How to properly plagiarize a website • Hacker News Board

Re: How to properly plagiarize a website

#61

Post by eyko » Wed, Jun 26, 2013, 5:01 PM UTC

lighthazard wrote: post #24

Ygor wrote: post #8

The best part is that the plagiarized site is a nominee for a css design prize? Infinum is one of the top developers here in Croatia. Nice to see them responding well to this.

Responding well to them? Their design is a standard template - slider below a menu, 3 columns below that, brands/testimonials below that, large footer. The only similarities I really see are the structure of the templates, and both look like they're from bootstrap, so I'm not sure what the stealing is complaining about.

I was thinking the same until I saw the run through. It seems quite obvious that they copied, to the extent that even minor details are there. However, I still think that the design is a trend, and it's a common pattern that you'll find hundreds (thousands?) of sites follow, not to say copy. And it's obvious that Infinium did not come up with the style.

I would like to see if they used similar CSS classes (which anyone probably can check in 5 minutes, but we can't be bothered... it's a common design pattern, yeah).

Re: How to properly plagiarize a website

#62

Post by oceanstone » Wed, Jun 26, 2013, 5:05 PM UTC

euxneks wrote: post #51

dasil003 wrote: post #22

This is nothing. Our 100k line vod web app was ripped off wholesale, with a new backend built from scratch, and repurposed to show pirate content. This was some serious engineering chops and time investment that went into a ripping off a site with hundreds upon hundreds of templates and thousands of lines of js and ajax interacting with an unknown backend that had to be reverse-engineered. We discovered it because th…

Did you guys write an article about that? That sounds supremely interesting.

Agreed, this speaks well to the frontend that was built.

Re: How to properly plagiarize a website

#63

Post by jevin » Wed, Jun 26, 2013, 5:08 PM UTC

jgrahamc wrote: post #9

I worked at a company where our web site was copied by a competitor entering the same domain. They copied the look of the site but also copied the Google Analytics tag as well. We found out about them because their page views showed up in our analytics.

Same experience here. The guy even hotlinked our Javascript files. Little did he know that we could have controlled his website from where we were.

Re: How to properly plagiarize a website

#64

Post by sauravc » Wed, Jun 26, 2013, 5:08 PM UTC

mintplant wrote: post #40

kamakazizuru wrote: post #27

am I the only one who doesnt find the sites that similar after all? Or to put it another way - neither of them seem particularly unique (fixed header, slider on top, broad sections and large footer) compared to many marketing sites these days?

- The scrolling animations on the header are exactly the same. - The curved/depressed backgrounds behind the hero image (fairly unique) are the same shape and style. - Page sizing is the same. - Color scheme is the same, with blue swapped out for red. These are just from glancing quickly between the two sites. Combined with the overall similarity, the fact that the scrolling animation is exactly the same is the most…

Sure. But I've seen these design elements all over the web before. Infininum is just as guilty as Kintek when it comes to copying.

Re: How to properly plagiarize a website

#65

Post by tokenadult » Wed, Jun 26, 2013, 5:08 PM UTC

When I was in high school, in an English class unit on journalism, I learned how the United Press caught a competing news organization (Hearst, as I recall) faking stories about the eastern front in World War I. The United Press reporters inserted details about a Russian government official named Nelotsky in their news stories, and watched the statements about Nelotsky get copied into reports from the competing wire service. There was just one problem with Hearst's journalistic procedure: there wasn't any such Russian official. The name "Nelotsky" came from reversing the spelling of the English word "stolen" and adding a Russian-looking "ky" ending.

http://www.law.uchicago.edu/files/files/246-dgb-uneasy-legac...

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=F30D16FF3B5B1...

Similarly, in the 1990s I noticed that a popular page on my personal website was being copied diligently by a college student for his personal website. I inserted a fake entry, based on the Greek word for "steal." I also put a link at that entry leading to the copyright notice page on my personal website, which has a distinctive filename unique to my site. When the student copied the page again, I was able to show the site administrator of his site that the student had plainly violated the site user agreement at that academic institution, which specifically required students not to plagiarize for their postings on the university site.

