Designer Still Pursuing Bogus Takedown Of Periodic Table Of HTML Elements; Has No Idea How Copyright Works

from the Australia:-land-of-IP-thieves,-pop.-2 dept

Very recently, we covered designer Alara Mills' wholly misguided takedown efforts against Mike Riethmuller, a coder who crafted a periodic table of HTML 5 elements that she claimed looked like hers. Here's Riethmuller's:

Which was inspired by Josh Duck's earlier effort:


Neither of which look like the HTML 5 table Alara Mills sells:


But she claims Duck's (and consequently, Riethmuller's) infringes on this earlier version, which was the subject of a lawsuit she brought against Duck.


The suit was dismissed. Duck settled rather than fight Mills' baseless claims, which included the unsupported accusation that somehow Duck had intercepted her original version -- which she had emailed to someone else entirely -- and used that to craft his version. From the cease-and-desist order, in which her lawyers don't sound too sure about the theory their client is pushing:

Ms. Mills submitted an earlier version of her chart within a book prospectus to a publisher in July 29, 2010, a copy of which is enclosed. This is the version that was possibly leaked to you in creation of your Periodic Table.

Using this "win" (she voluntarily dismissed the suit with prejudice), she's now pursuing Riethmuller over his Duck-inspired version -- not because it looks like her current version, but because it looks like the unreleased version Duck supposedly infringed on.

When I wrapped up the last post, I noted that Mills had apologized to Riethmuller and withdrawn her legal threats. Apparently, that move was just PR-related. Mills had no intention of dropping her baseless claims against Riethmuller. The same night that post went live (with the final "good news" added to it), she reversed course. Mills has filed a followup complaint to Github in hopes of expediting the removal of Riethmuller's HTML 5 table.

Here's her original takedown request, which spends as much time on claims of "owning" common elements like Mendeleev's periodic table design and coding constants as it does espousing conspiracy theories and mangling IP terminology. [Interrupted periodically for commentary.]

I, Alara Mills, have read and understand GitHub's Guide to Filing a DMCA Notice.

1.     Identify the copyrighted work you believe has been infringed.
The copyrighted work I believe is infringed is my copyright in the 2-D artwork titled “The HTML Table of Elements.” The copyright is registered with the United States Copyright Office with an effective date of registration of January 27, 2010 and registration number VAu 1-014-116. “The HTML Table of Elements” is my original, United States copyrighted artwork. It is an original work inspired by the Periodic Table of Elements from chemistry that I first sketched out on paper December 25, 2009. The HTML Elements within my chart are placed in my own unique categories. It is this unique ordering that took it out of fair use and thereby made it eligible for copyright. (Author's unique ordering of HTML5 Elements within their literary books is also what makes them unique for copyright.)

[You can't take something "out" of fair use. Fair use is a defense. She may have meant "public domain," but even if so, she's still completely wrong. You can make use of public domain elements, but what you can't do is "remove" them so that no one else can do the same. But that's what she's claiming.]

2. Identify the material that you allege is infringing the copyrighted work listed in item #1, above.
The material I am alleging is infringing the copyrighted work is hosted at the following URL: http://madebymike.com.au/html5-periodic-table/

My HTML Elements and Attributes Infographic has evolved into a proprietary graphic with various derivative works. The one in question is an earlier derivative work which was submitted within a book prospectus submitted to publishers as early as May 2010. This version was leaked to Joshua Duck, who then made an unauthorized derivative work of my original work and hosted it at http://joshduck.com/periodic-table.html.

[Word salad. First, this still assumes that these are "derivative" from her works, when there's very little evidence to support that. And, remember, the only control Mills has is on derivative works of the parts of the original that was actually protectable by copyright. And there's almost nothing in the original that is protectable -- and what little there is does not appear to be carried over into Duck's or Riethmuller's design. And, of course, this argument rests on the still-unsubstantiated claim that Duck had access to her earlier versions and used that as the basis for his table.]

I filed a lawsuit against Joshua Duck March 2014 and the matter was settled out of court with Joshua Duck agreeing to removing the infringing content and not to use it again (Settlement agreement is attached). However, I have discovered that Michael Riethmuller has recreated another unauthorized derivative work which is an exact recreation of Josh Duck's work, which is also an unauthorized derivative work which infringed on my copyrighted work.

[It's not an "exact" recreation. It's significantly different and it's inspired by Duck's version, rather than being a ripoff of a ripoff of Mills' questionable "original."]

3.     Explain what the affected user would need to do in order to remedy the infringement
I recently emailed Michael Riethmuller to express my concerns and asked him to please change the credit language he is attributing to Josh Duck on his sites page. I am willing to allow Michael Riethmueller to keep the derivative work IF he is willing to update the credit language to state me as the true and rightful owner of the work.

