Imitation Sucks
January 10, 2007 by ian
Imitation without permission is not the sincerest form of flattery. It makes me very, very angry.
An internet marketing company called Vodazon in Barcelona apparently decided that Portent's design was just great. They also liked our content, our portfolio, our Google certification, our news and just about everything else.
So rather than waste time and effort on silly things like, oh, original work, they ripped off our entire site.
All of it.
Their site is at http://www.vodazon.com
Compare it to my company at http://www.portentinteractive.com
And just in case they already took it down (I've already contacted them), here's a screen cap of their home page, and one of ours. Click on the thumbnails to get a close-up:
Vodazon
Portent
By the way, we found this using the Portent Interactive duplicate content scanner. Just a quick marketing plug.
Update: Apparently I have a twin named Amit Sadhawani:
Update 2: We did more digging. The site is registered by a company here in Bellevue, WA, YourWebServers.com. They registered it through a London company, who then described it as a Barcelona company a private domain registrar called 'WHOIS Privacy Protection Service'. More bulletins as events warrant.
Update 3: I found the president of Vodazon through LinkedIn and contacted him. Within 90 minutes the site was gone. We'll see if they keep their hands off our content going forward.
Technorati Tags: ethics
Join the Conversation:
Marcelo Calbucci says:
January 10, 2007 15:44
I'm shocked at this level of rip off. Everything is identical except by the company and people's name.
I hope this is not becoming a new trend on the web.
ian says:
January 10, 2007 15:59
Hi Marcelo,
Sadly it's an old trend. That's why we have special tools to deal with it. But happily copies this blatant are few and far between.
Ian
seth godin says:
January 10, 2007 17:35
holy smokes, that's aggregious. the good news is that talent usually prevails.