The Dangers Of Social Interaction: cTrader Accused of Alleged Copyright

American technology firm Modulus Financial Engineering, which produces software solutions for professional traders, brokerages, trading firms as well as educational, governmental and non-profit institutions, announced that it has applied the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) in order to achieve a successful take-down of source code from ctdn.com.

The website in question, ctdn.com, which encompasses the trade name cTDN, an acronym for cTrader Developer Network, and is a community which supplies trading algorithms for the cTrader and cAlgo trading platforms  is owned and operated by cTrader’s developer, Spotware Systems.

This DMCA take-down came into being after early suspicion by Modulus Financial Engineering that cTrader was infringing on copyright – and later that cTrader’s predecessor, Cosmilia Ltd, was in direct breach of its license agreement with Modulus.

Subsequently Modulus Financial Engineering filed a DMCA take-down notice in July 2013 which was complied with by Rackspace.

Intellectual property is most certainly a valuable asset, and in today’s FX market, where every company which provides technological solutions relies on retaining its own competitive edge via constant development to maintain an edge in the market.

Use of protocols and coding is a delicate business, as it must be kept secure and not only away from those with malicious intentions, but also those wishing to plagiarize it for their own purposes. This is certainly a sensitive enough matter for those who compile their own material, but for those who host an open community where others can contribute from outside, as in the case of so many social communities in the FX world these days, the dangers are exponential.

Richard Gardner, Founder & CEO, Modulus Financial Engineering made a public statement regarding the take-down that “in July we had a successful DMCA take-down with cTrader’s ISP Rackspace to remove our source code from the cTDN website.”

Mr. Gardner also alleged that despite cTrader’s assertion that this particular source code was posted under an anonymous account, the code was posted under the cAlgo_Support username. Mr. Holeu considers this to be a pseudonym used by the forum user, and not to originate from the company itself.

Spotware Systems responded to the matter relating to Rackspace’s compliance with the DMCA take-down insofar as Rackspace, which hosts the website, issued a letter to Spotware Systems requesting that those particular links must be deleted.

This has resulted in a battle of wits, which culminated in Modulus Financial Engineering making something of an example of this particular case by having gone public. The matter of whether it is an infringement of copyright by cTDN or whether it was an anonymous posting by a community user, it seems, generates the same outcome in the eyes of the law.