I thought it was interesting that YouTube, in the midst of trying to crack down on ad blockers, allows ads promoting an ad blocker that is specifically claiming to evade that crackdown.
One thief sold to another , it is like credit card lists or botnets are sold on the dark web .
PayPal is hardly innocent here , they knew what they were getting into , this is the core business model of not just honey but all of the coupon sites.
They are simply codes provided by partnered businesses and may be beaten by codes you can get by searching yourself.
If true, then this is them outright lying to the user.
And you know, if they don't find a coupon code for you, one might still be at least a little annoyed that the original 'salesman' didn't get their affiliate commission; it instead being pinched by another.
It should bother you if 10-30% of your price went to whoever last got you to click on a link.
It's a scam in partnership with the on-line shops. The consumer loses, the reviewer using affiliate links loses, and it turns out the extension goes further by occasionally making up discounts that don't exist (this will be in the next video it seems), so the seller gets screwed, too!
The affiliate networks (CJ, Impact, etc) are the ones who determine what attribution method to use, shopping extensions just comply. The vast majority of shopping sessions don't have any prior attribution and merchants fund all of these commissions (nothing is taken from a creator or a user). Yeah, it does seem like the codes Honey has have gotten worse in recent years, probably just a consequence of PayPal acquiring them and not giving it any attention (and layoffs). But the example MegaLag points out of finding a better code on a coupon website DOES THE SAME THING AS HONEY (overides the attribution).
So are there some problems with the affiliate industry? Probably. But calling Honey a "scam" seems completely unfair and lacks critical thinking. It's saved me thousands of dollars over the years.
Nobody cares that other companies and extensions do the same thing, they're bad too.
You didn’t just say that. You said a whole lot of other things. You lead with the fact that it’s well known within the industry. The implication of your comment is that the companies did nothing wrong, and people are idiots for not knowing this stuff before. If that’s not your stance, you should make your stance more clear.
If you instead simply said “people should also be angry at all these other extensions and companies, they’re complicit and just as bad” then nobody would be calling you out for astroturfing.
> So are there some problems with the affiliate industry? Probably. But calling Honey a "scam" seems completely unfair and lacks critical thinking.
It is a scam. It’s an industry wide scam. Calling it out is important because it’s the calling out of shady practices which puts pressure on industries and people to change.
The only way this could change is if the tech industry is hit with strict regulations. But considering that governments are technically incompetent, and that they're either in symbiosis or plain bought out by Big Tech, this has no chance of happening. Especially in the US, where any mention of regulation is met with criticism even from consumers, and where Musk will be taking the reigns for the next 4 years.
Once this "scandal" blows over and consumers forget about it, PayPal Honey will either continue to exist, or will rebrand as a different company in the same industry, operating the same way it does now.
As for influencers: it's hilarious that you think any positive change could come from them. They only care about getting paid, and could promote anything that lands in their inbox. Hell, they're often the ones who scam their own audience. We're decades away from regulating that whole mess.
Don't hate the player, hate the game is fine if you say it up front. If you leave it for a comment buried down below you just look like a shill to all the people that read only one or two levels deep.
I imagine people running affiliate programs have heard of rakuten, for example, so I suppose they have some reason they haven't banned it (i.e. it actually benefits them/lowers overall costs).
Do all of the upset people work in ads or ad-adjacent industries or something? Are the "influencers" (i.e. propagandists) trying to manufacture outrage and make it seem like normal people care? Please think of the spammers!
For me is mostly the same the disgust when I discovered that hyperparasitoid wasps exist.
It's like crypto - it's environmentally harmful and facilitates ransomware with minimal benefits, but I wouldn't be okay with someone showing up in the comments saying it's totally fine to steal someone's shitcoins with malware (though laughing about it is fine). It seems that you wanted to make a point about the post itself and used my comment as a launching point, which is fine, but don't accuse me of white knighting.
Edit: Forgot to check my writing.
Like I don't particularly like sponsored segments, but I know why they exist: because ad revenue on YouTube is fickle and pretty shit, and I enjoy the creators I follow and want them to keep making stuff, and making stuff costs some combo of time and money. So yes, I want the creator to get that.
I think most normal people would vibe on this train of logic. I don't view and never have viewed business, including my own, as a cutthroat competition between me and everyone else. I view it as mutuality of purpose. I offer my work, and people who need stuff done that I can do, give me money. I think if the broader markets had an attitude like that instead of chasing every last penny at every single intersection, then we'd live in a better world.
I offer my work for money. I don't work for free and tell clients "hey you should support me by using AWS (who will give me kickbacks) for your infrastructure." The conflict of interest is fundamental to such an arrangement, even if disclosed. Instead my employer pays me for my expertise and I do my best to give them my honest, unbiased experience/opinions/analysis. I'm explicit about the boundaries of my knowledge/experience.
Case in point: these "influencers" obviously did not do any due diligence on what this program was doing. They "recommended" something they didn't understand because they were paid to do so. If this were "merely" stealing user information (the monetization method someone else in the thread said they assumed), would there be controversy? What exactly did the people who recommended this thing think it was going to do to the people who installed it? That's the actual story here (though it should be unsurprising).
It is not the industry is shady that made honey standout, it is the fact that they were paying the people to pick from their own pockets is what got YT creators railed up.
It is being singled out, because without that heavy creator promotion they wouldn’t have grown anywhere close to the size they were last month. They have already last 3+ millions on Chrome web store in December .
