Plagiarism or Fair Use: The Online Debate Roiling the Climbing Community

BY MARY ANDINO

It takes a lot to stop me in my tracks while scrolling through Instagram. A few weeks ago, though, a post popped into my feed that did just that. A climber I hadn’t heard of before, David Lloyd, made a post accusing a popular app for digital climbing guidebooks, KAYA, of copying from his guidebook for a bouldering area in Wyoming. The app denied the accusations, but the post quickly exploded, with over 400 comments.

The scope of the debate ranged from KAYA and other guidebook authors speaking to their experiences to comments that could only be described as mudslinging. People blasted KAYA with comments like, “Dirty company at best. Watered down clones of hard, gritty years of work,” and they also critiqued Lloyd, saying, “You don’t own the folklore. Sit down.”

The subject quickly spawned its own post in the most popular climbing subreddit, r/climbing.

Why the fuss?

While of course I was curious about the veracity of these accusations, I was almost more drawn to the question of why this issue was so contentious, why it was sparking such strong reactions from the climbing community, a group that, in my experience, was all about stoke, encouragement, and pure love of the sport. I immediately knew that I wanted to bring nuance and understanding to this issue that had provoked such fierce tribalism.

To that end, ​​I spoke with dozens of stakeholders, including guidebook authors, publishers, and local climbing organizations. I spoke with KAYA’s co-founder and CEO, as well as its marketing manager, in a 1-hour and 20-minute virtual meeting, and had several follow-up conversations with them via email.

No matter what side you stand on in this controversy, it’s clear that it’s not a case of black and white, but one entirely colored by shades of gray, and one that plays on decades-old tensions within the climbing community.

What a user would typically see on the current version of the KAYA app. Photo: KAYA

What is KAYA, anyway?

Founded in 2019, KAYA began as an app for climbing gyms, allowing users to log climbs and workouts. Over time, it expanded to include information on outdoor climbing areas. In 2022, it published its first digital guidebook to Joe’s Valley, a bouldering area in Utah.

According to its website, KAYA’s guidebooks offer “exact GPS locations, detailed navigation, comprehensive topos, and thousands of beta videos — all downloadable for offline use.” These guidebooks are only available with a KAYA PRO subscription, a service that costs $60 per year or $13 per month.

How KAYA gets its guides

When it comes to acquiring new digital guidebooks, KAYA CEO David Gurman and Marketing Manager Eric Jerome described their typical process as following a few key steps. First, they’ll reach out to the author of an existing print guidebook, if one exists.

They’ll also contact each area’s local climbing organization (LCO). These grassroots nonprofits manage trail maintenance, land access, and hardware replacement for climbers.

In addition to the contributor, or author, each KAYA guidebook also has a moderator, a person who monitors access issues and updates the guidebook as things change over time. As far as financial compensation is concerned, KAYA gets 47.5% of revenue, the contributor gets 33.25%, the moderator gets 14.25% (47.5% if the contributor and moderator are the same person, which is often the case), and then 5% goes to LCOs.

How each user’s subscription fee is divided among areas is dictated proportionally based on which guides they view.

If the author of the print guide declines to work with KAYA, “We’ll try to get convergence on local community representation, [find] someone who’s got a tie to the local area, who’s been a part of the recent wave of development, who kind of understands what’s happening on the ground,” Gurman said.

What a typical user profile looks like. Photo: KAYA

When it works, everybody wins

We spoke with several authors who describe their experience with KAYA as following this stated playbook. Alan Watts and Andrew Leich, who wrote print guidebooks for Smith Rock State Park and Cheat Canyon Bouldering, respectively, have had zero issues working with KAYA on digital versions.

Jason Kehl is the moderator for the Hueco Tanks guidebook on KAYA and reported a positive experience.

“From my end, it’s been great. There’s not a lot of money in guidebooks in general, and what they’re paying is actually a little more than I was expecting,” Kehl said. “And I love being able to access the app from the back end if, say, a hold breaks, or you know, something gets downgraded.”

KAYA’s rocky relationships

While many of KAYA’s digital guidebooks undergo a smooth publishing process, the app has given rise to three key issues among the climbing community at large: ethics, access, and evolution.

Some of Andy White’s hand-drawn topo maps for the guidebook. Photo: Andy White

Ethics: can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em?

Steven Jeffrey helped publish KAYA’s first digital guidebook back in 2022 for the sandstone boulders of Joe’s Valley in Utah. But he had to request his name be added as the author after KAYA initially published the guide without attributing authorship to Jeffrey. He admitted he opted to work with the platform with some reservations.

“In the world of law and lawyers, they technically can’t steal your book, but they sure can write a guidebook right over top of you. So I would suggest joining KAYA to save your ass,” Jeffrey said.

But for authors who refuse to join KAYA’s growing library, the quick digitization of painstaking work that took seasons of their lives can be tough to swallow.

Andy White assembled a guidebook to 2,000 boulder problems in Canada’s Okanagan Valley over the span of 8 years. Kimbrough Moore co-authored a 464-page guide to Yosemite Bouldering. Both say that after turning down KAYA’s offer, KAYA sent climbers into the field using their work to populate digital content for the app in a matter of months.

