/Culture/ Thwart the design thieves
12/02/2009 | Filed under Discover > Culture
You’ve spent time and effort creating a beautiful site, only to find it’s been ripped off by a rival. Is there anything you can do? Elliot Jay Stocks canvasses the industry’s top designers for their ideas
What designer doesn’t love flattery? That warm feeling inside when members of the general public shower your work with praise is something we all strive for. Web designers are at a great advantage for ‘getting out there’ because our work, by its very nature, is meant to be consumed by the public. From the minute we upload it to a server, it’s immediately viewable by all and we love that.
But there’s a flip-side to this coin. The immediacy of web design also opens it up to be copied. The nameless public who throw praise your way suddenly become the nameless designers who copy your work. They say imitation is the highest form of flattery, but what happens when the imitation is nothing more than a direct copy? Your website – your hours and hours of hard work and effort, along with all those difficult design decisions you made along the way – is suddenly sitting on someone else’s domain. That individual might have made little more effort than to copy and paste, and now they’re reaping the benefits of your creativity.
Some say that this is still flattery; that to be copied means you’re at the top of your game. Your work is in demand, your style is what people want, and imitation – even that of the shameless, copy-and-paste variety – shows that you’re looked up to. Ah, there comes that warm feeling again…
But should we just grin and bear it? Should we let some copying go and relentlessly pursue others? Where’s the ‘inspired by’ line, and when is it crossed? Is there any way we can prevent rip-offs from happening before we find them in the wild?
These questions and more have plagued me for some time, as there have been numerous instances of my work being imitated. These range from being respectfully influenced by my work (the kind that invoke the warm feeling and a sense of pride) to the downright ridiculous rip- offs where the ‘designer’ has lifted the image files directly from my server (the kind that induces less of a warm feeling and more of a Hulk-like rage).
I’ve posted a few examples of the latter on my blog and found that this often resulted in the offending designs being taken down. However, the comments that were posted on these blog posts made it obvious that opinion was largely divided on the issue.
I was confused, too – was naming and shaming the best option? Where could I go if this approach didn’t work? And what could I do to stop the theft happening in the first place? Fortunately I’m not alone, so to discuss this further, I contacted some of the web’s biggest designers to get their opinions on the matter.
Drawing the line
One of the hardest things about ‘drawing the line’ is defining the difference between ‘stolen’ and ‘inspired’. “Unfortunately, stealing on the web is facilitated by the convenience of lifting code,” notes Dan Cederholm. “It’s just too easy to do, and some people can’t help themselves.” To Shaun Inman, “A stolen design is one with only superficial changes, such as logo insertion and colour-swapping, while an ‘inspired’ design’s source material is suggested instead of quoted verbatim.” Kyle Meyer believes “inspired work tends to form trends, such as the legions of gloss and rounded corners spawned largely as inspiration from Apple”.
Khoi Vinh, like every designer I spoke to, believes it’s a grey area. “However, I’d say that something is ‘stolen’ when the result still looks like it belongs to the author/creator of the source material. And something is ‘inspired’ when it looks like it reflects the values and ideas of the person who was inspired by the source material.” Rob Weychert defines the two nicely: “To be inspired is to create something new by finding a way to associate two or more things that were previously separate. To steal is to call someone else’s inspiration your own.”
Paul Boag believes that it’s difficult to draw a nice neat line. “If in doubt about whether you’ve overstepped the mark, my recommendation is to speak to the website owner who has inspired you. Ask what they feel. I occasionally get people asking me if they can use some element of my site and I have yet to say no.”
In the creative world, it’s impossible to be totally original: the closest we can get is innovating with the inspirations and influences that we have. “There’s a long tradition of ‘creative borrowing’,” Miguel Ripoll points out. “The ultimate example is Picasso’s series of paintings on the Meninas, or Bacon’s portraits of screaming cardinals inspired by Velazquez.”
However, some sites are guilty of wearing their influences on their sleeves too openly. What can we do when we find our own work within them? Drew McLellan advises: “Send an email to any contact address you can find, politely explain that the work is an unauthorised copy, and ask for it to be removed within a reasonable timeframe.” Jon Tan agrees: “In the first instance, this is an appeal to the better nature of people.” And when you have perpetrators in the same country, as Andy Clarke often finds he does, “I simply pick up the phone and tell them in no uncertain terms that I’ve caught them out.”
