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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 You are, of course, very welcome to read it — but I personally consider it to be outdated / irrelevant / embarrassing, and have removed it from my blog archive listings.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!

Pirated

Article illustration for Pirated

UPDATE: Thanks to the abuse report submitted by ‘Delicious’ (see comment below), I’m pleased to announce that the infringing design has been taken down from the site on which it was originally showcased. For reference, please refer to this screengrab on Flickr.

They say that imitation is the highest form of flattery, but imitation is also the highest form of laziness, it’s highly unoriginal, and it’s just plain rude. And while I admit that a small part of me is indeed flattered, a very large part of me is still trying to scrape my jaw up from the floor after seeing this shameless rip-off of elliotjaystocks.com.

Since launching this version of my site, I’ve seen the unique visits shoot to roughly 2500 per day, the site’s been showcased on a number of different sites all over the web, it’s been featured in some very prestigious places, and I&mmp;#8217;ve received more offers of work than I could ever hope to accept. For all of this, I’m extremely grateful, humbled, and flattered; but the downside of all this exposure means the design is open to plagiarism by the less original and dishonest designers among out there. And now it’s happened.

Luckily, I’m not alone. There’s a lot of interesting reading from other designers who’ve experienced the same problem, and Shaun Inman in particular had quite a few: link 1, link 2, link 3, link 4, link 5, link 6. The guys at Pirated Sites have set up a Flickr account for people to upload screengrabs of stolen designs, and I’ve done just that, as well as posting this image to my own Flickr account.

Eric Meyer has publicly urged Flickr users to tag such images as ‘piratedsites’, and says that although “the original site may be gone, […] the idea can absolutely be reborn using the social tools we already have.”

So all hands on deck, me hearties – I need your help, and the comments are open! Firstly, it’d be great if someone could accurately translate some of the stuff on this page. Secondly, what steps do you think I should take? ‘Thacker’ made some interesting suggestions on Eric’s post, but it’d be good to get some further thoughts on this one.

Before I go, I just want to thank the ‘Dikamilo’, whose comment on this page (I assume he was pointing out the similarity between the design and my site) contained the referrer link was that turned me on to the rip-off. Never underestimate the power of Mint, guys.