No other coupon company has been valued or sold at 4 billion honey was, it is by far the largest and most successful. It is not uncommon for largest player to get the most scrutiny even though others do the same
"UBlockOrigin GPL code stolen by Pie Adblock Extension and Honey team"
Of course Pie is scummy, it is brought to you by the people behind Honey. In addition to stealing GPL Source the new over-hyped Adblocker that probably also steals (silently rewrites in the background) affiliate links, just like the old "coupon finder". No surprises!
Would it make a difference if this garbage was GPL licensed?
> Pie Adblock: Block Ads, Get Paid
Really? Do people not understand how the economy works or something? Education failed so bad :(
> Browse ad-free with Pie Adblock and earn cash rewards for the ads you choose to see.
Sounds like they replace the ads with their own, paying you (and surely taking their cut). Sounds a lot like Brave Rewards, similar thing...
Honey _does not_ scour the web for discount codes. Honey instead partners with webpages to provide you a discount code (or not) with the advantage for the webpage being that less people will use a 30% discount code and instead use Honey's 10%.
Of course the really funny part was that basically none of the influencers did due diligence on their counter-party and Honey also took all of the influencer's affiliate money as well.
I think this is a facilitation of theft, though the theft is hidden to the user so the user does not possess criminal intent while using the code. I’m not sure how illegal it is but it is clearly wildly unethical.
At the scale and resources of Honey the claim of ignorance becomes unreasonable. It would help their case if they had a made a documented good faith attempt, but I think due to the obvious nefarious nature they would have avoided collecting such data because they wanted to continue the practice.
But as mentioned, I’m not sure how illegal it is despite the TOS but it’s clearly wildly unethical.
If the business does not want their codes given out, then they should not agree to Honey’s T&C.
If it was a printed coupon and photocopied it would be obviously illegal, I’m not sure how the digital equivalent would not be illegal. If such a coupon was publicly available then it would be like if honey went and fetched you a new coupon instead of copying an existing one.
Even if the user says they have the right it doesn’t mean they do, and at what point does it become handling stolen goods. Consider a scrap dealer accepting a clearly stolen catalytic converter, would that still be illegal if the scrap dealer did not pay for it? How ‘clearly stolen’ would it have to be to be illegal. What is a reasonable amount of verification?
> Consider a scrap dealer accepting a clearly stolen catalytic converter
Why? I don’t see where the claim is being made that Honey/Paypal is accepting clearly stolen coupon codes.
There are external testers as well as many other reasons to issue one off coupons to third parties. So the presumption that an employee of the company has permission to act as an agent of a company does not apply in such cases.
Consider if I ran a file upload site, someone uploads The Lion King, my software asks them if they have the right to give this to me to distribute, they say yes, I then distribute the upload to many other users who pay me for it. Honey is paid in a round about way but they are still paid.
There is a special holding out as an agent rule where if the uploader was in fact a Disney employee and stated that they acting on the behalf of Disney give you this right. That could get the distributor out of trouble a few times, but on an industrial scale the distributor would lose reasonable tests which are the tests made at the civil court level.
There are three businesses involved. A 3rd party (eg YouTube reviewer) has their affiliate code stripped from the page, and as a result is losing out on income. That may be illegal. And the affiliate doesn’t have a business relationship with honey. They didn’t sign anything away with them.
Also honey was (until recently) marketing themselves as “we find you the best coupon code”. That was & is false advertising, since they were clearly hiding coupon codes they knew about when companies paid them to do so.
Sure but the affiliate (influencer) has an agreement with said business and another affiliate (honey) has an agreement with same said business. It'll be interesting to see if Honey's agreement allows them to do this.
Can even think of it just like HN. You and I don't have an agreement with HN that lets use edit other user's posts. This doesn't mean somebody can't edit other user's posts.
What they did was out themselves as garbage humans, with laziness, antisocial grifting, disrespect for the law, and general unpleasantness at every possible level. It'd be difficult to be worse people without adding murder or violence to the mix.
and not just cut it off once, but cut it off forever
and as a bonus: cut it off for all other influencers too
I'm sure they can be profitable.
This deceptive behaviour actually makes the business loose customers in the long term.
A system that tolerates bad actors like this will in time only have bad actors. It’s tolerated because it makes a large amount of money for a small number of people.
We need to resist that call to apathy, stop acquiescing, and start demanding better of others. That, incidentally, often starts at demanding better of ourselves.
I see things in terms of a sharecropping analogy, feudal lords (corrupted government) allow the scammers to harvest the crop (victims) for a share of the proceeds. We cannot fix people to the point they are un-scammable and there does not exist a democratic force strong enough to fix the government. Almost all ads I’ve ever seen are for obvious scams, especially on twitter. You’d think the richest guy in history (possibly?) could afford not to allow industrial exploitation of his users but apparently not.
You have gambling sites and binary auction scams that have a turnover that includes a significant percentage of suicides. I wish we had a democracy that could prevent this but we do not. While many of us here may be smart enough to avoid falling victim to these scams we have family members that we care about who are not so this still indirectly costs us wealth.
If we mean ‘we tech workers’ then you’ll just be replaced, just like how I was when I quit being a researcher at FANG companies over this and other ethical concerns. The only observable outcome is that my clear conscious came with the cost that I’m far poorer than I could have been. I’m lucky as I’m still well off but not everyone can make that call and survive. These scamming behaviors are trivial to detect and especially so at the large internet company level. It exists on these platforms because the owners want them to.
Just because she isn't perfect and wouldn't be all powerful doesn't mean both options were the same.
Owners of platforms can be held accountable, especially if they're turning a blind eye. Disabling message history won't save Google or anyone else.
Doesn't this rely on us as the individual? We get the government we allow. We, humanity, could've had anything we wanted, this is what we gave ourselves.
