Mon Dieu, les Pirates | April 5, 2007
Some nice French chap likes the Clearleft website so much, he’s decied to take it as his own. Seems like there is a lot of this type of stuff going on at the moment. On one front it’s very flattering, but on the other it’s deeply disappointing.
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I sent him an email but it bounced…one can only hope no innocent customers get suckered by this shady operator!
Recently a colleague had her blog design ripped off by a Japanese porn site…they didn’t even change any of the footers and she only found out about it via these odd inbound links! They did take it down once she pointed out the design theft, thankfully.
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f****** French. ;)
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I sent them an email (whois) and this is what they sent back
“relax it is a test.
will disappear soon”
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It’s flattering, but always theft.
Maybe it’s just a weird publicity form, steal someone who’s job is well known and then get people to talk about you, even if in a bad way. Very strange.
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How can you avoid this? Some lay-outs
never get the chance?
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When I was younger (16 or 17), a guy I went to school with ripped off tons of people’s sites. There were only about 4 web designers at my high school, so we banded together against him. Every time he’d launch a new design, we’d scour the web to find what he ripped it off from, then notify the site owner. We always had a good laugh when he’d replace the site with an “Under Construction” message.
Recently, someone ripped off my style sheets from my MySpace profile (very difficult to style, mind you). I had hot-linked the images from my website in my style sheet. He didn’t change the links. When I noticed it in my server logs, I replace all the images with plain-pink ones. For a few weeks his previously dark and foreboding profile was bright pink. It was almost worth having my design stolen to prank the guy.
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Me parece ofensivo que alguien copie de esa manera el trabajo de los demás. Supongo que será algún tipo de timo, porque no creo que vayan en serio a vender diseño web.
¡Denuncialos Andy!.
Sorry for the Spanish.
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felix : in Asterix it’s “les gaugau les gaugau les gauloiiiiiiiissssss” :)
f*** ripper
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Between your book and now your site, your ego must be as big as my dick! the reason they stole your site is because it has that website-template-out-of-a-book look to it - accessible and boring. I feel more sorry for Frenchy - he’s got no taste.
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Thanks for the intelligent comment Yummy. You’re right that I do have a small ego, and sorry to hear about your meagre appendage. That must be very embarrassing ;-)
So if you’re such an expert in web design, I’d love the opportunity to critique some of your work. Shame you didn’t have the nerve to leave your web address. I guess some people are all mouth and no trousers on the web.
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Yummy, If you dislike Andy’s work so much why do you spend your time reading his Blog?
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That’s ridiculous. I don’t understand what people are thinking.
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Web Trousers has the making of a great domain name.
I think if Yummy had taken the time to have a look through the code he might have noticed that the site couldnt be more accessible if you actually had someone pop round to your house and read it out to you, i really wouldnt call that boring.
I bet Yummy would like a poorly designed full flash portfolio with no standards in mind, give all those Jaws users a real treat!
Also, if I had a book published I would be very very pleased with myself, ego aside its a big deal.
(I do believe that Flash has its place, Im simply making a point)
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Seems the “Fiouret web.agency” website is down now. Let’s see whose site they will copy next. ;-)
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If they ripoff Dan C then I am retiring
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This happens all the time, and sucks every time.
Just one thing: I hadn’t checked out the lovely ClearLeft in ages, and when I read this here I dropped by. CRASH. I tried it 5 times and every single time my OSX Firefox 2.0.0.3 crashed. Thought you’d want to know.
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Screw you, Bill H. All French aren’t like that.
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I’d be interested in knowing how you found out they were using your design?
I think a good project for Google Labs would be a nice way to search HTML/CSS source for using regex or something to find ripoffs. What do you say Google?
-Bradly
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Bradley, Google already do this, I can’t post the link as I keep getting stopped for “questionable content” - even if I use Textile.
it’s at google/codesearch
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Hi Andy, I just want to let you know that clearleft.com gets my Firefox to crash too.
bye
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