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If you’re going to steal someone’s website… better know what you’re doing

December 3rd, 2007 by bkatzel

Some french dude ripped off my website but still linked over to my images so I hooked ‘em up with a little custom weenie treat. You gotta visit the actual links on this one and scroll to get the full effect.

Here’s the original site – http://www.webleeddesign.com

original.gif

Here’s the french copycat – http://cul2stars.free.fr/

copy.gif

Posted in design | 53 Comments »

why post?yawn...on the fenceRippedMajor Rip! (67 votes, average: 4.94 out of 5)
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53 Responses to “If you’re going to steal someone’s website… better know what you’re doing”

  1. on 03 Dec 2007 at 5:56 am   Guav

    That’s absolutely amazing HAHAHA …. and the best part is that it’s subtle, so it’ll probably be a while before they notice.

    Great design, by the way.

  2. on 03 Dec 2007 at 6:17 am   Anonymous

    you sir are a gentleman and a scholar, go to my stable and take my finest horse. his name is rainbowcocks he is yours.

    real pretty site design as well.

  3. on 03 Dec 2007 at 6:24 am   nitnat

    haha nice done :D

  4. on 03 Dec 2007 at 7:38 am   Anthony to the S.

    bwahahahahah

    http://paidandpopular.blogspot.com

  5. on 03 Dec 2007 at 7:43 am   emuman

    haha, this is so cheap!
    he just changed the stipes into penises…

  6. on 03 Dec 2007 at 7:58 am   here

    i salute your awesomeness.

  7. on 03 Dec 2007 at 9:47 am   T

    Some buttmunch has now hacked the site for you.

  8. on 03 Dec 2007 at 10:07 am   Marty

    Bhahahahaha. You sir, are a genius.

  9. on 03 Dec 2007 at 3:28 pm   susie

    Now that is true art. You are very very clever man.

  10. on 03 Dec 2007 at 7:11 pm   robokid

    hahahahaha, that’s sooooooooooo f***ing hilarious. well done! hahahahahaha…

  11. on 04 Dec 2007 at 5:06 pm   susie

    You better copyright those weenies ASAP. Someone might slap them on a T-Shirt.

  12. on 04 Dec 2007 at 5:31 pm   Matt

    Ha Ha, the hack is the best!

  13. on 05 Dec 2007 at 8:07 pm   Arkonbey

    Genius, man, genius. Big ‘ol design kudos to you.

  14. on 05 Dec 2007 at 9:05 pm   SIXTEN

    Awesome! Great job.

  15. on 05 Dec 2007 at 10:27 pm   Jen

    This is my favorite form of revenge. One time I caught someone hotlinking to an image on my site and I asked them to remove it. (They were claiming that the artwork was theirs on a gallery page.) Not only did they refuse to take it down, but their response was something along the lines of “bite me.”

    So I changed the image and it took them over a week to notice. For that time though, right on the front of their site was an image that said “The image you are trying to view cannot be displayed because Whatsername is a FUCKING IDIOT!” ;)

  16. on 15 Dec 2007 at 4:38 am   not Anthony to the S.

    Anthony to the S. can you please stop spamming us all with your blog. Thanks.

  17. on 17 Dec 2007 at 7:23 pm   WaffleMatt

    I’ll just have to say that I love webleeddesign. Great job!

    Excellent job handling this too. Unfortunately it’ll be noticed promptly now, as it appears the copycat has been broken into more thoroughly than your sublte hint.

  18. on 17 Dec 2007 at 7:53 pm   FAS

    wow, beautiful site. Wish I could have seen what you did to the other guy….

    Feel like giving hints as to how you did that beautiful thing with the stars….?

  19. on 17 Dec 2007 at 7:58 pm   chad p

    Brilliant. There should be a holiday for you. Maybe there is.
    A group called Holiday Cover Up is encouraging us to celebrate every day of the year by revealing holidays we don’t know about. It’s pretty good. View it here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZQC1ySK1aVI.

  20. on 17 Dec 2007 at 8:01 pm   cardoso

    I did it once. Some kid stole entire posts, first-person texts, including lots of pictures. Hotlinking every single one.

    I left a few messages. Nothing. I claimed DMCA, NSA, DIAF, etc. Nothing. I wrote all sort of comments, from very polite ones to very nasty ones.

