Caught Red Handed - Don’t Rip Off Websites!
Blog » Personal » Caught Red Handed - Don’t Rip Off Websites!Caught Red Handed - Don’t Rip Off Websites!
November 14th, 2008
Once in a blue moon I see blog articles when an agency or designer catches someone stealing their design and slapping their own logo to make it theirs. As a third party looking into the situation, it was always amusing to see how shameless some people are when it comes to taking credit for other people’s hard work.
Well yesterday, I caught a young designer at www.mitchellsoft.webs.com make a poor decision by trying to rip off my own site. This is the first time this happened and since it wasn’t professionally done, I was not angry nor was I upset at the situation. I have simply sent an email to him to take it down.
For those out there ripping off other people’s designs, let this be a lesson to you. Work hard, practice, and be patient! Take pride in your own original work, and when inspired by other pieces, always give credit and recognition to where it’s due.
**Update**
So I email him professionally asking for the ripped site to come down. This is his brilliant response:
I don’t understand. If you don’t want people to use it, then why do you put it on CSS drive? And, my name is not mitchell. I will take it down when you give me the reason. HOW IN THE WORLD DID YOU GET MY EMAIL? I’M SENDING A SPAM REPORT!
and even funnier is his response once he took down the ripped website:
I’m so sorry but the website has been shut down due to the stupidest thing i heard of. I’m getting a new template and now sohwhatever is my least favorite place in the world so i put a report to it. site will be back up soon and hopefully their site will be shut down too.
*Hint* Maybe if you didn’t forget to take off my Google analytics tracking code at the bottom you wouldn’t of been caught.
This has been a very amusing day 
My Original Site
Mitchell Soft Website
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Tags: Rip-Off
This entry was posted on Friday, November 14th, 2008 at 9:17 am and is filed under Personal. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
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Oh my… lol this one is terribly done. I think you caught him before he finished too. Dumb kids these days.. tsk tsk
Too Funny! Red Handed.
Wow as if he isn’t lame enough, he currently has a temp page stating, “I’m so sorry but the website has been shut down due to the stupidest thing i heard of. I’m getting a new template and now sohwhatever is my least favorite place in the world so i put a report to it. site will be back up soon and hopefully their site will be shut down too.” Dood this is hilarious. AWESOMEEENEESSS to the MAX!
ROFL, LMFAO. Busted Biotch!
You can’t tell me you aren’t at least a tiny bit flattered. Ha.
Wow. Don’t people know that they are going to me caught doing this?
lol now, there is no website!!
People these days …
Why do you think Mitchell ripped your site? You are wrong and It has been just “inspiration” because the logo and the titles for example are different.
Of course i am joking, I cannot understand why the people like “michell” is so stupid and selfish.
This kid clearly does not understand the nature of CSS gallery sites. It sounds like he thinks these are free templates. I pity those kind of people.
why would anyone want to steal a site based on a word
press template?
See he has a new site design now. Looks like he needs to steal a dictionary next - “New temlate, again! So, lets start from the beggining. About 5 years ago…”
Ha, that’s made my day.
It has to be said though, your site is rather stunning. One thing is to take a look at and learn from other sites you admire. To nick the whole thing, and more to the point pass it off as your own is quite another.
little s*!t
I think the funnyest bit is him copying it so much as to leave your google analytics at the bottom… priceless.
Give the guy a break. He’s obviously inexperienced. It’s not easy to come up with a great design like this site. I’m sure he’s learned his lesson after reading all your insults. He will be great one day if he’s really passionate. I used to copy other sites until one day I realized that I was only cheating myself and I will never be a great web guy if I keep copying sites so I got a full time job at a web agency building sites until I developed my own style.
ok, but does it really matter?
It’s not like we’re talking about large scale corporate fraud worth bazillions.
The content of a site is what’s important. The look should be a secondary aspect.
He probably would’ve changed the look once he’d got the fundamentals down and then created something unique of his own.
Imitation is the greatest form of flattery.
But you’ve gone from being a teacher to being the judge, jury, and executioner.
That kid has to be at least 14. Nice work and catching the little ba**ard:)
Holy. Crap. This little dude has to be one of the most ignorant “web designers” I’ve come across - EVER. Interesting that he just copied and pasted your entire blog too..I wonder if he went in and added his dumb company name into the copy?
Haha, well done
We’ve had a similar rip, but whats annoying is that this is a decent sized agency, who have not only ripped of our main site for themselves, but also have another site in their portfolio thats also a rip of one of ours!
Our site:
http://www.engageinteractive.co.uk
Their rip:
http://www.renksiz.net
Our site:
http://www.arcinspirations.com/kobe
Their rip:
http://www.cagritanitim.com
Its almost amusing that a creative agency cant even create their own site and resort to stealing
If anyone cares to check out MitchelSoft’s new site - it’s rather pathetic. None of his links are working, what is working is completely un-unified design, and it’s just sad…Poor Mitchel can’t make it on his own. Probably searching the internets for some other well designed site to carbon copy.
As a website owner and designer this really frosts my cookies. Your site was so blatantly ripped off and they didn’t even apologize? Unbelievable! On a side note, thanks for your how-to on the sIFR thing. I’m using it for the first time on a new website I am building and it’s pretty awesome!