Consider the US scoped studies studies showing that the population doesn't get what it wants. They showed that policy follows the whims of the wealthy even in the cases where the population overwhelmingly agrees on a contrary direction. So the data says "no", control has been removed from us.
Part of the complication is that the determined action of a few actors can efficiently spoil the efforts of communities.
Humans have built in innate weaknesses that are easily exploited by the unscrupulous. People have been exploiting others since time immemorial, secret police keep libraries of exploits and you can see them used repeatedly and effectively throughout history. Pied-piper strategy (basket of deplorables), Operation Trust (Q-Anon).
I don’t know how to counter it.
Individual action is known to be so inefficient that the oil&gas industries poured money into promoting the idea of the personal climate footprint.
We have no investors to answer to. We're printing money. Yet at every opportunity company leadership reveals itself as this slavering beast where the only people in positions of power have gotten there through duplicity and a lack of empathy.
The tech job market is terrible. I'm trapped in the guts of a machine that was supposed to be one of the "good ones".
I'm not sure there's anything to do for people who want to act ethically and be decent to each other if even the "good" companies show a complete lack of regard for anything but making their profits take off into the stratosphere.
You and I value our privacy but most people don't. That's the truth. The tone of your post assumes people agree with you but, clearly, most people don't.
It isn't the market that creates the demand.
Protects and does not bind vs bind but does not protect. Same as always.
That does not work for corporations, because most people who are customers of these corporations are unaware of the corporation's bad behavior, are unable to avoid the corporation's products, or are stuck with a choice between bad options.
The main solution is regulation, oversight, and legal action, but the first two of these are unlikely to be enacted in the US in the current political climate. The Biden administration made some steps towards stronger regulation (e.g. by putting Lina Khan in control of the FTC), but received little to no political benefit from it and probably harmed fundraising for the Democrats.
Legal action is often prevented by arbitration clauses or disparate funding, where it is financially untenable to restrain bad actors using legal action.
I think it's more often that they don't care.
I'm deeply pessimistic about the future of open source. A lot of people are going to give up on it as it becomes clear that it's just free labor for SaaS companies and hustlers. That and I expect far more supply chain attacks in the future. I'm quite surprised there haven't been a lot more like the attempted XZ poisoning... yet. Or maybe there have been and we haven't caught them.
Edit: I forgot free training data for code writing AI. It's that too.
OSS is one of the Internet's last remaining high trust spaces. It'll be dead soon like all the others. The Internet is a dark forest.
Legally and morally they should ask the permission for each content they crawl / ingest, but they do not.
I get linux for free, an entire OS. Tons of giant companies contribute to it. I get llvm and clang mostly paid for by giant companies. I get python, go, node paid for by giant companies. I get free hosting for open source projects and free CI (github) paid for by giant companies. I get free frameworks (React, Flutter). Free languages, free libraries, etc...
My open source is just part of that. Contributing back to all the free stuff I get, much of it from giant companies.
You're right though, centimillionaires feel entitled to become billionaires, and billionaires feel entitled to become centibillionaires. However, I have noticed that the decimillionaires I know are aware that they still aren't in the right lane to even think that way and are largely content.
(wow, you're getting downvoted, the little boys on the site sure are a jealous bunch.)
They seem to be more on the respectful and ethical side btw.
Are the liars of our society shunned and condemned to penury? Nope.
Jeff Skilling (Mr Enron) got out of jail and raised money for a new company. Pull off the fraud synonymous with corporate fraud and get investors.
Former convicted Enron corporate officers enjoy fat speaking fees and cushy consulting gigs.
You can pull off the fraud everyone knows and pay no social price for it.
You can defraud investors by the billions and get a movie about you (Wolf of Wall Street).
You can cook up the disaster that was WeWork and raise hundreds of millions from the most powerful VCs right after.
But can you be as profitable as your indecent, deceptive, scamming competitor?
If not, it won't matter how much of a goody-two-shoes you are. If the market sets the bar low, you either limbo or leave.
If you assume that purchasing decisions are also affected by scandals -- which would make sense -- then the overall consumer purchasing algorithm could be summarized as "buy whichever brand has existed for the longest period of time without a scandal". So businesses are rewarded for minimizing their scandal rate.
Top story on HN today:
"Since we launched PlasticList, we’ve been heartened to have quite a few food companies reach out and ask for help interpreting their results and tracking down and eliminating their contamination." https://x.com/natfriedman/status/1874884925587087434
Warren Buffet said:
"It takes 20 years to build a reputation and five minutes to ruin it. If you think about that, you'll do things differently."
"Lose money for the firm, and I will be understanding. Lose a shred of reputation for the firm, and I will be ruthless."
And also:
"The stock market is a device for transferring money from the impatient to the patient."
Overall, I think there's a case to be made that doing the right thing is actually the most profitable strategy in the long term. It's not flashy, but it works.
https://fee.org/resources/the-road-to-serfdom-chapter-10-why...
Some aren’t and never will be without the deception and those companies just shouldn’t exist.
I don’t see any incentives for decency.
Decency is as desired by society as “made locally.” Very few people are willing to pay for it and behaving that way he tremendous opportunity costs.
Their product is supposedly: install a FREE extension and you get discount codes applied for you at retailers when you check out.
It turns out they were able to be profitable by making themselves the affiliate every time you purchase something, but that's scammy because it's stealing from others who actually generated the referral.
But what other non-scammy business model could they have? There's basically no business model for what they're trying to offer that makes sense other than end-users paying for it.
