is GPLv3 code. GPLv3 had two major
| changes around patents and "tivoization". The tivoization
| clause in particular forces changes that break Apple's
| security model for their hardware, and is probably the core
| reason they do not ship GPLv3 software.
| tzs wrote:
| Note that the anti-tivoization provisions only apply to
| software that is sold with the hardware. If Apple wanted to
| use GPLv3 software in apps that you have to purchase
| separately the anti-tivoization provisions would not be a
| problem.
| canucker2016 wrote:
| Thanks for the correction.
|
| This points to one area of Apple's use of GPL code. Apple
| doesn't want code licensed under GPL v3+ so they're
| sticking with the GPL v2 codebase (and custom-backporting
| bugfixes?). Apple uses Bash v3.2, GNU Bash is at v5.2.
| Klonoar wrote:
| Apple doesn't have bash as their default anymore, it's
| been zsh for years.
|
| I presume they keep _a_ bash around due to how ubiquitous
| it is for scripting.
| canucker2016 wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zsh says Apple switched to
| zsh as the default shell (with its MIT-variant license)
| in 2019.
|
| GCC was replaced with LLVM in Xcode 4.2, and GDB was
| replaced with LLDB in Xcode 4.5 and GDB removed in Xcode
| 5.0. see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xcode
| Arnavion wrote:
| If the GPL code is an integrated part of your code, then you've
| created a derivative work, a "work based on the Program" as the
| GPL calls it. In this case your work must also be licensed as
| GPL.
|
| >5. Conveying Modified Source Versions.
|
| >You may convey a work based on the Program, or the
| modifications to produce it from the Program, in the form of
| source code under the terms of section 4, provided that you
| also meet all of these conditions:
|
| >[...]
|
| >c) You must license the entire work, as a whole, under this
| License to anyone who comes into possession of a copy. This
| License will therefore apply, along with any applicable section
| 7 additional terms, to the whole of the work, and all its
| parts, regardless of how they are packaged. This License gives
| no permission to license the work in any other way, but it does
| not invalidate such permission if you have separately received
| it.
|
| It seems to be the case here since, as the top comment by
| RraaLL says, they've included GPL-licensed JavaScript from uBO
| in their extension.
| tsimionescu wrote:
| There are multiple aspects here. In short, any kind of linking
| or equivalent process definitely makes your code a combined
| work with the GPL parts; the "safe" way of using the code are
| more like calling a GPL process like `system("ls -l")`.
|
| First, if you are distributing modified code or code compiled
| from GPL sources, in any way, you must advertise that fact
| clearly, and extend an offer to the original sources plus your
| compilation methods to anyone who recieves this from you. This
| is true regardless of whether your work constitutes a combined
| work.
|
| Then, if you are distributing a work that includes GPL parts
| and parts that you don't want to release under the GPL, you
| have to check specifically how the GPL parts are used. The
| relatively safe boundary is calling GPL binaries as separate
| processes, especially over a network - if this is the only way
| you are using the GPL code, it's probably OK to keep your other
| parts under an incompatible license.
|
| If you are using the GPL parts any more closely, such as
| calling functions from a GPL library directly through an FFI,
| or worse, linking to that library, then you are almost
| certainly building a combined work and all of your own code has
| to be released under the GPL if you wish to distribute the GPL
| parts.
|
| Even if you are calling the code only as a separate process,
| the amount and type of communication you use matters - if you
| are exchanging extremely complex and specific data structures
| with the GPL process, rather than just a few command line
| switches and parsing some yes/no answer, then your work may
| still constitute a combined work and have to be entirely
| distributed under the GPL.
| octacat wrote:
| Strange, an addon that was written to steal income by replacing
| affiliate links with their own, is found to also steal the code.
| mulmen wrote:
| The headline says the team stole code, not that they stole it
| for Honey.
| 65 wrote:
| How does Pie Adblock make money?
|
| It's free so I'm suspecting they're doing more affiliate
| marketing stealing or something similar to Honey.
| encroach wrote:
| From the webstore extension overview:
|
| > Get Paid to See Ads -- Opt-in to see a limited number of
| partner ads and earn rewards.
| moqmar wrote:
| After what happened with Honey, I guess this probably means:
| they replace ads on pages with their own, pocket most of the
| money, and extort the sites who would have earned money with
| the ads into partnering with them.
| matt3210 wrote:
| It wouldn't surprise me if most companies steal GPL code. When
| code is closed source, how can anyone know?
| yuvalr1 wrote:
| There are some indirect ways.