Presumed innocent
It’s worth remembering the ‘innocent before proven guilty’ rule. As Drew McLellan reminds us, “Sometimes it can be the case that the owner of the site didn’t do the stealing themselves and is as much of a victim as you are, so be clear, reasonable and polite in the first instance.”
Unfortunately, emailing the offending party doesn’t always work, says Shaun Inman. He prefers the name-and-shame route followed by so many other designers. “It shouldn’t be the victim’s responsibility to rehabilitate the thief,” he argues. “They’ve already displayed a disregard for our time and effort, so they aren’t worth wasting any more on.” Although Jeff Croft doesn’t personally recommend this approach, he concedes that, “Public shaming works every time. If you embarrass someone, they’re likely to change their ways. If this fails to yield results, another form of action might be to contact the domain registrar or the web host.”
With the option to ‘view source’ on XHTML/ CSS-based sites, it would seem that those of us in the web standards community are slightly more at risk than those working with Flash. As Jonathan Snook says: “It’s simply easier for beginners to get to the website’s assets.” Of course, there are a few ways around this. “Using a minifier to crunch any whitespace etc out of JavaScript and CSS is a good way to discourage copying,” says Drew McLellan, “But it comes at the cost of discouraging the ‘view source’ tradition on which the web has been built.”
Paul Boag believes that Flash-based sites are still easy enough to rip with the right decompiler, but advises: “We shouldn’t allow a fear of plagiarism to dictate the technologies with which we develop,” he says. Dan Rubin agrees, and adds that: “Only the code is easier to copy from XHTML/CSS. If we’re talking about the visual design itself (rather than the interaction, animation, etc) then it’s easy to recreate a design no matter how the original designer created it.”
Copyrighting code
The subject of asserting copyright over code is a difficult one, because there are many standard practices for certain actions with CSS. “However, an author can achieve a given phrase with a variety of words in much the same manner as a coder can create an aesthetic with lines of code,” says Kyle Meyer. If an author can copyright his arrangement of words, why not a coder?
Other designers disagree. Dan Cederholm isn’t bothered about other people using his code for their own layouts: “It’s the visual design and branding that I’m most concerned about,” he explains. In fact, Paul Boag doesn’t feel that his code is truly his own to copyright: “After all, I’ve learned much from other people’s code and from those who have actively taught me best practice,” he says. Shaun Inman believes that copyrighting code would be a very bad thing. “Imagine if you had to license a paragraph element, a link element or an image replacement technique,” he argues. “Lack of openness doesn’t scale.”
Client demands
Rip-offs aren’t all about external thieves. Some clients request near-exact copies of other designers’ work. Kyle Meyer suggests we “explain the importance of being unique and the legal implications”. A similar approach can be taken when a client asks for a site that is ‘like’ another site. In this situation, Paul Boag will “encourage the client to articulate what it is about the site that they like and why. I then ask them what about the site is not appropriate or how it could be improved. Before long, their initial desire has evolved into something unique.”
Jeff Croft is also keen to demonstrate the disadvantages of copying another design: “I’m a designer, and a client is paying me to come up with a button style and imagery that’s appropriate for their own site,” he points out. “If they have me ‘steal’ a design element from someone else, then they’re not using the design skills they’ve already paid for.”
The situation is challenging, and it usually comes down to refusing the project or attempting to educate the client about creating something unique. As Jon Hicks notes, “Clients often provide examples to demonstrate what approach they would like, which is good. The skill of the designer is to interpret those examples.” Sam Brown adds: “This is where you have to combine your creativity with satisfying the client, while not offending anybody else in the process.”
Miguel Ripoll brings up the other scenario that can occur: “Sometimes clients ask me to copy myself, which is indeed a temptation for any creative, and one we should resist. I have a number of influences, references and inspirations I weave into my work, like I suppose everybody else does. I search for inspiration elsewhere; rather than looking at websites I go to museums, or read books about typography, architecture, interior design and furniture design.”
Does the problem come down to the fact that design thieves simply don’t understand the notion of copyright? “Some people seem to think that if the design is visible on the web, it’s free for them to copy and use,” says Jon Tan.
