Comments on: Comments on 5293

Post number 5293

webchick — Mon, 15 Jan 2001 15:36:39 -0800

Unmitigated gall, Part Deux ...no, it's not déjàvu. Some folks simply have no respect for the work of others.

By: cCranium

cCranium — Mon, 15 Jan 2001 16:36:00 -0800

As Zeldman points out Adobe owns the copyright on that piece. Something tells me these Orange Digital Media people will be receiving a call from a rather high-priced lawyer sometime soon.

By: JDC8

JDC8 — Mon, 15 Jan 2001 16:54:21 -0800

I found it odd that Zeldman linked to Smug as a well-designed site. The Smug design was simple and clear, but the site is five months overdue for a relaunch. Is this a ghost site? A well-dressed corpse is still a corpse. Jason

By: kokogiak

kokogiak — Mon, 15 Jan 2001 16:57:39 -0800

Irony = this quote on orangegroup's website: "Quality means doing it right when no one is looking." - Henry Ford

By: webchick

webchick — Mon, 15 Jan 2001 17:05:47 -0800

>I found it odd that Zeldman >linked to Smug as a well-designed site >... >the site is five months overdue >for a relaunch. Zeldman's "HTML Hell" article first ran on Adobe's website early last year.

By: holloway

holloway — Mon, 15 Jan 2001 19:12:26 -0800

I have found the best way to deal with silly requests (jumping dog animated GIF background image!) is to bamboozle the management with technical terms. Sad, but wholy true. Either that or educate them with case-examples (no one can disagree with case examples). No, wait, bamboozle with tech terms. `Parallax scrolling` is always a good one. For example, "Mamm, that won't work due to the parallax scrolling...chip" But now that Zeldman mentions it, I have noticed the broken spirit of the webdesigner. It's their own fault, really.

By: webchick

webchick — Mon, 15 Jan 2001 20:52:35 -0800

(I apologize ... my hurried postings earlier today look vague in hindsight ... ) The crux of the matter is that someone at Orange Digital Media (a <quote>professional</quote> web services outfit) thought it was a good idea to swipe somebody else's work (Zeldman's) without permission or attribution. I guess they thought they wouldn't get caught. I am always amazed that people think they can get away with stuff like this. I turn up garbage like this all the time. I find it sifting through my site logs, or using a search engine, or sometimes I just stumble across it. My hunch is I'm not alone. I suppose the lesson here is to practice good Web karma, baby. The Internet has a way of looking out for its own :-).

By: th3ph17

th3ph17 — Mon, 15 Jan 2001 20:58:54 -0800

The real shocker is that it is Still There. Doesn't anyone at Orange Digital Whatever fucking Read online?

By: headlemur

headlemur — Mon, 15 Jan 2001 21:16:44 -0800

One of the problems on the web is telling people apart. Without your admission your gender, race, orientation and views remain a mystery. When you do 'come out', you have the ability to express all of your hopes and fears. These words and images are yours and deserve respect. They also deserve to remain yours, unless you give permission to use them. Agree or disagree with what you see is your choice. Something different is just a click or keystroke away. What has happened here is Theft. It is not a Fair Use excerpt for commentary or criticism. It is a wholesale theft and re-publication without attribution nor permission. It is copyright infringement. A little more pointed opinion can be found here

By: rodii

rodii — Mon, 15 Jan 2001 21:32:10 -0800

Is that page actually linked to from anywhere on the site? Notice the page title ("content") is different from evey other page? Looks like they might have been using Jeffrey's text for a little lorem ipsum dolem action. I do that--I often save a piece I'm interested in to read later, and then when I need a little text to dummy up a layout, I just grab whatever's handy. I'm usually not so stupid as to publish it to my site, though.

By: lucien

lucien — Mon, 15 Jan 2001 22:06:37 -0800

Tragically yes........... It's under "Company" - "A designer's view" from the front page.

By: normy

normy — Mon, 15 Jan 2001 22:32:26 -0800

As of a few moments ago, its still there, but now includes: "(thank you to all those who wrote to let us know the original author)" ...and credits Mr Zeldman at the top of the page.

By: Steven Den Beste

Steven Den Beste — Mon, 15 Jan 2001 22:38:45 -0800

Uh, that doesn't make it better. It's still copyright violation unless Zeldman gave them permission.

By: mikel

mikel — Mon, 15 Jan 2001 23:09:58 -0800

Adobe owns the copyright. It's up to them to give permission, although the author may arguably maintain some moral rights.

By: thirdball

thirdball — Tue, 16 Jan 2001 12:41:51 -0800

Orange Media is acting like this is something being passed around daily in e-mails. " the original author" It's very obvious who the original author is and that it is copyrighted and not to be copyed without permission.

By: cCranium

cCranium — Tue, 16 Jan 2001 13:03:24 -0800

thirdball, I had a nice little rant all ready to go that said basically the same thing, but lost it this morning. Basically, claiming this was some uncredited e-mail they'd gotten is a bullshit excuse, plain and simple. They presented it as their own, by not giving credit (even to "Anonymous" which would have almost been acceptable) they implied that it was their creation. And Christ, they stole it from Adobe. How stupid do you have to be? And, really, a web design company where not one person hits Zeldman.com at least once a day? Or even once a week, to scope out his news page and see what interesting things he has to say? (That's the implication of saying author unknown in this case) I just can't believe it.

By: rodii

rodii — Wed, 17 Jan 2001 20:39:41 -0800

I bet there are lots of web design companies who *never* visit Zeldman (lest I forget thee, Slashdot…). It's a big web out there. A lot of smallish companies mine their little lodes quite happily without ever worrying about Jeffrey or the WaSP or pixel-sizing their CSS. (I have a colleague who can't believe—I mean, flat-out, incredulous-at-my-cluelessness can't believe—I don't make my students read David Siegel, because David Siegel is the man.)

By: cCranium

cCranium — Thu, 18 Jan 2001 05:13:24 -0800

You think so? I don't know how anyone can be in this industry for a year without hearing about Zeldman, the W3C, WaSP and A List Apart. I mean, I guess it's true, it is a big web, but that just seems odd. :-)