Har-land!

If you need a good intellectual property lawyer let me know.

It's like you are dreaming of Garganzola when it is clearly brie time baby!

Maybe he has been drinking a little too much of Grandpa's cough medicine.

What a crappy slappy site...usually its flattering when someone gets inspired by your creativeness but this instance it is outright disgusting and inexcusable...there is restitution to be had!

Take Greg's advice: You do have a case here, my friend. If they liked your company's site so much (It really is cool, I gotta tell you), why not just hire you to do something for him? What a jerk.

You must contact an attorney. NOW.

I used to like Harland Williams.

You should mention the best part of his site:
"© Copyright 2003 -2004 Harland Williams"

that s such a bad rip off!

To be fair, I'm sure Harland didn't put this together himself. He probably has never even heard of Dominey Design.

However, I would point the finger at Dan Hopkins of http://www.danhopkins.com/.

That's the jerk y'all should be grilling

Jay The Boy

I wonder if, unbeknownst to Harland, an agency or freelancer sold him the idea.

I don't think Harland himself had much to do about the site design or whatnot. It's prolly some company or some kiddie who took the stuff because they or he/she thought it looked cool, and couldn't create anything like it theirselves. We all know that this kind of thing happens all the time, but this is a famous person we're talking about. You'd think that he or his management company would be able to afford a descent webdesign company. Guess not.

Yes, I refuse to vilify the man himself until he's proven guilty. I'm still tee-hee-ing over Malti's Harland quotes above.

Alright this is getting a bit odd. Isn't this at least the second time this has happened to your site? It finally happened to me just two weeks ago. I couldnt help but laugh because this guy did the exact same thing. He took images off my site, edited them (horribly) for his own purposes, and HTMLed it up. I did a few blog entries about it here, with screenshots. Rather funny . . .
http://www.joshteague.com/bio/journal.html

Scroll to the bottom of that page, if you care.

http://www.cameronmoll.com/v2/

Remind you of anything?

Man, that sucks. I want to believe that Harland himself didn't have much to do with the rip-off, since I think he's a funny guy (singing "All by Myself" into the bar of soap in the prison shower in Half Baked -- hilarious).

Blatantly ripping off your company's identity -- not hilarious.

The production of that rip-off is probably the worst that I think I've ever seen. That being said, don't be "that guy."

Suing is NOT the answer. We live in a lawsuit happy society, and adding to it probably is not the best solution. Our court systems are inundated with all kinds of crappy lawsuits every day. I realize that someone stealing your business identity is not necessarily a crappy lawsuit, but take steps to rectify the situation before taking the matter to a court of law.

I am willing to wager that a firm, insightful email to Mr. Harland of the website will not only open his eyes to the problem (chances are that he doesn't know his site is a rip-off), but it will probably also inspire him to get his site redesigned by someone with a little talent.

mail your comments to dan@danhopkins.com

You should call him up and get him to bid on a redesign for your site. That will get him nervous.

I was going to suggest pirated-sites.com, but I see that Tim is on the stick.

wow... that takes balls. i wonder how this went...
harlow visits domineydesign.com
harlow likes.
harlow tells (stupid) designer "this is what i want it to look like".
designer says ok... if that's what he want.
designer COPIES domineydesign.com.
harlow happy.
wtf?

harlow.. harland... whatever.

I think it's ignorant to blame Harland Williams for his site. I'm sure he's probably only cared to look at his site once and didn't even care. They hired some crap designer who took your stuff and presented it to him. Why in the world do you think Harland took a look at Dominey Design and told someone to steal it. Kids, use your head...

Are you people really this dense. Do you honestly think Harland saw the web site and said to his designer "hey, copy that site". I seriously doubt it. It's just some jackass designer ripping off dominey.

Todd, I am sure if you email Harlands people and show them what's up they will yank the site and probably go after the design firm that did this.

If you go after Harland, I am coming after you.

I too doubt Harland had anything to do with the design and development of his home page, although I have yet to find (correct me here) any mention of who's responsible for the site design.

Todd, here is the designer. It is on the splash page before it advances to the home page:

http://www.danhopkins.com

Another interesting point.

