Assholes of the internet

• Author: Matthew Jackson
• Comments: 3

Over the last couple of months WeAreSignals has been picked up by a number of design showcases and featured in articles that use the word ‘inspiring’ in the title. That’s pretty awesome! We were chuffed when onepagelove.com selected our work, there were high-fives all round when thebestdesigns.com added our site to theirs, and, we partied like rock stars when webdesignledger.com used our site, twice.

For a two guy, one gal operation, running in Johannesburg for a little over a year, we thought we were doing pretty well for ourselves. But, there’s more to being selected for web design showcases than meets the eye. There’s a seedy underbelly to the entire process that leaves a rather bitter aftertaste in the mouth.

As it turns out, thieving scum peruse design showcases, as well as the design community. These chimps aren’t looking for inspiration; they’re after something to rip in its entirety. 
About a month ago we noticed some strange activity in our analytics. We were getting links from a localhost and pages that are not indexed were being viewed. So, we’ve been expecting some sort of iteration of elements of our site to pop up somewhere.

Yesterday we discovered exactly what’s been going on. Some asshole in India copied our site. Now, if my new friend had drawn some inspiration from our site and then done his level best to produce a replica, I would have been flattered.

That’s not what happened; instead the abhorrent little thief used some opensource software to download a full copy of our site, he then added a little colour to our headings, stripped off the blog, changed a couple of images and launched the site as his own. He didn’t even bother to write his own content. All he did was use a find and replace tool to remove Johannesburg from the copy and replace it with Bangalore. Smooth.

On discovering the insidious site, I did would any rational human being would; I threatened my newly found chum with the full might of the law and made sure I knew exactly who he was, where he lived, where he worked, where he went to school and who his friends were. I also took all of the necessary screen shots that I’d need to build a solid legal case and I downloaded a full version of his site using software similar to the software which made the initial theft possible.

Protecting your intellectual property online is something that needs to be done. Thankfully, our ripped was taken down more-or-less immediately. Today the site does not exist, which saves me the hassle of having to write cease and desist orders, contact the hosting providers and deal with search engines while requesting a ban.

When it comes to the web, it’s not a case of if your site or content gets stolen, it’s about when. With over a gazillion million katrillion sites on the interweb, all requiring content and graphics, and a similar number of fly-by-night web development companies in existence, someone somewhere is going to steal from you eventually. There’s not very much you can do to prevent the initial theft from taking place, but there are a couple of really cool tools you can use to find the culprit once they’ve nicked your intellectual property.

For content protection, I use a free online service called Copyscape. If you’re blogging or paying someone to write for you, you should definitely be using this service. You’ll be able to track down copies of your content in a matter of seconds, which is great if someone’s stealing your work or selling you stolen content. Tracking down stolen sites is a little trickier, but you can normally find it through your analytics. For images, you could try using Tineye to find copies of your work.

I’m not going to go into too much detail on how to deal with stolen content or sites, but if you have fallen victim to plagiarism visit Lorelle VanFossen’s site, she has an excellent article on exactly what to do in this kind of situation.

My little buddy is not the only thorn in our bunch of showcase roses. We’ve also being experiencing a slew of poorly worded, Google translated, hand-typed spam mails from Russia, submitted through our contact form. Frankly, I’m comfortable with my penis size and don’t need any performance enhancers just yet, but I’ve saved the addresses for when I get a little older.

They say that mimicry is one of the best forms of flattery. The people who say this sort of twaddle have never been followed by a mime for the better part of an hour. Mimicry sucks. Blatant theft is even worse. By all means, draw a little inspiration from a site; apply a little bit of innovation, then serve it up as your own. If you’re gonna just rip a design, steal a site or copy-paste content, then, in the words of Dexter’s Debra Morgan, ‘Fuck off and die… Die again’.