Web Site Theft

Encountered my first case of outright theft of a site design I did. My employer's web site, which I designed and authored, showed up on another site today with their content and a few color changes. I thought it looked quite familiar. Opening up the source code showed how familiar. It was the exact same code. Headers, footers, CSS, everything, even the comments. Not just one page. The entire site, give or take a few.

Needless to say I was a little hot. I fired off an e-mail to their County administrator and my local webmasters group. I received an extreme apology with the caveats of a newbie thinking it was OK to "use our ideas" on their site. Ideas, yes. Complete source code, No.

We all will admit to hijacking some code or ideas from other sites, once in awhile. Heck, how are we ever going to learn new techniques. But to just save the source code as your own, and even put your own Copyright on it? Where is the common sense or ethics?

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