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Hello, dear reader! Just a heads up that this article is deprecated and (probably) not worthy of your time. You are, of course, very welcome to read it — but I personally consider it to be outdated / irrelevant / embarrassing, and have removed it from my blog archive listings. Really, it’s only still here to stop old links from breaking. You have been warned!

Now this is just silly

Article illustration for Now This Is Just Silly

UPDATE: After reporting the copyright violation to the website’s host, Strato, it appears that they’ve taken vmixx.com down! Cheers guys!

I couple of weeks ago, I wrote about my site’s design being ripped off, and – while the majority of comments were very supportive – some people thought I was being a little too harsh in calling it “pirated”. Well, I’m not here to continue that argument today; instead, I’m going to point your attention to vmixx.com, and I think you’ll agree that there’s nothing to argue about here. (In case the site gets changed or taken down, here’s the evidence on Flickr.)

What’s really interesting here is that the site’s ‘designer’ actually asked for my permission via e-mail, and when I declined, I’m pleased to say he ended up using a background that (while similar) was still very much his own. So why revert to using my imagery? Was the other background purely to throw me off the scent? Luckily I was alerted to the change by a helpful reader. Thanks, Rod!

Am I offended? A little. But I think it’s too funny to be that offended. I mean, not only has he used my main background image, but he’s also used the top bar and the swirls that sit behind it. And what are the swirls? That’s right, folks: MY NAME! So not only does vmixx.com have ‘Elliot Jay Stocks’ emblazoned across it in the metaphorical sense… it also has in the very literal sense as well!

Come on, man – take it down.