I think you might just be taking the wrong approach. Shaming them is a bad idea, at least as a first move.
Seek-out and contact the owners of these businesses. Point out what you have discovered. There's an outside possibility that they have no clue that their web designers have done this. They might actually feel rather embarrassed to learn so. If I couldn't code my own sites and had to rely on designers who took this approach I certainly would feel pretty bad upon learning about it.
What to do then? Tell them that you'll gladly allow them to use the design for a small fee. Or, perhaps better yet, if they actually hired an outside firm to build their site, propose that you take over their site design and that you'll fix what they got wrong.
If the deed was done in-house or you are up against a coder-designer-founder that just go lazy, figure out a win-win. Out of respect they ought to at least pay you something. You could even lobby for a link in the footer with "Site design based on ...". I wouldn't opt for "Site designed by" because if they screw it up it could look bad for you.
Aikido vs. Karate. It can work wonders.
Oh, yes, I also concur with those who proposed that you might want to consider productizing your design. As a minimum-viable-product you now know that there are people willing to steal it. With the right approach you might be able to find people willing to buy it.
You could even consider expanding upon this and creating a few more designs. Post them openly on your site with an invitation to use them and the condition that you are to receive payment after a thirty day trial period. Just a thought.
Wow. I don't agree with this response at all. "Allow them to use the design for a small fee"?
The original site design was the product of careful branding, long hours of coding, and probably countless revisions: the point of all this work is to create something that uniquely represents the company.
Responding to piracy by "homogenizing" an original design isn't the answer.
The rest of the business world is definitely not that generous (trust me: if you steal an image from Getty Images, they don't let you get away with paying a "small fee"). Neither should OP.
> "There's an outside possibility that they have no clue that their web designers have done this."
I thought that too but of all the sites listed, only one is not some kind of digital/creative/design/etc agency. I'm more forgiving of the one company that may have contracted out their website but not really for the others who should know better.
Edit: I doubt shaming would really achieve anything (other than catharsis for the OP).
This is a case of a design company that basically ripped off the design of another design company. They used almost exactly the same sub-title on the first page. As for the bottom page, it is the same, word for word. I mean, they didn't even bother changing it. What do you think the OP should do? Call it's competitors and tell them that they should pay a small fee for ripping them off?
Again, I agree with your general statement, but I think that all of the companies involved in design, marketing (or any other creative business) that copied this design deserve being called on.
"Shaming them is a bad idea, at least as a first move.
Seek-out and contact the owners of these businesses. Point out what you have discovered. There's an outside possibility that they have no clue that their web designers have done this. They might actually feel rather embarrassed to learn so."
You're just suggesting a different form of shaming :)
Being passively shamed as the OP suggests might be taken better than direct shaming, I imagine. Granted, either attempt might be less satisfying than one expects, but passive attempts at least let one go on with their day with less expectations for interaction and follow-up.
It is interesting to see how the community reacts when someone steals their work. There are some good suggestions (e.g. the parent here) like contacting the owners of the offending sites politely.
Quite a few of the other comments seem pretty malicious in nature. Like serving up javascript which behaves mischievously. It doesn't seem to matter to these people if the site owners were victims of bad and lazy designers.
(Never mind the fact that the original design is not that original.)
I can't believe that almost the same people then go on to rage and demand, more or less in spirit, everything else be free and open. (academic papers, iOS, music etc)
Free, open and being kind are rules which are good to apply to others. Isn't it?
Folks, the above comment is the best way to go about it.
(Pasting an earlier top-level comment of mine as it seems to have been deluged under the anger.)
This is true. But some people ignore the e-mails and calls, or lie, or both—at which point shame is an excellent strategy. My family runs a grant writing consulting firm, and we've had people rip us off too—now, when they rip us off, we call them out too: http://blog.seliger.com/2009/07/03/fake-grant-writers-spamme...
