Even though the cost of the Iraq Invasion is now at $135,000,000,000, Paul Bremer’s crew still finds it necessary to steal intellectual property, from liberal think tanks, no less! According to the Washington Post, the designer working for Paul Bremer’s CPA-IRAQ web site stole the design directly from the liberal Brookings Institute.
“Now if they’d just crib the policy proposals and not just the html!” Marshall [of Talking Points Memo, who broke the story] wrote, referring to the hypertext markup language in which Web pages are coded. “Hey, at least those CPA folks are saving money!”
See for yourself:
Coalition Provisinal Authority
Since Marshall uncovered what he called a “secret liberal influence” on the U.S. authorities in Baghdad, Bremer’s staff appears to have made some slight changes to differentiate the two sites. Now the date in the top left corner of the coalition homepage is a little bolder and a slightly different font than it had been a month ago, and the small arrow-like icons on the navigation buttons on the left-hand side of the page are now red instead of their original Brookings-esque yellow.
Does that mean I can steal The DaVinci Code, change a few words, and call it my own?
by Cheshire Dave » May 27, 2004 6:03 PM
The bad ideas just pile up: it's not just that they stole someone else's good design; it's that somehow they then managed to make it look bad.
To add further insult to injury, they stole the Netscape logo and used it as their favorites icon. What does the N stand for to them? Maybe, as someone I used to know was wont to say, the N stands for "knowledge."
At any rate, I'm pretty sure it doesn't stand for "Najaf."
One thing's for sure: $135 billion apparently doesn't buy the Defense Department the best and the brightest design minds.
by nwzmn » May 28, 2004 11:01 AM
The sites look too similar to be coincidental, but there are two points to consider:
1) I looked at the source code for both pages, and it does not appear to be a "cut and paste" job. They may have taken the look and feel, but I don't see where the actual code was swiped.
2) Brookings ought to be proud that someone within the CPA was familiar enough with their site in the first place.
by Ben » May 29, 2004 8:09 AM
I'm not a designer, but I always thought the design is pretty generic, with navigation on the left, content in the middle, and links to the latest major releases on the right---doesn't that describe a hundred web pages? Legally, I think we've been through this before: stealing somebody's look and feel may be rude, but isn't against the rules unless it creates confusion in the marketplace.
While I'm here, would you guys mind if I vent a bit and critique the format? Putting a lot of dynamic content on each page gives the servers a million branch points to get something wrong. For example, I'm the only scholar listed on the home page of Brookings's Computer Ethics Institute. That gives me heaps of authority for this posting here, but I'd never heard of the CEI before finding my name on their page. Turns out I study intellectual property, the CEI does too, and so a high-level script somewhere married us. If I see a link on some page that looks interesting, I have to bookmark the darn thing ASAP, because the constant dynamic rebuilding, coupled with Brookings's prodigious output, means that the paper won't be in the same place tomorrow. I guess I'm just a low-tech kind of guy, and like static and not-necessarily-appealing design with fewer moving parts [e.g., my own web page, whose design has been consistently critiqued as uninviting.]
My ambivalence toward Brookings's web page is partly tied to the capriciousness of the Microsoft servers used to run the thing. I've found a security flaw or two, and the high-level scripts sometimes don't quite run. So I hope the CPA just copied the look and feel, and not Brookings's marriage license with Microsoft.
by Jason latshaw » May 29, 2004 11:35 AM
I have to say. . . maybe they are set up in a common way, but I think it is by no means a direct swipe. And if it is, it's a bad one. The cpa site is UGLY, while Brookings is pretty nice.
by gHandi » Jun 2, 2004 6:38 AM
I think there are more convincing examples of copies of websites. Check http://www.pirated-sites.com/
In CPA/Brookings case, this is just a very minimal similarity, apart from the very common top/titlebar with logo on the left, navigation on the left and highlights on the right. There are thousands -or millions- websites built with this 'frame'.
by Brandon » Jun 2, 2004 1:29 PM
Hard to steal something so basic as to be practically public domain. It'd be like Ancient Greece sueing Ancient Rome for appropriation of their "look and feel".