|
| Suspecting users can try the software to see if it has the
| exact same functionality or bugs as the copied GPL library.
| This is of course not a definite proof, but some amount of rare
| enough coincidences can be considered as a very strong sign for
| copying. Legal measures can be taken on account of these
| evidences.
|
| And of course there is always the option of a whistleblower.
| NikkiA wrote:
| Usually 'strings' on the binary shows up tell-tale signs.
|
| Granted that means the 'smart' infringers are likely to slip
| through the sieve, but at that point they'll have to
| essentially be re-writing the code anyway, and lose most of the
| benefit that they'd get stealing the GPL code (they'd have to
| hand-roll any bug or security fixes back into their stolen-but-
| obscured GPL code)
| dbtablesorrows wrote:
| Not if they can use an obfuscator?
| lizknope wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNU_General_Public_License#Leg...
|
| There are cases here where companies used GPL code without
| releasing their changes.
|
| How do licenses of a source code check if the people using
| their code is complying with the license it uses?
|
| https://www.reddit.com/r/embedded/comments/18gie6l/how_do_li...
|
| The fastest way is often to just run the "Strings" program on
| the software. Often it will dump out a bunch of strings that
| match those in the Open Source project: Error Messages, Logging
| messages, etc. Sometimes if they're really sloppy it'll spit
| out the name of the GPL program/library directly and a version
| number.
|
| I often add magic arrays to my code. So.. if I find them in a
| binary blob...
|
| Have there been any lawsuits involving breach of open source
| licences?
|
| https://opensource.stackexchange.com/questions/11452/have-th...
| random3 wrote:
| Pretty much any (non-entry level) engineer at a decent software
| company knows what licenses to avoid. There are strict policies
| against the use of viral licenses along with training and
| automation to detect it, etc.
|
| Also I don't think it's that easy to conceal and not sure any
| serious company would risk the liability.
| SamInTheShell wrote:
| I thought config files can't be copyrighted. The post talks about
| what appears to just be a config file.
| shultays wrote:
| It is the filter list, which are the things that defines ads
| and loaded by adblocker to block them.
| blackeyeblitzar wrote:
| Yea but who is going to do anything about it? What is the
| enforcement method?
| efitz wrote:
| Wow these people really just go all in on the unethical
| practices.
| Havoc wrote:
| I guess honey is just going all out now?
| jazz9k wrote:
| If piracy isn't 'stealing' neither is this, since the original
| code is still available.
| ozgrakkurt wrote:
| You are not making money off the product when doing piracy. In
| this case they stole the code to make money off it which is
| very different
| aunty_helen wrote:
| Pie also removed its footer reference to being the team that made
| Honey and then deleted all of the team photos from the who are we
| page. They seem to understand cookies and affiliate links well
| but aren't versed in the way back machine.
|
| The ethical standards of everyone involved with Honey/Pie are
| deplorable and they should be outcast from the software industry.
| aunty_helen wrote:
| http://web.archive.org/web/20241223012824/https://pie.org/ab...
|
| For context, this all started about 2 weeks ago with one of the
| best pieces of investigative journalism I've seen on youtube:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vc4yL3YTwWk
|
| And it's spiraling from there into lawsuits etc. I'm kinda glad
| PayPal bought them as they can't just shut down and file
| bankruptcy. Hopefully some of these creators will get paid out
| for lost revenue.
| HeyTomesei wrote:
| Great find. I noticed the photos disappeared yesterday, but
| didn't catch that footer reference change.
|
| Sadly, Ryan Hudson knows how to play the game and Pie (with its
| charming .org domain) is on a roll --- already hit 1M downloads
| just 9 months after its launch and grown to 10+ Engineers/20+
| employees.
|
| Shameless.
|
| On the bright side, LegalEagle also called out Pie in the
| video. Hopefully that'll help shine a light on them.
| jzl wrote:
| Minor quibble with the linked complaint: the GPL doesn't require
| you to post source code, it just requires that you have to
| provide it when asked, and only to people using your software.
| (But you're not allowed to restrict anything _they_ do, like
| repost it.) Just follow the whole Redhat / CentOS drama for
| exhibit A in this behavior.
| kelseydh wrote:
| Google removed chrome extensions that do cookie stuffing before:
| https://www.zdnet.com/article/google-removes-two-chrome-ad-b...
|
| PayPal's Honey extension should be pulled by Google for doing the
| exact same thing. There is no difference and Honey shouldn't get
| special treatment just because it's owned by PayPal.
|
| ---
|
| UPDATE: It's criminal wire fraud.