I agree. Even for design agencies and web shops, it can be a difficult task to work on your own site sometimes with client work being the top priority. I've seen first hand web agencies basically cookie-cutting other sites that offer similar services. Which is silly, especially if they want to stand out.
Now in this case, I think you have every right to feel upset that they pretty much jacked your whole website... in some cases even the raw HTML and CSS. Some of those examples didn't even change anything and almost all used your icons.
I do agree with @robomartin though, might wanna take the nice-guy approach first and give them the opportunity to admit their wrongdoings. Good luck, your site looks kick-ass by the way.
i've caught one of my design employees copying stock stuff and claiming it was his own work (and fired him for it), so yes it's very much possible for the owners/managers to not know that the site is a copy.
i'm not sure your other suggestions are that great, and probably public critisism isn't that big of a deal actually (as expresed by PT barnum, all news is good news, or in this case, good SEO)
Interesting, given the copying of the js directly, you could use that to your advantage. Have it behave one way if the page is served up from an IP address you own, and slightly differently served from a foreign address.
Could be sublime, like adds a menu item/link to their pages that has "Web Design Services" that points back to you, to the silly "Get free copyrighted material here" and a link to some dubious content site. Or it could just break periodically and cause them great frustration until they give up and use something else.
I think there might be a commonality here – a number of them seem to be located in Australia (with one in India and one in the UK) – a whois check shows a few AU contacts and an AU-based whois privacy guard, so I can't be sure, but the do seem to be oddly clustered, IMHO.
My bet would be that some third-party web firm/designer has sold all of these companies a "unique design" and more than likely most of them are unaware of the origin of the design, much less the other sites with the very same design.
Make a premium WordPress theme based on this design, slap a price on it, and distribute through WordPress theme sites thereby creating an additional income stream for your company. I'm in Miami and I'd be happy to help.
Totally agree here. Give them a legal way to 'copy' it and you'll make some money on it. Maybe even make the copyable version easier to install and look slightly different.
You could easily use this to your advantage:
1. Your portfolio is now larger (my designs + people who ripped off my designs)
2. You could create a "Submit sites that ripped off our design" for your customers and create a conversation around it
3. Ask the sites to reference yours in their footer
4. Modify the ripped off source files to display modified header/footer on external sites
You should be thanking them for creating so many opportunities for you. Why not expect everything will be stolen and go from there? It's all public files in the end.
While I agree that these other sites have "ripped you off," I don't think you should spend any more time worrying about it or "fighting" them.
From a quick glance, these sites appear to be tiny "companies" that probably saw a nice site and decided to copy it rather than think up something great for themselves. They are probably not taking away any measurable business from you via their copies sites, so any time you spend "calling them out" or even drawing more attention to them is just a waste of your time.
Go think up the next great design for them to copy and focus on making your own company better instead of putting down the others who decide to take a shortcut.
This post is pretty childish. Competition and copycats have existed for centuries and will continue to exist long after you're gone. You think calling them out is going to cause them to have a sudden change of heart after they presumably ripped off your design? Probably not. And I'm almost certain it won't affect any of their future business. You've not only placed yourself in an antagonistic position, but are now open to rebuttals and return attacks. Didn't you read OXO's response to Quirky "calling them out"?
The best thing to do is either ignore something like this or find a way to use the situation to better your business, perhaps with a post about how you value design innovation at your company or, like others have suggested, selling a Wordpress theme.
Don't concern yourself with trivial crap like this; just smile, make the best of it and focus on doing your thing.
I've seen a few posts on HN complaining about people copying their sites, but I'm not sure I sympathize.
Websites are HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, all of which is open text and easily copied. You shouldn't have any illusions that your design and code is copied and reused somewhere else.
In this case, the websites that are using the design aren't competitors and aren't taking away business from the original developer. What are they expecting to get out of it? An additional revenue stream of HTML templates?
I agree it's a problem if they are hot-linking to assets on someone else's server, but that's a problem in that it's consuming someone's bandwidth and server resources.
