Wow, bad. And of course it’s from a site with the lead, “Don’t waste money on a designer!”

Oh hell no. I just sent an email to Gary Vaynerchuk, current owner of Cork’d.

The best part: “don’t waste money on a designer”!

Dang, you’d think people would learn after the “logo theft”. I entered http://templateworldpro.com live chat and had this little conversation…

Sean Hello, jared_1. How can I help you?
jared_1 Just curious if you’ve ever seen http://corkd.com?
Sean no
jared_1 Hmm, that’s interesting because you completely copied their site.
jared_1 Not cool, not cool at all!

Wow, that’s bullshit.

What’s happened here is copyright infringement, not ‘stealing’– you haven’t lost the cork’d design yourself. It’s an important distinction to make.

Plus, stealing is *sometimes* OK– would you prosecute a hungry, destitute child for stealing from your profitable bakery?

Anyhow, your underlying concern is indeed justified; I’m just uncomfortable with the terminology being used to voice it.

“Don’t waste money on a designer!” :( Well they sure didn’t did they.

I noticed that the site is hosted with dreamhost. As I’m a customer, and know that they don’t like being involved with copyright infringement, I’ve contacted support asking them to deal with it.

I wonder where they got all their design “products” from?

Eric

Oh, the injustice! Dude, people in this world are starving. Thousands are dying in Iraq. Who cares if some dummy ripped off Cork’d's design. Welcome to the internet.

I wish I could send these guys a nasty e-mail, but “their” site doesn’t seem to have any Contact section. Hopefully that alone will dissuade business.

WHOIS RECORD:

Domain name: templateworldpro.com

Administrative Contact:
STOCKFLASH
Mark Brenwall ()
+1.4155966579
Fax:
450 Shotwell Street
San Francisco, CA 94110
US

Technical Contact:
STOCKFLASH
Mark Brenwall ()
+1.4155966579
Fax:
450 Shotwell Street
San Francisco, CA 94110
US

Registrant Contact:
STOCKFLASH
Mark Brenwall ()
+1.4155966579
Fax:
450 Shotwell Street
San Francisco, CA 94110
US

Status: Locked

Name Servers:
ns1.dreamhost.com
ns2.dreamhost.com
ns3.dreamhost.com

Creation date: 03 Jun 2007 20:27:16
Expiration date: 03 Jun 2009 20:27:16

Mark Brenwall (mark@brenwall.com)
+1.4155966579
Fax:
450 Shotwell Street
San Francisco, CA 94110
US

I find it particularly apt that their page has a little tick next to “Don’t waste money on a designer”.

Yikes, looks like they took their own advice (1st bullet):

“Don’t waste money on a designer!” Steal!

I love how they have a copyright on the bottom of the page! That was the icing on the cake.

The first check mark on the Template World Pro version is funny:

“Don’t waste money on a designer”

At least, they practice what they preach

They aren’t even the designers/developers of the templates that they are selling; they appear to be an affiliate of mytemplatestorage.com (though it’s hard to tell if they are the originators, or another affiliate themselves). Templatesweb.com are selling the same templates, so they could be the source, or yet another reseller…

Reading the source in this instance, though, it looks like the guilty party might be one Brock Anderson, who also appears to have written lots of articles plugging the site’s services. He isn’t named as the person who registered the domain, though: that appears to be one Mark Brenwall of stockflash.com (which redirects to the site) or brenwall.com.
It’s all a bit involved for what looks like a fast attempt to make a buck by re-selling templates of the back of a ripped-off design.

I recommend playing with their live help applet. Strangely, the connection seems to get lost whenever I ask about it. :p

As the Template World Pro site says: “Don’t waste money on a designer!” LOL.

I just went to their website and launched the live-chat help system. I asked them about the rip off. Here’s the transcript [short but sweet]

Connecting. Please wait.
Please send your inquiry and give it several minutes for the operator to respond.
10:16:01 template issues
10:16:15 How can I help you?
10:16:18 hello
10:16:59 i was just wondering why your templateworldpro.com design is a rip off of the http://www.corkd.com website
10:17:54 Please contact our copyright officer Steve Chizmar at steve.chizmar@templatemonster.com. Thanks for your cooperation!

“Don’t waste money on a designer!”

Good to see they practice what they preach.

Disgusting. One disadvantage of a non-encoded presentation format.

i chatted with their online support, and i got this canned response:

21:23:01 |op|Stom Hello, jp_patches. How can I help you?
21:23:21 jp_patches nice rip of cork’d
21:23:41 jp_patches http://corkd.com/
21:23:48 |op|Stom Please contact our copyright officer Steve Chizmar at steve.chizmar@templatemonster.com. Thanks for your cooperation!

