Don’t believe that pirated website content is really a problem? Can’t imagine that anyone would really steal somebody else’s website look, feel, or content?
Well, think again, because it’s real, and it happens. But don’t take Aunty’s word for it. Because there is a website out there which is devoted to outing such copycat sites. It’s pretty amazing to look at one site, and then another, and realize that they have identical elements and layout which could not be independently developed by the proverbial infinite monkeys, let alone a few human beings.
Now you can review these sites, including screen shots, and it’s fascinating. And while this often has the desirous effect of causing the pirate site to change its stripes, or spots, there are still enough copycat sites which remain up after being posted to the site to make for a very interesting tour.
Some websites which Pirated-Sites claims have copied from one to another include these two (check out the banner):
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And these two (ditto):
And (see the nav bar along the right-hand side abouto a third of the way down):
Ok, if that whetted your appetite like that of the person who just can’t pull their eyes away from the accident on the highway, you can peruse to your heart’s content at Pirated-Sites.com.
You can also report pirated sites in their forums.
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You’re quite right about the Netymology site (the bottom one above), it’s featured numerous times on Pirated-Sites.com and been ripped off no less than 100 times I’d guess, and those are just the one’s that we’ve found. There have been some that only changed the logo and the phone numbers, and many who ripped the design verbatim, then proceeded to change the colours. We were quite flattered by the attention to start with, but technically it’s a breach of copyright, although policing this is very difficult.
More worrying perhaps is when our client work gets ripped. Admittedly it’s less frequent fortunately, however last year we came across a site purportedly created by a Mexican web team, which was an identical copy of one our larger client’s sites. We reported the ‘similarities’ to their client in this case, who incidentally had paid rather alot for it, and the site was withdrawn almost immediately. Undoubtably the ‘designers’ involved had a rather unpleasant suprise.
I guess the laws will adapt and policing the Internet will get easier as time goes by, but the potential cost for a small agency of persuing legal action against the perps, is unthinkable. Really, shaming is our only deterrant currently, so raising awareness of the issue helps us all out – keep up the good work!
This site has been around for a while (it only recently added the forums feature), and has been very useful in helping web designers and site owners shed light on rip offs.
As a web developer myself, I think it’s great — someone being inspired by your designs is a compliment. Someone taking all your code and imagery is theft.
Yawn…… and how exactly does this affect me as a net user?
So what if there’s a website for reporting copy cat websites, while I can understand the frustration of someone copying all your hard work (it’s been done to me too), the copy cat website will still be out there. There’s nowt you can do about it.
Just take it as a compliment for your hard work then move along.
I was under the impression, from your previous, articals that pirated sites were used to hijack personal information and defraud users. Most of this seems to be a loose copycatting with no such purpose and as the previous responders noted merely a format similarity at most. With all the web sites out there just how many unique formats are available?
Come on Aunty you gotta be able to do better than this. Next you will suggesting the decision of the nation’s future based on gay marrage.
Looks like plain old “boiler plate” to me!
How about examples where two websites are using identical, proprietary, images?
This seems a bit alarmist. Could it just be that some of the sites are using the same ready-made templates, as provided in Microsoft Publisher, Serif WebPlus and the like?
I’m curious, how do you know if these sites were not templates that they bought and just added their content?