Legal Copyright Issues on webpage Designs

paulthelegend

I just helped out a friend on a college project she was doing, just ECDL standard web page haha, but basically she seen a webpage she liked so we copied the source, cleaned it up, changed the colour etc stripped it completely and then she put in the stuff she wanted, all grand and everyones happy and there allowed do that in the project cause literally every name and colour was changed and the layout was changed slightly ... im just wondering in the real world how would that go legally?

If a designer seen a layout he liked and done the above like went threw the whole thing line by line and cleaned it up and changed colours etc etc and then used it, how tight is the copy right law, what would you have to change to be safe?

just curious, as i wouldnt really like it happening to my sites someone just ripping it off, but i don't think id have a leg to stand on once they change it slightly

cgarvey

s/seen/saw/g
s/done/did/g

AFAIK (and I'm no solicitor) the onus would be on the original author to prove the the website that is a copy is a derivative of the copyrighted work.

So the more you change the harder it is to prove it was derived from the original work. However, watch out for things like typos, and invalid HTML. Otherwise, you could be caught on something like "Well they look the same, and both designs have invalid HTML in the 3 cell of table X, and the same typo in the 3rd last sentence".

If you use some creativity in your work, and clean up the original, like you say, then its unlikely to be proven that you copied the copyrighted work. Probably more to do with common sense.

.cg

mneylon

Online copyright is a grey area in some respects, as you can be influenced by another site's design, while ripping it off is another kettle of fish altogether.

p

Copyright in general is a bit grey. It'd really depend on the site.

Post up the two and will tell you if it's legal or not. )

It'd really depend on how close they were.

Though from a professional POV, I wouldn't expect any professional to do such a thing, from an ethical standpoint, and for practical reasons, e.g. it's simply a pain in the ass to hack someone else code, than simply create your own from the ground up.

paulthelegend

its long gone like i just fixed it up for her and gave it back, dont have any of the files anymore.

was her idea she really wanted that site(which i dont wanna say now for legal reasons haha), like basically the drop down menu was a javascript file Macromedia Inc. which is a copyright free file once u leave the tag on it, but to look at the two sites you would definitly see a simularity, like the drop down layout and the menu bar layout was the same, but changed in colour in all the jpg buttons and the main colour of the site,(and of course all the content haha) and each line of code was combed over to clean it up and change the file names from like x_32_r3.jpg to names she could understand and mess with herself, and took out a menu bar along the bottom, so definitly changed but definitly look simular.. this was litteraly just a ponder but want to know incase the silly cow tries to sell it to the company shes doing her project on

Its her boyfriends, da's company, little ****ty frieght company, (and the victim of this rip off was not a frieght company or anything like that was an IT company haha)shes just doing it free, like only for the marks in college, which i know she wont be done for Plagiarism but duno bout ... legalism

thanks for the info ... dont wanna be responsible for her trying to sell the site for a few drinks at the end and finding out she gets sued

clearz

Originally posted by p
Copyright in general is a bit grey. It'd really depend on the site.

Post up the two and will tell you if it's legal or not. )

It'd really depend on how close they were.

Though from a professional POV, I wouldn't expect any professional to do such a thing, from an ethical standpoint, and for practical reasons, e.g. it's simply a pain in the ass to hack someone else code, than simply create your own from the ground up.

A pain in the ass to hack someone else code? What to right click and go view source.

paulthelegend

hahahahaha
No a pain in the ass as in you have to figure out what does the b_th_abc_123.gif actually do and when you view it its just a dot and have to figure out which table is which etc etc i only use raw html so in notepad its a b*tch to figure out at the start, and probably quicker to just start from scratch and look at the original and code it yourself.

but just wanna know where she stands if she puts this up on the web for them, she actually will be doing it for like a few pints r something like that, not really selling it to them, more of a present.

Ph3n0m

lets just report her site to http://www.pirated-sites.com, just for giggles