Yeah this comes off as pretty stupid, as if its rocket science to do the alleged elements. Pligg rocks!

So he copies their template and then tells them they stole it from him? Nice!

Next thing you know he’s suing all the members at Ning…..

Dear world,

Please cease and desist from using the internet. I invented it.

Sincerely,
Al Gore

I keep telling you people:

DO NOT GET THE EFF INVOLVED. They’re guaranteed to fuck things up for Pligg.

Pligg ALREADY OWNS THE COPYRIGHTS. Copyright is automatic in the US. That’s been basic IP law since the 1970s; filing is only a throwback to the old system.

Further, filing is only useful in the absolute lack of other information establishing when the material in question was first generated, and by whom. In this case, CVS/Subversion logs, archival web pages, and all sorts of users can testify to when Pligg first generated the material that SuperGu claims.

classic, just classic.

btw michael, i’m suing you for the techcrunch name. i work in tech and like cap’n crunch, close enough.

Looks like SuperGu is having technical difficulties. The site is down, and a search on google results in “supergu hacked” for their domain.

It’s about time it appeared here. Maybe JP will come out of hiding from underneath that hole he crawled into once more people get to know about it and revoke his C&D.

Idiot

god i hate clones.
be original.

This is funny stuff. Is this just a way to get attention?

Maybe I should sue all the blogs that have the Fjord theme installed.

We got into this discussion on my blog the other day (link above on my name). I was reminded that I might not have all the facts. Perhaps I don’t - but it sucks either way because it is taking development attention away from extending the code base.

(And it is seemingly based out of childishness and pettiness)

Rob

The best part is that SuperGu originally claimed to be “inspired by Meneame, Del.icio.us and Reddit,” and Pligg is nothing more than an English version of Meneame.

I’ve had site designs copied before, and even in legitimate cases the C&D is such a waste. If the guy has any dignity, a simple “come on you moron” email will suffice, and if not, there are sites to shame the copiers. Much more fun.

In any case, worrying about someone copying your idea generally means you’re paying attention to the wrong thing. Better to just keep improving and watch everyone continue to try to copy you.

I’ve said it before, at least SuperGu has a sense of humor (they are idiots):

http://www.parislemon.com/2007.....humor.html

Time for them to enter the deadpool.

Coining a new phrase: clones 2.0

Someone should get that domain name and start writing about web 2.0 clones. Innovation has turned to clonnovation. Vic Okezie | vdemo.tv

Everyone. Consider yourself sued for harrassment.

I tried to call James just because I really wanted to ask him if he was serious about this b.s. and thought he had any chance of pulling it off, but got his voicemail instead.

Registrant:
James Phelps
PO Box 4271
Costa Mesa, California 92628
United States

Registered through: GoDaddy.com, Inc. (http://www.godaddy.com)
Domain Name: SUPERGU.COM
Created on: 12-Aug-06
Expires on: 12-Aug-07
Last Updated on: 13-Aug-06

Administrative Contact:
Phelps, James (supergu@yahoo.com)
PO Box 4271
Costa Mesa, California 92628
United States
9494001195 Fax — 7144381179

Technical Contact:
Phelps, James (supergu@yahoo.com)
PO Box 4271
Costa Mesa, California 92628
United States
9494001195 Fax — 7144381179

this is comedy gold…thats like the buglar who sued the home owner for tripping over on the wet lawn

gold!!!

This post is like reading the Onion.

Cease and Desist means nothing cause nobody is gonna do sh”t on the startup level. SG has no money. What are they thinking?

Very funny post, but you’re an attorney, and you certainly know this is a look-and-feel claim, not a claim to “ownership” of “Powered By,” etc. It may be a losing claim, but this type of intellectual property is completely valid.

There was a talk about DIGG serving SuperGu with Cease and Desist over copyright infringment last month. I am surprised SuperGu had balls to go for this move.

“We own the rights to the orange RSS logo”. Are you #$%^ kidding me. That was developed by mozilla guys.

haha supergu isn’t working atm

This is clearly the most hilarious part:

“Furthermore, the Ajax effect applied to all the boxes within the sidebar menu when they open and close is identical…”

“Ajax effect”?

Wow, what is wrong with people?

@Guillermo Rauch

Yes, they sent Pligg a C&D for AJAX effects hahahaha

Dugg: http://www.digg.com/tech_news/.....Digg_Clone

I better hurry and download Pligg!

this is classic! btw, when i try to get to supergu a login and password pop up comes up. i might call james tomorrow to say “what up!” Of course, he is probably 12.

I hate clones, too. To clone MS Office, MS Windows, etc is understandable, but to clone a free web app - it’s a total waste of efforts!

Well his ‘cease and desist’ letter has already a lot of buzz and free marketing for his site. I would imagine a lot of us who have commented above have tried to check out the site, even though it seems to have been hacked.

What a jackass.

