Romney campaign apparently violates copyright law (ping lawyers)

[Puppycow]

Romney rips off Obama website

After months of telling Democrats that they didn’t build that, the charge may be ironically accurate when it comes to Mitt Romney’s website. The Romney campaign’s “victory wallet” donation page bears a striking resemblance to the Obama campaign’s “quick donate” page. The Obama campaign published its in March and Romney’s site went up in late August.

Both sites display three options to donate, the text beside each identical. For example, on the Obama campaign’s “Donate With SMS” section:

After you’ve saved your credit card and phone number in your BarackObama.com account, you can use your cell phone to make a donation. All you need to do is text the amount you want to give. If you text us “10″, we’ll charge your saved credit card $10. It’s never been easier to donate.​

And the “Donate with SMS” section from the Romney site:

After you’ve saved your credit card and phone number in your MyMitt account, you can use your cell phone to make a donation. All you need to do is text the amount you want to give. If you text us “10″, we’ll charge your saved credit card $10. It’s never been easier to donate.​

Note that at the bottom of the Obama campaign webpage, it says the following:

© 2011–2012 Obama for America. All Rights Reserved.

It seems that a law has been broken here.

Also from the Salon article:

The Terms of Use of the Obama campaign states that the website, “including, without limitation, OFA’s logo, and all designs, text…are the proprietary property of OFA or its licensors or users and are protected by U.S. and international copyright laws.”

Could Obama sue the Romney campaign over this? Should he?

 

[NotJesus]

Could Obama sue the Romney campaign over this?

I guess so.

Should he?

I don't see how it would help him win the election.

 

[Aridas]

Incidentally, an update on that story adds a little.

UPDATE: BuzzFeed gets a quote from Moffat who says, ”This was a junior staff confusion that has been updated and resolved.” There was no shared vendor between the two campaigns.

The campaign has slightly tweaked the language on the page in question. The meaning is identical, but the phrasing has been slightly altered to differentiate from the Obama campaign’s language. For example, where it used to read, “Either way, you’re done in seconds!” it now reads, “just enter your password and you’ll be done in seconds.” They even fixed the grammatical error in the SMS section. It now reads, “Just text the amount you want to donate — i.e., ’10′ for $10 — and in seconds, you’re done.”

 

[Puppycow]

I guess so.



I don't see how it would help him win the election.

Would it hurt though?

How could it help? Depends how much money he could win.
Money can buy ad time. More ad time for Obama, and less for Romney.

 

[SezMe]

Tempest in a teapot. Who besides election wonks and insiders gives a damn?

 

[Wudang]

Incidentally, an update on that story adds a little.

They even fixed the grammatical error in the SMS section. It now reads, “Just text the amount you want to donate — i.e., ’10′ for $10 — and in seconds, you’re done.”

Too bad they introduced a new one, unless they only accept $10 donations. Why don't they want other values, e.g. 20?

 

[Puppycow]

Too bad they introduced a new one, unless they only accept $10 donations. Why don't they want other values, e.g. 20?

'i.e.' where it should read 'e.g.'

It's debatable whether the original was a grammatical error in any case. Yes, in American English the convention is to put a comma inside the quotation marks, but that could cause confusion in this case: does one text the comma too, or only the numerals? I think it's a stupid convention myself. I prefer the British convention, and I often use it too.

 

[Bill Thompson]

An entire book of Pslams was lifted from the Bible just to add fill to the Book of Mormon. So maybe Romney does not care by example if copyright laws are violated.

Regan and a mole who helped him prepare for the Carter debates.

Obama, more likely than not, is letting the false rumor that he gratuate Magna Cum Whatever carry him. Why else is he hiding his college transcript?

Maybe they are all crooks.

 

[SezMe]

Bill, please share your recipe for the concoction you are obviously inhaling/drinking. It must be powerful stuff.

 

[jj]

Tempest in a teapot. Who besides election wonks and insiders gives a damn?

Well, that's what you're supposed to think. You're supposed to excuse all sorts of misconduct, you know.

That is, unless it was the Obama campaign who did this. Then it would be cause for attempting impeachment...

 

[Upchurch]

Meh. The rest of Romney's campaign was pretty much just thrown together, why not this? It's fairly common boiler plate-like language.

 

[Sam.I.Am]

Meh. The rest of Romney's campaign was pretty much just thrown together, why not this? It's fairly common boiler plate-like language.

Pretty much this. Take out the references to Obama or Romney and put in a charity like United Way or whatever and it will be about the same (if not the exact) wording. If both of their donation systems work the same way there's only so many ways that you can inform people on how to do it by that method.

Mountain out of molehills if you ask me.

 

[Puppycow]

Tempest in a teapot. Who besides election wonks and insiders gives a damn?

Well, when one side cheats, I don't think it should be allowed to pass without at least being noted for the record. People can make of it what they will, but it should be reported.

There is a legal principle here, whether you agree with it or not.

 

[Upchurch]

As a website developer, copying code from others is a long held tradition. Its how most of us learn how to code in the first place. Shared knowledge* is the entire point of the Internet.

Really. This is not even a deal.


*and porn

 

[Tricky]

Could Obama sue the Romney campaign over this? Should he?

That would make Obama look petty. He'd be much better served just to ridicule Romney over how he can't make his own website. Or even better.

"It's a fair trade. I borrowed some of my health care plan from the one Romney used in Massachusetts. He borrows my website."

 

[Puppycow]

As a website developer, copying code from others is a long held tradition. Its how most of us learn how to code in the first place. Shared knowledge* is the entire point of the Internet.

Really. This is not even a deal.


*and porn

Is code subject to copyright protection?

Maybe code is one thing but copy (if that's the right term of art) is another.

Would McDonald's sit still if Burger King copied their website? I suspect they wouldn't.

 

[elbe]

Both may have been cribbed from online code examples.

 

[Alan]

Is code subject to copyright protection?

Maybe code is one thing but copy (if that's the right term of art) is another.

Would McDonald's sit still if Burger King copied their website? I suspect they wouldn't.

Creators can licence their software in lots of different ways. Some allow you to study, change and redistribute code. And some don't.
http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/license-list.html

In a recent trial:
"So long as the specific code used to implement a method is different, anyone is free under the Copyright Act to write his or her own code to carry out exactly the same function or specification of any methods used in the Java API. It does not matter that the declaration or method header lines are identical."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oracle_google_lawsuit

 

[Moss]

There has to be prior art that predates both sites... This is just silly.

 

[Upchurch]

Is code subject to copyright protection?

That isn't a simple question and it gets even more murky when it comes to uncompiled and freely distributed languages like HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. I don't have the legal expertise to comment very knowledgeably.

Maybe code is one thing but copy (if that's the right term of art) is another.

That is the correct term. "Content" would also be appropriate.

You are also assuming that Obama's website is the original source of the copy, or paid for the generation of the copy. It could very well have been copied from a third party. I don't know.

I think you would be hard pressed to establish ownership of such generic language. (Not that Apple wouldn't try.)