Andy Budd feels there’s a big gap in people’s understanding of copyright in general: “If a designer hands over copyright to a client, they could be losing the right to re-use any of it in the future.” He feels it’s better to grant clients a licence rather than copyright. “Handing over copyright gets even more complicated if parts of the design use licensed images or stock icons, or parts of the code use Javascript libraries or CSS frameworks. In truth there are very few situations where the client actually needs copyright anyway.”
Jeff Croft highlights the misunderstanding of copyright concepts among designers. “I constantly hear people talk about ‘copyright’ in instances where they should be using ‘trademark’ or ‘patent’. Simply creating an original work is enough to copyright it, as long as that work falls under the scope of copyright law.”
The importance of placing a ‘copyright’ symbol – and possibly a ‘copyright notice’ page – on one’s site is a sure-fire way to assert copyright, and is recommended by all the interviewees. Of course, whether it’s respected or not is another matter.
Some believe there’s nothing we can do to prevent design theft, because, as Rob Weychert points out, “It’s all down to the medium. For all its merits, it’s ripe for abuse, and you can’t really protect your stuff from thieves without also protecting it from everyone. I, for one, am more interested in making my work accessible to everyone else than making it inaccessible to a minority of miscreants.” Drew McLellan believes there’s still comfort we can take, even if our work is stolen. “What they can’t steal is the ability to create the next, even better design. That’s what makes the designer a designer – talent and skill.”
Don’t worry – be happy
In December 2007, industry pioneer Jeffrey Zeldman posted on his blog: “Don’t worry about people stealing your design work. Worry about the day they stop.” This sentiment is shared by many designers. Often it comes down to whether or not the infringing site is making a profit from your work.
Jonathan Snook is keen to forgive: “There are new people entering our industry every day and they all need to go through the same learning process.” Jon Tan believes good design should propagate. “No designer can own a style, in the same way that no one person can own an accent. Both are products of context, influence and inspiration.” However, he adds that the right to create derivative or inspired works has to be balanced with the rights of designers and their clients to protect their work.
“Some amateur thieves genuinely don’t know they are thieves,” Rob Weychert points out. “They need to be educated. Other thieves know exactly what they’re doing. They need to be destroyed.”
It’s not just about being fair, however. Paul Boag emphasises the fact that in most situations, it’s simply not worth the time and effort. “Are they a threat to my business? No. Why waste my time trying to get them to remove copied designs? Those who rely on stealing from others will not survive as a business.” As Keith Robinson reminds us, “Good design is often made with a great deal of inspiration. Too much worrying about this would be bad for all designers.”
Andy Budd has tried all of the prevention methods mentioned earlier, but these days remains fairly philosophical: “Life’s too short to worry about these kind of things!” Dave Shea is also keen to point out that “It’s often not worth worrying about, given the small percentage of people who will actually view the offending copy. That tiny percentage is just the inevitable cost of being a designer.”
I’ll leave you with the words of Dan Rubin, who feels we should treat each instance on a case-by-case basis. “Ultimately it comes down to the designer whose work has been copied. If you decide to take it as flattery in one case, file a formal complaint in a second, and take legal action in a third, that’s your right.”
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Comments
Derek Organ / 12/02/2009 / 16:47 / http://1timetracking.com
Always an issue alright with web content. Came accross this site recently and found it useful if you want to prove you created something at a giving time. Could give you that extra bit of evidence that its yours that would force the offender to take it down.
<a href="http://www.digiprove.com">http://www.digiprove.com </a>
mark elliott / 12/02/2009 / 19:45 / http://www.digiprove.com
Hi Guys,
This is self promoting and I make no apologies for the fact. We have developed an application that helps creators prove ownership of their creations.
Please check us out at www.digiprove.com and let me know your comments.
Regards
Mark
Susan Hallam / 28/07/2009 / 20:36 / http://www.shcl.co.uk
This is a huge problem for the designers, but even more so for the business owner who finds the USP of their site - the design - has been hijacked. I have had one client's design ripped off like this, and we were able to settle the matter to our satisfaction by getting the local Trading Standards involved. This will only work in the UK, of course, but for small businesses this might be one free way to resolve the situation without recourse to expensive solicitors fees.
