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General discussion

Portfolio rip-off

Jan 25, 2006 4:15PM PST

Some days ago while doing my weekly research on my webdesign portfolio stats I discovered that I got ripped off by a Turkish company.
They never bothered even to change the screenshots of the sites in my portfolio.they.just changed the text in the html and put their name over mine in the graphics. They changed the title in the meta, but not my name..so I'm still the author there. Not to mention the css wich is still named the way I named it and the comments in the css are still my own.
After posting this to another forum, a member of that forum discovered that the Turkish company copied also a previous version of my portfolio.
I tried to e-mail them to the addresses provided on their sites and to the addresses in the registrar's records, asking them to kindly remove the designs that they stole from me, but no reply came. I have sent e-mails to the hosting companies (one of them is also Turkish, the other one seems to be a phantom company somewhere in the US), but no reply came as well.
I'm not sure if I'm allowed to post links here, so I won't for the time being. What I want is some advice: what can I do? Is there any way that I can solve this?

Discussion is locked

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The links
Jan 25, 2006 8:55PM PST
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Take it as flattery.
Jan 25, 2006 11:16PM PST

Nice design. While artists do get riled about this on the web, you must be doing something right for the design to be lifted almost intact.

How does this hurt your efforts? Where you live? The question is not one you need to answer here but think over on your own. If you are in Aus, and they are in Turkey then fretting about this may drain you and not them.

I normally don't comment on such a post as yours but I looked at your site and thought it looked very very ... nice.

If you read a few at http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=imitation+flattery you will see quickly the same issue as you noted.

Bob

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Thanks
Jan 25, 2006 11:35PM PST

You're right and I did take it as a flattery from the first moment..I've even laughed about it. I suppose in the end what disturbed me most was the fact that they didn't even bother to answer my emails. But I guess I got to live with that. And after all..they are "spreading" my design, even if under their names.
Thanks for the appreciation.

Emma