In the rare case there is a prior referral, yes last click attribution comes into play. But that's the same for every shopping extension (Rakuten, Capital One, etc). The extensions have to comply with the affiliate network's "stand down" policies, which means they can't just automatically pop-up and actively try to poach the commission if it's within the same shopping session. And they all comply. MegaLag focuses on a very niche case of going back to the merchant in the same month.
Source: I worked in the affiliate industry for a few years
Thats an extremely generous way to say that they steal referrals from genuine affiliate partners.
I never said Honey doesn't override cookies. I'm not saying this isn't a problem, it's just not a Honey-specific problem. If the affiliate networks used first-click or multi-click attribution, none of this would be an issue.
https://www.businessinsider.com/shawn-hogan-sentenced-in-eba...
1 - Because investors are now the customer. There is no incentive to solve a problem or provide a product for end-users, only to funnel money to investors. That is the business model. 2 - The attention economy is run entirely on deception. Without solving someone's problem, the best option is to keep their attention and prevent them realizing they don't need a subscription. Literally addicting people to notifications and scrolling.
I'm frankly baffled it weren't more common knowledge, despite being common sense, before the MegaLag video. Did people really think that sites like retailmenot.com or wethrift.com make you open tabs to the shop you're searching for coupons for before you can see the coupon code just for fun??
Affiliate code stuffing is the coupon provider business model, it's not Honey-exclusive at all. I'd be surprised if you find a coupon site/extension that haven't always done that.
I wouldn't mind if they were transparent about what they were doing or gave you the option to substitute your own code specifically. I'm sure there are a lot of situations where I've clicked an affiliate link to check something out and then that affiliate got credit for other things I've purchased hours or days later. I'd really like a toolbar that let me modify or block the affiliate code from those links.
I suppose it's easy for us to forget how an average person really doesn't think about how cookies and referral links work.
The only part that seemed uncouth to me was setting the referral code when they hadn't actually found any coupons, and collaborating with retailers.
... and helping to screw everyone else over in the process. That is what makes advertising for Honey so unethical.
Well, not screwing over their partners and customers?
They didn't have to overwrite existing affiliate codes to make lots of money. And the stuff you list in your last sentence is a really big deal.
1: Honey is doing shady stuff with affiliate links
2: Affiliate links aren't shady, just the stuff they're doing with them
1: So honey is doing shady stuff with affiliate links
It's less that I think it's OK, more that I'm unsurprised.
Bingo.
You want to stick your lawyers on them and try to punish them and extract as much money as you can out of them? Fine. Whatever.
>> not screwing over their partners and customers?
I wasn't around to organically take in this situation, but being introduced to Honey by seeing this blow up today, I can only say: "...no? I don't think so?"
Take, for example, the wild west days of rampant SEO exploitation (I'm talking like 2000s or 2010s era) and its race to the bottom, and Google's subsequent refinement of the SEO program over the years. Why am I supposed to root for one side over the other, again?
Their bottom line purpose is the revenue stream; this is not a FOSS project that does so much as to not even solicit donations.
--
I hope the top thread writer from that HN discussion five years ago is having a field day dancing on top of his I-told-you-so mountain :)
I'm pretty surprised that so many YouTube creators pushed Honey without questioning how they were making money off giving away discounts. Did they not ask, or did Honey have a lie for that as well?
https://help.joinhoney.com/article/30-how-does-honey-make-mo...
I guess they say it, but being owned by PayPal I'm guessing there was an assumption that the commissions weren't being stolen from other people, and the codes being provided were organic codes and not ones created for Honey by the merchant to manipulate the user into thinking they were getting the best deal, when they weren't.
The only thing you can know for sure about an actor, is that their profession is pretending to be something they're not.
isn’t it egregious when you make the people who are you stealing affiliate money from to promote the same thing ?
I think the last time I actively investigated how to save pennies with these online coupon things was the 90s when I was a teenager and I suppose that's true for more people.
Perhaps they've guessed that it would shock some people to learn how often they inadvertently use affiliate links and they would be discouraged from shopping or find some way to disable the codes.
That would completely undermine the incentive structure of the whole structure.
> Which would be win for everyone.
Except of course the content creators. It would not be a win for them.
Or then just ban the whole scam.
It is a very different proposition. In the current practice you get the product for the same price as everyone else and the creator gets a small slice of the shop's profit. In the system you are proposing where you could decide to pocket the money it would feel like you are giving the money out of your own pocket to the creator. It literally would make the product more expensive for you to purchase if you decide to not take the discount but give it to the creator. It would feel like charity with weird extra steps and a middle man.
Sure, some people would do it. I guess there are turbo-fans everywhere. But the income from affiliate links would collapse dramatically. Because if there is a button to get a discount easy then people will push the button to get the discount. They will justify it to themselves however they want it.
> Or then just ban the whole scam.
Ban as in with government force? Or ban as in the online shop decides to not engage in affiliate marketing anymore?
The first: ok? Why? I'm not that fussed about it, but I'm also not seeing why this would be a good policy. Or what exactly you want to ban for that matter.
The second: Presumably the webshops made their own calculations that they earn more money with affiliate marketing than without. I don't know how one would do that, but I assume they are not just doing it out of inertia, or goodness of their hearth.
It just seems illegal to replace an affiliate link like. I guess the courts will determine that.
It's one of those open secrets that most youtube-peddled services are predatory in some way, and the creators happily kept pushing them on to their viewers because money talks. Now it turns out Honey is hurting their own bottom lines, so of course they all get on their moral high horses.
Online advertising is a cesspool that makes things more expensive not less.
Honey isnt a problem it's a symptom.
