YC and 500 Startups company Curebit caught stealing from 37 Signals

There's copyright infringement for personal reasons (i.e. I really wanted to watch that movie) and there's commercial plagiarism. It's a completely false equivalency.

yep, what if you do? copying a color code is certainly not speaking to copyright concerns.

There are a couple of points to consider though. the first and most obvious is that generally a background color by itself will not work well with the other colors on your site - choosing items in isolation like that is generally a fantastic way to end up with coder art (believe me, I know something about how to produce coder art).

The thing that good designers do, and do well, is make all the elements work together, generally if you simply take a single element (background color, font sizes, etc) from someone else's site and dump it on your own site without considering the overall effect, you are doing a stupid thing.

I don't think anyone here is worried about the sharing of ideas - uses of color, general placement of elements and so forth, taking those things and merging them with your own needs and messages is how new art is made. The problem with copyright usually comes when someone simply does wholesale copying without the process of considering each element in terms of its effect, the message you want to get across and so forth.

IMO A 'good faith' copying of highrise done competently would produce something new, something where the source of inspiration can be clear, but where there is sufficient change and obvious consideration of the factors that made your own product unique that there is no question of direct copying.

The damage done by straight copying is always twofold, the first is the obvious - the breach of copyright, the second is also clear but many people miss it - a design produced that speaks to a specific product, specific website goals and specific messages is very unlikely to have the same positive effect if transplanted wholesale.

That is why wholesale copying is not just a sign of a lack of ethics, it is also a clear indication of a total lack of competence. The person doing the copying entirely lacks knowledge of the process that is required to produce good work, and has no idea why the site they admire so much works so well. Even putting copyright and ethical concerns aside, I would have no interest in working with someone who lacks the competence to understand why wholesale copying is usually a stupid idea. They will not produce good work targeted at my needs, they will produce good work targeted at something entirely unrelated.

Because of the fundamental concept of property, and ownership, and the right to control your own creations?

It's one thing to voluntarily release something into the public domain (or enable its direct re-use via licenses like Creative Commons).

It's another thing to say that all work should be public property, usable as long as credit is given. Or are you suggesting that everything belongs to the People, comrade?

Even disregarding the profit motive for a second here - if I created a successful web page, should, say, the Westboro Baptist Church be free to take my web page and use it to support their (IMO vile) efforts, so long as they gave credit?

This issue boils down to something plain and simple.

If you come across something on the Web that visually makes since for your business, you open up your favorite editor and begin to code to match what you see. Source graphics that are similar in nature to reflect your objective and the design's objective.

For CSS and JS, examine what has already been accomplished and add your flavor and tweaks that make your brand what it is.

But if you copy CSS and HTML directly from another site and link to their images? For an up and coming funded startup? You are just greedy and lazy, or someone on the team got lazy.

I haven't tried design, so I don't know if I have talent for it or not. But I do have talent for programming, and I don't mind people copying my knowledge and work there, assuming: A) a world where everyone does so, B) credit is given.