Feb 20

kitschensink.com & kidd81.com take one hell of a creative beating! Originality will always be King!

Posted by Mr P . Filed under kidd81.com general, kitschensink.com | 13 Comments

Hey Guys and Dolls!

I know its been a while since I properly blogged… a few reasons really.. I wanted to keep the post regarding my article in WebDesignerMag very much fresh in everyones mind… besides I didn’t have anything more hardcore newsworthy…….’til now!

Rowan @ kitschensink.com are always in close contact through facebook mainly as we like to share creative ideas, we often exchange Google alerts to where her site is featured… for example… We have had an enormous response to her site going live and have been featured in countless CSS galleries which – for us both really – is a huge achievement to be recognised by fellow creative professionals.

I recieved a facebook message on February 16 at 2:02pm from Rowan saying “What the hell?? http://www.julianhasse.com.ar/ Is this OK???”

To my absolute astonishment… this guy had blatently ripped off our site… I have never in my 10 years in the industry seen anything like it… I didn’t know whether to laugh, cry, scream, shout…. my instant reaction was to hug my computer screen and say “No! No! this can’t happen!!!” < yeah, weirdo!.. I guess this reaction can only happen when something as drastic as this happens to you... Rowan too was equally in a state of shock as the story unfolded.

Let me try and peice together and deconstruct the site so you can see for yourself what we was seeing.... For the record.. the beautiful kitschensink is on the top!

kitschensink.com gets ripped off!

At first glance you you can hardly tell the difference…. thats because there is absolutely NO DIFFERENCE AT ALL! (barring a few image changes which have been poorly executed)…. Whoever has taken the time to rip us off blind has done it good and proper… but very badly! For anyone who isn’t in to web development, sites are made up by markup code (or HTML) which allows pages to be built to an industry standard… these cowboys have lifted my source code too! So the hours which went in to building the site had litterally been de-compiled, rearranged and passed off as their own… how on earth can this blatent act happen!…

The site was lifted at approximately Sunday 24 Jan 2010 17:09:39 GMT… I know this because they left all my code in the top of the page with a meta expiry I set to stay current… this stopped the moment they took the site and never re-implimented it so it was like the clock had simply stopped on them! Clever cats these guys arent they? :o / I am terribly upset they even put their own copyright statement up there too! do they even know what this means?!!

Here is an example of the HTML.. it is only a small snippet of the code, but it is significant as I had named a h1 class as ‘grant’… as in ‘Rowan Grant’ but these idiots have kept it in! but just changed the text to his name!

The most amusing page of all we come across and at this point this is where complete anger changed to us just shaking our head.. this was the ‘Payment’ page of kitschen sink… see for yourselves…

For some reason they decided to keep kitschen sink’s payment page on their site… Strange… but it may have something to do with their blatent carelessness. The page content refers to eveything to do with kitschen sink and how to pay her for her items of jewellery. Even the links were pointing to her shop!!! This page also retains my footer with all my copyright and disclaimer notices…What the hell is going on!

Not only did they rob my design, source code and scripts they also replaced all my imagery but retained the image name so it was easy to put together… for example kitschen sinks logo image http://www.kitschensink.com/images/kitchensink-h1.jpg was replaced with that daft accordion but still kept the image name!

The last example I want to highlight… (I could go on forever but hopefully you get the gist) and this has really hit Rowan hard.. She is one of the most passionate gal I know and one thing which she prides the kitschen sink concept on is her grandma… she taught Rowan all she need to know about crafts so thats why we chose to include this story on here ‘about us’ page which reads…

“Rowan was born in June 1982, to possibly the least creative two parents in the UK. Both worked full time jobs, so on holidays and mornings before school, Rowan went to Grandma’s. Grandma didn’t like the TV to get hot, so after Saved By The Bell, it was switched off, and the paints, pencils, knitting needles, pins, wool and felt came out. Grandma spent a lot of time showing Rowan how to draw, knit, sew and the like, and it’s all Rowan ever wanted to do with her time from then on (plus catching Pugwall whenever possible!).”

Even writing this next bit makes me feel a bit sick… I have no idea how Julian had the audacity to put this on his site be he included this crock of shit on his site….

Who on Earth would think that’s morally acceptable? It’s Rowans heartfelt words about how she got where she is now.

Since we discovered the site we got in touch with the man himself – as it turns out he’s a ‘respected’ musician who teaches at the university – he co-operated fully with our request to take it down. But is does make you wonder… 1. How much he knew of our site and 2. His reluctance to give us the contact information of his *cough* cowboy ‘web designer’… its hard to make out who is the guilty one at their end… maybe its something we will never know!

