British Government Caught Pirating On Prime Minister’s Website
Written by enigmax on August 20, 2008While the British government puts huge amounts of pressure on ISPs to clamp down on file-sharers, it is doing some pirating of its very own. It seems that Prime Minister Gordon Brown’s own website is in serious breach of copyright, as it is based on a ripped-off Wordpress theme.
The issue of copyright is a hot one in the UK right now and the government isn’t scared of getting involved. It has been putting huge amounts of pressure on ISPs to take action against alleged music file-sharers, so imagine, if you will, the beautiful crimson color Prime Minister Brown’s face will turn today when he is declared a pirate too.
Amongst other things, Anthony from antbag.com makes WordPress themes - he gives them away for free but if someone wants to donate, they can. His work is released under Creative Commons 3.0 license, which means that if someone wants to use a theme ‘as is’ or modified in some way, they are required to credit him. A link in the footer of every theme he creates points back to Anthony’s site - this is the minimum attribution he expects, which is pretty damn reasonable.
So imagine Anthony’s surprise when he discovered that his NetWorker theme for WordPress had been used by the British government without honoring the Creative Commons license. The theme has been heavily modified, including the removal of all links back to his site, but Anthony has been able to verify from the source files that Prime Minister Gordon Brown’s own website is in fact built on NetWorker.
It is clear that Brown’s site indeed uses the Anthony’s theme - violating the Creative Commons license. Not only was the link to the the original removed, Brown’s site should have also made their version available under a similar license - share alike.
Still, the site even claims it is protected by Crown Copyright - a quick look at the CSS for the theme should dispel that myth.
Anthony sent an email to the company who developed the site who claimed that although they did some testing on the NetWorker theme, they then rebuilt it from scratch. Unfortunately, according to Anthony “they failed to remove the credits in the CSS file that named the theme ‘NetWorker’ or to change the theme folder which is named ‘NetWorker-10′ (Networker version 1.0).”
There is a campaign running in the UK right now featuring “Knock-Off Nigel” along with cringe-worthy videos depicting this fictitious character as some kind of social outcast.
One would think that Mr Brown would avoid the sort of behavior that could easily make him the star of the next campaign but if it’s good enough for the MPAA, it must be good enough for him.
Update: We were contacted by Dave Smith, Managing Director of New Media Maze, the creators of the Number 10 site. He has a full statement on this issue which is available here, but in summary, here is his explanation, in his own words:
1. The only file that was drawn upon from AntÂ’s theme was the CSS file, a fact that we have never denied.
2. Under AntÂ’s theme license (CCL), there was no requirement to attribute the work to him in the footer.
3. Under the CCL, he was correctly attributed in the CSS file that was used.
4. Therefore we have abided by the license of AntÂ’s work and are not guilty of ‘ripping off’ anyone’s work.
For his part, Anthony doesn’t wish to prolong the conflict. Click here for an update from him.
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80 Responses
LOL, gg England.
yet another embarrassment for this ridiculous government! when its time to vote, i hope people do the right thing!
Oh wow, a stolen wordpress theme… who the fuck cares?
http://digg.com/politics/British_Government_Caught_Pirating_On_Prime_Minister_s_Site?OTC-kff
there are 2 submissions, better do em both ;)
LOL, Brown is an idiot, no one voted him into power and most people don’t / didn’t want him in the first place, hell, I didn’t even vote Tony Blare I sure wouldn’t vote for him. But what’s the betting that all of this will disappear without a trace within the next 24 hours?
typical. how stupid can you get? talk about lead by example! seems more like ‘dont do what i do, do what i tell you’!
What irritates is those Knock Off Nigel rubbish, they actually try to encourage mob mentality. The website even includes a flash game where you get to throw fruit and other items at a ‘Knock off Nigel’.
Gordon Brown should make a short apology statement, give the guy his dues and not hire that company again!
@2, its quite doubtfull.
If we take a look at the up and coming generation of file sharers, we find that they are iether to young to voat or have discovered the joys of doing fuck all.
I agree with you 100%, I just don’t think there’ll be much progress, because sadly for most people, the idea of filesharing past the stage where there just downloading the odd file of limewire still seems a bit geeky.
Canadian Industry Minister Jim Prentice was caught violating Google copyright on maps. Story here:
http://p2pnet.net/story/16289
Those ads are just horrible. I mean who is that supposed to work on? Little boys? The mentally handicapped? Is it only boys who knock stuff off? No Nellies or Nancys?
