Caught Red Handed – Don’t Rip Off Websites!
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
…and the Saga Continues…
Thief #2 – Masters.ge
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My name is Soh Tanaka and I am a Los Angeles based designer/front-end developer specializing in CSS driven web design with an emphasis on usability and search engine optimization. I also run a CSS Gallery which is updated daily with the best CSS websites from around the world. Come check it out!
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+ Add Comment44 Peeps Have Spoken Their Minds...
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! :-D
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!
A shame people think the Internet is a free-for-all like that!
We spotted a local company who’d used a website scrapping tool to create their own website from another company: the giveaways were the meta author tag set to the name of the scraper tool, and the fact that some images were hard-coded to the previous company’s website (though they’ve been ‘clever’ enough to remove these now).
Thinking that Mitchell must be getting the idea that he’s not that great at web design – he’s now in his third “redesign” since this article was published. Search hard, Mitch! I’m sure there’s a reasonably well designed yet relatively unknown site out there just BEGGING to be ripped off!
I hate copy cats.. But i keep credit when i use reference image or content
I hate a copy
haha totally ripped? didn’t even put an effort to change the colors.
Well done for catching mitchell – funny how he responds so argumentatively…
We also take copyright protection very seriously, after all, your work shouldn’t be stolen by others and we congratulate you for enforcing your rights.
Freaking annoying isn’t it lol
I actually had my website ripped off not that long ago, I took the same approach as here, Name and shame and they weren’t long in taking it down,
Recently a free css template website was ripped off and their “Free” templates were/are being sold now, Which is obviously a complete cop out,
Think there should be some sort of reporting feature to stop this
Regards
Craig
omg dude this guy must be retarted why the hell would you rip off anothre person’s site? it take an hour or so to learn the basics of how to use css to layout the images and text, and only takes a few minutes to find a cool program that lets you create beaut images lol god, help us all..
So, how did you find his email adress…..??
@joe He has a contact form/email address on his site.
That sux, Soh. At least it’s down now. Our friend on Twitter, Toby Powell’s site (http://www.toby-powell.co.uk/) was ripped off twice this month. The most recent is today, and it was taken down in half an hour possibly from all the emails he received. The person contacted Toby, apologized, and took his site down. In case you’re interested Toby took screengrabs :)
http://twitpic.com/3on56
http://twitpic.com/3omw4
Let’s hope this doesn’t happen again! LOL! Have a good one, mate.
Too funny, I love the detail about Google Analytics because I had a somewhat similar experience myself. Years ago I worked for Urchin Software,(which was later bought by Google and transformed into Google Analytics), and 3 or 4 times we discovered other companies had blatantly ripped off our website. The kicker is that they were discovered by our marketing guys while visiting our customer’s websites. Apparently they thought buying our product also entitled them to steal our site! Crazy.
Lmao this is funny :D , so many web sites giving out free templates and his last resort its to steal. Hopefully that kid stays in school so he can learn how to make his own web designs, programming and how to use Google :D
A fair few of my designs have been found being used elsewhere. It bugs me quite a bit that when you contact them about it they either say they have the right to use it or they even say that they created it themselves and it is a coincidence… Even when the reason I found them was because they were still using my meta tags!!!
If it happens to you, just start contacting their customers and let them know who they are dealing with :)
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HAHAHAHAHAHAHA HALARIOUS!!!!! WHAT A DOUCHE!!
this kids plays with fire… how dare him… motherfucker thats kid..! steal someone artwork…
Wow that is crazy, ive heard of ppl taking inspiration from other sites, but who gets a complete rip of a website (Same colour scheme same everything) and try and pass it off as there own.
Hahaha, glad you busted him!
Soh, you’re design is awesome, and I kinda understand why he wanted it so bad xD
But, ripoff = baaaad thing to do!
so funny …
HAHAHAHAHA Oh my this is too funny. Mitchel and Masters.ge = Terrible Designers! What a shame. the URL should be MastersOfLameness.com
Too Funny.. I think Mitchel is too much of expert in copy paste org.
Well, I came across your site the other day and I have to say that it rocks. You have tons of valuable info for all.
About the copycats, you will always get those. It amazes me that the one guy left your anayltics code on, that was not clever at all. I guess you must be proud in a way as they like your work, a great achievement and worry.
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