[The only person who believes you're the "rightful owner" of common coding elements arrayed on a remix of Mendeleev's periodic table is YOU, Ms. Mills.]

He has not responded, which makes me allege that Josh Duck is somehow behind Michael Riethmuller recreation of his work, to add injury to insult. Additionally, both parties are coincidentally from Australia, though Josh Duck now resides in Northern California and is employed at Facebook. If Michael is unwilling to make this change in credit of the work, then I want to request for it to be completely taken down.

[The world according to Mills: Australia is a continent inhabited solely by Riethmuller and Duck, who have both conspired to screw Mills out of some poster sales. This bizarre theory helps explain why Mills can't be dissuaded of her notion that Duck somehow intercepted her earlier, unpublished chart. The world -- well, at least Australia -- has it in for Mills and will stop at nothing to steal her HTML 5 table.]

I also want to challenge Michael Riethmuller's threat that he will simply send a counter to my take down request on the bases of fair-use. Though the periodic table is fair-use and the HTML5 elements categorized by the W3.org is fair-use, my unique effort in categorizing and placement of the HTML5 elements within my chart made it eligible for U. S. copyright. Josh Duck copied my work without permission and with the false assumption that it was not copyrighted and thus he did not apply any real originality to his version, using the exact same color choices and placement of the elements within his chart making them jarringly similar. It is for this reason that I am asking Michael Riethmuller to either give appropriate credit to me at the true author of his "inspired" work, or take it down.

[Nice. A preemptive strike against fair use. The best offense is a good offense, I guess. As for the rest, anyone with eyes can see Duck's version does not use the "exact same color choices and placement of elements." And this has to be the first recorded use of the phrase "jarringly similar." Click through for the full-size version.]


The original takedown request is thoroughly ridiculous. As is Mills herself, who keeps finding conspiracies where none exist and doesn't seem to have even a basic understanding of fair use, idea vs. expression, derivative works or even that her chart she claims Duck copied exactly only very faintly resembles her version.

So, she told Riethmuller she'd drop all of this and let it go. That was the evening after the post went live. The next day, Riethmuller emailed me Mills' revived effort to have his table kicked off of Github.

Dear Github Support,

I am emailing to follow-up on the status of my DMCA notice. As per my last communication with Michael Riethmueller, I requested that he please place an appropriate credit to me as the original author of the work instead of taking down the work all together.

There is no mistake as to my copyrighted work being a protected work that does not fall under fair-use.

[This again. FAIR USE DOES NOT WORK THAT WAY. You can't exempt your copyrighted material from fair use. It either is or it isn't, but you can't somehow get out ahead of it just by declaring your work not open to fair use.]

I added enough originality to the expression of this art work by placing the HTML5 elements in my own unique order different from the World Wide Web Consortium's categorization of the HTML elements. This is the same copyright protect that is granted to all other authors of HTML5 literary books: they all came up with their own unique listing of the HTML elements within their works.

[So what? Just like all these authors used the same common elements to create protect-able creations, so did Mills. And Duck. And Riethmuller. It is completely possible for all of these to exist without infringing on each other and for every single one to be protected by copyright. Mills cannot seem to wrap her mind around this concept.]

The work that Michael Riethmueller is using is a modified version of Josh Duck's unauthorized version of my original art work. Josh Duck was under the false assumption that my work was not copyrighted and therefore copied my exact color scheme and placement of the HTML elements making the works too similar.

["Too similar?" It isn't. It's only as "similar" as the elements behind it force it to be (Mendeleev's periodic table design; the semi-rigid hierarchy of coding elements).]

I don't think it is unreasonable for me to request that Michael Riethmueller's work be credited appropriately to me to avoid additional unauthorized use of his work. Again, if Mr. Riethmueller is unwilling to update the author credit, I do want to request to have the work taken down.

[Riethmuller won't credit her because he never saw Mills' version. He may have seen Duck's version and his more closely bears resemblance to Duck's than to Mills', but either way none of these charts bear enough resemblance to each other to make one of them infringing. Riethmuller owes Mills nothing in the way of "credit." She had no part of this. She only thinks she does because she registered her version back in 2010 and now feels other versions are somehow infringing on her creation.]

Given Michael Riethmueller's refusal to credit the work to me as the rightful owner, I am also alleging that Josh Duck is somehow very much behind Michael's recreated work as a form of retaliation for my rightfully filing a lawsuit against him which was settled out of court at Josh Duck's explicit request.