Here’s the registrar info for the guy who owns the site:

Mark Brenwall
mark@brenwall.com
+1.4155966579
Fax:
450 Shotwell Street
San Francisco, CA 94110
US

I’m sure he’d love to hear from some concerned readers.

Sad…just sad.

You know, I admit to using other peoples layout ideas from time to time, but at least I change color scheme, add my own ideas to their ideas, and HAND CODE IT MYSELF.

Geez. I’m too scared to use other peoples code…who knows if it’ll be 508 compliant? (I design University sites.) I take a screen shot and re-code the wire frame into something reminiscent of it.

This, though, is just blatant theft of intellectual property.

But, is what I do stealing or just gathering inspiration? I don’t know. I like to think it’s taking inspiration in a cool idea, but maybe that person would think differently.

Am I in the wrong here?

Yeah, that’s a blatant rip-off. Makes you wonder how much of what he’s selling (templates, icons, etc.) is also stolen. I love the copy: “Don’t waste money on a designer! (We didn’t, we ripped off our own site design for free!)”

Contact the site that’s being copied and let them know:
http://corkd.com/contact/

Cork’d is a large enough company that they’ll have a copyright lawyer on their books. Their lawyer will do a whois of the domain to get the offender’s details, then contact Mr B and tell him the consequences of being a filthy plagiarist They’ll also send a DMCA takedown notice to his host:
http://abuse.dreamhost.com/copyright/#reporting

Which is, funnily enough, also Dan’s host. (And mine, too.)

Oh, by the way, I’d go and delete that TWP comment from your other site, it’s an obvious plug for his site and he obviously doesn’t deserve any free advertising!

It never ceases to amaze me that people think they can get away with this shit.

That is hilarious. I agree with you in taking an idea and creating your own rendition, but blatantly stealing code is probably not the best idea.

Stealing is never OK?

What if you were to steal all of Hitler’s weapons, or his hold on power? Wouldn’t that be a good thing?

What if you were to steal Dick Cheney’s pacemaker? Surely that would have good consequences?

Wow, that is really bad. I wonder how many of those templates they are selling are also ripped off. It’s really sad to see stuff like this.

I love the line, “Don’t waste money on a designer!”

They might as well add, “We’ll steal a design for you!”

One would have to be lying through one’s teeth to suggest they’re not identical. I was SHOCKED by what their front page says, too, right at the top: “Don’t waste money on a designer!” No, just steal their designs for free. It’s stuff like this that tells the public that design has no value. After reading Corkd’s terms of use, I have my doubts they allowed this template site to copy their design; that’s the only provision. Is there any way to lock our code from viewing or at least prevent save/copy-paste?

The worst part about this is that, since it’s a template site, it can make some people think that Dan bought a template, himself. The only things different I can see at first glance, looking at the template site, are a lack of artwork and a change in fonts for the name. The feel is definitely the same.

And since this company (person) actually copied his code, I suspect that Dan could sue for copyright infringement. This is like taking a kid’s book, ripping some pictures out, scratching out the names of characters and putting different ones in, then trying to sell copies as your own work. I am not a lawyer, and this is not legal advice, but I suspect that Dan could definitely start with a DMCA takedown notice to abuse@dreamhost.com .

Whois reports that Mark Brenwall (mark@brenwall.com) of San Francisco is the admin, tech contact, everything. His company name is listed as Stockflash for that site, or Web Dynamics when you look at the whois for his own site. He has worked on projects for Cisco, Visa, Panera Bread, Sony, Ask Jeeves, Open Table, and Juicy Couture, it says on his site. (Surely someone visiting here from Daring Fireball’s link will find that to be interesting)

Check out their ironic example for a Logo Template design. It’s 4th from the bottom.

“STEEL WORKS: YOUR SLOGAN HERE”

templateworldpro.com/index.php/templates/portfolio/

[Note: Yes I know it’s the metal variety, but it’s pronounced the same.]

Talk about marketing jackassery – the cork’d design makes sense with it’s colors and layout for the use it’s being put to, while it makes no sense at all for “Template World Pro”.

It’s a crime, for stealing, and it’s plain stupid and dumb for branding purposes.

These guys are unbelievable, stealing designs, and not only use it for their own website, but selling the stuff for good money!!

What do you expect from a company like that? After all, their first key selling point is “Don’t waste money on a designer!” What a pile of jerks.

