Hacker News Reader

Comment by dewey | Hacker News Reader

"We knew there must be some mistake, so we quickly sent you a DMCA takedown requests and waited patiently."

That does not seem like the best way to start a business relationship...

My thoughts. Why not just drop them an email, or call to ask them to remove it? It would be so much nicer, plus you could always send the DMCA afterwards and refer to your previous, "nice" enquiry.

Personally I'd try to first contact Al-Jazeera (in a friendly and direct way, not DMCA) before a name and shame. This could after all be the fault of some technical intern at Al-Jazeera who didn't think twice about ripping code. And I suppose DMCA notices are easily ignored if they come via e-mail.

They didn't just rip code though. They ripped the entire story...that's gotta go higher than some random intern.

It is more likely they payed to redistribute the story, just not to the presentation company but to the writer or paper.

It's the same author. Probably misunderstanding about redistribution etc. Shoddy work but dmca is stupid.

FYI, the linked article now begins with:

Update: clarified that we exhaustively tried to resolve the situation amicably, but our friendly requests over multiple channels were ignored. The DMCA request was our last resort.

There are more specific details a little later in the article, and the line quoted in the parent post appears to have been amended.

No... stealing is not the best way to start a business relationship.

Someone is interested in your product, even if they are ripping it off. The next step is to make them a paying customer and look at it as a chance to start something. Just because it started the wrong way doesn't mean it has to stay that way.

Yea, that was my first thought as well. Imagine this scenario playing out in international politics: "We'd like to trade with your country, and knew there must have been some cultural mis-communication when our diplomats met, so we quickly bombed your capital with nukes and waited patiently."

Reply on news.ycombinator.com