I say, call it flattery and be proud that you made a design that other people want to copy. If you're really paranoid (I don't see why), ask for attribution like "Site design by ..." at the bottom of the page.
It's because it's a lie. Many times the copied sites have copy asserting that so-and-so is a great firm, make great products, when they haven't made anything. If isn't such a big deal, why don't the copied sites say 'We copied this entire website, minus copy changes, from X.'?
This is more akin to copying someone's math test and not having enough understanding of the English language to avoid copying the "Name: Keith Gabryelski" in the upper right hand corner
Stealing a design/style or color scheme would yield a "boo hoo" from me. Get over it -- pretty things are pretty and people will build on them.
Whole-hog copying code so that you copy the Google Analytics javascript deserves ridicule and if they removed the authorship comments I say "hang em high".
Funnily enough, their website loaded slower than the ones who were ripping it, so I was initially confused about what the argument was as the large background image took ~20s to load/push down the rest of the layout. The JS on the navigation never started working either.
You might want to add rel="nofollow" attributes to those outgoing links. This indicates to search engines that you do not want your links to influence the other sites' rankings. Not sure if this is possible with tumblr though.
A design company that rips off the design of another design company! That's a new one.
/sarcasm off
Ok, it really is shameless. Especially the one that even hosts the javascript on your server (that opens up some interesting possibilities). But it really is flattery, the good bit is that you can now show them in your portfolio.
On another note, this design, while nice isn't all that original. I've seen it in other places too and maybe they ripped you off as well but for sure it's been around for a while.
Fun anecdote: I once sued company that had ripped off our script for doing plug-in-free video streaming. In court their defence to the claim they ripped us off was they had not ripped it from us but from one of our licensees.
It is interesting to see how the community reacts when someone steals their work. There are some good suggestions like contacting the owners of the offending sites politely.
Quite a few of the comments seem pretty malicious in nature. Like serving up javascript which behaves mischievously. It doesn't seem to matter to these people if the site owners were victims of bad and lazy designers.
(Never mind the fact that the original design is not that original.)
I can't believe that almost the same people then go on to rage and demand, more or less in spirit, everything else be free and open. (academic papers, iOS, music etc)
Free, open and being kind are rules which are good to apply to others. Isn't it?
This might be a web design company reusing your design. The sites listed may have no knowledge of this being a copy, and most likely paid a high dollar amount for this cool design.
Get in touch with the site, hear their side. Worst case, sue them.
[+] [-] robomartin|13 years ago|reply
Seek-out and contact the owners of these businesses. Point out what you have discovered. There's an outside possibility that they have no clue that their web designers have done this. They might actually feel rather embarrassed to learn so. If I couldn't code my own sites and had to rely on designers who took this approach I certainly would feel pretty bad upon learning about it.
What to do then? Tell them that you'll gladly allow them to use the design for a small fee. Or, perhaps better yet, if they actually hired an outside firm to build their site, propose that you take over their site design and that you'll fix what they got wrong.
If the deed was done in-house or you are up against a coder-designer-founder that just go lazy, figure out a win-win. Out of respect they ought to at least pay you something. You could even lobby for a link in the footer with "Site design based on ...". I wouldn't opt for "Site designed by" because if they screw it up it could look bad for you.
Aikido vs. Karate. It can work wonders.
Oh, yes, I also concur with those who proposed that you might want to consider productizing your design. As a minimum-viable-product you now know that there are people willing to steal it. With the right approach you might be able to find people willing to buy it.
You could even consider expanding upon this and creating a few more designs. Post them openly on your site with an invitation to use them and the condition that you are to receive payment after a thirty day trial period. Just a thought.
[+] [-] mijustin|13 years ago|reply
The original site design was the product of careful branding, long hours of coding, and probably countless revisions: the point of all this work is to create something that uniquely represents the company.
Responding to piracy by "homogenizing" an original design isn't the answer.
The rest of the business world is definitely not that generous (trust me: if you steal an image from Getty Images, they don't let you get away with paying a "small fee"). Neither should OP.