Because they have absolutely no idea.
Where would they ever run across that information?
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 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.
Maybe they should have looked out before taking advertisement deals for products they don't even try to understand.
The only reason all of the "content creator" (influencer would be more fitting) care about this, is for once the product screw over them instead of there audience (just look at betterhelp).
ou don't need have been socially engineered in order to be a part of a company hack. Same deal here.
no you at the very least needed to install the addon for it to swap out your browser cookies.
>And it's effect isn't limited to YouTubers
the reason for the lawsuit based on financial damages very much does only effect them, the people who have referral programs which aren't the audience. ofc it also effects youtuber who didn't have a deal with honey.
Yes, that was my primary point. And It may hurt them even more.
e.g If you're a tech YouTuber and Marquee took a deal, odds are you will feel the effects more than he would a A multimillionaire and industry known influencer. Because you'll probably have a huge overlapping audience with him.
Also, remember that a honey spent billions advertising this. I doubt this level of budget was limited only to YouTubers. Plenty of Instagram and TikTok and Twitter influencers to target.
https://youtu.be/caVSUaB8S3o?si=aTyhH7fsB1W72g-O
But to attempt to summarize it, LegalEagle was trying to file a FOIA request for to DOJ and the FBI for rejecting their request to retrieve documents related to the January 6th riots. And they were rejected in one way that basically suggested that it wasn't read, and one claiming that there were not "part of the media" (which shouldn't matter since anyone can file a FOIA). There's a lot of stalling tactics being done and there's worries that the records could he expunged if too much time passed.
Update: It looks like they're also using code from uBO without attribution or authorization. That's most likely illegal.
@readers: Obligatory notice: Don't base your business decision on random internet comments.
If that was true, all user-side aggregations would be considered as separate projects.
I think it might be possible to circumvent the GPL license, when the URL to the list would be user-configurable and the program also worked without the list.
A similar example would be using a GPLv3 licensed JavaScript library in a website. What it implies to other HTML/JS/CSS code is controversial [0]. The FSF actually believed that they should not be "infected" [1], and the legal implications may need to be tested in court.
I don't think chrome extensions can be modified by the user; there's probably some integrity check. So to be GPL compliant they need to publish source files to rebuild the extension?
> For Zeidenberg's argument, the circuit court assumed that a database collecting the contents of one or more telephone directories was equally a collection of facts that could not be copyrighted. Thus, Zeidenberg's copyright argument was valid.[1] However, this did not lead to a victory for Zeidenberg, because the circuit court held that copyright law does not preempt contract law. Since ProCD had made the investments in its business and its specific SelectPhone product, it could require customers to agree to its terms on how to use the product, including a prohibition on copying the information therein regardless of copyright protections.
> 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...
Sure they'll use IP as a means to an end, but that doesn't mean they believe IP is a good idea in general. It's just one of few tools that exist to solve it.
In an ideal world all software would be forced to be FOSS, and we'd have to come up with ways of funding it that aren't based on artificial scarcity.
Like, what if I want to release a rather difficult puzzle in the form of an obfuscated executable and provide a reward to the first person who solves it? If I’m required to release the source code upon request, then that kind of spoils the puzzle. (Sure, I can say that anyone who gets the source code this way is ineligible for the prize, but how could I tell?)
This is of course a somewhat silly and niche edge case. Still though, it doesn’t seem natural/appropriate for a law would prevent such a thing.
Whereas, agreeing to only distribute modifications I make to some software written by others if I’m willing to distribute the source code to my modifications, well, that would just be an agreement I would be making, and seems unobjectionable.
Though, I wouldn’t really claim that all IP is illegitimate. I think many IP protections go way too far and last too long, but, I think some amount of copyright and patents is probably a good idea, though for a much shorter duration. So maybe I’m not really in the camp being described.
I think the freedoms described in the GPL are good.
I guess one alternative could be to say that all software written “for a useful purpose” (or something like that) has to have the source code made available, and that could handle the puzzle case I mentioned?
It does seem important to avoid the case where one needs to use some software for something but is prevented from modifying it due to not having the source code.
So… maybe if one is only required to provide the source code if someone could reasonably be described as “needing” the software for something? (E.g. if you “need it in order to get your printer working”, or the like.)
You can make a physical item intentionally hard to work with or modify, but I see that as a shortcoming of our current legal standard—that's why we need some kind of "right to repair" framework. Requiring people to distribute human-readable code alongside software follows the same underlying philosophy as physical "right to repair" requirements.
I am not saying that the puzzle author should have any legal authority to restrict people from disassembling the puzzle.
I’m just saying that the government shouldn’t compel the puzzle designer to distribute disassembled versions of the puzzle.
If other people want to take apart their rubix cubes, they’re free to, I just shouldn’t be forced to help them take it apart.
Potentially utilitarian software and creative software could be treated differently, e.g. have an escrow for games (for which user customizations are less important).
Obviously DRM to restrict user modifications is unethical and harmful toward functioning markets and should be illegal.
For what it's worth that's the camp I'm in as well, I'm just being a bit silly for the sake of argument.
It takes a certain kind of insanity to think that it's feasible to spend millions of dollars writing software when your customers are all entitled to take it for free.
Still, there are people who care about quality, and some of them also share their work with others. Those people would exist regardless of whether there is copyright or not. The only difference is, we won’t have LICENSE files anymore.
But no one complains and it lets them ship faster. So not much will change here.
I think we’re past even that point by now. Not only the code we ship now is slow, it’s also harder to build and maintain, and expensive to run. I have no idea how we got here to be honest.
