It’s Sunday and I’m trying to catch-up on my RSS feeds. One item that caught my eye was posted by Eric Meyer on his blog http://meyerweb.com/eric/thoughts/2007/05/17/avast/. His post was on the topic of Piracy of web site designs. One site specifically that is a blatant rip-off of the Digital Web Magazine’s style. The Flickr image, http://www.flickr.com/photos/digitalweb/502310574/, does appear very much the same as the DWM’s site. No doubt about that. Eric has since created a ‘piratedsites’ Flickr tag http://www.flickr.com/photos/digitalweb/tags/piratedsites/ so others can upload similar findings. Mmmm-kay
I really don’t have an issue with calling out the guilty parties and calling then a theft. What I have a problem with is the basis for the judgement. Someone else commented on his blog about the need for HTML, CSS and JavaScript encryption to thwart these type of issues. I’m all for the protection of everyone’s intellectual property. We all use ideas from others and share. In my experience this is how the web for one has evolved. We see something that pushed the envelop and we break it down, add to it and come up with something of our own to share. Someone sees what we’ve produced and extends that into something else. Sure I agree this is different issue that blatantly ripping off someone else’s design and just changing the contents. In the case of this DWM site rip-off, if they had moved the left navigation to the right side of the page. Would that be enough of a difference to not cause alarm?Isn’t it still the same code? What is next, someone uses the same color and font to style an unordered list and they are now stealing your design. I’m sorry. I just have a hard time drawing a line in the sand. Also I find it interesting that Digital Web Magazine even cares. I mean they are one of the premiere site along with ALA and others for sharing information on web development and design.
Maybe a better solution is to come with a way to gauge the level of ‘sameness’ between the two systems. Can’t you compare the CSS and HTML code using a simple diff tool to see the percentage? Would that not be a better analysis tool than just a visual compare of the two site? If the site is 75% similar then you start name calling and finger pointing. Or course we all know if a tool is developed, those who want/need to steal will figure out a way to make enough changes to not get caught by the check anyway.
Thoughts? Remarks?