So many questions. So much apathy.
Those knock-off Nigel ads are an endless source of amusement for me… I don’t see them very often since I barely watch TV any more, but seeing the progression from “buys knockoff DVDs” to the realisation that the fake DVD market has been slaughtered by the internet (and the subsequent updated advert) was good for a laugh
LOL they want to clamp down yet i bet they download ect themselves …. i think this is very funny …. Do the right thing and Vote me in LOL
That’s alright, this guy should be out of a job before long anyways, along with the rest of his criminal Labour crew.
Not very surprising - Hard to find a more openly corrupt government in Europe.
wow .. this is great news….
comeone now … lets celebrate////
It is clear that this horrendous action has caused the death of thousands and the damages sought after should be no less than 100 million pounds.
do what you want cause a pirate is free,
you are a pirate.
The british government is in SHAMBLES at the minute and I am embarrassed to say that I am a resident of England. Gordon Brown should get off his fanny and f**k off out of Parliament. Notice his hair is graying faster than Tony Blair’s did - from stress - because he’s being asked to do things he can’t do. We have a monkey running the country.
And as for the knock off nigel advert, I agree with #8 - Nobody is being fooled. They should give up their losing battle against piracy.
like it’s a surprise that politicians are rotten and crooked to the core…
I guess the difference here is that the PM’s site might actually respond to a compliance request.
Storm in a teacup my dear chap.
OT but worth reminding people:
@14 you are presumably too young to remember what happened last time the tories got in. ERM Debacle, high interest rates, sleaze, recession, unemployment, child poverty, etc.
I think we need the UK pirate party to band together and make an example of this.
Sure they’ve got a chance in hell of winning next election but ultimately I don’t believe Labour nor the Conservatives (sorry but David Cameron is a shallow sell out, and his party more so for making him party leader.) deserve to be running the UK.
EVERYTHING IS A COPY.
Things that are made easily and copied seamlessly are of little value these days. Stop trying to sell your media crap like gold.. its worthless.
If a Lambo could be copied instantly and given to anyone anytime, there price tag would go to nothing. And you better believe if we had the power to do it, we would.
I thought this when I initially saw it - but I doubt Gordon Brown even knows what WordPress is - this is the fault of a lazy design agency, not the Prime Minister. Gordo seems destined to become the blame bin for all our complaints…
Great story! I hope it gets some wide attention.
If you vote in UK elections, you are supporting a government system which is corrupt, ineffectual, indifferent to its citizens, and allows corporate interests to dictate laws to the deleteriousness of its people.
This can not be solved by electing another party… The core problems that exist, have done so, and will do so in every party; a system whereby the populace gets a single vote, and the ruling party is effectively declared imperator rei republicae shall always be reprobate.
Democracy in its current form is contrived to deprive its denizens of any involvement in how the government operates, and instead handing absolute power to the few who systematically abuse and exploit it for their own benefit.
Early Greece elucidated a system of administration that was impervious to the attacks of putrescency (direct democracy, or pure democracy). In place of self-serving politicians, five hundred citizens were chosen annually at random to vote on proposed legislation; eliminating the threat of corruption. Similar to court duty, except that citizens had a real voice in the running of the state.
Pamela Andersen pole dancing was my Intellectual Property, i actualy came up with it the first day Baywatch aired and it was stolen from me by the movie industry.
I think we need stronger Intellectual Property laws, noone should even be allowed to think anything that anyone else might already have thought off, society will be doomed otherwice!
I think this Gordon fellow is on the right track, we surely need more people like him who doesnt understand anything except what lobbyists wants them to understand. That would be a fair and long lasting world.
Unfortunately, according to Anthony “they failed to remove the credits in the CSS file that named the theme ‘NetWorker’ or to change the theme folder which is named ‘NetWorker-10′ (Networker version 1.0).”
————————————–
Lol, that’s dumb.
UK PWNED LoL
Maybe Gordon Brown could put this video on his fancy new website.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tmI4BNA6vsg
Anyone took the time to take the test to see if u’r a knock-off nigel on the site http://www.knockoffornot.com/test/ ??
There’s a really interesting little detail in there: It shows just how distorted their sense of morality really is.
If you do any one thing of a list of bad things like taking a bus without paying, cheating your friends, stealing money from your mother or even stealing from a children, you’r only a bit of a knock-off nigel but as soon as you download you buy a movie (which they seem to consider to be equally bad) your a full knock-off nigel!
so, in conclusion:
steal from your mother or from kids, cheat, etc -> not that bad
download a movie -> you’r an asshole!
