In case you missed, it freeCodeCamp News has moved to Medium. Since then, there has been a slight uproar about copyright infringement and @ossia ’s motivations.
Before we start this discussion, let’s recap.
Recap
Medium Threatens freeCodeCamp
As seen in the image above, Quincy describes steps Medium took to get freeCodeCamp behind their paywall to capitalize on the traffic the freeCodeCamp News blog brings. The email clearly states that:
They pressured us to put our articles behind their paywalls. We refused. So they tried to buy us. […] We refused. Then they started threatening us with a lawyer.
The motivation to get freeCodeCamp away from Medium is clear: Medium sole interest is money. Even @ben explains that:
freeCodeCamp Moves off Medium
On May 27th, 2019, freeCodeCamp announces their move off Medium. It is impossible for me to describe freeCodeCamp’s move off Medium better than @ossia himself: https://www.freecodecamp.org/forum/t/we-just-moved-off-of-medium-and-onto-freecodecamp-news-heres-how-you-can-use-it/279929.
To summarize, freeCodeCamp used the Ghost blog platform to serve as the home of freeCodeCamp News. He admits that the freeCodeCamp team is “still fixing quite a few bugs.”
@ben Writes About the freeCodeCamp Move to Medium
In
explains that:FreeCodeCamp seems to have just pulled the plug and taken everyone’s Medium content with them, to be displayed in a different context, wiping out the canonical URLs, while depriving the authors their ability to edit, delete, or manage in any way.
He tweets his article:
to 29K+ of his followers. In the thread, he accuses freeCodeCamp of literally stealing content without the consent of the copyright holder:
Ben Halpern 🤗@bendhalpern
FreeCodeCamp just left Medium, along with the articles that had been contributed to the publication—with no notice, and in violation of the terms they had agreed to as far as I can tell.
I wrote more about this. Please tell me if I'm missing something:
dev.to/ben/i-m-concer…18:46 PM - 28 May 2019
84
260
and breaking the lawBen Halpern 🤗@bendhalpern@tylermcginnis You were never asked whether you were okay with the move. It's literally stealing content without the consent of the copyright holder. I'm seriously concerned for FCC right now in terms of their legal exposure to many parties, including Medium and every writer.22:06 PM - 28 May 2019
Ben Halpern 🤗@bendhalpern@ossia I'm not concerned about it being competitive, I'm concerned about it being a massive violation of trust and likely against the law. To the extent it touches us is because some of those affected are employees at our company or members of our platform.19:44 PM - 28 May 2019
Personal Opinion
@ossia has made his motivations for moving off of Medium very clear. It is obvious that Medium wants to monetize the freeCodeCamp blog posts while freeCodeCamp (in their usual fashion) believes in an open internet and blog posts that are free to read.
@ben
is concerned about freeCodeCamp and those who have created content for the freeCodeCamp publication. However, I don’t understand why that concern needed to be made public in front of the entire developer community. If the concern is real, why blast it? Why not approach @ossia
in private or, better yet, schedule an open discussion with @ossia
present? Why accuse @ossia
of being “super flippant in addressing the issue?”
Ben Halpern 🤗@bendhalpern@tylermcginnis I understand where you're coming from, but this is a conversation that needed to happen. Publishing with zero consent is seriously messed up, regardless of broader intentions. I'm trying to give benefit of doubt, but they've been super flippant in addressing the issue here.21:56 PM - 28 May 2019
Tyler McGinnis points out that @ben
’s article “feels a little premature and virtue signally.":
and I completely agree.@bendhalpern (this is going to be overly harsh and that's not my intention, I ❤️ dev.to) but your post feels a little premature and virtue signally. After getting set up, (unless I'm missing something) none of your points are valid to me now as I can fix everything mentioned.21:49 PM - 28 May 2019
This uproar on the @ben ’s part comes off as a play against the perceived competition (though @ossia promises it will not be a competitor to dev.to) and to promote his position as a content creator advocate.
The freeCodeCamp migration from Medium to their own platform did not go so well. There are issues with the author link that are being patched up. Mistakes were made. However, given everything that freeCodeCamp has done for the developer community (read: provide a FREE platform for ANYONE to learn web development), we as a developer community should give their small, non-profit organization the benefit of the doubt.
Lastly, please feel at liberty to share your thoughts on this issue. Don’t let “content creators,” tell you that it’s hard to understand if “you’ve never been a content creator”
or that you’re not at liberty to criticize @ben
Lindsey Kopacz 🐞@littlekope@0xaeternum @graeme_fulton @bendhalpern @ossia @freeCodeCamp Actually, he's standing up for a lot of his content creators who have posted on freecodecamp's medium blog.
I'm pretty impressed with how he's handling it. If you've never been a content creator, it may be hard to understand though.20:50 PM - 28 May 2019
Lindsey Kopacz 🐞@littlekope@0xaeternum @bendhalpern If you're not a content creator and haven't seen how badly your traffic has suffered from this change, I don't think you're at liberty to criticize Ben's reasonable criticism.17:43 PM - 29 May 2019
Most of all, don’t let “content creators” make you feel as if your questions and concerns are “costing a lot of time.”
Lindsey Kopacz 🐞@littlekope@0xaeternum @bendhalpern Please read the article that Ben originally posted as well as the comments to learn more. you're costing me a lot of time. You can also send me money if you want to learn more, I have a venmo!18:24 PM - 29 May 2019
Don’t let your voice be stifled.
I’m with @ossia . ✊
Top comments (2)
I'm not really for or against, and "stealing" is a bit nebulous when it comes to content and copyright (I'm not a lawyer).
However, I think if FCC moved content from the service before alerting users then they went about it poorly - after all users are the heart and sole of FCC. From what I understand that is the heart of the issue - that peoples content was moved between services without their knowledge or consent.
Which, as Ben pointed out, is likely against the Terms of Service. Ben has clearly been understanding of why the move happened but is just concerned about the ramifications of how the move happened.