For me personally I found his attitude towards the entire thing the real problem. He asked if crediting the original creators was enough, he then hid behind all manner of silly startup buzzwords ("a/b testing", "ghetto test", "lean startup") and didn't seem to understand it was wrong. His tweets after the fact were worrying too, especially when others uncovered that they had other products that took designs from elsewhere.

Shit happens and hopefully this doesn't damage curebits business long term, but Allan really needs to understand what he did wrong, he seems to think the problem was he didn't credit and it's perfectly okay to take someone elses work, pass it off as your own and then hide behind silly phrases. No matter what your business is or how old you are stealing is wrong.

Allan did have some silly responses. Either he was panicking and couldn't think clearly (he does have a lot on the line) or he genuinely doesn't understand what the problem is. On the other hand, I think David is overreacting and trying to get as much attention as possible -- seems a bit childish.

If I was in David's shoes, I'd be shocked to see how much they directly copied and simply ask them to take it down, and possibly notify their investors. I'd also be proud that they used my design.

Allan has founded four companies. This isn't his first ball game and I'm sure he knows better.

>"Shit happens and hopefully this doesn't damage curebits business long term"

Why this? Having their business affected is precisely what needs to happen to demonstrate that doing this is unacceptable.

"I'm happy to copy the css styles for it." vs " I've still coded everything myself."

No, you haven't.

Seeing a website look that you like and emulating it by creating a blackbox version of it is fine, seeing a website look that you like and grabbing the css styling for it is breaching copyright. Its also ridiculously lazy in a bad way, getting someone else's css to work with your html is going to be way more painful than simply writing your own. Unless you also copy the html for it?

Seriously. As a professional you do not get to take other people's work without their permission. As a civilian you can do what you like, but if you want people to think of you as a professional, you need to act professionally.

What if you are web browsing and you see a background colour of a site that looks really good, so you decide to get it from the source and use it from your website?

"I'm happy to copy the colour code for it." vs " I've still coded everything myself."

yep, what if you do? copying a color code is certainly not speaking to copyright concerns.

There are a couple of points to consider though. the first and most obvious is that generally a background color by itself will not work well with the other colors on your site - choosing items in isolation like that is generally a fantastic way to end up with coder art (believe me, I know something about how to produce coder art).

The thing that good designers do, and do well, is make all the elements work together, generally if you simply take a single element (background color, font sizes, etc) from someone else's site and dump it on your own site without considering the overall effect, you are doing a stupid thing.

I don't think anyone here is worried about the sharing of ideas - uses of color, general placement of elements and so forth, taking those things and merging them with your own needs and messages is how new art is made. The problem with copyright usually comes when someone simply does wholesale copying without the process of considering each element in terms of its effect, the message you want to get across and so forth.

IMO A 'good faith' copying of highrise done competently would produce something new, something where the source of inspiration can be clear, but where there is sufficient change and obvious consideration of the factors that made your own product unique that there is no question of direct copying.

The damage done by straight copying is always twofold, the first is the obvious - the breach of copyright, the second is also clear but many people miss it - a design produced that speaks to a specific product, specific website goals and specific messages is very unlikely to have the same positive effect if transplanted wholesale.

That is why wholesale copying is not just a sign of a lack of ethics, it is also a clear indication of a total lack of competence. The person doing the copying entirely lacks knowledge of the process that is required to produce good work, and has no idea why the site they admire so much works so well. Even putting copyright and ethical concerns aside, I would have no interest in working with someone who lacks the competence to understand why wholesale copying is usually a stupid idea. They will not produce good work targeted at my needs, they will produce good work targeted at something entirely unrelated.

I find it a problem when people's response is basically "I'm sorry I got caught", and not "I am legitimately sorry".

The part of the apology is realizing that a mistake was made in the first place. Failure to do that does not make you look good.

I don't know about a lynch mob but for me it clearly reflects poor judgement, lack of integrity, and just plain laziness.

Improvements and Rip-offs are two different things.

> it's just a bit of design rip off

I'm surprised that some people don't even understand what is being discussed here. Hint: it's not the hot-linking, it's not the borrowing of html, css or anything else. It's the brazen theft of someone else's work that @allangrant has engaged in and his apparent inability to see why this is an incorrect attitude. Not being a designer is not an excuse for being an apologist, either.