This is true, but art and business are not exact mirrors. Business has a lot more in common with sports and war than art. Sports teams copy each other like crazy when they see something working.
Facebook was a copycat.
Google was a copycat.
Every television network in existence would be considered a copycat of the DuMont Television Network.
There's a big difference between your examples and copying a company down to the pixel level. Come on, copying literally every pixel. As a designer and entrepreneur, I strongly feel there is something wrong with that. It is purely theft.
The word "theft" implies that someone is being "wronged" by the action.
If we ask ourselves "is this the case? Is anyone harmed by the actions of the Samwer brothers?" then, after we force ourselves to really sit and think about the answer to the question, and after we attempt to find real-world examples which support our point of view, then we find ourselves in the uncomfortable situation of being inexorably pushed, prodded, and shoved toward the inevitable conclusion: No. No one was harmed. In fact, just the opposite: the people who now have access to the cloned services now enjoy a higher quality of life due to it.
In short, inasmuch as I share your prejudice, I cannot figure out any way of reconciling that prejudice with the honest assessment that the world is now more enriched than it was prior to the Samwers.
The people working for RI and the incubated companies are wronged. The copying is not the problem. The problem is how they treat their employees. In the Berlin tech scene, if you were working for rocket you are treated as an easy victim. As someone who accepts every insult, being yelled at and every wrong that is done to them.
Er it seems pretty obvious that the company getting copied is being wronged. The evil genius of copying it verbatim and getting it out first is that when the original does launch in that other country, IT looks like the knockoff because it came to those people later and it looks just like something that's already been out for a while. This has large financial implications for them.
Still don't know how you can say that in the business world. Retail vendors do this as part of their normal course of action. So do the retailers themselves. Target and Wal-Mart will produce near-exact copies of expensive clothiers products. Are you equally outraged by that?
I agree 100%, which is why I raised that in my post. I think it would add a lot to their credibility if they produced original websites for their startups..
Facebook was a copycat. Google was a copycat.
Every television network in existence would be considered a copycat of the DuMont Television Network.
NASDAQ is a copycat.
Best Buy is a copycat.
American Idol is a copycat.
Not sure where you draw the line on originality.