MySpace accused of rip-off
p2pnet.net news:- “I have no problem with borrowing ideas, a lot of real innovation comes from that, but blatantly ripping off someone’s product and taking all the credit is just super Lane, disrespectful, and pretty pathetic.”
So says Freewebs developer Jay Elaraj (right) who with Dave Maestri wrote RealEditor, a MySpace profile editor.
Quoted by Michael Arrington in TechCrunch, the say MySpace totally ripped them off.
Their RealEditor, “caught the eye of MySpace President Tom Anderson, who wrote to the founders in March,” says the story, going on, “He complimented RealEditor and asked them if they’d be willing to come work for and/or sell the software to MySpace.
“The co-founders declined. But they had a bit of a surprise recently when MySpace released it’s [sic] new editor, incorporating many of the features from RealEditor and some of the look and feel.”
With that in mind, Elaraj and Maestri made a video pointing out some of the similarities.
“If it were me,” says Arrington, “I would have sold the editor to MySpace when they offered to buy it. There isn’t a close enough case for this to be worth litigation, and the traffic bump from calling MySpace out on this will be short lived.”
States a TechCrunch update, “RealEditor has requested a clarification based on some of the comments coming in below. They say ‘They offered to pay us for the development time we already put into it at an “agreed upon” rate, and an hourly wage/jobs. Which didn’t appeal to us since we’re in a better position at freewebs. MySpace claims they offered a cash buyout upfront (in the tech crunch comment), so I assume that’s what they’re referring to. Specific numbers were never discussed, it never got as far as a ‘formal’ offer.”
Also See:
TechCrunch – RealEditor Says “MySpace Ripped Us Offâ€, May 21, 2007
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Tired of being treated like a criminal? They depend on you, not the other way around. Don’t buy their ‘product’. Do bug your local politicians. Use emails, snail-mail, phone calls, faxes, IM, stop them in the street, blog. And if you’re into organizing, organize petitions, organize demonstrations and then turn up on your local political rep’s doorstep, making sure you’ve contacted your local tv/radio station/newspaper in advance. Don’t just complain. Do something!
August 22nd, 2007 at 5:59 pm
I’ve seen this story before, but the first time I’ve seen it here. RealEditor was already one of very many CSS-based MySpace editors that can be found at just about any MySpace Layout web site. It was a best-of-breed product, but not difficult to duplicate.
The class of MySpace profile editors that will be left are the WYSIWYG profile editors like the ProfileMine Profile Editor. ProfileMine is more into MySpace Layouts, but their editor is currently one-of-a-kind and may not be so simple for MySpace to duplicate.