Not just Todd's ideas were stolen but Macromedia's background colour scheme was taken right down to the hex colours!
On the splash page of harlandwilliams.com the darkest part of the gradient is #71828A and the lightest is #ACB7BB, exactly the same as macromedia's site.

I know this is picky but it just hardens the point this designer has done the wrong thing.

Good luck with it Todd.

Dan Hopkins' logo sure is similar to Peugeot.

Sorry I forgot to mention the light hex colour on the gradient is when you are running at 1280x1024. It would vary for different resolutions, but still be the smae on both sites.

Yuck. I'm sure you have better things to do than deal with this.

A few seconds of research (imdb.com) and I see that Harland Williams is the cousin of Kevin Hearn of Barenaked Ladies. (They have been ripping people off for years so this should come as no suprise.) And...he is Canadian.

No doubt his agent or press person arranged the site ("Harland, sweeeeite, you totally need one!"). If you want the site down and Dan Hopkins to 'never work in this town again', I would try to get the name of his reprsentation.

This booking form even says that it will go to one of his 'important people'

They say that 'good designers borrow; great designers steal' - this Hopkins guy must be some kind of genius! Would it be mean to email Peugeot as well?

No Trial . No Jury . No Judge . --> Straight to execution for the designer ...

The site's a total rip off but there's no such thing as stealing a background color. That's a bit ridiculous. I get white! "You'll get pink."

I'd lay off using the same exact color as Macromedia, because it's such a popular site, but it's not stealing...

I'd trade him the look-and-feel of Dominey Design for the use of this on your site: http://www.harlandwilliams.com/sounds/welcome.wav

Have you heard of 8 minute web design? Dan Hopkins has 7 minute web design.

Jim Renaud said:
"there’s no such thing as stealing a background color"

Of course, but when you use exactly the same colours in a gradient you know somethings not quite right. Like I said, it just proves more design attributes are not orignial in this harlandwilliams.com design.

lol, why has no one commented on this?

http://www.cameronmoll.com/v2/

O.K., so I thought about this for a while (and after revisiting Pirated Sites). Who the heck are some of you people? Layoff cameronmoll! Sure it looks similar, maybe even inspired, but a total rip? Nahhh.

I'd bet if some of you design geniuses took a good hard look (hmmm, like YOU really conceived of drop shadows, brushed metal backgrounds, beveled buttons, the three-column layout, etc, etc.) at yourselves, you might find yourselves guilty of the same thing.

Anyway, just remember: It's all been done before, so relax and worry about yourselves!

And yes, I do think there is a distinction between "inspired" and a "rip" So there. Lemme get off of this soapbox........

Jay The Boy

Oh...and read this article by cameron moll:
http://www.sitepoint.com/article/copy-great-designers-steal/1

Funny that you wrote about this, yesterday I was flipping through the Arts Projects Magazine, which pointed me to the pirated-sites.com where Har-land was paraded as theives that they are, It's terrible that designers can stoop that low.. shame on them,,,,

In regard to Cameron Moll, let me (hopefully) end any further discussion by stating that his site is phenomenal. It's beautiful. His use of script-caps on his titles -- which smartly uses Fahrner image replacement -- is such a great idea. I think his site has a similar spirit to mine, but his attention to detail and graphical execution is fantastic.

I'm loving the Har-Land's new signs. Top notch stuff there.

I figure it's time I finally chime in to clarify a few points on the issue as related to my site.

Was my site "inspired" by What Do I Know? As a loyal reader of the site, yes. Was it inspired by SimpleBits? Yes (right column). How about WebStandardsAwards? Yup (articles page). Was it inspired by Squidfingers? Yes again. Was it inspired by Wrangler Jeans? Yes (that's where the styling for the Premium Linkage graphic comes from). Was it inspired by Airbag.ca? Yes (date format). Was it inspired by the dozens of weblogs that use faux columns with a drop-shadow bg? Yes.

There. I think that's all of them. If you prefer to pick on WDIK, please pick on all of them.