‘British Government’ suggests that every Member of Parliament was involved in this scandal?
When in reality it was a company hired by someone working for the Brown office.
Most of which, obviously have no understanding of the masses of copyright or infact any other type of legislation they have swindled through the House of Lords, these past 10 years.
I’m afraid I have no idea what knock-off nigel does. However, I am livid that the media tries to imply that a copyright infringement is a criminal offence - when it is only a civil tort. Don’t the media understand uk law? The interview I heard with Davenport Lyons on Radio 4 was appalling. I hope the BBC get sued for defamation. We need a level playing field not distortion. I hope the lass involved starts a fighting fund. At the moment there is nothing to stop a corporation from leaking a game/dvd onto the internet intentionally and then asking all downloaders for £300 each - sounds a very good business strategy! We only have their word that they didn’t!
The difference between the two sites here is enough that I would not call it a rip-off.
And let’s be serious here, we’re all here for piracy, we all want copyright law to be more lax for our benefit, but by the same token, we all need to realize that it goes both ways. You cannot have a site glorifying piracy, bitching about piracy. It’s stupid.
At the same time, you can’t have a government paying people with ptaxpayers money, for what is copyright infringement, while at the same time, looking to up the penalties for same.
Of course, what the PM’s site designer did was CRIMINAL copyright infringement since it was for financial gain.
We at TorrentFreak like to point out the dichotomies of those villifying copyright infringement, but at the same time being a party to the same offences. It’s the same league as Al Gore traveling by private jet, or buckcherry stickking a song on torrent sites and then complaining about piracy. They can’t have it both ways. It’s NOT one rule for us, and not for them.
Epic Fail!
@7, mob mentality is what is needed to stop the government. They are using mob mentality against the people and citizens of the world, you know.
Ever heard of police abusing people’s rights? Ever heard of government officials taking away your rights through law? It’s not like it’s only one official making the decisions, you know.
He’s a knock-off Gordon, he’s a knock-off Gordon… Knock-off Gordon steals copyrighted works!
@ 33 - anonymous-someone
I’d never say ignore copyright completely but ultimately, it wouldn’t harm anyone to leave a link in… Even if they engineered there own version, it makes me wonder, Labour paid this company to make something they could of had for free… all because of what, they didn’t want a link at the bottom of the page? it’s tax payers money in the end.
@ 30 - B0rg
I noticed the same. I’ll be honest I think we should have a campaign against those ads, I find them so offensive that they all but say ‘if you see an illegal downloader, spit in his face’
They wana knock off nigel, then really we should knock off the MPAA
@ 20,
im not too young to remember the tory government from the late ’70s to the early ’90s, but labour have done exactly the same as the tories but worse!
brown should go cos hes the biggest embarrassment the uk has ever had!
LOL, I guess the British Government is a lot Like Dictator Bush with his “Do as I say, not as I do” attitude! LOL
This is completely and wholly inaccurate.
1. Nowhere in his licensing does he require attribution in any specific way. He is attributed in the CSS file, so as far as that goes, they have fulfilled their end.
2. The license he used refers to distribution, not use. They’re not redistributing, so that license does not apply anyway.
3. They’re denying that they’re actually using his theme: http://www.newmediamaze.com/index.php/antbags-theme-the-facts
4. His license is wrong anyway. WordPress is GPL software. His theme is a derivative of WordPress. Therefore it is GPL too. Sorry, but all WP themes fall under the GPL. Like it or not.
TorrentFreak Caught Stealing WordPress Because Their Coders Suck A$$
They should apologize? Right? I would love to see that.
The Knock-off Nigel adverts actively make me want to download films and stuff off the net. Normally I am too lazy even to do that but now I have 3 PC perpetually downloading stuff illegally. I LOVE IT. The beauty of it is, I don’t even want or watch half the films I download, I just store them ready for when WW3 breaks out and we all have to start living underground.
This is beautiful, I say.
If they’re going to push their laws onto us, they’d better be ready to have these very same laws shoved up their asses.
Give ‘em hell!
Otto, it’s a shameless rip off and you know it.
Ya glenn I kinda do the same.. dont watch half the shit.. lol. When those black helicopters come were all fucked.. exept us cause we will be well entertained.
it may seem like a lower class observation but that gorden brown is a complete tosser. cant wait to vote for nick clegg, hes going to change politics so people actually have confidence in the leaders of their country.