[More conspiracy theories. Nothing factual alleged here and veering very close to being defamatory. This argument is about as worthless as her decision to play the sexism card during my earlier Twitter conversation with her. (If you're planning on chatting with her, get screenshots. She likes to delete tweets.]


So, Mills has learned nothing other than how to give the appearance that she's learned something. She's continuing to push Riethmuller to give her credit she doesn't deserve (and which is not a part of copyright law anyway) and she has clearly shown she doesn't understand the first thing about fair use, derivative works or that the underlying elements of "her" HTML 5 periodic table can be remixed in a number of highly-similar ways without infringing on her "original."

From where I sit, there just aren't enough periodic tables of HTML 5 elements and that situation should be remedied, although I would ask any Australians to refrain from participating unless they already know everyone else who lives on their continent.

Filed Under: alara mills, copyright, fair use, html 5, josh duck, mike riethmuller, periodic table, public domain

Designer Issues Takedown, Cease And Desist Over Periodic Table Of HTML5 Elements

from the not-really-yours-to-take-down,-is-it? dept

Anyone can have an idea. Multiple people can independently have the same idea. It's the expression that counts, but Alara Mills, the creator of one version of a periodic table of HTML5 elements, seems to think she should be able to curb other expressions of this idea.

Today I received a DMCA takedown request against my personal website over a trivial GitHub project that involves a periodic table layout and information about HTML5 elements.

The takedown request was preceded by an "impersonal email" from Alara Mills -- a cease and desist letter loaded with all sorts of scary claims about thousands of dollars being potentially at stake.

“You neither asked for nor received permission to use the Work… nor to make or distribute copies of it. Therefore, you have infringed my rights under 17 U.S.C. Section 101 et seq. and could be liable for statutory damages as high as $150,000 as set forth in Section 504(c)(2) therein.”

As Mike Riethmuller points out, he had never seen Alara Mills' version of this HTML5 table. His was inspired by another person's (Josh Duck) and was mainly just an exercise in CSS, rather than some sort of cottage industry designed to undercut the only thing Alara Mills offers at her website.

Here's a thumbnail version Alara Mills' HTML5 periodic table of elements, which we're posting to provide commentary on her copyright claims (since she appears to be very litigious about anyone doing anything -- we'd like to suggest she do some studying of fair use before complaining about this usage):

Because Mills is so protective of this product, there's no way to get a closer look at the arrangement of the elements to verify whether or not Riethmuller "copied" her layout.

Riethmuller's version, however, looks nothing like hers.

And, as he states in his post, it's clearly inspired by Josh Duck's:

Duck's version is no longer live because Alara Mills sued it out of existence. Mill's lawsuit claims that somehow Duck got ahold of an earlier version of her chart, which looks like this:

Duck's bears more resemblance to this than her finished product, but it's still not an exact copy. Besides, it's unclear what "copyrightable elements" Duck's could have possibly copied. The periodic table itself is not (and it's certainly not the creation of Alara Mills). The HTML 5 elements are not. The color arrangement, maybe? But those are different. The HTML5 logo is not. What little that might be protectable in Mills' effort is clearly not in Duck's. It is merely the same idea -- and ideas are not copyrightable.

And the link between Duck and Mills is extremely tenuous. Here's what Mills' lawsuit presents as "evidence" that Duck infringed on her table.

Mills emailed a copy of her prospectus to Kirk Kazanjian on July 12, 2010, which contained a derivative work of the HTML Table of Elements in order to receive initial feedback from him before pursuing book publishers. Kirk Kazanjian is a literary agent/former co-worker of Mills. Mills sells quick reference guides, wall-reference posters, and table posters displaying the HTML5 Elements Table™ graphic. A true and correct copy of the graphic submitted to Kirk Kazanjian in Mills’ email is attached hereto as Exhibit D.

[...]

On information and belief, Duck has been aware of Mills’ HTML5 Elements Table™ since July 2010, when Mills emailed a copy of the graphic to Kirk Kazajian.

On information and belief, Duck had access to Mills’ HTML5 Elements Table™

No further explanation is provided. The cease-and-desist that preceded the lawsuit is similarly vague. It simply makes an accusation but never explains how her legal representation (or Mills herself) arrived at this conclusion.

Ms. Mills submitted an earlier version of her chart within a book prospectus to a publisher in July 29, 2010, a copy of which is enclosed. This is the version that was possibly leaked to you in creation of your Periodic Table.

In other words, Mills found something on the internet that resembled something she thought was an entirely original idea, and the only conclusion she could come to was that somehow Duck must have gotten ahold of her submission. There are multiple more likely explanations for this -- chief among them being that things based on the periodic table will often resemble the periodic table as well as the hierarchy of coding terms being fairly rigid. These two elements mean that any independent creation utilizing both of these will bear heavy resemblance to another.

