Sporthorse NOT Creative

Sporthorse Creative Design used Equine Web Design as template for former web site

It's ironic any web site designer might incorporate the word "creative" into their business name, then develop a web site to promote their design services by using content from another designer. Such is the case with Sporthorse Creative Design, whose apparent lack of creativity required they copy several pages of Equine Web Design's web site to market Sporthorse Creative Design's business.

Not only did Sporthorse Creative Design plagiarize sentence structure within identical topics, they also included the domain name of equinewebdesign.com into the keywords of virtually every page posted on the Sporthorse Creative Design web site (11-08-03). [ update ]

After basing the majority of Sporthorse Creative Design's web site on the content published at Equine Web Design, the Sporthorse Creative Design *dee signer added a copyright notice to the bottom of each page, as if to legitimize its origin. Sadly, that does not transfer copyright ownership any more than someone stealing your car, parking it in their yard and henceforth referring to it as "theirs".

Sporthorse Creative Design's Plagiarized Content

Example 1
Equine Web Design's original Flamingos That Kill was valiantly replicated, sometimes verbatim, on Sporthorse Creative Design's plagiarized version, "Self-Defeating Design", right down to our confirmation rant. (Notably absent from Sporthorse Creative's version was Equine Web Design's reference to Copycat Copycat, Shame On Them.) Sporthorse Creative ended the page with how they can fix such atrocities, similar to Equine Web Design's version. [ update ]

Example 2
Sporthorse Creative Design, much like Euroreining, liked Equine Web Design's Image Is Everything so well they titled their version "Impressions", and even remembered to put the horsie graphic in the same place. Somewhat flowery compared to Equine Web Design's original text, but Sporthorse Creative Design managed to keep several plagiarized phrases largely intact for easy identification. [ update ]

Example 3
Many dee signers, equine or otherwise, advertise domain name registration services. The difference is, most use their own words. Apparently, Sporthorse Creative Design loosened up enough to mix up the phrasing a little compared to Equine Web Design's version, but managed to stay true to the gist of things in the context of similar phrases. [ update ]

Example 4
Sporthorse Creative Design offers comparable web site hosting services to Equine Web Design's, especially when you look at the similarities in the order, name, and type of services offered in the plagiarized version. Save for a word here and there, they were nearly the same. [ update ]

Example 5
Sporthorse Creative Design went so far as to duplicate the titles and order of links from Equine Web Design's left-side site menu. Additionally, the heading font used is called Georgia, with sans-serif menu items, the same as the majority of pages posted at Equine Web Design. [ update ]

Trivial Pursuits

They say the Devil is in the details, and Sporthorse Creative Design left few stones unturned when adopting the majority of its content from Equine Web Design. Little things, like the text alignment of headers, font choices, positioning of design elements... all too similar to be coincidental, especially in light of the plagiarized text.

Without a doubt, Equine Web Design was the largest contributor to the content and structure of Sporthorse Creative Design's [former] web site without even trying. Equine Web Design was not compensated for any content taken, nor did Equine Web Design ever grant permission to Sporthorse Creative Design to re-publish its content. Rather, without permission and despite Equine Web Design's copyright notice, Sporthorse Creative Design used Equine Web Design's web site as a template for its own.

Resolution

After receiving a Notice of Infringement from Equine Web Design, Sporthorse Creative Design's webmaster removed all pages referenced above from www.sporthorsecreative.com. It is important to note examples referenced on this page are supplied by the cached versions of the the Google search engine, as the previous versions are no longer available from Sporthorse Creative Design's web site as of 11-09-03.

Online Resources

Plagiarism: What It is and How to Recognize and Avoid It - Indiana University Writing Tutorial Services
Web Design for Kids
Keywords, Meta Tags and Trademarks - Ivan Hoffman, B.A., J.D.
Meta Tags and Customer Confusion - Nolo

*dee·sign|er : n. noun [derogatory, slang] A person who designs or creates design works of 1. comparatively low quality within the same market or 2. takes (ideas, writings, etc.) from another and passes them off as their own. [ back ]