“is in serious breach of copyright”
bollocks. it’s wordpress. the code is GPL, they can do what they bloody like with it. “wordpress” could care less that a WP blog doesn’t advertise itself as such.
The sites don’t look nothing alike. Sounds to me like the author of the original wordpress theme is just trying to get attention.
@3
It’s not about who cares, it’s about them being hypocrites.
Has anyone here actually thought about the government, how hard it is to be a decromacy, rather than a dictatorship, how much taxes do we pay a month for a free healthcare service, not really alot to be fair, and ot make it even worse, the public demand better, and sue when they havent got “their expectations met”, there is always a price for freedom, sure the government doesnt do everything it says it will, looses information somtimes, but thats a damn lot better than not being able to say a word agaist the government without dissapearing in the next 24 hours, and so i think the media and the public should just give them a break and for once say, good job. this is just one insignifigant mistake made, compared to one right such as freedom of speach, it’s nothing.
Oooh, shoddy substandard and irresponsible work on the part of the web designer. I agree with Tom. I honestly doubt anyone in the government, esp. Messr. Brown, who has his mind on other more critical stuff like, y’know, how to turn around his economy, had the know-how to imagine it could have been pirated and subsequently determine it had been. Seems to me that it is PM Brown who has the right to sue the agency for selling him pirated stuff and in turn getting the gov’t caught with its pants down.
The Office of the PM is just as much a victim as any in this instance, they payed people to make the site, and they have been had.
Lack of attribution is different from sharing. In file-sharing networks, it’s not like we strip away the credit to the original creator.
Can someone suck on my balls please!?
/*
Theme Name: NetWorker
Theme URI: http://www.antbag.com
Description: An adsense ready theme from Antbag.com.
Version: 1.0
Author: Anthony Baggett
Author URI: http://www.antbag.com/
*/
http://www.number10.gov.uk//wp-content/themes/networker-10/style.css
Honestly, the theme looks no way like the networker theme. :o
[quote]1 Aug 20, 2008 at 12:37 by Anonymous
LOL, gg England.[quote]
[quote] 18 Aug 20, 2008 at 14:51 by CMG
The british government is in SHAMBLES at the minute and I am embarrassed to say that I am a resident of England. Gordon Brown should get off his fanny and f**k off out of Parliament.[/quote]
Gordon Brown is not English.
England is a Nation within the British Isles.
Britain is a name of all the Nations within Great Britain.
Innit?
@41: You have no clue what a derivative work is. Hint: a theme, which is not code, but a DATA file for Wordpress, is not a derivative of WP. You don’t even have to be a lawyer to understand that, common sense would suffice.
@49: Why don’t you read the fucking license before opening your mouth in the public? No, they really can’t do whatever they want with GPL stuff. Plus, the theme is NOT under GPL.
One might think this is a very small issue, but it is not!
It’s the principal, they broke their own copyright laws which they are fighting wildly for.
How are they supposed to make us respect the copyright laws, when they do not? It’s absurbed.
PWNED!!!
Time to walk the plank, Gordon!
The only solution is for Anthony to sue the Prime Minister to cease and desist, and to contact his ISP and issue a “Strike 1″ towards getting his connection terminated for Copyright Infringement.
Also, I agree with #25. The solution is to cause laws to include the duration until the law must be reviewed, number of jurors required as well as rules for selecting them - to resolve any given issue of state.
People should be automatically randomly selected to serve.
A “judge/speaker” ought to guide the group through an evaluation of the case at hand, and the law should come to pass by vote.
This would replace the role of politicians and ensure that law was relevant.
Best,
Daniel
Oh for crap’s sake. It may have been based slightly on your code, if just the credits, but it looks nothing like the Networker theme…which is, no offense, kind of shitty. They really designed the theme nicely for the PMs site, so any resemblance, if any, is merely what anyone can do with CSS and a couple of ’s.
P.S: I don’t give a crap about Brown, and I’ve never even been to the UK.
He should force the government’s isp to issue a copyright warning letter, and see how they like it, haha :)
Releasing themes for WordPress– an author can claim whatever license he/she might want, but the WordPress license (GNU General Public License) trumps any theme license.
So… antbag.com can kiss it.
I had a look at the copyright page and it does say that the “Material” is protected under Crown Copyright. So doesn’t that only cover the posts and pictures, the content, as opposed to the theme?
I’d like to see the owner of the theme try and take them to court over this. I wanna know how CC stands up in court.
I run New Media Maze, the company that built the Downing Street web site.