What if I tell you I hand-coded something in asm, but secretly used a Rust compiler with an obfuscator?
I agree though. We should always intend for accurate and consistent language.
You seem to be basing your rejection of "gift economy" as a label for the latter on the basis that it's not done for entirely altruistic purpose. But that is generally true of gift economies - most people who participate in them (and I'm not just talking of software here!) are not doing it out of purely altruistic motives, and actually expect to receive benefit from such an economy as well. Usually this is cultural, but some people, like you, might consciously believe that it's the most efficient way to distribute goods (whatever their definition of "efficient" might be).
> 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.
I suppose that metphor depends on what you think of community efforts. Like say, sharing a food recipe or a workout routine. I see see the framing as "giving it away". Even if your endgoal is an ultimately selfish search of "better recipe/routine to use".
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.
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.
>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?
I'm LGBT and agnostic.
Schools banning crosses and the Swiss banning burqa are very similar to the LGBT flag removal in Michigan. It's all censorship to enforce the ideology you agree with.
A free society would do none of these things.
Instead we have two angry sides playing games to anger one another.
An LGBT flag is a symbol of support for people who are not cis and straight. It is not a religious symbol. It is not infringing on any individual's right to practice their own religion. This is pro first amendment.
Banning burqas is oppressing muslim students' right to practice their religion, and is anti first amendment.
If copyright infringement isn't theft (our goal), then it doesn't matter.
Hope that makes some sense.
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.
But in a world where that is politically infeasible, we have to use whatever tools we have at hand to get as close as we can. And, unfortunately, the tool we happen to have is the modern copyright regime.
Hmm okay yeah, I buy that. Good rebuttal, I retract my comment :)
How is it stealing from the public domain if it’s intellectual property you’ve created? Do you also believe I should be entitled to a cut of your paycheck?
I don't necessarily agree with GP or you, but this isn't a good argument because anyone other than libertarians (i.e. anyone who supports taxation), which in practice is pretty much everyone, does believe that.
don't you benefit from taxes?
Doesn't work with DRM protected media. Version 1 will be pulled from circulation shortly before the time runs out, version 2 will be slightly altered and qualify for a brand new 14 year copyright. Buyers of version 1 will not receive any refunds and will be expected to pay the full price for version 2.
Downloading software from a server means you need to have access to that server, possible through an account. There is also a fair amount of precedence covering the enforceability of TOS and limitations of server access, especially when a company earn profit on intentionally ignoring them.
Contract law has its own issue, and copyright is generally seen as much easier to understand and enforce, but if contract law can be used to control how software and data is used after a user has downloaded it then it could be used for something like GPL.
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.
This does not match my understanding. My understanding is that the goal of the GPL is to weaponize the copyright system to enforce copyleft. Many creators and supporters of the GPL do oppose IP laws (at least in their current form) but the goal specifically of the GPL isn't to destroy copyright, it's to weaponize it to accomplish higher purposes.
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.
stealing from the commons, basically.
If you want a mental metaphor of what the vast body of GPL'ed code is, think of a very, very large multinational corporation.
If you want to use their code, you have to join the company. Fortunately for you, all you have to do to join the company is to agree to use the same license for you own code as the company already does. If you agree to that, you are free to use any or all of the code "owned" by the company.
However, if you do not agree to the company's terms - i.e. you wish to use a different license - then you are not a part of the company and have no legal right to use any of the company's code. You may of course continue with your own software, but you cannot benefit from the amassed resource that is the company's own code (though of course reading it is allowed).
There is no joining any company or anything remotely like that no matter how hard you try to squint. The single rule in GPL is no more than any other usage-of-commons rule like don't pee in the pool or litter in the park.
The park is still free for anyone to use, you just can't fence off a part for yourself and start operating your tire-burning business in it. The body of people who either first donated it or the tax payers who voted for it set some terms for usage, and now you can either enjoy the goods under those terms or not.
But what's interesting is how some people have this kind of reaction and try to come up with this kind of argument over the act of being generous.
Are you sure GPL isn't even worse than you said? Why be so nice? Are you sure it doesn't also eat babies?
You cannot (re)use any GPL code unless you agree to license your own code under the GPL.
You and I may agree that the terms of the GPL are essentially just a way of protecting the commons. I happen to spend quite a bit of time on HN and elsewhere debunking people who cite Hardin's "tragedy of the commons" precisely because that whole story ignores the fact that real commons have historically been managed with a variety of social and civic techniques.
However, precisely because of this widespread repeating of Hardin's use of the term "commons", I tend to doubt that random mentions on HN of "the commons" actually means "a carefully socially and civically managed resource available to all but notionally protected from abuse". Rather, it does indeed tend to be a synonym for "public domain".
BTW, I've been writing GPL'ed code for more than 35 years, and for the last 25+ years, it has been my full-time self-employed means of making a living.
In the much more currently commonplace use of the term as "a bunch of resources that people can just use", no.
That is embarassing for such a self professed domain expert to say something as ridiculous as:
"You cannot (re)use any GPL code unless you agree to license your own code under the GPL."
I still don't hear an argument that actually shows how it's not a commons. If you're just arbitrarily declaring it actually means "public domain" I say you don't get to declare that and inventing your own definitions for terms is not a valid argument or even valid comminication, and there is no further point in attempting to communicate with anyone doing that.
I'm not making up my own definitions. I'm contrasting Garrett Hardin's use of the term in his famous book "Tragedy of the Commons", which is the way most people on HN use it with Elinor Ostrom's much more enlightened definition of it in her refutations of Hardin's claims (refutations that Hardin has accepted).