|
| Brian Dunning sentenced to 18 months jail for cookie stuffing:
| https://www.businessinsider.com/brian-dunning-ebay-and-affil...
|
| "Cookie Stuffing" internet fraud schemer Jefferson Bruce
| McKittrick pleads guilty: https://www.justice.gov/usao-
| sdal/pr/cookie-stuffing-interne...
| maratc wrote:
| Are you a lawyer? Asking because "cookie stuffing" (which is
| indeed criminal) refers to the practice of setting _a ton_ of
| referral cookies for the sites the browser had no intention of
| visiting, just for the case it will visit them some time in the
| future. In my understanding it _does not_ refer to setting a
| cookie for the site the browser is currently on.
| bayindirh wrote:
| No but, LegalEagle is, and he's suing for class action with a
| bunch of other lawyers and creators [0] [1].
|
| [0]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4H4sScCB1cY
|
| [1]: https://eagleteam.law/honeycase/
| maratc wrote:
| Is he suing for class action _on the claims of cookie
| stuffing_? I haven 't found the actual case in either link
| (the second one is for "creators" only), so I can't get the
| answer myself.
| bayindirh wrote:
| The event is very fresh. <24h as I write this comment.
| The claims are not laid yet, but as far as I can see,
| it's starting with wire fraud, and they'll go from there.
|
| I don't think they're in the (private) discovery phase
| now.
|
| P.S.: I'm not a US citizen, so I'm not familiar law terms
| in the US, if the above comment makes no sense, please
| forget what I said and move to next comment in the chain.
| Thanks.
| maratc wrote:
| I see. To be clear, I'm not saying what Honey did is not
| criminal activity, I'm just saying what they did does not
| look to me as if it qualifies as "cookie stuffing". It
| might still be illegal, for a different reason.
| (Obligatory IANAL.)
| braiamp wrote:
| No, he's claiming breach of contract and unfair
| practices. Cooking stuffing is just a customer issue, not
| a partner one. He would have no standing on that front.
| maratc wrote:
| My understanding of US law is extremely limited, but
| seeing it's a class action, would the lawyer be able to
| file the suit on behalf of the customers instead, if e.g.
| they thought it has a better chance to succeed as such?
| And if not, is the fact that this suit is filed on
| "breach of contract and unfair practices" claims
| presenting any evidence that Honey engaged in a specific
| legally defined practice of "cookie stuffing"?
| kelseydh wrote:
| The actual lawsuit does mention the cookie practices,
| it's the core of their class action.
|
| https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.cand
| .44...
| seanalltogether wrote:
| My understanding from comments on reddit is that part of
| the suit relies on tortious interference, basically that
| honey is damaging the relationships between content
| creators and vendors by masking the source of referrals
| and therefore making the vendor believe that the content
| creator is under-performing in their contract.
| maratc wrote:
| This thread has started with GP saying "cookie stuffing
| is illegal" and me replying "does this qualify as cookie
| stuffing?" I'm not claiming what they did is legal, I'm
| claiming it might be illegal, just not for "cookie
| stuffing". As far as I can see there is no evidence that
| this particular suit claims "cookie stuffing", so there
| is nothing in it that can add to the question whether
| this qualifies as "cookie stuffing" or not. Which was my
| only original question.
| kelseydh wrote:
| More to it than that, alleging unjust enrichment among
| things in the latest amended filing: https://storage.cour
| tlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.cand.44...
| kelseydh wrote:
| Cookie stuffing is criminal fraud because the offender is
| receiving commissions for sales they did not generate, thus
| defrauding legitimate advertisers and companies paying for
| the advertising.
|
| Obtaining money by means of false or fraudulent pretenses is
| wire fraud.
|
| Honey's extension stuffs a _ton_ of different affiliate
| cookies via its extension for sales it did not generate. They
| are representing themselves as the one who made the referral,
| and receiving commissions for doing so, when they did not.
| maratc wrote:
| > Cookie stuffing is criminal fraud
|
| There is no disagreement about that. Murder is also
| criminal. The disagreement is whether what Honey did
| classifies as "cookie stuffing". (I hope there is no
| disagreement that it _does not_ qualify as murder, which is
| a different crime.)
|
| > Obtaining money by means of false or fraudulent pretenses
| is wire fraud.
|
| This is ... not the definition of what "wire fraud" is, but
| let's leave it aside as it's irrelevant to this discussion.
