A few months ago Eric Odom from Freshy SEO joined the BloggingTips writing team. He wrote some good posts but after being a few days late with one post and completely forgetting to post two other weeks I had to part ways with him. So I emailed him about this on June 26th 2008.
Hi Eric,
Due to another post being missed today, I will have to remove you from the bloggingtips team. I appreciate your a busy guy however I plan my own posts round the schedule of the other BloggingTips authors and you have now missed 2 posts and been late with 1 too.
No hard feelings. I know it can be hard to juggle woth with your own blog and someone elses however I really need bloggers who can post on time every week.
Best of luck with your blog.
Kevin
Eric never replied to this email but I didn’t think anything of it until yesterday when I came across a post of his on stumbleupon. Check out his new footer on his blog.
Compare this with the BloggingTips footer.
As you can see the author list at the bottom of the site is identical ie. the avatar followed by ‘Firstname from Blogname’. Just like BloggingTips the authors first name is a different link color from the blog link. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to realise that Eric completely ripped off this section of his blog design from me and out of curiosity I checked his sourcecode.
My footer is wrapped within two classes author_avatars with the list below using the class author_list. Low and behold Eric is using the same code.
Is Imitation the best form of flattery?
I know that programmers and designers use other designs and scripts for inspiration in their own work however in this instance I think it is just plagiarism as Eric has just copied and pasted the same code I was using. Normally I wouldn’t write a post like this without first contacting the person in question to hear their side of the story but since Eric completely missed posts he was scheduled to write here, since he never replied to my email about it and since he’s blatantly copied a big part of this blogs design, I really don’t think I owe him that courtesy.
I don’t like to write negative posts like this though at the same time, I don’t want bloggers from a similar niche to be copying elements of a design I paid a company specifically to make this blog stand out from the crowd. Of course, this kind of thing goes on a lot. Darin Carter posted last year about The Geek Boys completing ripping off the design he had paid good money for.
It can be very difficult to make a blog stand out nowadays which is why I don’t want whole sections of my blog design to be copied.
What do you think : Is Imitation the best form of flattery? Would you be annoyed if someone copied and pasted parts of your blog design or would you be flattered that someone liked your design enough that they would do such a thing?
* For the record, I know my tone has been a bit negative in this post but I’m not angry or pissed off towards Eric about this, I simply don’t want parts of my design copied and reproduced around the web, particuarly without my consent and particularly not on blogs in a similar niche.
Kevin,
You have every right to be mad! When that copy cat situaiton happend with me I didn't know if I should have been flattered or pissed. However I paid for a Unique Design to stand out of the crowd and for someone to just swing by and decide to RIP my ENTIRE Site, that was just not cool. I made it known to the community and everyone stood behind me. He eventually decided to go with a different design but that was after some bad press.
I'm behind you in your decision, make your point well known!
Darin
I can only imagine how angry you were at the time. I've only had a small section copied, I recall the design thegeekboys put up and it was a carbon copy of the design you paid for. The people who ripped you off even had the cheek to put their copyright on the design!
Kevin,
I'm a little surprised at your post here… I thought you and I were on good terms and because you had never tried to contact me regarding this, I had no idea you had a problem with it.
Let me makes some points here in my comment, since to be fair my side of story should have a chance, no?
1) Did I build upon your idea? Absolutely! I love the idea of promoting authors for their participation. I think what you did here was steller and I applaud it. But did I just copy your code? Absolutely not. In fact, I didn't even design it. Justin from SEO zombie did. If you would have actually contacted me (we are both on gchat, after all), I could have explained that.
2) Freshy SEO is not a "blogging tips" blog. With that in mind, I never once saw us as "competing". If you think we are then you could have just told me that. I've been a long time reader of Blogging Tips and I'm a huge fan. I don't see how two completely different blogs can't use a similar idea and co-exist in peace.
3) If you would have simply e-mailed me about this, I would have certainly edited my site to remove the footer.
Again… I had no idea this was an issue. At all.
4) As I explained in my e-mail, I got completely overwhelmed and could not post for a bit.
Does all of this, considering the fact that you decided to not come to me for comment, warrant a post attacking me personally?
That doesn't seem fair.
And… after further investigation, it appears as though my reply to your e-mail is still a draft. I don't know why I never sent it, as it would have hopefully cleared up some things. My mistake, and obviously a bad one at that.
