The country and western artist Jerry Jeff Walker once had to go to court to defend himself against charges of plagiarism. On the stand Mr. Walker played the song he wrote and the song he was accused of stealing. He then proceeded to sing about ten other widely known songs while strumming the same melody line. He won the lawsuit.

"The adult Internet is rife with lazy jerks that filch the hard work of others and a good site design is as susceptible to looting as any video clip or image gallery."

Writers are taught when composing scenarios for stories and novels, to keep in mind there are only five basic plots: Man against man, man against nature, man against society, man against himself and man against God. No matter how inventively an author may tell a tale, their prose is always a derivation of five ancient story lines. Artists, musicians and filmmakers constantly strive for fresh ways to express their passions but even the thousands years old Bible states; there is nothing new under the sun.

The Internet has brought hope to those who search for unique modes of creative articulation. Everything seems new when done on the net and there’s validity to that sentiment. This latest medium has produced original methods of aesthetic expression, especially for the ordinary PC user. They can create little pages with self-made graphics/interactive applications that will reach an audience as big as the world.

For the first time in human history, everyone and anyone has a chance to display their ideas, efforts and wares to the entire planet. The humble designer can create their own works and broadcast them as effectively as their marketing abilities will allow. In doing so, this massive exposure opens the creator’s work to unsavory types who would rather steal someone else’s projects and ideas than make their own.

If there were a top ten list of the most common topics posted on adult webmaster message boards - Somebody stole my design! - would be on it somewhere around number one.

Site builders and designers are as protective of their efforts as anyone. The TGP owner frets over hotlinkers, the content producer searches for unlicensed users and the gallery builder checks their stats to see if any bastards are redirecting their page. The adult Internet is rife with lazy jerks that filch the hard work of others and a good site design is as susceptible to looting as any video clip or image gallery.

How do you protect your design and self made graphics? If you come across a site that is an exact copy of yours is there any recourse you can take to get it removed from the net? Can you copyright a design?

Protection

To protect your site design from thieves, one thing you can do is disable their ability to view your page’s source code. The design burglar most times simply opens the source code of your page from the menu of their browser program. They save it to their hard drives, reconfigure it to fit their needs and upload it to their servers as if it they owned it. You could put a "no right-click" script into your page to keep viewers from downloading images but it's pretty bothersome and really doesn't protect your design.

You can however, encrypt the HTML code of your site so only authorized users can read it. There are software programs that will encrypt/decrypt HTML code for you easily. You may also try JavaScript includes on your page. JavaScript includes entail formatting elements of your page into text files and "including" them in JavaScript page commands, sort of like style sheets. The problem with this method is that search engine spiders won't index JavaScript and that could affect your SE rankings.

You can take the time to register your page with the US Copyright Office but it costs 40.00 a pop. Most definitely, you can add the copyright symbol to your site. You could go a step further legally and inquire into having your site/company name trademarked but even then, a layout can be stolen without infringing a trademark.

Action

If you feel that someone has stolen your site design, you should always contact a lawyer to find our your legal recourses. Unfortunately, intellectual property claims are very hard to prove and even in clear-cut cases the internationality of the net comes into play. Thieves might reside in countries where the laws are less strident against plagiarism. If you have registered your page with the US Copyright Office, then you can take action against thieves residing in the US through their local Sheriff's Dept.

Reality

The sad fact of the matter is there's not a whole lot you can do to prevent theft of your design even with special scripts or some legal advice. You can always email the owner of the offending website and suggest they find another design but it probably won't get you anywhere.

Unless you have a legally trademarked name or logo, theft of the design elements of your site is difficult to prove. How many ways can one lay out a table on a web page? One can't copyright a color scheme or a font choice. Text can be stolen but it has to be a good deal of text. A site motto can be pilfered but if the motto isn't trademarked or the thief is in another country, there's little that can be accomplished.

The truth is the site designer can protect their work a little but not a lot. Many designers take a philosophical view of design theft and call it flattery. Others will tell you a design can't be stolen because there's nothing in design that hasn't been done before. Much like old Charlie Daniels who sang the lyrics to ten or so famous songs while strumming the same chords on his guitar. How many ways can you really make a web page new?