Thanks, Todd. Saw your latest post just after mine posted.

Who is the dork that had a problem with Cameron's site? Dom? Thanks buddy. If it weren't for your stupid, asinine rip-off accusation I never would've found Cameron's great blog. Nice work Cam! I'll be visiting often.

Everyone is crying attorney, please people, its not like anyone was killed. Fine they copied your design and Frankly they did a a terrible job of it.

Compared, your site kicks ass, thats pretty obvious, besides in a way its complimentary .

Now you’ve exposed them for the phony designers they are. That’s humiliation enough. Everybody knows now, well at leased a whole BUNCH of people at leased, and thats all you really need.

I’m sure that you are not the only person that has mailed about the incident. Soon enough they’ll take it down and rip off someone else, but that is their problem not yours.

For the record, I received a response from Dan Hopkins. Or...rather..."danhopkins.com". Get a load of this:

-------------------------

Mr. Dominey:

Thanks for your email this morning.

We were notified about the article you posted yesterday night and are looking in to it.

As a professional courtesy, we immediately updated the site.

Best Regards,

DanHopkins.com

This last part of this discussion has touched on a dormant thread in web design (and other arts as well): what separates inspiration and derivative work from outright copying?

Glad to see both Moll and Dominey weigh in on each other's contributions and other sources of inspriation for current designs - very insightful. If we read your blog, we likely read people you link to (and are inspired by).

I'm certainly guilty of inspriation by WDIK. But, I had the opportunity to go to a school where we were taught the difference between rip-offs and inspired work. Many awesome web designers have come to the profession by another route (self-taught) - perhaps a lack of education is the difference. Though you'd think Mom telling you not to steal would be obvious enough.

So no lawsuit? This guy sounds like an asshat and worthy of legal action.

I don't think Harlan or his agent will care that the site is a rip-off. Todd, unless you've trademarked your logo, you really don't have a lot to go on here.

Having worked in the film industry for a few years, I can tell you that Harlan is probably just a regular guy like us that just does his job on camera instead of at a keyboard. A friend of mine does Bruce Campbell's web site. Bruce Campbell is way more famous, prolific than Harlan; and Bruce and his "Dan Hopkins" are just regular guys.

This Dan Hopkins character is probably some kid that he met along the way that has mastered copy/paste and some other basic ImageReady skills.

Also, speaking from real experience here. Anyone who is naive enough to promise a personal site redesign and then miss the deadline by many months is probably flipping burgers, rolling burritos, or joints, or whatever mom requires in lieu of rent. Hell, I haven't touched my personal (non-blog) site in 2 years.

Anyhow, it's despicable for sure. But beyond sending him some love.

Personally, I'm glad to work with someone worth copying! ;) I think the real story here is T-dog dropping the F-bomb on his homepage. Zoinks Scoob!

I'm not sure whether to laugh or cry. This is just so incredibly horrible. And the professional courtesy? My good that cracks me up. You wont get anything but trouble and sleepless nights over a lawsuit, even though it's tempting - and certainly deserving.

I figured the least I could do was to tip off peugeot about Dan Hopkins' logo.

With regard to Jayme's rather obnoxious post (post 42).

*Sigh* You can't post anything without someone flaming (even here!) I made no 'stupid' 'asinine' rip-off accusations, I simply wanted to know what others thought of the site originally posted by Alec (post 12) as all subsequent posts seemed to overlook it.

I have nothing against Cameron and his great work. Speaking as a professional web designer myself, his article was spot on.

Regards,

Dom the stupid (asinine) dork.
(heh, I feel like a teenager defending myself on a Britney Spears forum)

Something similar happened to a company I used to work for. We produced an outdoor portal website dto.com. By chance one day we happened to find a radio station owned by clear channel entertainment that had taken our graphics, our data, our articles, -like everything! So seeing this as the only possible revenue source ;-) (we didn't make too much money). We called in the lawers, well we ended up pissing off clear channel with our threats to sue them, and they offered us 10k to go away. We resisted, but that was futile, and in the end our legal bills were more than the 10k. -What a great business! We couldn't even sue anyone right.