[+] [-] amirmc|13 years ago|reply
I thought that too but of all the sites listed, only one is not some kind of digital/creative/design/etc agency. I'm more forgiving of the one company that may have contracted out their website but not really for the others who should know better.
Edit: I doubt shaming would really achieve anything (other than catharsis for the OP).
[+] [-] abraxasz|13 years ago|reply
http://dapaticalglobal.com/
This is a case of a design company that basically ripped off the design of another design company. They used almost exactly the same sub-title on the first page. As for the bottom page, it is the same, word for word. I mean, they didn't even bother changing it. What do you think the OP should do? Call it's competitors and tell them that they should pay a small fee for ripping them off?
Again, I agree with your general statement, but I think that all of the companies involved in design, marketing (or any other creative business) that copied this design deserve being called on.
[+] [-] illuminate|13 years ago|reply
You're just suggesting a different form of shaming :)
Being passively shamed as the OP suggests might be taken better than direct shaming, I imagine. Granted, either attempt might be less satisfying than one expects, but passive attempts at least let one go on with their day with less expectations for interaction and follow-up.
[+] [-] ricardobeat|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cscurmudgeon|13 years ago|reply
Quite a few of the other comments seem pretty malicious in nature. Like serving up javascript which behaves mischievously. It doesn't seem to matter to these people if the site owners were victims of bad and lazy designers. (Never mind the fact that the original design is not that original.)
I can't believe that almost the same people then go on to rage and demand, more or less in spirit, everything else be free and open. (academic papers, iOS, music etc) Free, open and being kind are rules which are good to apply to others. Isn't it?
Folks, the above comment is the best way to go about it.
(Pasting an earlier top-level comment of mine as it seems to have been deluged under the anger.)
[+] [-] jseliger|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bwsewell|13 years ago|reply
Now in this case, I think you have every right to feel upset that they pretty much jacked your whole website... in some cases even the raw HTML and CSS. Some of those examples didn't even change anything and almost all used your icons.
I do agree with @robomartin though, might wanna take the nice-guy approach first and give them the opportunity to admit their wrongdoings. Good luck, your site looks kick-ass by the way.
[+] [-] novaleaf|13 years ago|reply
i'm not sure your other suggestions are that great, and probably public critisism isn't that big of a deal actually (as expresed by PT barnum, all news is good news, or in this case, good SEO)
[+] [-] ChuckMcM|13 years ago|reply
Could be sublime, like adds a menu item/link to their pages that has "Web Design Services" that points back to you, to the silly "Get free copyrighted material here" and a link to some dubious content site. Or it could just break periodically and cause them great frustration until they give up and use something else.
[+] [-] incongruity|13 years ago|reply
My bet would be that some third-party web firm/designer has sold all of these companies a "unique design" and more than likely most of them are unaware of the origin of the design, much less the other sites with the very same design.
[+] [-] elboheme|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mtrimpe|13 years ago|reply
That people are taking the risk of illegally copying it and being publicly shamed speaks volumes for the desirability of your design.
[+] [-] andresmax|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] niel|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sarhus|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pibefision|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] utopkara|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mrgreenfur|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] methodin|13 years ago|reply
You should be thanking them for creating so many opportunities for you. Why not expect everything will be stolen and go from there? It's all public files in the end.
[+] [-] tensafefrogs|13 years ago|reply
From a quick glance, these sites appear to be tiny "companies" that probably saw a nice site and decided to copy it rather than think up something great for themselves. They are probably not taking away any measurable business from you via their copies sites, so any time you spend "calling them out" or even drawing more attention to them is just a waste of your time.
Go think up the next great design for them to copy and focus on making your own company better instead of putting down the others who decide to take a shortcut.
[+] [-] corwinstephen|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] stephen_g|13 years ago|reply
Out of concern for their possible future clients, I think it's best that they're publicly shamed.