Unbelievable! And they are using articles to beef up their content, that they found on other sites like ArticleAlley. Not in itself dishonest, except the condition of use is that you agree to attribute the article to its author – and TemplateWorldPro has not. No big surprise that TemplateWorldPro doesn’t have any “About Us” information on the site.

I really do find this kind of thing offensive and have submitted a note to the host of the offender, who are fantastic and am confident they will take appropriate action.

Wow. That’s lazier than lazy!

I love how the first sales bullet is:

“Don’t waste money on a designer!”

Priceless!

Kind of fitting that on the front page of the ripoff site it says “Don’t waste money on a designer!”
I guess they follow their own advice.

Sadly this type of thing is all too common amongst students also these days. We’ve had three or four cases of this kind of blatant theft over the last few years and, surprisingly (or perhaps not so surprisingly), many leave the original source code there.

It makes it easy to track them down, but very, very disappointing. Sadly it seems there are too few people willing to put in the time and effort to lear, preferring instead to opt for a little light pilfering.

How do we put a stop to this? I’d be eager to hear suggestions.

I love the first bullet: “Don’t waste money on a designer!”

How appropriate.

Ooh, that’s pretty nasty. Go to their online chat and bug the hell out of them, I say!

This happened to a site I worked on a few years back, and the company who stole the design and code was a Brooklyn-based Web design firm! When they were notified of the problem, they claimed it was from a ‘freelance designer’ they had hired to build their site. Our client, who paid for us to design, write and build their site, demanded they pull the copycat site immediately, which they did. However, I checked in on this firm a few months back, and noticed that they had a corporate identity that was stolen from another company altogether.

As designers, our inventory is our time and our creative output. When someone simply takes your work for their own, they are stealing not only your designs, but your time and therefore your money. Insist they stop whenever possible.

Transcript:

10:58:00 Mark Hello, eric_1. How can I help you?
10:58:38 eric_1 you could start by redesigning your website. you stole your layout from corkd.com
10:58:53 Mark What do you mean?
10:59:22 eric_1 templateworldpro.com. the site design was stolen from corkd.com
10:59:39 eric_1 you even left corkd.com html in your code. it’s not even god theft.
10:59:47 eric_1 good*
11:00:22 Mark ok
11:00:29 Mark Please contact our copyright manager
11:00:31 eric_1 [code snippet]
11:00:36 eric_1 see
11:00:48 Mark steve.chizmar [at] templatemonster.com
11:00:48 eric_1 why?
11:00:54 eric_1 just remove it
11:01:10 eric_1 you contact steve and tell him what’s up

Do designers work on “tempates”? You can browse them on TWP’s site.

templateworldpro.com/index.php/templates/website_overview/

Makes me wonder if most of the templates they’re selling are ripped off as well.

Word to the wise: a) Don’t rip someone else’s design/code b) If you choose to ignore the former, at least be smart enough not to rip one of the most well known web designers out there.

Man, this is the second time in like 2-3 months Cederholm has had his worked ripped off. (the first was that logo theft http://www.flickr.com/photos/simplebitsdan/429265591/)

Why can’t people just suck it up and learn to design their own stuff.

Connecting. Please wait.
Please send your inquiry and give it several minutes for the operator to respond.
10:42:09 Template question
10:42:53 How can I help you?
10:43:20 Hey, so what’s up with your site design rip-off?
10:43:26 And please don’t tell me to contact your copyright person.
10:43:59 Ripping off the Cork’d site was a real scumbag move.
10:44:31 Hello?
10:44:44 Did you bail out already?
10:44:50 Do you have any documentation confirming that it was your design?
10:45:14 Cork’d is a very well-known site, everyone knows that Dan Cederholm designed it.
10:45:30 And you guys know full well that it was ripped off.
10:46:24 I love how your website says “Don’t waste money on a designer!”. I guess you guys sure didn’t.
10:46:49 You lifted a design from one of the best-known designers in the industry. This is going to come back to bite HARD.
10:48:26 You did not answered my question. Do you have any info confirming that you are the owner?
10:49:17 So you guys are refusing to acknowledge the design rip-off until someone “proves” it to you? You’re going to ignore the hordes of angry designers who are spreading your name and screenshots all over the place?
10:49:29 And frankly, you didn’t answer MY question yet.
10:49:37 Let’s get to that first, and then I’ll answer yours.
10:52:08 Sorry sir, i’m authorized to discuss only oficial matters with all necessary info form your side, if you have anything else except for words, then we’d like to have a look at it
10:54:32 Here’s some documentation….
10:54:47 http://web.archive.org/web/20060524221924/http://www.corkd.com/
10:54:56 That’s Cork’d from May 2006
10:55:15 When did your site launch?
10:56:22 Also, why does your site have commented-out code directly linking to Cork’d in it?
10:57:34 At long last, have you no sense of decency?
10:59:50 Hello?
11:00:29 Hold on pls
11:00:34 Holding….

