A few years back (talking 1998/99) I was running a movie website (no longer hosted) which had managed to get itself mentioned in a few national papers and US magazines, got a nice bit of sponsorship (and several free DVDs a month) and attention, then one day I get an email from a guy in Australia asking could he have a link on my site, to his new site that focused around the same topic.

“Sure”, I said, I’ll just go have a look at the site.

Low and behold I was looking at my own website. The styles, the structure, the links and sections, logos I’d created, all with his name tagged under the end of them. Needless to say I flipped. Forget flattery. My first case of a pirated website.

Then I come across this resource this morning, Pirated-Sites.com.

I’ve been publishing some of my photographic work to deviantART in bits and pieces over the last two years and the forum system there has a nice area set aside for reporting ripped artwork (where I’ve also had one of my photo pieces ripped and published without permission). Pirated-Sites takes that to the next level, providing an archive and forum resource of sites that have been ripped from a design point of view.

If its your thing, or you’ve ever been involved in a case of having your site completely ripped off, then check it out. Funny what people come up with…