But I must repeat that I'm quite taken back at your attacking tone here. Are you suggesting that other bloggers cannot have similar features as blogging tips? I'm not a coder, so I don't know if Justin just copied your code. I know that when he was doing it he built it from scratch using your layout as an "idea springboard". That would be a discussion to have with him, but I do know the idea is solid and you seem to be saying that no one else can use it because it was yours first. Is this the case? That strikes me as a bit odd and doesn't seem like you at all.
Like I said though, I'll remove it if that is your wish. Just had no idea you were ready to launch a negative hit piece on me over others building on your good ideas.
Is that not what Blogging Tips is about? Sharing good ideas and helping other bloggers succeed?
-Eric
Eric,
I didn't write this post to personally attack you. My last two emails to you were never replied to which is why I didn't speak to you about it.
1. I disagree that you built upon my idea. The code was copied, the design was copied. That isn't building upon an idea, it is plagiarism. I don't think that it's fair to pass the buck to your designer, I'm sure that you advised him to do this design and you approved it afterwards. I don't see why I should have discussion with him, you advised him to use my footer as an 'idea springboard', he chose to just copy it exactly and you chose to accept this and publish it on your blog.
2. I never once claimed your blog was a blogging tips blog anywhere in my post. I said it was in a similar niche and it is. SEO is a topic I cover here and it's something a lot of bloggers read about. Both are related to web development in some way.
3+4. You emailed me on June 17th. I replied and asked if you can give me some notice if you cannot write posts. You never replied. A week later you missed your scheduled post again and I sent the email which I mentioned in the above post. After getting no reply to my emails and after seeing my code copied exactly, can you blame me for not contacting you about it?
Yes I agree, and in the history of this blog I have did my best to do that and have many times told people the plugins I use, shared the code for certain parts and I have explained certain things via tutorials.
If you do not code or do not design yourself then perhaps you cannot see that you are doing anything wrong here. However, I think you need to try and see the difference between 'inspiration' and 'plagiarism'. It's no different from copying content and passing it off as your own. As someone who blogs regularly I'm sure you can understand the frustration this can cause to the author.
As I have said, I normally do contact the owner with something like this but since you did not reply to my emails and since the code was copied exactly, I did not believe I owed you that courtesy. I was not trying to attack you personally however I don't just sit back and let people copy my content, design or code without even voicing my opinion on it. I think this is something which many bloggers wouldn't be too concerned about which is why I would like to hear other bloggers view on this subject though personally, I'm not happy when someone copies code directly from one of my sites.
#1. Then we'll just have to agree to disagree. Do you know how many themes out there have a space in the upper right for four different 125X125 ads and they all have the exact same format? Is that "plagiarism"? Of course not! It was a good idea, and one that many have now duplicated.
I'm not "passing" anything. He's not a designer, he's a blogger who also writes for Freshy SEO. I asked him to create something like what was here. What's wrong with that? I still don't see the problem here, but again, as mentioned above, if you had instant messaged me and asked I would have taken it down. You never told me you were upset about it, instead… you wrote a post accusing me of "stealing your code".
#2. I see that instead of viewing the sphere as a community with a wide variety of topics, Blogging Tips is the one source for all topics covered here? Is that your assertion? There are thousands of bloggers who look at Blogging Tips as a great resource for information and ideas… yet, you don't want us to use YOUR ideas? I'm a little shocked about that, to be honest.
"can you blame me for not contacting you about it?"
Absolutely! It's called Gchat. I see you on it… and you see me. We've talked on it before, so why not now?
I understand my email never made it to you. For that I am deeply sorry. It's a mistake that I now regret. But to assume something, and then write a big blog post accusing me of this is just over the top, Kevin. It's disrespectful, rude, and goes against everything I thought Blogging Tips stood for.
Look, this is a feud I would prefer us not have. Like I said, I'm MORE than willing to remove the footer code and let this just be a feature ONLY available to BloggingTips.com. If you would have just asked me we could have resolved this. But instead, you've dragged it into an unprofessional post written in poor taste.
Hopefully we can move on now and leave this be…
1. I have explained my reasons for not contacting you directly in my comments and in my post. I will repeat them again, you did not reply to my emails so why would my first thought be to contact you about this?
2. It wasn't an idea you stole. You copied a design – the code was copied word for word, character for character – that is the definition of 'stealing code'. You are completely missing the point I was trying to make. It's the same as you copying the logo from ProBlogger or DailyBlogTips or whatever and changing the text to say FreshySEO.
I am not trying to start a feud and I didn't write this post to start an argument either. I disagree that it was written in poor taste. I grant you that it was written in a negative tone but it's difficult to write a post like that without coming across as negative as the post talked about a part of my design being copied. Any programmer will tell you that having code copied from something you took time to write is frustrating.
