From China with Love
If you are wondering what story is behind this post title, it has nothing to do with Tibet nor politics. Brian Ling from Design Sojourn sent me an email yesterday and told me some web design pirates in China has blatantly ripped off the WordPress theme design and CSS I created for Design Sojourn.
Before anyone says “heavily inspired”, have a look at the style sheet. See anything strange? They left our original copyright information in there! I guess they didn’t read the line that says “strictly intended only for Design Sojourn & Brian Ling”.
Plagiarism is the best form of flattery indeed. The site is hosted on Dreamhost, the same webhost as this website. I’ve used Dreamhost’s support many time and the help provided is great. I’ll probably send in a ticket and have them remove the theme.
In case they have taken down the offending theme. here’s a comparison of since1984.cn, the pirated site and Design Sojourn, the original.
Homepage
Design Sojourn
Ripoff
Categories
Design Sojourn
Ripoff
Sidebar and Search Box
Design Sojourn
Ripoff
Comments
Design Sojourn
Ripoff
Comment Form
Design Sojourn
Ripoff
CSS
Posting comment, please wait…
zTao on May 06, 08 – 8:32 pm
很抱歉，做为中国设计师我对这样的情况也感到无能为力！
我能做的也只能是约束自己的行为，中国太大，人太多，这种情况只能一代人一代人的去改变~
希望你不用太去在意这种事情，不过并不是视而不见~~
Aen on May 06, 08 – 10:27 pm
Here’s a translation of what zTao commented.
I am so sorry about this. Being a Chinese designer myself, I feel there is nothing we can do for the situation in China. The only thing I can do is to ensure I discipline myself. China is too big and has too large a population, it is only through generation and generation that we can observe change.
I hope you are able to put this matter behind, but of course you should not be blind of what’s happening.
and my reply…
Thank you so much for y our comment. In fact my post title is meant to be sarcastic and to poke fun. I am not as affected by DT himself, or should I say excited. :) I didn’t mean to generalize Chinese designers in any way. It is true China is notorious for ripping off but on the other hand it produces world class and original creative work too!
DT on May 09, 08 – 6:12 pm
Well you should look what he has done instead!
silvrstar on May 14, 08 – 2:46 am
You know, this is cool actually since that’s how I found your website!
The internet’s bizarre like that ;)
Aen on May 15, 08 – 1:11 am
Did he go back to the stolen theme?
silvrstar on May 15, 08 – 1:49 am
as far as I see, it hasn’t changed at all. The incriminating CSS comments are removed though.