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.
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.
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.
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?
This reminds me of how as times changed, once illegal behaviors are now considered normal because "big tech" embraced it.
Remember Kazaa, BonziBuddy, Gator (The OG adware), etc.? They were demonized for collecting data on all the web traffic you were doing it. They got sued by the FTC and were forced to change their business models and/or close down.
Then Facebook, Google came along and did the same thing in the early 2010's except via cookies and Javascript, but somehow that's ok. Even worse, it's considered a normal business practice.
It amazes me that Honey has been able to become so popular given it's business model has always been more of a hack than an actual product. How did commission programs not sue them for fraud?
Probably because they had good ole Silicon Valley VC money to scare them off.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
> 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.
>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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
> 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
“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.
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.
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.
>- 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?
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.
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.
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!"
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.
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?
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.
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)
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.
Readit News
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...
[0]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4H4sScCB1cY
[1]: https://eagleteam.law/honeycase/
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.
Which definition/source for cookie stuffing are you looking at?
Remember Kazaa, BonziBuddy, Gator (The OG adware), etc.? They were demonized for collecting data on all the web traffic you were doing it. They got sued by the FTC and were forced to change their business models and/or close down.
Then Facebook, Google came along and did the same thing in the early 2010's except via cookies and Javascript, but somehow that's ok. Even worse, it's considered a normal business practice.
It amazes me that Honey has been able to become so popular given it's business model has always been more of a hack than an actual product. How did commission programs not sue them for fraud?
Probably because they had good ole Silicon Valley VC money to scare them off.
The ethical standards of everyone involved with Honey/Pie are deplorable and they should be outcast from the software industry.
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.
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.
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.
Online advertising is a cesspool that makes things more expensive not less.
Honey isnt a problem it's a symptom.
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.
Because they have absolutely no idea.
Where would they ever run across that information?
Deleted Comment
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.
> 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
The "copyright infringement (is / isn't) theft" argument is drivel on the same intellectual level as "corporations are people."
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
GPL violation: less people than intended can see the code.
In short: until society changes you play by its rules.
Deleted Comment
Copyright infringement may be criminal. But compared with theft there’s, rightly, a higher standard of proof required.
FSF address this issue directly. GPL is basically fighting fire with fire.
infringing on copyleft is like stealing from the poor
its the difference between robin hood and government corruption
If copyright infringement isn't theft (our goal), then it doesn't matter.
Hope that makes some sense.
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.
>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?
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.
> 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...
Dead Comment
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!"
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...
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.
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)
Also I don't think it's that easy to conceal and not sure any serious company would risk the liability.