Co-author James Lucas with the Yosemite guidebook. The team works to mail out copies. Photos: James Lucas

More complaints

The complaints go on, with authors claiming to see KAYA employees and/or local climbers with their guidebook in one hand, and a cellphone uploading photos and routes in the other. Some have even sleuthed KAYA employees purchasing paywalled guides in rivaling GunksApp, only to publish the same area on the KAYA app. In some instances, even names of projects only published in a single guidebook will quickly appear on the KAYA app.

The common refrain among guidebook authors was the extraordinary amount of labor that went into locating, identifying, photographing, and describing boulder problems that are sometimes miles into the woods.

Guidebook authors like Moore and White maintain that KAYA avoids the years of research and on-the-ground work that go into making guidebooks. Before they published the Yosemite book, Moore and his co-authors, James Lucas and Shannon Joslin, spent 3 days hiking 65 kilometers in Yosemite to double-check problems and retake photos.

Since acquiring its first guidebook in November 2022, Kaya now has 113 verified digital guidebooks behind its paywall, with approximately another 60 in development.

Impossibly fast growth

Moore believes that it is impossible to have achieved that rate of growth ethically.

“Some guidebooks take many years to write. And in the last three years, I believe [KAYA] assembled over 100 or so,” he said. “How can a tech company accomplish this? The only answer is by duplicating existing research, because it’s just not possible to accomplish what they have in an ethical way,” he said.

For its part, KAYA responds to complaints as they arise, sometimes removing guides altogether, other times delisting them as verified, “official” guides.

Gurman called these instances “early missteps” that were “overzealous.” Gurman’s team has even gone so far as to publish a blog post to address many of the accusations directly and more clearly outline how the app intends to work with authors. And, KAYA has categorically denied any accusations of plagiaristic behavior.

The tricky truth of access

While the technological component of this debate is modern, in reality, it touches on one of climbing’s eternal core tensions: access versus gatekeeping. On one hand, as climbers, we all want people to have the ability to climb outside and find joy in the sport. You shouldn’t have to be part of the “in crowd” to climb outside.

Andy White boulders in the Okanagan Valley. Photo: Andy White

On the other hand, sometimes areas need to be gatekept and only known by word of mouth to preserve access.

KAYA sees itself as a harbinger of equitable access for all.

“We built KAYA as a tool to help climbers have their best adventures and share meaningful experiences together. We’ve designed the experience and our community standards to promote a more inclusive digital space for climbers compared to other platforms that some may consider elitist and intimidating,” Jerome said in an email.

But many guidebook authors expressed concern that the wide accessibility of information on apps like KAYA may lead to overuse and overcrowding of climbing areas, potentially resulting in landowners revoking access.

Often, local areas have unwritten rules or areas where access is allowed but highly sensitive.

One of the boulders in Yosemite Valley. Photo: Gary Goldfinger

“In the south Okanagan, there’s a lot of very access-sensitive bouldering that we purposely did not put in the [print] guidebook for that reason,” White said. He’s concerned about what might happen if those areas come onto apps like KAYA.

There has not been a case of access being revoked to areas due to an influx of climbers from KAYA, but authors worry nonetheless.

Evolution of tradition

Climbing began as a counterculture sport and has long been the purview of self-described dirtbags and hippies. As climbing has gone more mainstream with the growth of gyms, some fear that KAYA represents how climbing is losing its way.

“KAYA is some mass-marketed, passionless business with an end goal and a means to get there that doesn’t really include the dedication and the pioneers [of the sport],” Fred Knapp, owner of print guidebook publisher Sharp End, asserted.

In many ways, this controversy is just the latest in climbing’s long history of tradition butting up against evolution. While we herald and celebrate innovators in the sport, at the same time, we bristle at change.

Robbins in Yosemite. Photo: Royal Robbins

In the 1970s, it was Royal Robbins chopping off the bolts that Warren Harding had left on El Capitan, symbolic of their differences in climbing ethics. Then in the 1980s, what’s now accepted practice — bolting routes for sport climbing — ignited a firestorm, as trad climbers opposed this manipulation of the natural rock. Finally, in the 2010s, the boom in commercial climbing gyms sparked debate about whether the sport was losing its soul in favor of prioritizing financial growth.

Tradition vs evolution

The debates over KAYA and digital guidebooks may well just be the newest chapter in climbing’s storied history of tradition fighting evolution.

“You’re kind of dealing with two different climbers,” Jeffrey said, comparing the ethics of KAYA to a new school climber. “[There’s] the climber that’s a trad climber through and through, and then [with KAYA], you’re dealing with a climber that will glue and chip and retro bolt anything they want to climb. Yes, we’re both still climbers, but we both have extremely different ethics of what climbing is.”

KAYA, meanwhile, believes it is mutually beneficial for all: climbers, authors, and LCOS.

“I believe this is a watershed moment for climbing similar to sticky rubber and bolts,” Gurman said. “The digital revolution in climbing is equally as contentious as those innovations. The best platform will be the one that makes climbing more accessible, sustainably in concert with the community. We want to be that platform.”

In a world where access to information and beta videos are just a click away, it’s up to each climber to decide what responsible, ethical climbing and access look like.

This story first appeared on GearJunkie.