I don’t know how to even begin this. I’m quite furious. Tonight, during my almost hourly check of my Mint stats I noticed a new unique referrer coming from brendajerryshows.tripod.com. Now when seeing this I immediately thought of Brenda and Jerry’s, a local venue. A few months back I saw a show there played by Race the Sun. I thought maybe they had a picture of me at that show and linked to my website. That wasn’t the case.
Upon browsing to the page in question, I hunted around for the link to my website and never found it. I thought maybe it was on a different page. As I went up to their navigation bar I noticed something suspicious. Their mouse over effect looked just like mine. They had stolen my menu!
When seeing this I instant messaged my one friend, Tony, and we started talking about it. About two minutes later, when I was closely looking over the site, I noticed something else. It wasn’t just the menu they stole, they stole my whole website design! All that was different was they changed the colors. On top of that they even copyrighted the design on the bottom, when my design was already copyrighted!
As you can see I’m very pissed over the issue. I spent a great deal of time working on the custom design and it was not meant to be given out for free without my consent. The reason I did a custom site design was so my website was unique. It’s not supposed to be a template in which any blog can use and claim as their own.
So I’ve made up my mind. I’m taking action. I just don’t know what steps I should take. Since the place is local, I could drive right to their store front and complain, or I could call them constantly until they get back to me. What would you do if you were in my shoes? All I know is I’m giving them two options; remove the design or pay me for my work. I bet they’re going to be pretty surprised once they find out the person they stole the design from is local.
26 Comments
If for some reason they change the design, I have a screenshot of the stolen design.
It’s really hard to say. Web code is plenty visible. If someone was hijacking my bandwidth (personally i could care less) but i messed with them. the guy hard linked one of my images, which was a huge portion of my traffic, so i resized the image to like 1500×1500 px. (the original was like 10×10).
now what is this mouse over effect u mean?
@Jonathan
The blue highlight of the link before you click it. Also, if you view the source you’ll clearly see they even used the same CSS class names.
SUE THOSE PUNKS! They didn’t check the about me portion? haha. local…duh! I know some people if you know what I mean…
And to think, they left the damn CC link there… probably not knowing what it was. To be honest it’s a shitload uglier than your site. But still you should do something. The referrer to you site in Mint was them probably uploading it for the first time, not having changed the links yet. This type of thing happens a lot, it happened to a 9ruler once - a bunch (yeah, a lot of us) of us left some negative comments and the guy was overwhelmed and reverted to his old design.
Oh wait, you can’t leave comments on that site. There’s always forums.
I find it funny that they have the same exact wording in your comments too! And are they even using WordPress? I will help those rat bastards see the errors of their ways. Do not worry, Mr. Heft.
Wayland, although I appreciate you leaving a comment on their forum, please don’t do anything yet. I still need to contact these people and I don’t want them to have an inkling about what’s going on. I don’t want to give them time to prepare some BS statement and try to get out of the truth. I will be contacting Brenda and Jerry’s later today. Until then, please don’t start attacking them.
My apologies. You should consider applying for an actual copyright for your designs, though.
Wayland,
That is certainly a quite humorous comment.
Ronald,
I agree with Mr Smithers, you should apply for a true copyright. I been tossing the idea of making my blog a true serial. I heard about a guy who did this, but I am unsure of the outcome. I did apply but got rejected because I didn’t follow the form correctly. What am I babbling about that is? An ISSN!
They killed the template, I just looked at it now and it was basically a styless page. I can’t wait to hear about the outcome of your phone call. it should be good…
Well that was just because the school was blocking the CSS file. Viewing it at home shows nothing has changed.
Speaking about the CSS file, have a look at it. The even stripped my copyright information from that.
On top of that I just found some very concrete proof. They’re linking to my PNG hack directly. I should charge them for the bandwidth.
What about DoS them?
If I do that I’m putting myself at risk. Besides, it’s a Tripod site. Not their own server, so for all I know the site may be spread across multiple servers.
I’m sorry. I took the design. I wasn’t completely finished with it. I have I really was going to give credit to you. In fact I just did. I’m very very sorry. I apologize again.
Oh yeah if you dont want me to use it. Tell me and I wont.
I took it off line.
I’m sorry for the trouble I caused.
Zach D.,
That really isn’t an excuse. You sir, are a liar. If you were going to give my pal Ron credit, then why the fuck did you remove his name from the copyright in the css file itself and put you in it?
How did you find this website anyways?
I was going to give him credit. This was just a mockup design for a new page. I hadn’t meant for people to view it yet.
He hosts my brother’s band’s site. (Andrew D. of Capgun Showdown)
I did change a few things in the site, but I admit it wasnt right for me to claim it. I’m so sorry. I am just an amature site designer. I hope you can orgive me.
forgive*
Zach, I sent you an email at the address you provided when commenting. Also, I understand the page was not live yet, but that doesn’t change the conditions.
Zach,
I still don’t get it. How does erasing Ron’s name with your own name excusable. Face it you’re a moron and guilty of digital theft. Shame on you!
Salam there,
I might have come late, but actually I’ve gone through the same thing that you have, and I do understand exactly how you feel. However you should think of it as a credit to you, they wouldn’t have stolen your design if it wasn’t any good
I totally agree with you in taking ACTIONS, and here I found these two links that suggests actions to make:
http://www.selfseo.com/story-19031.php
http://lorelle.wordpress.com/2006/04/10/what-do-you-do-when-someone-steals-your-content/
Best Regards,
Buthaina
Forgive me, I just read the comments.
As I understand, Zack you have took the site off line and apologized. I highly respect people who take responsibility for their actions. It’s alright to be an amature, but believe me bro, it really hurts the original designer when their work is copied like this. I hope you’ve learnd your lesson by now, wish you good luck with your original work
Regards to all.
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