Looks like a person named Brock Anderson is involved. Google the domain name and his name pops up everywhere. It’s also in the HTML source (commented out):

dc:subject=“Website Templates”
dc:description=“15128″
dc:creator=“Brock Anderson”

Heh, i did the support thing too. Fun stuff!

10:39:10 Mark Hello, John_1. How can I help you?
10:39:36 John_1 Hi there
10:39:36 John_1 I have a little question concerning your website
10:40:04 John_1 How come it has a strong resemblance to corkd.com?
10:40:36 Mark How can I assist you?
10:41:09 John_1 Just answer me. You stole it, didn’t you?
10:41:30 Mark OH my God!!!
10:42:37 John_1 I know for a fact that corkd is older that templateworldpro.com…
10:43:35 Mark no it is not older
10:44:02 John_1 So what are you saying?
10:44:20 Mark This is not support issue
10:44:59 John_1 LOL
10:44:59 John_1 No shit
10:44:59 John_1 What are you, japanese? Chinese?
10:45:22 Mark Indians LOL
10:46:26 John_1 Well, tell your boss he’s good at ripping off. Just right-click on templatesworldpro.com and view the source.
10:46:44 John_1 You’ll see it has lots of references to corkd.com
10:46:50 Mark this is not our site
10:47:39 John_1 Dude, i clicked on Live Support on templatesworldpro.com and i get to you…
10:48:04 Mark we are template-help.com
10:48:25 John_1 Same shit, man
10:48:48 Mark we are support for editing templates
10:48:55 Mark not for the copyrights
10:49:23 John_1 Ah… OK Which templates then?
10:49:43 Mark from that site
10:50:33 John_1 Fuck this… I’m not going to put my time in a bunch of template-stealing motherfuckers like you man
10:50:33 John_1 See you, and have a good life. Asshole
10:51:12 Mark best regards from India LOL

Seriously gang … it is 2006 – the Internet is awash with “borrowing” of art, layout, code and even complete page theft.

I am honored to have my code and designs/layouts stolen – they have been stolen many times – but I don’t whine like a bunch of little babies.

Seriously get your heads out of your asses and realize that there is so much more going on in the world. WHO CARES ABOUT THIS!

Sniveling little nerds. Do you think this is the ONLY design out there? There are a billion web sites developers/designers can “borrow” from – be flattered.

@ you are al so silly
AKA the person who stole the design

First of all it’s 2007

Secondly the people who care about this are actual designers. You give a bad name to the word designer. You’re not creative, you just steal.

Like I said in my post, it’s ok to take an “idea” from another designer. Nobody would have said anything if you would have made it your own, but you didn’t.

You copied the design and didn’t even take the time to rebuild the site.

I pity the company that that you shot in the foot because the blogosphere is a powerful community and not only is your company damaged goods, but your name is too.

Do they know how hard it is for us Designers to come up with this stuff. I have laid in bed many of sleepless nights trying to come up with something NEW or Different.

When I was in school a fellow class mate would steal my ideas SEVERAL times and then construct her project just like mine. I went to the point of not showing my work before it was due to be turned in. We should not have to do this. Most say that it’s flattering. It’s Lazy it is…just plain LAZY!

One of their support gents had a bit longer cpnversation with me, but it still led nowhere:

Connecting. Please wait.
Please send your inquiry and give it several minutes for the operator to respond.
18:27:37 Copyright Infringement
18:27:44 How can I assist you?
18:28:53 Hi. I was wondering how you expect people to think well of your services if your site has copied Cork’d code and modified for it your own ues, while still even leaving in some parts and just commenting it out?
18:29:46 are you an official representative of the web-site owner
18:29:47 ?
18:31:29 The main code for your site is copied from corkd.com. Relevant information was modified, but look at this copied from the source code and commented out:
18:31:32 Recently Reviewed Staff Reviews more ›–>
18:31:44 15are you an official representative of the web-site owner 01?
18:32:33 No, however, I *was* a possible client and word-spreader of your services.
18:33:49 you expected us to invent new html code?
18:35:21 Well, yes, or at least use one of the templates that you purport to sell, instead of blatantly ripping-off and even directy copying code from a website, and then, even claiming that it is copyrighted at the bottom of your page.
18:35:50 I don’t think this conversation will lead anywhere, do you have some other questions?
18:36:15 No, thank you for your attention to this issue.