In Ostrom's sense, yes, GPL'ed code comprises a commons. In Hardin's sense, it does not (or at least, it has a bunch of features to it that render his entire thesis about commons inapplicable).
and you can't burn tyres in the park.
no it seems that you've just been triggered - I did mean it in the above sense. that's why it's offensive when somebody takes gpl code and puts it in proprietary code that they distribute.
public domain means do as you want, even burn tyres in the park.
I make changes to gpl code all the time. I never release the changes because my coding is far too embarrassing. Nobody forces me to release anything. I can and do compile it with gpl incompatible links, not a problem.
I just don’t distribute it.
Uh, no there aren't. The GPL's requirements only kick in when I try to redistribute: that's why the license is in a file called COPYING. It's not an EULA: you don't need to agree with it to use GPL'd software.
But they'd have to take effect right away, otherwise you'd be illegally copying copyrighted software :). It is the GPL license that grants personal use without restriction.
I don't need to be granted permission to run a program on my own computer.
> I don't need to be granted permission to run a program on my own computer.
Correct, you can run programs on your computer without permission. It's the 'loading the program on to your disk' part that you may need permission for.
[0]: https://www.copyright.gov/help/faq/faq-digital.html
> Uploading or downloading works protected by copyright without the authority of the copyright owner is an infringement of the copyright owner's exclusive rights of reproduction and/or distribution.
Why do you try say that means there are no terms?
The terms are ridiculously generous. But there are terms and those are they.
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.
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.
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."
The corporation you probably thinking of right now is a small private government to run a for profit endeavor. But note that cities are also corporations.
Probably want to contact a lawyer for the nuances, but the thousand foot view is you create a corporation with yourself as chief officer, and others as backup officers. set your corporate law to make your backup officers useless until the death of the chief officer and strict guidelines as to how the backup officers are to manage corporate assets. then finally transfer assets to the corporation.
The point being, the thing that makes a corporation a corporation is its corporate law governing its members, thus the assertion that corporations are not people, they are governments.
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.
GPL violation: less people than intended can see the code.
I was paying for netflix until my kids could no longer watch from my house and my exwife's house. After that nonsense I just taught my kids how to find stuff for free.
I used to pirate all my games but now pay for all of it. I am trying to rack my head around why I stopped with games but having a hard time thinking of what made me change. For PC I just think it probably is risky running pirated software that may be malicious. For things like the switch well I have a older switch that can be fully modded but haven't due to not having the time to fully research all the ins and outs and not wanting my kids switch to be banned or something.
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.
infringing on copyleft is like stealing from the poor
its the difference between robin hood and government corruption
Everyone from the foodbank to other homeless people would justifiably be furious at this scam artist when they learn more. That's the morally repugnant situation we find ourselves in with Honey.
Copyleft infringement is perhaps better thought of as stealing from a foodbank than government corruption.
In short: until society changes you play by its rules.
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.
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.
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.
FSF address this issue directly. GPL is basically fighting fire with fire.
Copyright infringement may be criminal. But compared with theft there’s, rightly, a higher standard of proof required.
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?
I’m not an expert in this sort of thing, so a more knowledgeable person may chime in.
The mere act of communicating with other programs does not, by itself, require all software to be GPL; nor does distributing GPL software with non-GPL software. However, minor conditions must be followed that ensure the rights of GPL software are not restricted. The following is a quote from the gnu.org GPL FAQ, which describes to what extent software is allowed to communicate with and be bundled with GPL programs:[74]
What is the difference between an "aggregate" and other kinds of "modified versions"?
An "aggregate" consists of a number of separate programs, distributed together on the same CD-ROM or other media. The GPL permits you to create and distribute an aggregate, even when the licenses of the other software are non-free or GPL-incompatible. The only condition is that you cannot release the aggregate under a license that prohibits users from exercising rights that each program's individual license would grant them.
Where's the line between two separate programs, and one program with two parts? This is a legal question, which ultimately judges will decide. We believe that a proper criterion depends both on the mechanism of communication (exec, pipes, rpc, function calls within a shared address space, etc.) and the semantics of the communication (what kinds of information are interchanged).
If the modules are included in the same executable file, they are definitely combined in one program. If modules are designed to run linked together in a shared address space, that almost surely means combining them into one program.
By contrast, pipes, sockets, and command-line arguments are communication mechanisms normally used between two separate programs. So when they are used for communication, the modules normally are separate programs. But if the semantics of the communication are intimate enough, exchanging complex internal data structures, that too could be a basis to consider the two parts as combined into a larger program.
For that specific hypothetical, I’d say it would function as a derived work, but others would be able to answer better.
GPL is called a viral license. Any project that you add GPL code to must be licensed under GPL (and made available to others under the GPL guidelines). That's why many commercial companies don't include GPL code - see Apple.
LGPL is typically meant for code packaged as a standalone library called from other, possibly non-GPL, code. You can distribute and call LGPL code from your code but your code does not have to be GPL/LGPL-licensed.
I believe the intent of LGPL was to have free LGPL versions of libraries where only popular non-LGPL libraries existed before. Any changes made to LGPL source code must be released under the usual LGPL/GPL guidelines, i.e. you can't make changes to LGPL code, release it in your project, yet keep the changes to yourself.
This is wrong in a couple ways. First, Apple ships plenty of GPL code. https://github.com/apple-oss-distributions/bash/blob/bash-13... as an example.
What Apple does not ship is GPLv3 code. GPLv3 had two major changes around patents and "tivoization". The tivoization clause in particular forces changes that break Apple's security model for their hardware, and is probably the core reason they do not ship GPLv3 software.