We will have to agree to disagree on this one. As I said in my post, there are people who might not be too bothered about this but having code copied directly is something which I don't like.
Kevin, again, how hard would it have been to open up a gchat dialog box and say "Eric, are you on? I'm about to write a negative post about you unless you take down a part of your theme that looks like a part of mine"
I completely understand your point about my e-mail not getting to you. For that I have apologized. Hopefully you can except that.
Secondly, yes, we will have to disgaree on the copying part. I didn't copy any design. Your theme is your theme. I use PassionDuo Green, and one of my bloggers hacked the footer up using a layout like your footer has. It isn't your code, it just so happens to "function" like your code. But keep in mind that your theme designer "copied" an "idea" of having 125 ads in the sidebar. That is fact. According to your logic, that is "stealing code".
Your logic and mine are apparently quite different.
Well, I was going to say something along the lines of "don't jump to conclusions, it just has a similar structure, it's not like it's the same styling," but then I got to the part about having the same classes and stuff…
Now, looking at the screencaps, they have the same structure, but they look differently stylistically. If what you say is true about about the HTML being copied and pasted, then yeah, that's not good.
My recommendation would be to re-code the section, and maybe add some further stylistic variation.
I hope this can be resolved civilly and without too many…problems. I've seen this sort of thing happen far too many times.
With regards to the 125×125 banner ads, I don't think this is the same argument
When I first started working on the web 468×60 was the most popular ad format. Over 80% of browsers had resolutions of 800×600 pixels or smaller therefore ad formats like 728×90, 300×300 or skyscraper ads like 160×600 or 120×600 couldn't be used – infact, I don't recall any affiliate network actually offering these formats anyways.
If you had to search back to some articles around that time you will see a lot of influential webmasters telling you that you should perhaps design your website smaller than 750-800 pixels in width as many users were on resolutions smaller than 800×600 pixels. This was a time when 15" CRT monitors were considered large and the smaller 14" was the norm.
Fast forward a few years and the introduction of TFT monitors and then the reduction in price of these monitors means that most users used larger resolutions. Larger resolutions meant that more and more websites designed for larger screens and the industry started offering more and more ad formats (how often do you see 88×31 banner ads nowadays?).
One of the changes was the change for blogs to use 125×125 ads on the sidebar. This was an obvious choice. Most designs now accomodate a 1024×768 resolution as a minimum therefore designs are usually fluid or a 1000 pixel fixed width. For blogs it is important for the content to be given focus which is why the many blogs have a sidebar of 250-300 pixels with a main content area of 600-700 or smaller if there is a 3rd sidebar. Of course, widgets and other things like latest posts means that 250-300 pixels is a good size to display the information which is common on sidebars. My point is, the growth of 125×125 ads amongst blogs is a natrual one which was influenced by users resolutions and the blog platform itself where there has to be a certain focus on the content in the center of the page. The same argument could be made for other types of websites eg. 728×90 ads are common amongst discussion forums and 300×300 ads are common in magazine style content sites.
Basically, these points are a long winded way of explaining that it iextremely doubtful that one blogger used this format and the rest of the blogosphere simply copied them. There are clearly most factors involved.
With regards to stealing code. Your designer had used the same code, pretty much exactly. There was a division with the same class name as mine. Within this CSS div was an unordered list with the same class as mine. Each author was then listed using a list tag (eg. li). It was exactly the same structure and used exactly the same CSS class names (mentioned in my post). This was my main criticism which I raised in this post
I do appreciate that none of this was intentional and you are right, regardless of not hearing from you from email before, the least I could have done was contact you first about this though if I'm perfectly honest, when I first realised what had happened I didn't think that way and was quite annoyed about it.
My intention wasn't to paint you as a scammer or anything of the sort and I apologise if it came across like that. I'm not a great programmer and I'm not a great designer however I do understand a lot of code and I usually tweak everything myself. I admit that I do forget that most bloggers don't code and most don't even want to get involved with it and perhaps this is where the different view on the subject is coming from. For the first 4 or 5 years I worked on the web I designed every site I run myself (which is why some of them were poorly designed!). I run a lot of forums and obviously the majority of that was coded by software companies though I did skin them myself. Perhaps this background makes me think differently to many bloggers on subjects such as this.
I think many of your readers would not like to get into this argument. Kevin, if you want to discuss about the issue of plagarism or imitation, I think you should have written a different post and not about your ex-guest writer.
By the look of your post, especially the enclosed letter and your post script MAY APPEAR, different thing to different readers.
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