Comments on: British Government Caught Pirating On Prime Minister’s Website

By: bob

bob — Sun, 24 Aug 2008 05:05:16 +0000

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.

By: Andrew

Andrew — Sun, 24 Aug 2008 04:03:42 +0000

To be fair, the designers did nothing wrong here and it looks as if they adhered to the rules of the CC license.

By: UKMoron

UKMoron — Fri, 22 Aug 2008 09:23:39 +0000

@3
It’s the point, moron.

By: Jeff

Jeff — Fri, 22 Aug 2008 08:28:53 +0000

Rule Brittania!

lolz

By: Ji

Ji — Thu, 21 Aug 2008 16:40:45 +0000

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?

By: anonymous-someone

anonymous-someone — Thu, 21 Aug 2008 14:50:50 +0000

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!

By: anonymous-someone

anonymous-someone — Thu, 21 Aug 2008 14:49:20 +0000

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.”

By: Pirate Edgar the Periwinkle

Pirate Edgar the Periwinkle — Thu, 21 Aug 2008 12:18:45 +0000

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

By: Trabb

Trabb — Thu, 21 Aug 2008 09:09:00 +0000

Bloddy goons, they all need shooting… AND I VOTED FOR THEM!! THEN THEY DO THIS PIRATE BULLSHIT AND GIVE AWAY MY RIGHTS!! bah.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Thu, 21 Aug 2008 08:21:29 +0000

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.

By: Mark

Mark — Thu, 21 Aug 2008 07:07:42 +0000

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.

By: Nick

Nick — Thu, 21 Aug 2008 06:20:08 +0000

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.

By: dave smith

dave smith — Thu, 21 Aug 2008 05:29:42 +0000

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

By: Dom Barnes

Dom Barnes — Thu, 21 Aug 2008 03:09:36 +0000

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.

By: Geoff

Geoff — Wed, 20 Aug 2008 20:53:58 +0000

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.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Wed, 20 Aug 2008 20:42:42 +0000

He should force the government’s isp to issue a copyright warning letter, and see how they like it, haha :)

By: Aaron

Aaron — Wed, 20 Aug 2008 20:21:23 +0000

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.

By: Dan

Dan — Wed, 20 Aug 2008 19:28:08 +0000

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

By: Jeff

Jeff — Wed, 20 Aug 2008 18:43:24 +0000

PWNED!!!

Time to walk the plank, Gordon!

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Wed, 20 Aug 2008 17:51:27 +0000

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.