This was settled out of court. Duck agreed to remove the non-infringing chart in return for a dismissal with prejudice. The alternative would have been an expensive trip through the judicial system. Mills seems to feel that this acquiesence gives her the right to pursue creators of similar charts -- not similar to the version she sells -- but similar to the version she still maintains Duck "stole" from her.

Alara Mills, however, would rather not talk about it. After engaging with her for a bit on Twitter, she suddenly deleted most of her tweets to me.


Fortunately, the deleted tweets have been preserved


Now, Riethmuller has never seen this "leaked" version. He's only (possibly) seen Duck's. But he's building on a lot more than Duck. He's building on the same foundation Mills did. Only he's not claiming his chart is somehow sacrosanct.

The information about each element was shamelessly stolen from the Mozilla Developer Network (MDN) and the layout is thanks to Dmitri Mendeleev. But luckily MDN and Dmitri are all about the learning and they support the community; as such I have much love for them both.

These two entities clearly inspired Mills as well, but no one went after her for utilizing the work of others. Riethmuller clearly didn't use hers as a starting point, but she thinks she can lock down an unoriginal idea and keep anyone else from expressing a combination of periodic tables and HTML5 elements that hews a bit too closely to hers. She's wrong, of course, and Riethmuller has filed a counternotice against her DMCA takedown. As of now, his table is still live at Github.

Riethmuller recognizes his work is not "original," but also that it's no "copy" of Mills' work. Unlike Mills, he wants people to build on his efforts, not consider it an endpoint that must not be remade, altered or otherwise moved forward.

I’d love to remake this using flexbox and update it with newer HTML elements and more detailed content. I’d love people to be able to fork it and learn more about creating challenging layouts with css. Or develop something new from this concept.

Riethmuller also points out how truly pointless creation would be if all creators acted like Alara Mills.

Imagine if we all received copyright challenges over something as tenuous a particular layout and subject matter. This would mean there could only be one single column web development blog (and not only that it would be a book).

That's how over-protecting creative works kills creativity. No one has a monopoly on ideas. Expressions can be protected but something as ordinary as a re-imagining of the periodic table isn't exclusive to one person. There are hundreds of periodic table "remixes" already out there, but apparently an HTML5 elements version won't be one of them. Here's another table inspired by Josh Duck that has been killed off -- perhaps by another threat from Alara Mills.

Mills doesn't "own" this idea, nor does she have any right to push these creations off the internet. But that's what she's been doing. She still has yet to answer my question as to the unsubstantiated claim that Duck had access to an unreleased version and has apparently rescinded her offer to tell me her side of the story. It doesn't take much to get the ball rolling on copyright trolling. All it takes is for someone to believe that only they could have arrived at this creative destination and that all others are simply infringers.

This story, however, has somewhat of a happy ending. Mills reached out to Riethmuller late in the day (a few hours after the half-deleted Twitter conversation took place) and apologized to him and withdrew her legal threats. According to Riethmuller, she appears to finally have realized that her claims of ownership over HTML5 period tables are extremely weak and that ambushing creators who are wholly unaware of her previous iterations (not that those supposed "copies," like Duck's infringed on that design either) with cease-and-desist orders does nothing but turn people against her -- and copyright in general.

Filed Under: alara mills, copyright, expression, html 5, idea, inspiration, josh duck, legal threats, mike riethmuller, periodic table, periodic table of the elements, sharing

DailyDirt: Better Living Via Chemistry... Just Got A Bit More Complicated

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

Almost no one liked chemistry class in high school, and on top of that, colleges use chem classes to weed out pre-med students. So the subject gets a bum rap a lot, and things aren't about to get any better. The periodic table just officially changed. Merry Christmas to chemistry teachers everywhere! Here are a few more quick links about this news and some chemistry-related stories:

The atomic weights of ten elements will now be expressed as intervals. And I'm looking forward to how They Might Be Giants will explain this in a song. [url]

There's a very boring answer to the question of what would happen if you threw every element together at the same time. It would reach equilibrium after creating a cloud of smoke. [url]

Do you know where your elements come from? Are they conflict-free? Blood diamonds get a movie, but when will they make a movie about "blood tantalum"? [url]

Have you noticed that your dish detergent is phosphate-free now? Procter & Gamble says it had no choice but to remove phosphate compounds from its products -- because it's better for the environment. Unfortunately, dishes everywhere aren't getting as clean as they used to be. [url]

Gold is not a gas, doesn't burn and won't kill you -- are those good enough reasons for you? I'll take: "Reasons why an element is precious for $200, Alex." [url]

Filed Under: chemistry, elements, gold, periodic table
Companies: p&g