    The little bastich deleted the comments. SO… I switched off Google´s safe search, and looked for REALLY nasty porn, goatse.cx, animal gay porn, you name it. Switched lots of pictures.

    Next day the kid wrote me telling me it was unfair, his familly followed his blog, bla bla bla. And he had not enough time to remove the posts.

    Poor little snowflake. Only a 2 weeks warning, how evil am I?

  21. on 17 Dec 2007 at 8:49 pm   argella

    May you live forever, in song, story, fable and myth.

  22. on 17 Dec 2007 at 8:50 pm   Morey

    This is just great, although the image in the article is nicer than the bland hack message displayed now.

  23. on 17 Dec 2007 at 9:17 pm   Chris Tucker

    I bow thrice in thy honored direction, Osensei!

    You have much to teach us.

  24. on 17 Dec 2007 at 9:28 pm   Lex10

    Ironically, this guy, who has to French word “cul” in his URL, is one:
    1 cul Noun, masculine (a) (quite Vulg) arse (quite Vulg), bum (Slang), backside (Slang); donner un coup de pied au ~ à qn to give sb a kick up the arse; “bouge-toi le ~!”, “bouge ton ~!” “shift your arse!”; “mon ~!” “my arse!”; tu peux te le foutre au ~ you can stick it up your arse; avoir du ~ to be a jammy bastard (quite Vulg); avoir le feu au ~ to be gagging for it (Vulg); (Vulg) ça t’arrache les poils du ~ (de me dire bonjour)? is it too much fucking effort for you (to say hello)?; être sur le ~ to be shagged out (slightly Vulg, humorous) (or) knackered (Slang)

    2 cul Adjective, invariable (a) (Slang) il est ~, ce mec he’s a right twat (Slang) (or) twerp (Infml)

  25. on 17 Dec 2007 at 10:50 pm   lozenge

    The cheek of some people!
    A few years back I was working for a small but renowned web design company (well in the NMA top 100) and some kid had the audacity to not only rip off our site as his own work, but to then submit it to .Net magazine for appraisal! At the time our lead designer was actually writing for the mag too, so it wasn’t long before we got to hear about it, yet still it was weeks before the arrogant plagariser apologised.

  26. on 18 Dec 2007 at 12:23 am   ed

    totally fucking rad… one of the best pranks pulled on a theaving stooge ever! i salute thee!

  27. on 18 Dec 2007 at 12:46 am   R. Elgin

    You had better take out a (TM) on “rainbow cocks” now — someone might decide they like that better than your original artwork!

  28. on 18 Dec 2007 at 1:07 am   Alan

    Kudos for the substitution gag I would have put the goatse guy I don’t have your subtlety .

  29. on 18 Dec 2007 at 1:42 am   B.Katzel

    Thanks for all the great comments everyone. Appreciate all the support and kind words.

    R. Elgin – I’m working on the merchandising as we speak. Who wants a “rainbow cocks” neck tie?! Maybe a few beer cozys and Wii-mote jackets for the kids.

    Fas – I think the stars you’re talking about are just a .png image with transparent areas that allow the rainbow background to show through when the page is scrolled. Hope that helps.

  30. on 18 Dec 2007 at 3:29 am   Mike Mol

    Looks like someone hacked his site. (Wasn’t me…)

  31. on 18 Dec 2007 at 3:45 am   Bob

    I dont know. These website rips are a bit suspicious to me. Its probably the sceptic in me but this guy probably got 18000+ hits on his site, looking at his portfolio. Potential clients.

    It wouldnt be hard at all to fake the ‘ripped’site to get all this exposure/traffic.

    His designs are good, dont get me wrong, but i hate being decieved.

    I dont have any proof for/againsed, but its wise to be mindful of other possibilities in an anonymous web environment.

  32. on 18 Dec 2007 at 8:03 am   Anonymous

    Againsed?

  33. on 18 Dec 2007 at 5:30 pm   matharchod

    Hey man, your site is so cool, I would have ripped you off, too! ;)

  34. on 18 Dec 2007 at 5:42 pm   Kim

    My web design skills are rusty, but how did you manage to hack the text on his site?