Sorry Dom. In retrospect, my language was a bit harsh. Apologies. Cheers.

Thanks Jayme :)

i like this actor. he's really good.

i hate when this kind of thing happens. even though they totaly ripped you off and stole all of your hard work - claiming it as theirs, you can't help but crack a little smile thinking that everyone wants a baddass design like yours.

if i could, i would beat the web designer across the face with a black marlin swordfish 500 times, then piss on his grave.

hope everything turns out well.

i was recently ripped off - some bastard showing screenshots of my applications in his online portfolio!!! I would be honored that someone ripped you off, but then I would demand from the ISP that the site come down until this is all straightened out.

I hope things turn out well. You got ripped off, but they didn't take the time to rip you off that well - your site is still 500x what the rip is.

Huh?

Is the sky really falling? I know it sucks when your design is ripped but it is also a form of flattery and you should stop and take it as a compliment.

I'm totally against gathering up the villagers and ruining a guys life though. Yes, he bit your idea and complete design. Yes, you could email and tell him to remove it. You did. He did. Now what?

Maybe someone should put a parody design site together making fun of how uptight you and Andy Budd have been lately.

You guys are talented geniuses that I admire. Don't worry about the small stuff.

Ew, have you seen the new site?
Mybe you should offer your help to him to make something that isn't so... bad.

The new site is much better! It's exactly what I would expect Harland have out there. Not everything needs to be overdesigned, animated and beveled.

As a follow-up (and hopeful end) to this thread, I received a reply from Harland this morning. He had no idea about any of this, and immediately removed the old site in its entirety (which I didn't request, but I suppose he was angry enough to delete everything). He has a new site up now.

I am new to the world of web design, and yes I am self taught (or in the process of). But what amazes me is that anyone would want to steal from another designer. I, for one, look forward to the day when we (my brother and I) will have created - hopefully - a site that garners the same sort of attention as a site such as this one has. That just couldn't happen if I were to steal a design. I want to be praised and lauded for my unique vision and design, not for someone elses. Which wouldn't happen anyway. I would just be derided for my utter contempt for the designer whose idea I stole. It seems to me the charlatans that do rip off sites lack the one thing many great artists and designers seem to possess in excess...ego. And I don't necessarily see ego as a bad thing.

Harland's site that is up now, is actually his old site. I love that site.

Brian Andersen said:
"I figured the least I could do was to tip off peugeot about Dan Hopkins’ logo."

He didn't steal Peugeot's logo, but he did steal. That lion design is actually the crest of Phillips Exeter Academy.

I would say to Harland Williams if he actually wants a good website maybe he should consider hiring Todd Dominey ;)

Lol, look at Harland's site now, _amazing_

btw, I was checking out your archives, I found this: http://whatdoiknow.org/archives/001132.shtml
and was reminded of the contract, whatever happened to it I wonder? Not very modern for a company renowned for innovation and bleeding-edge hardware.

Ha, the new site is fantastic... Takes me back to, oh, about '95-'96 or so...

"Oh crap, it turns out the site is a rip-off"
"Well, do you know any web designers?"
"My uncle's got a copy of Frontpage, he did the website for our family reunion"
"He's hired."

Sorry, sometimes cynicism gets the best of me. I do fancy his creepy artwork though, definite bonus points there.

There is always the supposedly flattering artistic mimicry that purveys most forms of art; a website is simply another form of art. Blatant, outright copying is of course wrong. But as it were, we stand on the shoulders of giants in the art world -- we learn techniques, and we mimic them in our own creations. Needless to say, THAT wasn't artistic, but stupid.

I fount this funny:

:D :D :D :D :D

ROFLMAO.

Dammit - let's try that again:

META NAME="GENERATOR" CONTENT="Adobe PageMill 3.0 Win"

I can't believe I just read all this. The only thing worthwhile I got from the exercise was the link to Cameron's site...which is totally weird because I just read his bang-on sitepoint (Good Designers/Great Designers) article last night.

Todd. As always great work.
Cameron. Real nice site. Inspiring ; ) Glad I found it. I've booked marked ya ; )