[+] [-] l0c0b0x|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] 0x0|13 years ago|reply
line 173: <script src="./smacontech_files/ideaware.js" type="text/javascript"></script>
[+] [-] kyro|13 years ago|reply
The best thing to do is either ignore something like this or find a way to use the situation to better your business, perhaps with a post about how you value design innovation at your company or, like others have suggested, selling a Wordpress theme.
Don't concern yourself with trivial crap like this; just smile, make the best of it and focus on doing your thing.
[+] [-] sequoia|13 years ago|reply
^None of these people are "copying" him, at least visually. OP did not invent links with vertical scroll or the vertical parallax effect.
OP: Clearly some of the sites outright ripped off your design, but stop trash talking sites with designs you merely think are "similar" to yours.
[+] [-] dusing|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] guilloiguaran|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] noeltock|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] 1as|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|13 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] Osiris|13 years ago|reply
Websites are HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, all of which is open text and easily copied. You shouldn't have any illusions that your design and code is copied and reused somewhere else.
In this case, the websites that are using the design aren't competitors and aren't taking away business from the original developer. What are they expecting to get out of it? An additional revenue stream of HTML templates?
I agree it's a problem if they are hot-linking to assets on someone else's server, but that's a problem in that it's consuming someone's bandwidth and server resources.
I say, call it flattery and be proud that you made a design that other people want to copy. If you're really paranoid (I don't see why), ask for attribution like "Site design by ..." at the bottom of the page.
[+] [-] lysol|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] keithgabryelski|13 years ago|reply
Stealing a design/style or color scheme would yield a "boo hoo" from me. Get over it -- pretty things are pretty and people will build on them.
Whole-hog copying code so that you copy the Google Analytics javascript deserves ridicule and if they removed the authorship comments I say "hang em high".
[+] [-] gbadman|13 years ago|reply
- http://tools.pingdom.com/fpt/#!/eDa8U8X2P/http://ideaware.co...
[+] [-] mnicole|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jcromartie|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ww520|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rukshn|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] drzaiusapelord|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] niel|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] retube|13 years ago|reply
Incidently - did you check whether these are individul copies or multiple clones by one person/organisation?
Anyway, if assets are being hotlinked you could have some fun...
[+] [-] djd|13 years ago|reply
* Some Russian Porn site uses jsonp using Crockford's host and he get a huge bill
* He polity asks them to host their own version and they don't reply
* He redirects the site to 'http://fbi.gov
* He receives a call from the FBI, because they have been getting suspicious traffic from some Russian site
* He then goes on to add a alert box with a annoying warning saying the site stole his bandwidth. Who cares for warnings any ways?
* He finally puts a loop in the JS file so that the other site wont load. He finally wins
[+] [-] afandian|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jacquesm|13 years ago|reply
/sarcasm off
Ok, it really is shameless. Especially the one that even hosts the javascript on your server (that opens up some interesting possibilities). But it really is flattery, the good bit is that you can now show them in your portfolio.
On another note, this design, while nice isn't all that original. I've seen it in other places too and maybe they ripped you off as well but for sure it's been around for a while.
Fun anecdote: I once sued company that had ripped off our script for doing plug-in-free video streaming. In court their defence to the claim they ripped us off was they had not ripped it from us but from one of our licensees.
It was a very short session.
[+] [-] cscurmudgeon|13 years ago|reply
Quite a few of the comments seem pretty malicious in nature. Like serving up javascript which behaves mischievously. It doesn't seem to matter to these people if the site owners were victims of bad and lazy designers.
(Never mind the fact that the original design is not that original.)
I can't believe that almost the same people then go on to rage and demand, more or less in spirit, everything else be free and open. (academic papers, iOS, music etc)
Free, open and being kind are rules which are good to apply to others. Isn't it?
[+] [-] brador|13 years ago|reply
Get in touch with the site, hear their side. Worst case, sue them.
[+] [-] hjay|13 years ago|reply
From your post, I get the impression that you have not yet spoken to those companies about it.
That would be a good start.