  35. on 18 Dec 2007 at 8:05 pm   jackson

    a lot of times the references on this site are homages — I mean, everything comes from something else — and I can’t really see the problem. art is theft. get over it. this, however, is simply evil and, worse, lazy. thank you for killing them.

  36. on 18 Dec 2007 at 9:28 pm   A to the J

    Can I copy the hacked site? Or will you re-hack my copied site? Will the penis’ then turn into snakes on a plane?

    just wondering if it is ok to steal from a thief. ;)

    good job.

  37. on 18 Dec 2007 at 10:57 pm   Dave

    probably some kid…

  38. on 18 Dec 2007 at 11:40 pm   Itsnotabomb

    I’d sport that shirt!

  39. on 19 Dec 2007 at 10:58 am   Pete

    Ahhh. The mirth! The awesome wave of mirth!

    I caught someone jacking one of my illustrations on threadless but my revenge was not near so sweet as this. I just dropped a dime on the fucker but I think you actually dropped this clown a couple notches. This is like design jiu jitsu, man. My hat is off.

  40. on 19 Dec 2007 at 11:12 am   Pete

    As for mr. “Art is theft,” There’s a difference between design-related convergence (it happens), theft (as you so aptly put it), and homage.

    In my understanding, homage is when you take an idea from someone you admire, learn from it and, if possible, improve upon it. There’s a big difference between making a playful reference to something someone slaved over and pillaging someone’s idea because you can’t personally muster the creativity to turn heads on your own.

    What we’re talking about here is not even a paraphrase of the original design concept, it’s the same story, if you will; word for word.

    That’s all I got. Pick a side, Jackson.

  41. on 20 Dec 2007 at 2:10 am   Kevin

    Making fun of gay people is funny!

    NOT

  42. on 22 Dec 2007 at 11:41 pm   Finneas Wimmer

    Why are the images on this entry now broken?

  43. on 23 Dec 2007 at 4:47 pm   Anonymous

    very nice desing on ur site btw !

  44. on 07 Jan 2008 at 3:36 am   another

    copy x2:

    I saw this on boing boing a few weeks ago and today, while browsing around I found this (look at the main user pic):

    http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendid=37293156

    Looks like someone copied the edited picture for their logo! maybe the innuendo was obvious enough?

  45. on 07 Jan 2008 at 11:47 am   Anonymous

    Check out the background of

    http://paidandpopular.blogspot.com

    and

    http://dpmhi.com/

    notice anything familiar?
    ;)

  46. on 25 Jan 2008 at 9:59 pm   Dave

    Heh… at first I thought that the background images were probably just part of a popular Wordpress theme but then I looked at the source of the background image on http://paidandpopular.blogspot.com and guess what ? It’s actually hotlinked right from http://dpmhi.com !

    He’s just asking to have rainbow cocks all over his website… or maybe subtlety is the name of the hotlinked-image-replacement-game.

  47. on 26 Jan 2008 at 3:07 pm   godiex

    heh, that’s a clever site.very well done.
    I know many graphic designers that would be so jelaous of it. ;)

    the penis thing was funny.
    a fucking rip off. but funny.

    good luck!

  48. on 05 Apr 2008 at 5:38 pm   Ricardo

    LOL.
    You owned that dude.
    By the way, your site is awesome

  49. on 02 Jan 2009 at 9:24 am   Marketing Firms Take Heed - BlawgIT

    [...] of the Joke Be forewarned. Like patent attorneys, artists and web designers have a rather warped sense of humor. When assessing the potential downside of marketing maneuver that infringes the intellectual [...]

  50. on 04 Mar 2009 at 5:27 am   » you thought we wouldn’t notice at hobartimus.com

    [...] If you’re going to steal someone’s website… better know what you’re doing share this [...]

  51. on 09 May 2009 at 10:42 pm   Vern LaVey

    I think that a few posters aren’t getting what you actually did, which was turn his blatant copy of yours into penises. (penii?)

    The penises aren’t the copy, they’re what was done to the copy because the copier was stupid enough to link to the originals.

  52. on 31 May 2009 at 7:30 am   you thought we wouldn’t notice » Blog Archive » CNET Web Design Theft… Three Times Over.

    [...] Should I stop posting website rips unless they are this good? [...]

  53. on 25 Sep 2009 at 9:11 am   J. Cullen

    Fighting a lack of creativity with some serious creativity.

    Nice :)

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