'Imitation is a form of flattery' ...but nobody likes being ripped off!

For anyone who has followed my work over the years you will be aware my work has been imitated before… Ok, it was a good few years ago and I can definitely look back on it and think ‘Oh well, it happened…’ I can even afford to laugh about it because of how blatent it was… It actually come to my attention from my client Rowan, who found in Google Analytics that she was getting lots of traffic from Argentina of all places. You can read about it here. Unfortunately, it seems lightening has struck again… The imitators are back! The beauty of Google Analytics is that you can see exactly who has been on your site, there is no hiding from it. This one was a little bit trickier to fathem out but I found a link from a company called ‘Track my root’… It was a surreal moment when i clicked the link as I thought for a split second this website feels familiar!! Low and behold, the website was a complete rip-off of my recently launched website www.ibbleobble.com. When I say ‘rip-off’ I mean they literally clicked ‘Save Page As..’ my code… HTML CODE I HAVE WRITTEN!.. they’ve changed a few links and images and called it their own. They even had the ‘courtesy’ to leave some of my images in for good measure. Reaffirming their bone idleness to actually create original work. Sickly huh? When even looking under the hood of the site in the HTML code, you can actually see some of my comments referencing Ibbleobble are still there! I also like the way they have kept my cookie message design almost identical, but they have failed to link the background image up in the CSS. Finally, it seems they have simply commented out the ‘like’ button to my Facebook page. My master detective work suggests they are Indonesian – having left some Indonesian vocabulary in the page.

Should I be angy? I am yeah… but what can I really do about it? I can’t even contact them and I do not want to give them any more publicity they don’t deserve. I have always had the saying ‘Originality will always be King!’ but there is only so much that statement does to make me feel better about it all. All too often people think it is simply ‘OK’ to take a slice of your creativity and call it their own. Even trademarking / copywriting hardly prevents stuff like this happening!. Believe me, I am incredibly proud of anything I am involved with and it has taken a great deal of hard work to get where I am now. Is there a way to stop companies blatently ripping others off? Probably not. The world isn’t as big as it used to be and while originality is ALWAYS king, some people think it’s their devine right to help themselves to it. 🙁

Categorised in: KidDotCo

They say ‘imitation is a form of flattery’ …but nobody likes being ripped off!

When somebody feels like it’s really ok to lift your site then I have every right to be angry

I wrote this!

Paul Jamie Kidd