This points to one area of Apple's use of GPL code. Apple doesn't want code licensed under GPL v3+ so they're sticking with the GPL v2 codebase (and custom-backporting bugfixes?). Apple uses Bash v3.2, GNU Bash is at v5.2.
I presume they keep a bash around due to how ubiquitous it is for scripting.
GCC was replaced with LLVM in Xcode 4.2, and GDB was replaced with LLDB in Xcode 4.5 and GDB removed in Xcode 5.0. see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xcode
>5. Conveying Modified Source Versions.
>You may convey a work based on the Program, or the modifications to produce it from the Program, in the form of source code under the terms of section 4, provided that you also meet all of these conditions:
>[...]
>c) You must license the entire work, as a whole, under this License to anyone who comes into possession of a copy. This License will therefore apply, along with any applicable section 7 additional terms, to the whole of the work, and all its parts, regardless of how they are packaged. This License gives no permission to license the work in any other way, but it does not invalidate such permission if you have separately received it.
It seems to be the case here since, as the top comment by RraaLL says, they've included GPL-licensed JavaScript from uBO in their extension.
First, if you are distributing modified code or code compiled from GPL sources, in any way, you must advertise that fact clearly, and extend an offer to the original sources plus your compilation methods to anyone who recieves this from you. This is true regardless of whether your work constitutes a combined work.
Then, if you are distributing a work that includes GPL parts and parts that you don't want to release under the GPL, you have to check specifically how the GPL parts are used. The relatively safe boundary is calling GPL binaries as separate processes, especially over a network - if this is the only way you are using the GPL code, it's probably OK to keep your other parts under an incompatible license.
If you are using the GPL parts any more closely, such as calling functions from a GPL library directly through an FFI, or worse, linking to that library, then you are almost certainly building a combined work and all of your own code has to be released under the GPL if you wish to distribute the GPL parts.
Even if you are calling the code only as a separate process, the amount and type of communication you use matters - if you are exchanging extremely complex and specific data structures with the GPL process, rather than just a few command line switches and parsing some yes/no answer, then your work may still constitute a combined work and have to be entirely distributed under the GPL.
It's free so I'm suspecting they're doing more affiliate marketing stealing or something similar to Honey.
> Get Paid to See Ads — Opt-in to see a limited number of partner ads and earn rewards.
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)
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...
Also I don't think it's that easy to conceal and not sure any serious company would risk the liability.
Not only is the original GPLd code still there, the owner of that code didn't have the money in their pocket, so nothing was actually 'stolen'.
It's why I support using GPLd code in proprietary applications. This team just got sloppy and copy/pasted. They should have hired me and I would have made it virtually untracable.
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.
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...
I don't think they're in the (private) discovery phase now.
P.S.: I'm not a US citizen, so I'm not familiar law terms in the US, if the above comment makes no sense, please forget what I said and move to next comment in the chain. Thanks.
https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.cand.44...
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.
There is no disagreement about that. Murder is also criminal. The disagreement is whether what Honey did classifies as "cookie stuffing". (I hope there is no disagreement that it does not qualify as murder, which is a different crime.)
> Obtaining money by means of false or fraudulent pretenses is wire fraud.
This is ... not the definition of what "wire fraud" is, but let's leave it aside as it's irrelevant to this discussion.
> Honey's extension stuffs a ton of different affiliate cookies via its extension
I have not seen any evidence that Honey's extension stuffs more than one cookie for any given transaction. In my understanding "cookie stuffing" refers to a practice of stuffing a ton of cookies for one transaction, not to a practice of "stuffing" one cookie for multiple transactions. Moreover, "cookie stuffing" is not a result of "stuffing" a "cookie", just like "guinea pig" is not a "pig" and it didn't come from a place known as "Guinea". "Cookie stuffing" is a specific legal term describing a certain well-defined behavior, and it would be inaccurate to apply it to anything that involves "cookies" and "stuffing". In other words, if I put some jelly inside an Oreo, this would not qualify as "criminal fraud" known as "cookie stuffing", even though it can be said that by doing that I'm "stuffing" (putting "stuff") inside a "cookie" (Oreo). That's why I asked if you're a lawyer -- they usually understand that e.g. "wire fraud" could be done without any "wire", for instance completely wirelessly -- or that someone committing a "regular" fraud while holding a pack of wire in their hand does not commit "wire fraud".
P.S. The search for "stuffing" in the filing you attached brings no results, so I assume the lawyers also don't argue that Honey engaged in "cookie stuffing" (which is criminal).
Functionally the extension is inserting itself as a second impromptu persistence mechanism ("cookie jar"), allowing it to stuff its cookies at a different phase of the e-commerce flow.
Slightly altered mechanism, same effect, same crime.
It's the same intent in both cookie-stuffing cases.
Thanks, I should have pointed that out before.
Which definition/source for cookie stuffing are you looking at?
They will argue that by providing a coupon that lowered the price for the customer they did in fact facilitate the sale. IANAL but this sounds reasonable to me. Less so for the sales they did not find a coupon for (even if they argue they've tried).
The rest of your comment folds under this.
I guess we'll see how this plays out, but for what it's worth, the attached filing does not argue "cookie stuffing". (It argues other things.)
This may also go to a completely different direction of e.g. "securities fraud" -- the SEC may argue that PayPal, as a public company, has advertised their Honey service as "finding the best deals for their customers", and on the basis of that claim some of the investors chose to buy its shares. If this was a lie, the shares sale was made under false premises, and that seems like "securities fraud".
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 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!"
Basically every dollar the company has made is basically illegal.