I had a following complaint from http://www.blizzboards.com/ that http://www.immortalwars.com is violating DMCA. Do you believe that immortalwars stole their design?

hard to say exactly... I wouldnt call it a rip.. but its inspired.. The side I know is the same, unless theres a tutorial on how to do that.

Originally posted by clanscc
I had a following complaint from http://www.blizzboards.com/ that http://www.immortalwars.com is violating DMCA. Do you believe that immortalwars stole their design? If it's a DMCA complaint and takedown request, it doesn't matter what anyone here thinks, or even what you think. To take advantage of the DMCA's Safe Harbor provisions, you have to take the site down. You may notify the site operator of the complaint, and it's up to them to provide a counter-notice; in response to that you have to put the site back up. Then, the two parties move on to battle it out in court.

So if you want to comply with the DMCA, basically you're out of the process of deciding whether or not there is infringement -- the courts do that. What is up to you is to decide (not too casually, you're taking legal responsibility for these decisions) is whether the notice you received qualifies as a takedown notice, and whether it affects copyrightable material. For example, you can't own copyright to a "design" or layout, but you can own rights to elements used in a design.

Of course it's up to you whether you want to follow the procedures outlined in that law in the first place, and by your question I'd assume that you aren't technically qualified for safe harbor protection anyway -- you have to have registered, notified your users, and met a few other requirements.

Most cases like this are never going to really end up in legal action so none of this might be worth worrying about for you, but since you mentioned the DMCA it's worthwhile for any host to understand its provisions, especially those of safe harbor.

See this faq at chillingeffects.org (http://www.chillingeffects.org/dmca512/faq.cgi).

It looks like one was clearly copied from the other.

No I think no one stole design.

Did you notice how the navigation is exaclty the same, the news is in the same place, the name of the site is in the same place. It looks like not only was the layout stolen, but some of the images used to make up that nav box.

what is the dmca? I do think the website is inspired, it's not directly ripped, on the other hand.. theire are a lot of about equall webdesigns like that around. The scrollbar IS exactly copied though, so are some more parts..


Found what dmca is, Digital Millennium Copyright Act. Good thing something like that is out there, i should have known already, but me is happy :)