Aimee's Freak of the Week

Freak of the Week #22 -- Ben

04/01/2000

This one goes beyond freak to amazingly stupid. I know, I know.... you think I exaggerate. You think I must be making this stuff up. No such luck.

I received this email earlier this week:

From: (*****)
Date: 03/29/2000 7:55:26 PM Eastern Standard Time
To: <aimee>
Subject: ripped off your code?

http://www.dncs-inc.com/cam

Only a day after he earned his 'freak of the week' award, he seems to have completely redesigned the whole page. How very strange.

Anyway, when I first checked it out, the title, description, copyright statement, tables, colors, keywords, and even his link formats were amazingly identical to mine. He did replace every female reference in the code to male ones and he apparently couldn't figure out the whole java cam thing, but for the most part it was obvious to everyone who saw it that he copied my site. The strangest thing is that this webcam is linked to a business site. I was amazed that of all the sites out there, he chose to steal mine. I am well aware that my site design isn't something that other designers should be NEEDING to steal. I wrote this:

From: <aimee>
Date: Wednesday, March 29, 2000 7:26 PM
To: webmaster@dncs-inc.com
Subject: a question...

I have to wonder how you can even have the gall to put a copyright notice on a page that you completely stole? You couldn't manage to come up with your own keywords and you even copied my copyright statement. Congratulations on being a moron, my lawyer will be contacting you soon.

Aimee

Not my best work...but I think I was in shock.

From: webmaster@dncs-inc.com (DNCS INC)
Date: 03/29/2000 10:15:28 PM Eastern Standard Time
To: <aimee>
Subject: RE: a question...

Oh wow, you're fast !!

I'm fast? How long did he really think it would take to be discovered when he signed up to be on all the same cam directories that I'm on? At least he didn't try to deny that he stole the site, which is refreshing from someone without a conscience. I expected a weak attempt at convincing me that it was all a really quirky coincidence and perhaps he was my psychic friend.

Contrast & compare the original meta tags for yourself:

my title: Aimee Live, A Free Web Cam Site & More	his title: DNCS LIVE TV, A Free Web Cam Site & More (coincidence?)
my classification: Live Web Cam Run By A Real Live Girl	his classification: DNCS Live TV Web Cam Run By Idiots !! (no kidding)
my description: Live cam site devoted to following a twenty something southern redhead with a razor sharp wit through her daily life. Watch her, chat with her, vote for her, read her email...she wants you to.	his description: Live cam site devoted to following a twenty two year old entrepenuer through his daily office life. Watch him, chat with him, vote for him, read his email...HE wants you to. (It's 'entrepreneur' and I didn't see any place where I could read his email. Maybe he'll rip off my freak pages next week?)

More Brilliance From Ben

From: webmaster@dncs-inc.com (DNCS INC)
Date: 04/02/2000 3:09:36 PM Eastern Daylight Time
To: <aimee>
Subject: Just as stupid as I thought .....

Ya know, I kind of thought you might be a somewhat smart enough to not make me 'Freak of the Week' or whatever the hell you call it and give me tons of hits.

You know, you would think that you MAY have heard of this saying:

Imitation is the best form of flattering ???

Is everything making sense yet?

Yes, I believe it all makes perfect sense. Not only is he very immature, he also can't be bothered to write his own code because he is 'flattering' me. Why would he flatter and copy a site of someone he thinks is 'stupid', anyway? It's all so confusing.

I have traffic to spare and I certainly didn't mind sending people to see this great tribute to my web design skills, but for some reason, he has decided to stop flattering me and put up a completely new site. Was it something I said?

Until next freak....

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