Chinese dev steals US HTML5 Game engine, US hosts won't close down the copy

Within a month of releasing my very successful iPhone app TextPics, there were several Chinese clones using a slightly modified icon, all of my content, my design, layout, and with names like "TextPics Pro" and "TextPics(R)" or "TextPics+". As annoying as this was and confusing to my customers, it got even worse. Theft in China does not stop at the dev level, oh no. Comparing my Google analytics app usage to my Apple purchases in China was even more depressing. It turned out China was <i>by far</i> my biggest country for usage... And just about at the bottom of my list for revenue. The Chinese were simply stealing the app with their cracked iPhones. I see no way to win here.<p>And this is no blind hate for the Chinese. I have a Chinese wife from the mainland, I study Chinese Rosetta Stone daily, and I've been to China multiple times for pleasure. I know these people. As a culture, they consider it laughable and stupid to pay for something they could otherwise steal. I've had this conversation with enough Chinese at this point.<p>So seriously I don't see how I can take that country or it's people seriously from a tech biz standpoint if I can't trust their ethics.

I had a similar issue a few years ago when someone from Asia had modified and resold my ecommerce application for years as his own. I lost at least $50,000 in sales to US customers who purchased this guy's copy of my software.<p>The big problem that I ran into is the cost to litigate international issues. I contacted a bunch of law firms and they all pretty much said it would be a six-figure cost to pursue any international action and the hopes of collecting would be almost zero. Fortunately, the copying was so blatant that I didn't have a problem getting the US web host to pull down his site.<p>Partially as a result of the incident I decided to open-source the code base. Other than locking up the code in a SaaS platform there isn't a 100% foolproof way to protect IP so why not embrace the copying and build a business model around reality.

As much as I hate the DMCA, when this happens and a U.S. host starts ignoring legitimate DMCA notices, start emailing their upstreams. Softlayer is probably doing this because they have an inexperienced tech handling your request.<p>Email ATDN, Global Crossing, Cogent Communications, and many of the other companies they peer with and say the website has not been shut down despite emails sent to Softlayer. Those companies may threaten to nullroute the website's IP.<p>If they don't do anything (unlikely) get an injunction.<p>It's trivial for this guy to get it hosted elsewhere, however. This is just me, but I wouldn't expect to build anything in HTML5 that couldn't be copied-- the platform is inherently open. If the only creative and useful properties of your work is built in the open, there does not seem to be a compelling reason why you would be protected by copyright. This person could build a website around your "copyrights" in little time.

Hopefully I (as the only SoftLayer employee in this thread that I'm aware of) can provide a little insight. Before addressing the specific issue in the post, I want to share a quick overview of SoftLayer's Abuse Department and the processes of handling complaints.<p>The abuse@softlayer.com address functions as more of a notification system than a medium for conversation. You don't have to be a SoftLayer customer to contact that address, and when reports of verifiable abuse are received, the abuse team will work with the customer responsible for the infringing server to get it resolved as quickly as possible. If the DMCA is properly formatted, the abuse team will work with our customers (who may, in turn have to work with their customers) to have the infringing material removed.<p>If a complaint is submitted to that address that doesn't meet the legal guidelines of documentation we need before we can take action, we cannot take action. If we can't take action because of an incomplete or invalid complaint, we also can't provide any visibility or feedback to the complaining parties about what was incomplete/invalid, as that could fall into the "legal advice" category.<p>Abuse tickets aren't handled by technical support, and they people creating and responding to the tickets are only responsible for abuse-related issues. Not only are they a distinct team, they fall in an entirely different part of the organization (alongside the legal, internal security and systems teams). As such, the way they respond needs to be extremely consistent from one issue to the next, and they're only able to make decisions based on the reports/evidence they have.<p>I don't have visibility into the specific complaint that was submitted, so the only assumption I can make is that the complaint wasn't properly formatted or it didn't have the legal evidence we need to take action. Whether or not the copyright infringement is "obvious" or "unquestionable" from an outside perspective does not change our legal requirement of having a properly formatted DMCA complaint to take action. If there's a lawyer in the building who is willing to offer his/her services to the game developer, a resolution might be a lot quicker. When the DMCA is submitted, I'd love to be copied on it (khazard@softlayer.com) so I can immediately have it investigated and acted upon.<p>-Kevin Hazard

Reading this and the related stories of other products like Cloudstone [1] I'm immediately reminded of another, recent HN post [2] which suggested covering about half a dozen markets/languages with your initial releases.<p>Something to think about.<p>1: <a href="http://www.reddit.com/r/gaming/comments/yc02l/some_company_in_china_stole_my_game/" rel="nofollow">http://www.reddit.com/r/gaming/comments/yc02l/some_company_i...</a><p>2: <a href="http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4389468" rel="nofollow">http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4389468</a>

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

As many people have said - with HTML5, you basically give your IP away and hope for the law to keep people honest. Making money is those conditions is the old open source conundrum.<p>I would suggest the OP to sell support contract (sponsored features, priority bug fixing, ...) to the Chinese customers of his copycat. If the situation gets worse (eg: the chinese firm translate their website in English), the engine can be open sourced and try to recover with the support.

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

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

The situation is unfortunate, but basically inevitable at this stage in China's development. Take a look at the Chinese book publishing industry and you'll see a glimpse of the Chinese way - most books are put online for free by the authors (mostly in their entirety). The publishing companies pick the most popular ones, who get deals to have their books printed &#38; sold in stores. Totally different from the west.<p>Doing business in China, I have noticed that there is somewhat of a "creativity gap" (as I call it). I believe that as their society evolves and begins to create more of their own IP, the laws will eventually adapt to protect such developments. In the meantime, it's very difficult.<p>But still, Cisco has had everything copied (down to the model #s) by you-know-who and yet still makes billions (also powering the great firewall). Like Microsoft &#38; Cisco, there are ways to penetrate and dominate the market in the midst of the piracy.<p>However, if your IP is some "easily de-obfuscated" javascript (and you're a startup), it's a very difficult position and my heart goes out to them.

As a Chinese, I feel ashamed about these people. They said on their [forum][0] that "The controversy is inevitable. We offer services only for China so that Chinese customers can buy the same product with a low price."<p>But please believe me there are a lot of good guys, contributors in China and many of them are so reclusive that you cannot recognize they are Chinese.<p>[0]: <a href="http://www.kilofox.net/forum/forum.php?mod=viewthread&#38;tid=469&#38;extra=page%3D1" rel="nofollow">http://www.kilofox.net/forum/forum.php?mod=viewthread&#38;ti...</a>

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

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

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

The unfortunate reality is that even if Softlayer comply with the DMCA request, the site could be moved to a host in a more infringement-friendly jurisdiction.<p>Perhaps a letter from a Chinese law firm could help to escalate matters. A basic cease and desist letter would be relatively cheap, but then again, from the infringer's stance so far, I can't imagine it would receive a particularly positive response...

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

There was a similar incident that someone posted on Reddit recently, however, not using HTML5.<p><a href="http://www.reddit.com/r/gaming/comments/yc02l/some_company_in_china_stole_my_game/" rel="nofollow">http://www.reddit.com/r/gaming/comments/yc02l/some_company_i...</a>

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

If the US-based hosting provider ignores DMCA requests, can't you sue the provider?<p>You could also see if their payment provider is willing to help.

These Chinese copy everything !

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

This is an exact use case that SOPA was designed to address. We <i>vehemently</i> hated SOPA, so what's the deal? We can't have it both ways.

How is this Hacker News, Chinese game portals are full of stolen games. No matter what you will do, they will reverse engineer and remove ads and blocks.<p>It's china, the land of counterfeit.