does copyright mean anything on the internets?
Thursday, 3 May 2007 @ 8:50This stuff seems to happen every day.
In another part of the globe, Mr. X, stakeholder in Giganticorp, Inc., decides his company needs a web presence. His company hires a “talented” designer (or uses someone in-house) to design said web site. As the new site is completed, everyone in the company oohs and aahhs at the awesome design that has been produced. The site goes live on Monday morning.
Meanwhile, across the ocean, a successful and productive web designer wakes up and decides to check his referrer logs. Wait—where is this link coming from? As he opens the referring site in his browser, his cup of coffee falls to the floor—along with his jaw—as his eyes behold Giganticorp’s new web site. “Wow…that’s my site!”, he exclaims.
What do we do when your hard work is pilfered by some no good designer trying to either make a quick buck without working or is just too lazy to come up with his own idea?
Here are the sites in question…
The ripoff
The original
Wow, well yours is certainly more elegant, but the resemblance in layout is uncanny.
Tell me, since i’m a Web noob, what is a referrer log?
You designed the current A List Apart skin? Congratulations, that is a very respectable project to lay cliam to.
It ceases to amaze me how stupid criminal are. Why is it that they almost always choose the most high profile sites that they can find? Wouldn’t it be smarter to find something obscure? Of all the sites you could pick, I can’t imagine ever having the guts to rip off A List Apart.
What to do?
The first thing I would do it take screen shots and document everything you can.
Next, if they are leeching anything off of your server (which is very often the case as they usually will only modify the code as much as they have to and links to images and style sheets will usually remain), I would change the file names/paths. And, if you’re feeling frisky, you can replace these assets with some fun content that they aren’t expecting such as Mike Davidson did when Senator John McCain’s web team stole his MySpace template.
Third, I would report them to Pirated sites.
And then, I would send them a strongly worded, formal cease and desist letter. Nine times out of ten a letter such as this is all that is needed and the site will come down. Most of the time—as you described in your hypothetical scenario—the business owner is oblivious to the theft and assumes that the work is original. Once the issue is brought to their attention, the artist will be canned and the site will be replaced with a “we apologize for the inconvenience but we are experiencing technical difficulties… we will be back online shortly” notice.
I wish I designed the A List Apart site! :) I was trying to be non-specific and anecdotal about who the designer was. Sorry if I was misleading! :(
It was designed by Jason Santa Maria in Philly. My whole point was that this practice of taking without repercussions is getting out of hand, especially when it affects sites as well known as A List Apart.
@Vuel: referrer logs are server files that keep track of how visitors to your site get there and where they came from. If someone steals something from your site, a lot of times they either link directly to the image on your server, or leave links to your site in the code they steal.
Thanks Rick. I work at Omniture, so I should know that. :P
@Vuel
no prob…what do you do at Omniture? I see their billboards all over the place these days. Good company to work for?
For sure. And we are huge in the B2B world. I am essentially the events designer, though I do all of the print design and some light HTML.
I in fact do most of those billboards, at least the recent ‘Green Guy’ billboard.