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by rossjudson
4771 days ago
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NY Times lawyer Samson's response clearly indicates a complete lack of understand of what scrollkit is/does. He thinks it's a toolkit for replicating content, when it's a toolkit that can be used to replicate technique. Scrollkit used bad phrasing. What they should have said -- "NY Times spent hundreds of hours building the groundbreaking Snow Fall article. With Scrollkit they could have completed it in only a few hours. Here's proof! p.s. NY Times Editors -- contact us and we'll be happy to get your next award-winning article built faster and cheaper!" |
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Before you say "Fair use!" and "it's educational!"...consider this example: What if I were to release a "How-to-Draw-Awesome-Cartoons" which was composed completely of examples of me redrawing the most famous Calvin and Hobbes strips? I'm not even physically copying Bill Watterson's assets, I'm redrawing them and telling people, "Hey, this is how you do it!"
Would you argue that Bill Watterson (who, for a time, was pretty vigilant about protecting the C&H brand from any kind of merchandise, a la Garfield) has no claim? I would argue that he does, because the reason why my How-to-Draw book is remotely interesting is because it exploits the appeal that Watterson worked to create.
If I were to make this How-to_draw book using only characters I've conceived myself, I might still be successful...but only if those characters have the same appeal as Calvin and Hobbes...and, as you can agree, that would be far harder than the actual how-to-draw content.
So I can see why the NYT is peeved that scrollkit is showing off their service by exploiting the goodwill and excellence that the NYT poured its resources into. However, I don't think NYT legal has a right to say "Don't use our name or compare yourself to us in any way". Scrollkit can make its own false claims (but then, they may be sued by a different stakeholder)