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I’m Tired Of Companies Ripping off our site, So I’m Calling Them Out

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Re: I’m Tired Of Companies Ripping off our site, So I’m Calling Them Out

#251

Post by jiggy2011 »

alexqgb wrote: post #214
robomartin wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The OP is a design house. Is this particular design the last drop of creative juice they have? I would think they can certainly evolve their site into another equally interesting design. It's almost like what happens to Mercedes Benz. Companies like Mitsubishi shamelessly copy MBZ designs. They've been doing it for years. MBZ's answer is to continuously innovate. Obsolete you own product.

Really? They can "evolve" their site? At what cost? Specifically, do you think it's a cost that's equal to or lower than the cost of simply waiting for others to do the hard work, then copying their advances? If you do, I can understand why you'd see your approach as a viable one. But if it turns out that origination is vastly more time and resource intensive than duplication (which, duh, it is), you'll find that the…

I suppose design is like fashion. Whatever you do will be emulated and plain ripped off pretty quickly so if you want to be seen as the hip trendsetter who gets to charge the highest prices you need to be constantly reinventing yourself to stay ahead of the curve.

Re: I’m Tired Of Companies Ripping off our site, So I’m Calling Them Out

#252

Post by piqufoh »

Raz0rblade wrote: post #230
mijustin wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Get a life and get used to it. Overall its just a design, you think its great, and at least a few agreed on it and copied it. There is no copyright on web pages. Web pages are there to be seen and thus their source to be copied. By even watching your page its in my cache now. I could copy it and use it. If you where a little bit smarter some .js code might have protected for easy copying, but you didnt do that, who t…

"Get a life and get used to it" Bit tough no? OP is only calling them out!

Re: I’m Tired Of Companies Ripping off our site, So I’m Calling Them Out

#253

Post by incongruity »

caseysoftware wrote: post #228
incongruity wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This also makes it very difficult to maintain for your client and a pain in the arse for any other designer or coder who has to deal with your work. IMHO, unless your client is completely aware and onboard with this and has access to the original, un-adulterated version, you're doing a disservice to them. (I say this as a designer and coder with degrees and 10+ years of experience to back up my opinion)

Making this as a deployment step should be pretty straightforward. On the plus side, this might also discourage the random client from just uploading updates via FTP..

As an automated deployment step, I have a little less of an issue with it, but it's still highly dependent on the client. If they are unaware that you are doing this and do not have the ability to access the clean source files then you are depriving them of the ability to update their site. Sure, sure, nobody wants a client messing up their nicely crafted work, but in the case that you two part ways or you (or your shop, if you're not a freelancer) can't do something for one reason or another, then the product you've sold them is verging on defective unless the crippled source deployment was explicitly agreed upon.

When you do work for someone else, in most cases, the client expects (and usually contractually ensures) that they own the work you do – and it's a reasonable expectation that it'll be revisable.

In general, this just comes off as spending way too much time to prevent something that probably won't happen because rarely is your work as good as you think it is (most of us suffer from this =) and if it is good enough to want to copy, given the nature of HTML/CSS/JS, etc., if you go out of your way to obscure things too much (and if it's a trend), the motivated will find a way to undo your obfuscation in a programatic/easy fashion.

But that's just my take – to each their own...

Re: I’m Tired Of Companies Ripping off our site, So I’m Calling Them Out

#254

Post by bpatrianakos »

One of the worst things is that a lot of times the ripped off design, while being really nice eye candy, doesn't suit the content at all. See the submarine propeller company linked to in the post for a great example. The information is organized and laid out in a visually pleasing way but at the cost of completely ignoring what the user is looking for and what kind of person the typical submarine propeller shopper is.

I'll admit I've heavily lifted design ideas from other sites but I've never once actually copied and pasted a single line of code from another site without permission. I would always always always recreate the elements I liked from scratch and the majority of times this gives a site a different enough appearance to not be a total ripoff. Just because you can view source doesn't mean the whole web is open source.

Re: I’m Tired Of Companies Ripping off our site, So I’m Calling Them Out

#256

Post by stch2 »

Raz0rblade wrote: post #230
mijustin wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Get a life and get used to it. Overall its just a design, you think its great, and at least a few agreed on it and copied it. There is no copyright on web pages. Web pages are there to be seen and thus their source to be copied. By even watching your page its in my cache now. I could copy it and use it. If you where a little bit smarter some .js code might have protected for easy copying, but you didnt do that, who t…

Just because it's possible to steal something, you/society should allow it to happen? Did I misinterpret what you said, or is this what you're saying?

Re: I’m Tired Of Companies Ripping off our site, So I’m Calling Them Out

#258

Post by alexqgb »

jiggy2011 wrote: post #251
alexqgb wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Really? They can "evolve" their site? At what cost? Specifically, do you think it's a cost that's equal to or lower than the cost of simply waiting for others to do the hard work, then copying their advances? If you do, I can understand why you'd see your approach as a viable one. But if it turns out that origination is vastly more time and resource intensive than duplication (which, duh, it is), you'll find that the…

I suppose design is like fashion. Whatever you do will be emulated and plain ripped off pretty quickly so if you want to be seen as the hip trendsetter who gets to charge the highest prices you need to be constantly reinventing yourself to stay ahead of the curve.

The similarities are superficial at best. Fashion, almost by definition, is ephemeral. Design, on the other hand, strives for permanence.

"Constantly reinvention" is just total bullshit when you start talking about salt and pepper shakers. And so is the idea of "staying ahead of the curve" when doing so means a non-stop torrent of additions to landfills everywhere. Good designers get this. They're actually very resourceful people who are trying to make the world work better in ways both small and large. Squandering resources with a stream of pointless variations doesn't square with this ethos at all.

The difference between design and trash is that good design is what you hold onto for years, even generations. What the best designers strive for is the elegant solution, a perfect convergence of form and function that resists further change for as long as humanly possible.

Again, the opposite of fashion.

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