I had a support chat conversation as well. Didn’t go so well.

Screenshot of the chat: http://tinyurl.com/ywyml9

I also asked if they did logos

My favorite part… “stealing is never ok.”

Please wait … Our chat operators will be available in few minutes. Please be patient.

22:50:57 |op|Stom Hello, John_1. How can I help you?

22:51:55 John_1 I am putting together a web site and was wondering if I could purchase the template for your actual site: http://templateworldpro.com

22:53:20 |op|Stom yes you can

22:54:03 John_1 it is available as a template?

22:55:11 |op|Stom I am not sure that I understand you properly. Can you be more specific please?

22:56:13 John_1 Your website… http://templateworldpro.com… can I purchase this design as a template?

22:58:12 |op|Stom ah

22:58:17 |op|Stom no

22:58:22 |op|Stom you cant

22:58:41 John_1 Why not?

22:59:02 |op|Stom it is not for sale

23:00:07 John_1 If I can not purchase the template, can I just download the graphics, the CSS , and the html code? Is that okay?

23:00:37 |op|Stom its not ok

23:02:24 John_1 What is not okay? Stealing your site code and design? What if I change it just a little bit.

23:03:21 |op|Stom stealing is never ok

23:04:35 John_1 You must be kidding. http://www.drewstauffer.com/stealing-is-never-ok/

23:06:02 John_1 You have to know, by now, that your employer stole it’s complete design, CSS , and html from http://corkd.com right?

23:06:11 |op|Stom yeah seems http://corkd.com/ stole a design from us and now you were asking me if you can do the same thing

23:06:57 |op|Stom am I right?

23:07:40 John_1 Corkd was coded by Dan Cederholm, one of the internet’s best web designers and author of very famous books on CSS .

23:08:25 |op|Stom Really? Lets go it this way

23:08:32 |op|Stom Are you authorized to represent interests of the corkd’s design owner or do you have copyright on it, proving that you are the unique owner?

23:09:26 John_1 But rather than create his own design for a very public, very popular website.. you are saying that he secretly stole your design. Correct?

23:09:40 |op|Stom Answer yes or no

23:10:03 |op|Stom If your answer is no I’m not going to waste time

23:11:52 John_1 you should be ashamed of yourselves. For beiung hypocrites and for being uncreative. And for stealing. Did you think we wouldn’t notice?

23:14:29 |op|Stom Look I’m really tired of that, you can flood our chat as much as you like saying Are you ashamed? Do you know thta stealing is not ok, etc But if you can not proove your rights I think discussion is over

23:14:33 |op|Stom Have a good one

23:14:44 John_1 you too

It seems like they’ve surrendered. templateworldpro.com/ now redirects to the Burning Man site.

WELL DONE EVERYONE!!!

Seems like the unity of bloggers has had a serious impact on this issue and it’s wonderful to see the change.

I’ll be sure to explain all the details of this fiasco in my next post.

I totally agree with Drew. Get off your little designer geek soap boxes. This website seems like its pretty new and he just leveraged a somewhat decent design to test the market. Pretty smart if you ask me.

Take it as a compliment, move on, and stop masturbating each other with “oh what a tragedy BS”. Sad.

Oh come on..what’s the big deal?
Just two tones of red and some gradient brown. Why do you think you have an exclusive right to a header and a footer…or to html code that is as is…How naive…As soon as there has been made the slightest modification it is NOT your design anymore. You simply can not protect colours or the position of where a couple of elements are placed.
In the end they didn’t do anything wrong and the law is on their side.
So get over it. You can always make a new one and a better one too if I might say so.
Oh and by the way…I think I saw 1000000 other wesbsites using “your” red and using lines with standard PS brushes.
Did you “steal” from them?

I guess people want to spend money on litigation and jail time instead of paying an often smaller and more convenient fee to a respectful designer.

wow!
but after two terms of george bush i have lost my ability to be shocked!

Woh mark… chill out man… Copying off of someone else’s design is the sincerest form of flattery to say the least. But please if you’re going to CTRL-C CTRL-V someone’s code, at least take everything referring to the design you stole out of it.

I’ve taken color schemes and layouts from many designers, but depending on the requirements, the design changes/morphs into a new design all together…

These people are so dumb… this happened to me just a couple of weeks ago.
http://www.missweblash.com/article.asp?id=200

A few carefully worded emails backed up by facts such as screenshots, codeshots and copyright statements soon got the wind up the perpetrator!

HELL yea stealing is okay