Ripped off by Televisiontunes.com
Friday, March 14th, 2008
The story starts when I re-discovered a song from my childhood by chance: “T.S.O.P” by Mother, Father, Sister, Brother. It’s a song that became very popular in 1974 and was nicknamed as “The Sound of Philadelphia”. In the U.S. it was the soundtrack for the TV show Soul Train. OK, so I remember how much I used to like this song and how wonderful these kings of funk and groove themes with trumpets used to be. So this morning I googled the soundtrack for Lou Grant, one of my favorite TV shows ever, and I arrived at this web site: www.televisiontunes.com.
I spent about five minutes on the site, they have a list of lots of popular TV series, and all the way through I have a funny feeling, some kind of Deja Vu like, “I’ve been here before”. So Naomi looks at my screen and she says, “But… OMG, they totally ripped our design!“
These people stole our design shamelessly. Our first reaction was to laugh really hard because I was in front of this design for five minutes which was literally stolen from us and I didn’t figure it out. OK, I admit I can be really dense in the morning. So we looked at it carefully and we noticed that they basically copied the CSS coding and just took out the parts they didn’t need. They ripped off the menu bar, they ripped off the background, they ripped off the font style, and they even dared to rip off the image of the arrow button that I created for Intuitive Designs!
This is the old design of our web site, since we changed it just a few days ago as you may know. Lucky for us. But it gets pretty disgusting to browse the internet and find people who steal your work. It happens more often than we would like. I wonder how yucky must be for famous people to turn on the TV or read a magazine every morning and find crap about themselves…
Once again we have to say what our philosophy is about being ripped off: life is an unique opportunity to celebrate our own individual identity. Each and everyone one of us are one of a kind. Each and everyone one of us can create our own print and that is a gift that shouldn’t be underestimated. By being ourselves and leaving our own footprint we make this world richer. It’s a celebration of life. Everyone should enjoy taking part of it and sharing their own goods with the rest of the world.
Here I leave an idea for their next design in case they want to have a different version of their most presumably ripped of illustration.
Mahogany says:
Monday, March 17th, 2008
It’s really shameless too. They say that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, but it’s hard to see things from that angle when you’re facing a flat out ripoff of creativity, time, and energy. Kudos to your for taking it in jest (great alternative illustration), as I’m not so sure I’d have such a good sense of humor about it :o).
Intuitive Designs says:
Monday, March 17th, 2008
You’re right, it’s hard to not get pissed off but sometimes, like in this case, the chance to have a good laugh was too obvious to let it pass. I have to admit we laughed so hard!
Snoopy says:
Wednesday, March 26th, 2008
get over it.
Bravos Media says:
Wednesday, March 26th, 2008
So if I click on the “Donate” button do you think I can write on it “This donation is towards you actually paying for your own original design”?
It sucks. I had a web site rip off an illustration I did for a client’s site for christmas. Luckily the client sent them a wonderfully legal and legitimate email threatening them to take it off their site, and they did. It’s such an odd mix of emotion when you get your work ripped off. Flattery, anger, confusion… All in all, I don’t like it.
Lori says:
Wednesday, March 26th, 2008
I feel your pain so vividly. I have my content ripped more often than my site, but have had my whole site duplicated more than once. It has happened so much that I don’t find it all that flattering anymore.
karl says:
Wednesday, March 26th, 2008
I’m with Snoopy. Get over it. Happens in every business, every one. Be satisfied with the fact that others admire your work. Be even more satisfied that others (an unfortunately smaller number) pay for it. Vengence is a terrible thing which never works. I’m sure they are going to get more clicks now than before
I did. Peace, zen, tranquilloooooo.
Intuitive Designs says:
Thursday, March 27th, 2008
Hi Karl, we agree. Basically that’s what we have said in older blog posts about this same subject:
http://www.intuitivedesigns.net/our-philosophy-about-being-ripped-off/
In this case, it was just irresistible to laugh at it and have fun. But no vengeance at all, just keeping the old sense of humor rolling