|
| > Honey's extension stuffs a ton of different affiliate
| cookies via its extension
|
| I have not seen any evidence that Honey's extension stuffs
| _more than one_ cookie for any given transaction. In my
| understanding "cookie stuffing" refers to a practice of
| stuffing _a ton_ of cookies for one transaction, not to a
| practice of "stuffing" one cookie for multiple
| transactions. Moreover, "cookie stuffing" is not a result
| of "stuffing" a "cookie", just like "guinea pig" is not a
| "pig" and it didn't come from a place known as "Guinea".
| "Cookie stuffing" is a specific legal term describing a
| certain well-defined behavior, and it would be inaccurate
| to apply it to anything that involves "cookies" and
| "stuffing". In other words, if I put some jelly inside an
| Oreo, this would not qualify as "criminal fraud" known as
| "cookie stuffing", even though it can be said that by doing
| that I'm "stuffing" (putting "stuff") inside a "cookie"
| (Oreo). That's why I asked if you're a lawyer -- they
| usually understand that e.g. "wire fraud" could be done
| without any "wire", for instance completely wirelessly --
| or that someone committing a "regular" fraud while holding
| a pack of wire in their hand does not commit "wire fraud".
|
| P.S. The search for "stuffing" in the filing you attached
| brings no results, so I assume the lawyers also don't argue
| that Honey engaged in "cookie stuffing" (which _is_
| criminal).
| belorn wrote:
| From what I can find, the definition of cookie stuffing is to
| deceptive claim credit for sales that they did not
| facilitate. Its the deception that is illegal, not the act of
| setting cookies. As such, the amount, _ton_ , or a _few_ ,
| does not change the definition. If they are claiming credit
| for the sale then they are either doings it in good faith or
| in bad faith.
|
| Which definition/source for cookie stuffing are you looking
| at?
| maratc wrote:
| > claim credit for sales that they did not facilitate
|
| They will argue that by providing a coupon that lowered the
| price for the customer they did in fact facilitate the
| sale. IANAL but this sounds reasonable to me. Less so for
| the sales they did not find a coupon for (even if they
| argue they've tried).
|
| The rest of your comment folds under this.
|
| I guess we'll see how this plays out, but for what it's
| worth, the attached filing does not argue "cookie
| stuffing". (It argues other things.)
|
| This may also go to a completely different direction of
| e.g. "securities fraud" -- the SEC may argue that PayPal,
| as a public company, has advertised their Honey service as
| "finding the best deals for their customers", and on the
| basis of that claim some of the investors chose to buy its
| shares. If this was a lie, the shares sale was made under
| false premises, and that seems like "securities fraud".
| kelseydh wrote:
| Snopes looking real silly for this 2018 fact check:
| https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/honey-browser-extension/
| zeveb wrote:
| Snopes in 2018 and Snopes in 2008 were sadly two very different
| things. They used to be such a great resource!
| xp84 wrote:
| They were always a protection racket against retailers, and I
| haven't seen any proof that they started stuffing their
| affiliate code in 100% of the time only recently.
|
| The racket is that they f*k with your campaigns by stealing
| codes typed by users of the extension, so even users who
| don't think they're sharing them end up sharing them with
| Honey. Imagine the fun when someone creates a valuable code
| for someone trusted and doesn't limit its usage sufficiently,
| and someone uses it on a Honey-infected machine. Now the
| whole Internet is getting a possibly loss-making discount!
|
| Honey then contacts the business and says "Gee, wouldn't you
| like us to stop doing that? Just pay us 3% on every sale any
| of our tens of millions of users buy and we'll let you
| blacklist any codes you like!"
| akimbostrawman wrote:
| A fact checker being wrong? How is that possible!!!
| ziml77 wrote:
| 2 years before PayPal bought Honey. It's possible that the
| extension was fine at the time. Even if it had always been
| hijacking the referral codes, I wouldn't consider that a scam
| from the perspective of the users.
| hotdogbaines wrote:
| looks like they did a new piece about it:
| https://www.snopes.com/news/2024/12/30/honey-browser-extensi...
| ChoGGi wrote:
| I'd only heard of Honey by way of random YouTube thumbnails, I
| assumed it was some sort of scam. Go figure they're connected to
| PayPal...
| Larrikin wrote:
| Is there a better option to Honey? The extension has saved me a
| good bit of money over the years, especially on newer and
| independent sites that sometimes offer deep discounts for your
| first order. But it does seem like the coupon codes come from the
| community and there should be a community version of the
| extension.
| exabrial wrote:
| PayPal Honey is also involved in lawsuit where it stole Referral
| Codes and replaced them with its own.
|
| Basically every dollar the company has made is basically illegal.
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