From a copyright-law perspective, it's not a slam-dunk that Curebit infringed any protectable aspect of the 37Signals design, as opposed to "stock" elements.[1] West Side Story has a lot in common with Romeo and Juliet, but the latter itself has a lot in common with a long line of still-earlier romantic tragedies.[2]
Some of the reactions here are fascinating. As a group, HNers prize the freedom to copy from others and the ethic of helping others --- but for some, it seems to be "I get to copy from others, but no one else is allowed to copy from me."
EDIT 1: That said, from a purely-practical perspective it's usually better and cheaper to steer clear of controversy (depending on how you think the PR scales will tip). Curebit might have been better off had it not copied what it did, not least because this controversy is sucking up management time that could probably be put to better use.
EDIT 2: Plus, stealing someone else's bandwidth by linking directly to their copies of images, etc., without permission does cross the line, if that's what Curebit did.
EDIT 3: Even copying HTML and CSS might not constitute copyright infringement if there are only a limited number of ways to express the same idea(s). This is even more the case if there's an optimal way to code a given set of ideas.
I am a software developer, I believe strongly in copyright.
I also believe strongly that people should not have their lives ruined, and citizens should not have their freedoms curtailed to protect it on a large scale.
I do believe that businesses who take a relaxed attitude to using copyrighted material that belongs to someone else are displaying a lack of ethics that is worrying and deserve to be taken down pretty hard.
There is a world of difference between some random person downloading a movie for viewing, copying a website for their personal blog etc and a company doing it.
These guys have made a really unfortunate decision here. To be fair, based on their response so far I expect its because they dont have a clue what copyright even means, so its about ignorance rather than malice, and it will soon be rectified.
It's also often a very successful strategy for companies to copy the design of competitors, and differentiate on other things. Zynga copying competitors' games is a great example.
In this case, Curebit was only copying the design of a landing page, so it was probably not worth pissing off DHH even if that landing page was legally usable and worked better. Although it really seems that DHH was more pissed off by Allan's tweets and posts about it than by the design itself.
Some of the reactions here are fascinating. As a group, HNers prize the freedom to copy from others and the ethic of helping others --- but for some, it seems to be "I get to copy from others, but no one else is allowed to copy from me."
EDIT 1: That said, from a purely-practical perspective it's usually better and cheaper to steer clear of controversy (depending on how you think the PR scales will tip). Curebit might have been better off had it not copied what it did, not least because this controversy is sucking up management time that could probably be put to better use.
EDIT 2: Plus, stealing someone else's bandwidth by linking directly to their copies of images, etc., without permission does cross the line, if that's what Curebit did.
EDIT 3: Even copying HTML and CSS might not constitute copyright infringement if there are only a limited number of ways to express the same idea(s). This is even more the case if there's an optimal way to code a given set of ideas.
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sc%C3%A8nes_%C3%A0_faire
[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romeo_and_Juliet