Stuart Crawford, a good friend and colleague, wrote in his blog today about a US company that has ripped off their website design and writing.
INTERWORKS.US, a company previously called Interworks and now called IT Authority has literally scraped Bulletproof website design and the written content. While they made some effort to rewrite some of the text, they left the majority of the words as they took them.
A quick scan of the domain name “bulletproofit.ca” at CopyScape.com very quickly returns a result showing exactly how the content at both websites compare.
There are some other great tools out there to catch people who steal your writing. While Google Alerts is the standard for names, domains and phrases - Copyscape can monitor and compare all of your website content against copyright infringement. We started monitoring our key marketing websites with copyscape last year. Believe it or note… about every two months someone out there that is starting a website design or search marketing company starts their website off by stealing my content! Incredible.
Now the company that is using the website design and content from the BulletProof IT site, IT Authority, Interworks.us… they state that they are web developers and that they do SEO;
They wrote, “Each website we design is a “one of a kind” site, custom designed from scratch. Effective navigation and usability testing insures your visitors won’t get lost and that they can find your important content and/or products. We have over 10 years web development experiance.”
All I can say to the boys over at IT Authority - experience is spelled with an E… just like Ethics.
The internet is not private. What you do online… well, it stays online.
For example, we know that the Interworks.us website was update as follows; the image on the left is how the website looked until May 2009 according to DomainTools.com. The image on the right is the November 2006 site shot.
Here is the screen image of the Interworks.Us website today (click it to read the copy);
Now - to compare, please feel free to visit one of Alberta’s best IT company - here and compare the design and copy.
Update: June 22, 2009 - The offending website was altered today to remove the majority of the unique design elements (images). It Authority / Interworks decided to keep the footer tag on the website “Web Site Designed By IT Authority”
To a degree, I take offense not only regarding the tag remaining on the website claiming some sort of design skills, I take offense to the fact that this company sells website design and search engine optimization services (according to the content on their website). Potential clients should be very wary of a company that states that they have 10 years of experience in website design - and then turn around and take a design that is not for the taking. Is it possible that they “borrow designs” for their client websites like the way that they “borrowed” the design for their own marketing website? One is left wondering…
I was not going to publish this blog post if they removed the borrowed designs from their website, but after careful consideration I really believe that their potential website clients need to know that they are likely not qualified. My request to Mr. Brian was to place an under development flag over the borrowed website until they can deploy a website that they have a right to display. They chose not to do that. Our HTML and CSS code still remains in use at the domain name - the images were removed (design images).
To read the letter sent by registered email to Paul Brian - click the read more link…
Read more…
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