Rowan asked me why I kept calm for so long over this… One of the 1st things my boss taught me at Blue is when things like this happen, keep calm and adopt the silent assassin theory… both Rowan and I are are very much the innocent party in this so while I wanna go crazy and kick and scream.. it won’t really get me anywhere… this simple blog entry makes me feel good and hopefully will be recognised and appreciated by others who have suffered at the hands of the dickhead minority who are out there robbing us blind!

In the light of the a high-profile case of the blatent rip off of Hidden Eloise (read on), one thing which has come out of it the amount of fellow professionals who have taken the time to contact both myself and Rowan about this… We don’t like people who rip others off… its an unwritten rule… Originality will always be King!

Bye for now!
Mr P + Rowan @ www.kitschensink.com

This entry was posted on Saturday, February 20th, 2010 at 12:26 pm and is filed under kidd81.com general, kitschensink.com. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

13 Responses to “kitschensink.com & kidd81.com take one hell of a creative beating! Originality will always be King!”

  1. Kim on February 20th, 2010 at 3:13 pm

    Wow, I can’t believe the cheek! Makes you wonder how many more sites are copied like this.

  2. Rowan | KitschenSink on February 20th, 2010 at 4:48 pm

    Nice post PJ, I have asked Julian for his ‘attorney’s’ details but he hasn’t responded yet.

    Just glad we spotted it :)

    God bless Google Analytics :)

  3. Carl Grint on February 20th, 2010 at 5:18 pm

    Glad you spotted, it is a shame when it happens, the worst you can take from it is that they liked it so much they copied, the number of sites that do this is unfortunately high, but it is good when caught.
    At least no link/image sponging, a number of sites have done that, although that does give you the opportunity to ‘play’ and serve some very ‘fun’ images ;o)
    BTW. He actually took the copy on the Monday 25th, as my Expire script sets the date to 24 hours behind the current date/time. :o )

  4. Dollipops on February 20th, 2010 at 5:26 pm

    I am so shocked… I have always adored the Kitschen Sink website, such a fab design. Hope it all gets sorted for you both, I’ve had people copy designs from me before and it is just awful.

  5. Laura on February 20th, 2010 at 6:33 pm

    A dignified response, impressive how you have kept your cool. You are an original and highly creative pair and I’m glad this was spotted. “Originality will always be King”, hear, hear ;)

  6. MarthaaMay on February 20th, 2010 at 8:37 pm

    Divs.

  7. Jonny on February 21st, 2010 at 10:19 am

    The blatant nature of it is absolutely shocking, it’s slightly stunning how little the guy must care about what he does to take so little pride in it.

    I have to say that your original site is fantastic – you obviously worked very closely with Rowan to make a site that really fits with her designs. Originality and hard work does the job every time :)

  8. Andreanna on February 21st, 2010 at 8:49 pm

    Wow that is insane. I wonder if it is just another stolen site but they just were smarter about it.

  9. Ben Bradley on February 22nd, 2010 at 12:01 am

    Wow.. I cant understand what would make someone do this! Your website represents yourself and you own style – a blatant copy shows the “web designers” lack of creativity/personal style. Disappointing!

    Otherwise great blog post really interesting!

    Ben

  10. myke black on February 22nd, 2010 at 12:21 pm

    Wow, that really is one of the most blatant examples of website plagiarism I’ve ever seen apart from the time that Bolo Clothing stole the Milan Clothing design and photography back in ‘07 (I think that was before your time at Blue Ink) – I stil got the screen grabs if you’re interested in them. A stern solicitors letter sorted that one out, but if the site in question is outside the EU, then there is not a lot you can do other than go report them to NIC argentina for domain abuse.

    Really though, flogging is too good for ‘em.

    I noticed the site looks a bit different now though. Hopefully his web designer hasn’t nicked this one too.

  11. Rachel (rachellucie) on February 22nd, 2010 at 2:38 pm

    absolutely incredible, jaw-droppingly so. the curse of the world wide web, someone comes straight in through your front door and nicks the design for your bedroom and thinks no one will notice.

    good news for you both that you had a result, but I be the whole things still smarts, doesn’t it?

    Rachel

  12. heather aka NiftyKnits on February 22nd, 2010 at 4:11 pm

    Very impressed at the way both of you stayed calm in the face of so many amazing coincidences (LOL) my favourite has to be their joint admiration for sex in the city. I really really hoped that someone had made payments into kitschen sink’s helpfully linked paypal, but I guess that was too much to hope for?

  13. Apryl on February 22nd, 2010 at 8:58 pm

    what a shame.. its rediculous to have been that blatant..*shakes head at the lunacy* but I guess on the positive side it shows what a fantastic website design you created. :o )

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