I didn't do a lot of public outing of that student--but you had better believe I still remember who he was. Teachers do well to teach students early and often to use their own noggins and to do their own writing, giving proper credit with correct citation form to sources they rely on. That's a better education than just letting students copy whatever they happen to see, without any analysis or thought at all.

Re: How to properly plagiarize a website

#66

Post by jdlshore » Wed, Jun 26, 2013, 5:12 PM UTC

robbyking wrote: post #57

I worked at an AV company where I wrote a small video capture application that feature some basic CMS features. After a while it started to become a pain to maintain, so we decided to look for something off the shelf. The first vendor to come in and demo a product showed us a UI that was our design, pixel for pixel, with only the name changed.

Are you sure that wasn't intentional? In enterprise sales, it's fairly common to customize the demo to the client. I've been in situations where we deliberately made our software match the prospect's branding as closely as possible.

Re: How to properly plagiarize a website

#67

Post by notahacker » Wed, Jun 26, 2013, 5:19 PM UTC

kamakazizuru wrote: post #27

am I the only one who doesnt find the sites that similar after all? Or to put it another way - neither of them seem particularly unique (fixed header, slider on top, broad sections and large footer) compared to many marketing sites these days?

Did nobody asking this question look at this screenshot: http://www.infinum.co/system/uploads/2013-06/kintek/kintek-f...

Look at the area immediately below the fold.

It's one of the most blatant examples of plagiarism I've ever seen.

It's arguably worse than simple wholesale lifting of css, since they've carefully and deliberately redrawn distinctive design elements, and lifted half the copy as well

And this is a medium-sized design company, in a developed country. And it got nominated for an award.

Sure, the design has evolved a bit since it started as a direct copy, and the design wasn't that original in the first place, but I'm baffled by people suggesting the similarities might have been accidental.

Re: How to properly plagiarize a website

#68

Post by heyitsnick » Wed, Jun 26, 2013, 5:20 PM UTC

tokenadult wrote: post #65

When I was in high school, in an English class unit on journalism, I learned how the United Press caught a competing news organization (Hearst, as I recall) faking stories about the eastern front in World War I. The United Press reporters inserted details about a Russian government official named Nelotsky in their news stories, and watched the statements about Nelotsky get copied into reports from the competing wire…

That's a great story about Nelotsky, I hadn't heard that before.

For those interested, these fake entries to catch copyright infringement are commonly referred to as "Mountweazels". They are common in maps (fake towns, roads) and dictionaries (fake words and definitions). You can read more on wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fictitious_entry

Re: How to properly plagiarize a website

#69

Post by heyitsnick » Wed, Jun 26, 2013, 5:22 PM UTC

icco wrote: post #55

gk1 wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What? Are you saying they are arrogant for outing a plagiarizer?

I'm not sure about what OP was thinking, but I felt the same way. The article seemed to have mixed messages. One was, "how dare you steal from us" and the other was "Everyone steals". Looking at the two sites, they were both using such common web design styles these days, that I would have assumed they both based their site off of someone else's. If I were them, I would have stuck to the second argument, realized tha…

I think they're just having fun and making light of a crappy situation.

Re: How to properly plagiarize a website

#70

Post by ChikkaChiChi » Wed, Jun 26, 2013, 5:25 PM UTC

gk1 wrote: post #43

yashodhan wrote: post #31

I can't decide if it's a general aversion to public complaining, or if this company is really as arrogant and self important as this article made them out to be. In fact, after the thuggish threats, I'm pretty sure it's arrogance.

What? Are you saying they are arrogant for outing a plagiarizer?

"But after some thought, Darko, our design lead (he's a very nice person) convinced me to give you guys the benefit of the doubt and not send the Croatian emmigration in Australia (known for working as bouncers and construction workers) knocking at your door."

Yeah. You tend to lose the moral initiative when you pretend you have the backing of some nefarious street thugs.

PS: Thanks for stereotyping Croatians, asshole.