The practice of stealing the intellectual property of someone else is as old as time. And it rightfully should make the “owner” of that information mad.

I remember my first real experience with a design pirate. My father started a business renting VCR’s and TV’s to college students in the late 80’s, and it was enormously successful for a few years before electronics prices fell. Every fall, my friends and I would canvas student housing with flyers promoting our wares. The next year, I found a flyer mimicking our design exactly: the pirate had gone to Kinko’s and replaced our company name with his with a shoddy tape-and-splice job, as well as lowered the prices for his rentals. Of course, we expected competition. But I was shocked. The theft was so blatant. I especially wouldn’t expect the competition to use our logo and flyer.

It’s Easy

Fast forward a few years and it is now much, much easier to copy someone’s “flyer.” No tape or photocopier needed. Just grab an entire website with wget, post it to your web server, do a search & replace on all relevant contact information, maybe tweak a few images or two and you’re done. Of course, in the Good Olde Days of web design markup was so heavy and specific that it was easy to recognize — even if the thief took the effort to change images drastically — that a site had been lifted.

Nowadays, as more websites separate structure from presentation using CSS, it’s even easier. Especially with the blog format, that, as Greg laments, ain’t exactly all that innovative. All you need to do is lift one file, tweak the settings to the new structure, and presto! — a new site design in minutes, without changing your content. The exact opposite of CSS Zen Garden: some sort of CSS Pirate Garden.

Suppression by Slander

It has been interesting to watch the struggle high-profile web developers experience to keep their design their own. There are blatant site-lifters out there. Mix a deadline, an annoying client, how easy it is to steal, and shake with a lack of integrity and voila!. It must be excruciatingly frustrating to have your sweat, blood, and tears lifted by someone else in this environment. I don’t relate, because no one would care to copy what I do. Because it is so difficult, web developers resort to “black-listing” sites and authors to inhibit theft.

This form of professional, um, slander is useful. I do believe this type of slander has its place, and nothing can be more effective short of litigation when the intent of a site theft is overtly ill-intentioned. But it is also dangerous. Shaun Inman’s experience is a case in point. Someone lifted his site and posted it to an orphaned web page without his permission, perhaps not realizing that live web server really means live, and didn’t change any links, so the “theft” immediately appeared in access logs.

Misunderstandings

In my opinion, however, I would hardly call this theft. Though the text on the lifted site read, to paraphrase, “Hey! Look at my site!”, it is clear that, at least at this point, it wasn’t doing Shaun any harm. “© Shaun Inman” was plastered all over the page. Now, as to the actual intentions of the “thief”, I have no idea. He may have been planning a site release using the design. But I believe innocent until guilty should be the mindset whenever a site lift is encountered.

From my perspective, all the guy did wrong so far was post this to a live web server. He downloaded Shaun’s site, changed the text to say “Hey! Look what I did” and day-dreamed of the day when he received the same type of respect Shaun does. Since it was live, he should have at least asked for permission to play around.

I can’t think of another developer in this business who hasn’t downloaded and played around with someone else’s code. We all have done it. And if, at that point in my career, I had been clueless enough to post it live and still link to the original author’s server, I would have been heartbroken and angered if I were publicly slandered.

So here’s my summary:

• If you want to “learn” how someone did a site, don’t post it to a live server. Use your hard drive, people.
• Ask permission first. I doubt there are many designers who would not graciously help you, knowing your intent was not to rip off their site.
• If your site has been lifted by someone:
  1. Consider it a compliment.
  2. Assume innocent until proven guilty.
• Only slander someone when other means have been exhausted, or the intent to steal is unavoidably clear.