Thread

Incidentally, if anybody here wanted to help out, you could send Mr Mayfield a note through his contact form encouraging him to, ah, reconsider his position, since he’s not being terribly cooperative.  We’d be much obliged!  (Or email him directly: .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)

Thanks!

Are his clients aware of this?

Not that I can tell, but I’m not sure how to make them aware… despite having promised to revert his site to a previous design by end of business Thursday, he’s still got our property up.  He’s made a few superficial changes, like changing the names of the nav items and swapping out his featured image, but that’s actually more insulting, frankly.

Sure wish I could just focus on designing and coding; it’s such a time-waster tracking these cats down…

Why not just send a plain mail to all his clients:

“We will just let you know that the people making your site is con artists, site ripper etc., so just be beware of people like that, because your company might also be fooled, or maybe your company will be put in a bad light because of people like this breaking copyright issues yadda yadda” ....or something like that.

Than show logs, screens, and the site itself (before its too late).

Make the rippers bleed. Make their names be marked as con artists for eternity.

Why not just send a plain mail to all his clients:

Thanks, Tobben, that’s a superb idea!  Actually hadn’t thought of that… nice!

Issue a DMCA takedown notice to the ISP, and him. They will have to comply within a responsible time frame.

http://www.tareeinternet.com/forum/seo/263-dmca-template.html <- Templates

If you can get his address and the ISP’s send them express signed delivery 😉

We’ve done this before were people have stolen news articles from sites I manage and its very effective, especially when its some 16 year old and his parents get it from the mail man.

Damn, wish I could afford to hire a company like yours for some design work!

I’m definately going to keep you in mind once my project picks up pace.

Yes, really nice work btw.

Yes, really nice work btw.

Hey, thanks, fellas!  Nice to be appreciated.

Why not just send a plain mail to all his clients:

Thanks, Tobben, that’s a superb idea!  Actually hadn’t thought of that… nice!

I’d advise against this; there are a lot of pitfalls associated with directly contacting someone else’s clients. Generally, people are (or should be) suspicious of people who contact them without solicitation, and it’s reasonable for them to assume that you’d be doing so with an ulterior motive.

Who does it serve to deny this person business? He’s a charlatan, obviously, for stealing your work, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that his clients were ill-served. If you point out that their web developer is a design thief, one of two things will happen: they will respond with apathy if their own site isn’t a rip of someone elses, or they’ll look for another web designer because it is. They won’t come running to you just because you pointed it out, more likely they’ll avoid you for pointing out a costly business problem and for disrupting business as usual.

It seems that they are experts in the rip-off field. From their website:

Site Transformation
Have it or not, we’ll turn any website into a Joomla! template. Do you like the design of a certain website? Give us the url, and we’ll build a replicated Joomla! site that you can manage. The replica can look identical, or it can be customized to fit.

They advertise breaking the DMCA.  They rip-off designs without changing a single thing.  I’m starting to think that they have never actually designed a whole page on their own.  Talk about a professional company.

Who does it serve to deny this person business? He’s a charlatan, obviously, for stealing your work, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that his clients were ill-served. If you point out that their web developer is a design thief, one of two things will happen: they will respond with apathy if their own site isn’t a rip of someone elses, or they’ll look for another web designer because it is. They won’t come running to you just because you pointed it out, more likely they’ll avoid you for pointing out a costly business problem and for disrupting business as usual.

Hi Nick,

Good points, all, and I agree.  We’d like nothing less than for his “clients” to come to us; we want nothing to do with them or him.  And frankly we could have dropped this, except for the most extraordinarily egregious behavior of this cat…you won’t believe how low he’s stooped.  He’s now making a case that his site was generated totally from scratch and is not a rip-off—that’s what’s really a problem.  See here:

http://ellislab.com/forums/viewthread/67997/P18/#336806

I am utterly speechless.

Lol, if you look at the site now - the top links STILL go to onwired.com! Image here for future reference using Web Developer Toolbar to show links. 😊

Site’s down!

We’ll be back online by 6pm est. Thank you.

Good work!