Comment The difference between layout and look and feel (Score 1) 390
I'm a webmaster, and I can assure you that there are VERY limited ways that a web site can be laid out. That's one of the challenges of and attractions to this medium.
See, it's all boxes stacked on boxes within other boxes. There's only so many ways to stack them, folks. The art of web page design is in transcending these boxes, by creatively arranging your content, whether it be artwork or text or what have you.
Like a cereal box, there's only so many ways to package our information -- what separates us is our CONTENT --- and I think everyone can agree that that should be protectable.
Bearing in mind that I haven't even seen the site in question here (it seems to be down), so I don't know whether graphics or text were taken or not (which would be another matter), I'm not even sure that attribution for a layout should even be expected. It borders on the absurd. Should newspapers have an 'inspired by the London Times' line on it?
When I write my code, should I be giving attribution to the sites, books and magazines I disected when I learned how to code? Ridiculous.
On the other hand -- if I took the look and feel of Amazon and applied it to another site, maybe you've got a case here.
I think this flies in the face of the idea of open source. After all -- at the very HEART of open source, isn't it the idea of figuring out 'how they did that' that brought us all here in the first place?
It may just be slashdotter protectionism at work here that this subject has so many posts -- I've seen it before in the Macintosh world: the company/group we're rooting for is being predatory and over-protective in ways that we'd find deplorable if by chance the offender wasn't on our team in the first place.
It's ridiculous, and reminds me of the Adobe 'tabbed palette interface' patent and Amazon's 'one-click purchasing.' How can we protect the interests of our friends, but when the concept is applied elsewhere, we decry it at the top of our geeky little lungs?
See, it's all boxes stacked on boxes within other boxes. There's only so many ways to stack them, folks. The art of web page design is in transcending these boxes, by creatively arranging your content, whether it be artwork or text or what have you.
Like a cereal box, there's only so many ways to package our information -- what separates us is our CONTENT --- and I think everyone can agree that that should be protectable.
Bearing in mind that I haven't even seen the site in question here (it seems to be down), so I don't know whether graphics or text were taken or not (which would be another matter), I'm not even sure that attribution for a layout should even be expected. It borders on the absurd. Should newspapers have an 'inspired by the London Times' line on it?
When I write my code, should I be giving attribution to the sites, books and magazines I disected when I learned how to code? Ridiculous.
On the other hand -- if I took the look and feel of Amazon and applied it to another site, maybe you've got a case here.
I think this flies in the face of the idea of open source. After all -- at the very HEART of open source, isn't it the idea of figuring out 'how they did that' that brought us all here in the first place?
It may just be slashdotter protectionism at work here that this subject has so many posts -- I've seen it before in the Macintosh world: the company/group we're rooting for is being predatory and over-protective in ways that we'd find deplorable if by chance the offender wasn't on our team in the first place.
It's ridiculous, and reminds me of the Adobe 'tabbed palette interface' patent and Amazon's 'one-click purchasing.' How can we protect the interests of our friends, but when the concept is applied elsewhere, we decry it at the top of our geeky little lungs?
