Comments on: Flash Plagiarism and the Current Climate

By: Ken

Ken — Wed, 31 Dec 1969 19:00:00 +0000

For most intents and purposes, isn’t it possible to copyright both the look and code of your site? My company’s site was recently ripped by another design agency in another country. You could tell the decompiler wasn’t used as the scripting was amateur and seemed to have been done by hand. However, the site looked very similar with many elements blatantly copied. We have a copyright notice on the bottom of our site. As such, we immediately emailed the infringing company and told them that we would be taking legal action unless they took the rip down. They admitted to ripping our site, appologised and removed the site straight away.

By: sgrosvenor

sgrosvenor — Wed, 31 Dec 1969 19:00:00 +0000

The problem here is obviously primarily for Flash developers and the resultant SWFs. It all depends on how unscrupulous the plagiarizer(s) are, whilst it’s easy to spot a blatant site rip and inform them accordingly, if someone steals a whole bunch of functions and graphical / non-graphical entities and secretes them into their own designs so as not to be a blatant rip, it can be difficult to track.

By: Ken

Ken — Wed, 31 Dec 1969 19:00:00 +0000

Yes, I agree. It can be difficult to impossible to track if people are ripping your code. Again though, I wouldn’t worry. As someone said recently on Ultrashock, people who rip code from SWF’s are like people who cheat in school. They may get away with it for a few weeks or a few months, but life has a way of catching up with these people. E.G- they will be uncovered for the talentless hacks that they are sooner or later. As a Flash Developer, I’m not particularly concerned about this “phenomonon”

By: woodyChicago

woodyChicago — Wed, 31 Dec 1969 19:00:00 +0000

This one really heats up on some of the other Flash blogs. I get really sick of the “it’s only meant for good intentions” argument and the “you’ll change your mind once it happens to you” warnings. The rip-offs that occur thanks to decompilers do way more damage than the lost file here and there that somebody doesn’t have backed up, in my opinion. People say “well, that’s how we learn Flash.” That’s lame. There are hundreds of tutorials and books out there for those that really want to learn. Decompilers are for those that want to rip.

By: glenn_a_m

glenn_a_m — Wed, 31 Dec 1969 19:00:00 +0000

Hmmm, sorry, but I really have to disagree with that (”Decompilers are for those that want to rip”). The major part of my employment is creating utilities and code for swf creation. I use ASV (ActionScriptViewer) practically every day, it is a brilliant product. When testing/debugging code, it is critical to be able to analyse the generated swf files. ASV enables me to diagnose problems far more rapidly than just the hex editor would. Anyway there’s a couple of cents worth, I just wanted to point out that they aren’t pure evil.

By: Ken

Ken — Wed, 31 Dec 1969 19:00:00 +0000

Yes, but the point is “Who cares?” People who are so lame and useless that they need to rip whole sites are not the passionate leaders of our industry. Most of them are bedroom Web designers who charge less than a grand for a site. They’re not competition. They’re just talentless lamers who’ll keep earning a measly crust or eventually move into another industry and give it a bad name!

By: John

John — Wed, 31 Dec 1969 19:00:00 +0000

If flash was the same as maths there would only be one answer, how ever it is not therefore different people solve the same problem differently and this is why I tend to decomply swf files. Having said that, should I ever use a function or sequence I would include a credit to the originator. I do not work in design and don’t have a flash site up as yet.

By: Kiko

Kiko — Wed, 31 Dec 1969 19:00:00 +0000

I started my web design firm back in 1996. I followed all the evolutions of the web and I must say that everything I learnt was from reading other people's code. I also frequently use a flash decompiler to study code techniques. It is for me an invaluable help. It it saves me time and money and keeps me always in touch with latest coding tricks.
I do not see anything bad in it.
It is usually people with limited talent that tend to use obfuscators and similar tools. After they learn one or two things from others they're eager to protect their knowledge. But the web is in continuous evolution. You will always need new things to know.
That's why you came to this site anyway. To learn from other people's code.

By: Tim Hon

Tim Hon — Wed, 31 Dec 1969 19:00:00 +0000

YEs, this is a big concern, i used genables obfuscator, but the alpha was no match for my multi-swf project. it has to be able to track variables across all the swf's involved in the project, otherwise they can talk to eachother. EVEN IF ASV is able to decompile an obfuscated code, its almost useless because all the variables would be changed to incomprehensible number patterns, the functions would still work, but it would take a while for someone to figure out exactly what it did.

Does anyone know if .SWC can be decompiled? it must be, becuase obviously the Flash Plug-in built into IE must be able to read it, so ASV should be able to get into those as well.

By: RedHotRuss

RedHotRuss — Wed, 31 Dec 1969 19:00:00 +0000

After getting very excited about SWCs as a potential solution to this problem, I created one. Then I realised they can be opened in winzip. And then, you can open the SWF from there.

Back to square one. I only wished I had researched this more before setting off on a very large Flash project.