Stealing Website Designs

Hey Hey People.....

Here's an ethical question for you, maybe a legal question. Where do you stand on stealing website designs.... A lot of people will look at a page and say hey that's cool they way they did that, and steal the concept of the code but I'm talking about something more serious. Taking a page and completely copying the design because you want your page to be liked. I ask because some aquaintances recently did this, and while they'll never be big enough for anyone serious to notice.. I'm wondering about it.. It's not really Ethical or Logical... here are the sites i'm talking about..

Original
Copy

The site was designed for the band and they know nothing about the blatant copying. Anyways.. i just made me think... Where does everyone stand on stealing code.. be it a snippit or a complete site.

The pictures are definate copyright violation. If it was merely a question of understanding how the design was done, then it's not necessarily a copyright violation but given that they've taken the pictures (and not even changed the names of the pictures) it's a little more blatant.

I think Mojo Media, the company that designed Nickelback's site, would have a case against Aftersight.

Now back to the ethical issue: as I said, if it was merely to understand how they did something, I wouldn't see that as a problem. But when you copy everything (graphics included) then that's not the art or ability of creating something. Just means you are a good mimicker and plagariser as well as thief. We have to be careful because there are a few tools out there that have templates to them but you usually can tell. ;)

Definetly, as a ex-newspaper writer, we had to take a class in plagerism. This is a very obvious form of it, and it well went past admiration of the site, to plain insult.

I think stealing code sucks IF you pass it off as your own original idea. Looking at other people's code to get an "idea" or understand a concept is okay as long as you still do your own work. Most programmers I know (myself included) wouldn't DREAM of stealing another person's code. I mean, coming up with your own ideas are most of the fun! :)

You know. I wish I had more students like you Mathgirl. Every semester I catch at least 3-5 people plagarising in my Intro to Sec course and even catch the occassional one in my Advanced Course. There are usually two reasons: "I didn't know that was plagarism" or "I was too busy to do it".

I can understand a single line or two but when a 9 page essay has 8 pages "copied" from a website or other source it's not an essay.

And it's just as bad when it comes to scripting. I'm creating a training game for a project I'm working on. I've asked for ideas from others on how to deal with things but I've deliberately posted that I'm not looking for code, just logic (I suck at it sometimes .. now apparently is one of those times).

I think in the original example of this thread if the 2nd site creator's had contacted the first and asked permission and registered where they got it from it would show honesty and integrity. Right now I wouldn't hire them because of the potential legal issue they'd put a company into with that kind of activity.

Hahaha....well MsMittens, I wish more teachers wanted students like me! ;) Seriously, though, you mentioned you get the line "I didn't know that was plagarism" a lot -- how is it a person can even make it to college and not know what it is???? :rolleyes:

Hmm half the joy in making a site is making it Unique, I would hate it if I had spent a lot of my time to create a site, only to have someone pinch the design without even so much as an email asking if they could borrow parts of it, eg images.
I think the company who designed the site would have a case against them, Although I am not sure if they will bother at the moment, if the copy site started to become really popular, then I'll bet they will start to bother

MathGirl.. you said you don't know how people can say that.. but it happens quite easily.. There's a retired dentist in my program.. so he's got a university degree and everything else.. and last semester his group was caught plagarising an assignment for our communications class.. The problem is most high schools don't identify it very well and don't spend a lot of time on it.. They go on and on about how they'll punish you for it.. but they never do.. I know a guy that turned in "Mentor's Last Words" as an english essay. he got a 9/10 and was commended for a brilliant paper. and he just hit print on the website and turned it in... And when you get to College/Uni it's you plagerize and your out pretty much... unless you have a valid reason (which is highly unlikely)... it should be a required section in high school english but it's not.

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The problem is most high schools don't identify it very well and don't spend a lot of time on it

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You're correct, HTRegz. What do you think about the idea of students knowing right from wrong? It's such a basic concept. I mean, that they can claim that they didn't know??? I don't think they can rightly say that just because the definition of plagiarism was never explained to them. Surely they know it's NOT their work. They also know taking something that is NOT their's -- is stealing. So, clearly, "ignorance" is no excuse. But that does seem to be the direction society is headed...just a bunch of "excuses", "poor me's", "it wasn't my fault's", "my environment is to blame" whining cry babies. Wow, sorry...I sort of got off track, there. :p



EDIT: Woohoo! I'm a member.....finally!!:)

First, I agree with the consensus about stealing code. I have the creativity of a brick but somehow I was able to generate original code when I was in school. :p

However, what do you do when your boss comes to you and tells you to steal a website design? :confused:

I will provide an example.

I was working for a software development company and the web designer there had their boss come to them and requested that they created a page for a new project for the company. The only problem here is that the boss wanted a replica another company's page. Now the web designer asked for some clarification as to whether he just wanted the same style as the original and the web designer was quickly corrected. The boss wanted the same page with a different color scheme, logo, and information.

What would you do?