I posted this link here yesterday, but i’m not sure it appeared so i’ll try again: http://www.newmediamaze.com/index.php/antbags-theme-the-facts/
The article I wrote is quite lengthy, but then it needed to be to put the matter fully to bed, so i’ll summise here in case you can’t be bothered to read the whole thing and that’s the last you’ll hear from me:
1. The only file that was drawn upon from Ant’s theme was the css file. Ant accepts this fact: http://antbag.com/my-regrets-about-the-copyright-dispute/.
2. Under Ant’s theme license (CCL), there was no requirement to attribute the work to him in the footer.
3. Under the CCL, he was correctly attributed in the CSS file that was used.
4. Therefore we have abided by the license of Ant’s work and neither we, nor Gordon Brown are ‘pirates’.
I’ll leave it to you to decide whether to do the decent thing and correct the factually inaccuracies in your original article.
kind regards,
Dave
It’s the web development companies fault, not the Governments. They hire people who claim to be experts and whose job looks effective enough. However, like may developers, they’re all borrowing stuff from each other and not designing anything that is original.
Yes!
Let’s impeach Gordon Brown for handcoding a site which blatantly defies a non-binding attribution license by attributing the author in the code but not in the way that he wanted!
The Revolution is at hand!
P.S Feel free to vote for the Tories BTW, just remember that they voted -with- this “criminal” government for the Iraq war, the only major party which didn’t were the Lib Dems. Oh, and I really really want them to fail quite spectacularly whilst I emigrate.
gordon brown is a dick,
he flew his wife to scotland while pregnant just so his son would not be born english,
in doing so the kid gets free prescriptions for life, no uni fees for life, oh and the right to vote on matter that affect england but england cant vote on scottish matters.
FYI gordon would make a good pirate, he is blind in one eye.
Bloddy goons, they all need shooting… AND I VOTED FOR THEM!! THEN THEY DO THIS PIRATE BULLSHIT AND GIVE AWAY MY RIGHTS!! bah.
Get your pirate name and join us in a toast to the promotion of pirating through the lampoon antics of the legal system
http://gangstaname.com/pirate_name.php
Gotta side with the web developer here.
I work in the business, and for a couple of client sites I have utilized themes that are available for free on Joomla/Drupal/Wordpress sites. Now in my situation I always leave any attributions in the code, and I have a couple of client sites right now that bear the mark of the theme developer. So yes, I attribute properly.
But what really happened in this situation is that NMM started with a freely available theme and made so many modifications to it that it no longer resembles the original theme. I’ve done this in the past, and once I’ve replaced all images and redone the layout of the site I do NOT attribute the original author. Of course I also have the foresight to remove any comments from the original code first…
So NMM made a small mistake by LEAVING THE ATTRIBUTION IN.
Had they ripped the site off completely, this wouldn’t even be an issue. We wouldn’t even be discussing this. But by trying to do the right thing (or just being lazy), they are incurring the wrath of the Internet.
I realize how everyone wants to point out the supposed hypocrisy here, but can we agree not to lower ourselves to the level of the IFPI/MPAA/RIAA? Otherwise we’re no better than them. “Us” becomes “them.”
And seriously–don’t fucking upload your custom theme to share if you don’t want people making use of it!!
For fuck’s sake!
Its amazing that even in things like this you get the Morons who like to go into an Anti-Scottish rant, if you don’t like the way your side of the border is run you vote for someone who will run it the way you want, we as the people of the UK are every much responsible for the decisions our parties make wither it effect us at home or abroad, don’t be an armchair biggot with your notions of blaming everything one someone else, if its not the scots its the polish immigrants etc, get political and show your disatisfaction at the way the people YOU as an individual and we as a nation allowed to come to power, who cares if the scots get this and that, the question should be why don’t the rest of the UK, should it not?
Rule Brittania!
lolz
@3
It’s the point, moron.
To be fair, the designers did nothing wrong here and it looks as if they adhered to the rules of the CC license.
I have no sympathy.
I make themes and im very clear with my conditions. I dont release anything under any type of creative commens rubbish.
You have specific rules if you want to use my stuff.
1. you must keep the link in the footer.
2. you are not allowed to modify the work and resell it or claim it as your own.
3. you are not allowed to place any of my work for download on any site without permission.
If people arent willing to stick to these 3 simple rules then they should look elsewhere for themes.
I have successfully had websites taken offline for breach of these rules.
Web hosts dont want the trouble and are quite will to issue a cease and desist or remove sites.
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