I’m still huge fan of TC, But why attack and crunch startups???

okay, so i’ve interacted with “3dkiller” (james) and the pligg dudes off and on quite a bit for a long while…while this looks bad, i believe that james is a good guy and that this saber rattling in areas like ‘rss logo’ may been dreamed up by his lawyer and not himself, though i’m surprised it’s all in the c-n-d letter served to pligg…

what makes me kinda sad is that james was originally trying to really contribute to pligg last year but the pligg guys were not buying into his ideas, most of which involved dropping the ’smary templating system’ (you’ll notice of course that most pligg sites operate very slowly as a result of the templating schema)…supergu’s demo, which was up for several months, was stunning visually and offered superior performance…

if james ever offers to package and sell what he’s put together, i’d actually pay money to license it for a site, it’s that solid…just because something is free doesn’t mean it stands on higher moral ground - nobody involved in this has offered anything beyond pissing fight insights…

pligg is obviously laughing about this, though of course paying real money to talk back through lawyers, all of which stands to slow things down for everybody and pull resources away from pligg development projects…in the interim, it’s put the release of supergu on the maybe-or-never release path…

i hope that they reach some kind of resolve, for the sake of all of their respective community members…

These SuperGu people seem to have so much time on their hands.

Dave,

If James is a decent guy and just wanted to make something better than Pligg, he could have just gone ahead and not acted like a complete walking turd. Unfortunately, it’s impossible to believe he’s anything but, because only a turd would be pursuing this.

And had he released something like Pligg sans Smarty, I would have used it too. Smarty absolutely blows in practice, and both softwares I’ve used that emplyed it (X-Cart and Pligg) are dog manure slow.

LMAO@ this post..

# nitsuj

March 19th, 2007 at 2:47 pm

classic, just classic.

btw michael, i’m suing you for the techcrunch name. i work in tech and like cap’n crunch, close enough.

@Morgan

AshDigg has done a lot of research and has been working on speeding Pligg up. It may have not been Template Lite at all (Pligg uses Template Lite, not Smarty). The slowness some people experience may have been caused by too many database calls. We’re currently working on it and Ash has decreased the database calls by almost 50% in the past week.

Also, I think you guys seem to forget that Flickr uses Smarty.

I think SuperGu will Most likely be in Super Du du

Here is some more info here:
http://www.pligg.com/5023/

Basically it shows a txt file that was available on the supergu site showing an internal doc to the designer/developer that was to create the clone. Also mentioning not to talk to Pligg or discuss in any forums.

Either this guy is pure evil or an a-hole. Im hoping he’s just an a-hole looking for some publicity. If this is link bait then job well done, if this was a serious business maneuver then I hope the wrath of the blogosphere will nit cut him any slack.

(Mike: I just read the transcript of you and Scrivs going back and forth about the redesign, wow)

Is there no money left in software or websites, just sue everyone instead!
-
http://www.WindowsVistaUserGuide.com

Why is pligg a digg clone just coz it offers voting of stories submitted by users. How many times do we need to remind ourselves that digg made the idea successful but it wasn’t original.

http://jamesphelps.com/

James is a real estate agent full time, I was impressed with what he has built. Talk to the man just a little bit, seemed like one paranoid dude. . . I noticed that he was not very (tech) business savy, I chalk this up to lack of knowledge than evilness. . .

james, wake up dude . . . open source supergu as you planned, contribute instead of getting all pissy about someone biting off your ideas. . .

(first time entreprenuers get way too caught up on “ideas” rather than execution)

Anyway, aren’t they *both* based on meneame’s code?

I think it’s time we kill off most of the vote-the-title sites, starting with Digg…

this link was sent to me by the pligg team. interestingly enough, pligg found an interesting notes.txt on the supergu server, available below

http://www.pligg.com/5023/

Sólo están haciendo ruido para que se les vea. Como bien dices es absurdo.

Let’s see this Phelps guy defend himself here.

That is so incredibly classy. Good job, SuperGu. Way to go.

Sure… Because Prototype , Moo, and Scriptaculous Libraries are owned by individual groups.

Durr he stole my Javascript code! Lets sue… How it looks like.

function fade_what(this) {

setTimeout(”Effect.Fade(’this’)”,2000);

}

WOW! I guess you can sue… Because theres look’s like this!

function what_fade(this) {

setTimeout(”Effect.Fade(’this’)”,2000);

}

Someone better be worried huh

Guys, I think this is a marketing ploy from the SuperGu guys… they would never be on TechCrunch or anywhere else for that matter if not for this. Think about it.

#21 “..It may be a losing claim, but this type of intellectual property is completely valid.”

You’re right, everyone’s focused on the RSS icon claim, but if you look at the C&D document, it’s more about the look-and-feel. (nobody reads anything these days)

I’ve been following Pligg and Supergu right from the beginning. The folks at Pligg kept trying to slam Supergu right from the start. They put one guy in charge of that task. Phelps did come up with some amazing ideas that only worried Pligg and people did start to jump ship. It’ so easy to take Pligg’s side, especially if you’re just tuning in and jumping into the anti-Supergu bandwagon.

Phelps big mistake was deleting those posts from Pligg. However, Pligg now has other things to worry about: Ning-ning-ning-ning! I want to see them badmouth Marc Andreesen.

Whatever happened to this? I haven’t read anything in the last year and a half about it.