Copyright Flaw of British Prime Minister’s Website
After receiving many emails on the subject, it’s been brought to my attention that my NetWorker theme for Wordpress has been used by the government of the UK, and it seems they’ve not honored the copyright agreement. The theme was released under the Creative Commons 3.0 license, which requires attribution to me whether the theme is modified or not. The link that I place in the footer of each theme I have available, which points to this website, is the attribution that I expect from each website that uses that theme.
The theme has been heavily modified, and looks very different from the original. However, one look at the source files verifies that it is indeed built on NetWorker.
The website in question is apparently the official site of Prime Minister Gordon Brown, and boasts protection under Crown Copyright.
After receiving quite a few emails, I’ve since had several journalists this morning from London email me and request comment. Before responding to any journalists, I sent an email to the company in charge of developing the website(New Media Maze) to try and work this out privately. They claim that they tested the NetWorker theme, but then rebuilt it from scratch. Although they rebuilt it from scratch, they failed to remove the credits in the CSS file that name the theme “NetWorker” or to change the theme folder which is named “NetWorker-10″(Networker version 1.0). They say this “slight oversight” would fulfill the Creative Commons license anyway. Uh…….
You can read further into this here:
- Prime Minister’s Website Breaks Copyright Law
- Has Downing Street Claimed Copyright on Stolen Code?
- 10 Downing Street Website Knock-Off and Rip-Off
- Number 10 and the Creative Commons
Unfortunately, this sort of thing is becoming way to common on the web. What I don’t get, is how can a Web Design firm (which I assume is respected) make these kinds of mistakes?…especially on a website that will have such a high profile?
For an update to this post, please read My Regrets about Copyright Dispute.
August 18th, 2008 at 4:54 pm
The fact is that they’ve claimed copyright on something that’s heavily based on somebody else’s copyrighted work, which is illegal, be it Crown copyright or not. I believe you should contact the PM’s office (or at least the web team). If they don’t respond (which is most likely), seek legal advice.
The way I understand it is that cc-by allows you to use it however you like, as long as the original author is credited in the way he specifies. As you asked specifically to be credited in the footer, they’re breaking the law if you’re not - no ifs and buts about it. If they had rebuilt the theme from the ground up it’d be OK, but as they appear to have copied chunks of code from the original NetWorker theme (or simply modified it) they are certainly in breach of copyright here.
I’m no copyright Nazi, but if they’re not giving credit for something that you’ve had the generosity to give away for free, it’s completely in breach of the law. And something hidden in style.css doesn’t count.
August 18th, 2008 at 4:54 pm
Under the CC BY-SA license they are obliged not only to correctly attribute it to you, but also to release their changes under the same license.
If New Media Maze don’t get this (the CC BY-CA license is clear and easy to read) they are either very stupid or so arrogant they think they can break the law and get away with it.
August 18th, 2008 at 5:30 pm
Hi Anthony.
I decided to dig a bit deeper. Running the two stylesheets through a comparison tool shows that No 10’s is very much a derivative work. It is VASTLY different, but it still has much of your original styling in there.
http://www.theopensourcerer.com/2008/08/18/more-on-number-10/
I’d be seeking advice if I were you… Talk to PJ on Groklaw, she might be able to offer some good advice or names of useful contacts.
Also, there is a suspicion that they may be breaching the GPL too so this is likely to run for a little while yet.
Good luck. We’ll keep up the fight over here…
August 19th, 2008 at 2:48 am
Downing Street would have taken some convincing to go for an open source solution and unfortunately they’ve been let down by the full-service agency that has ripped off your theme.
I develop WordPress solutions for politicians and often will take a free theme and modify it, but I am always conscious to leave any footer credits intact. It’s just the done thing. I am very mindful that most of the effort in developing the theme was not mine and it’s only fair to ensure credit is given where due.
For the Prime Minister’s Office, through the agency, to piss all over the law should not be allowed to stand. It cannot be a case of “do as we say not do as we do” - there’s already too much of that. Downing Street should have kept a better eye on the agency and the agency should have known that it can’t mess around with a site as high profile as this one.
The Managing Director of New Media Maze, Dave Smith, has been on my blog attacking me for commenting about their shambles of a job and yet they are the ones that are in the wrong. This bullish approach seems typical and the story they’ve given you about rebuilding the theme from scratch is a load of crap. I wouldn’t believe it for a moment.
August 19th, 2008 at 7:13 am
A look at the source code of the No 10 website shows a number of references to “/themes/networker-10.”
Here’s a screenshot:
http://www.twitpic.com/88yp
If the design company has used your theme without attribution, that’s an amazing oversight. And if it is true, denying it digs them into a very large hole.
Hopefully you will arrive at a solution that doesn’t involve lawyers. No winners there.
August 19th, 2008 at 12:06 pm
Wow Anthony, but what notoriety!
Your new site look is very nice. Congratulations on how you’ve progressed along.
August 19th, 2008 at 2:53 pm
Number 10’s twitter account has been asked about this and has replied:
“Our supplier is certain that there is no such issue concerning the new website. Again, thanks for feedback and please keep it coming.”
http://twitter.com/DowningStreet/statuses/892324866
August 19th, 2008 at 3:47 pm
All I’m gonna say at this time, is that I’ve been in contact with Dave Smith of New Media Maze to attempt to clear this up, and it hasn’t gone well.
August 19th, 2008 at 4:26 pm
I hope your going to try and have this gain greater attention, has somone submitted it to digg/slashdot and the like?
Copyright theft can be reported at http://www.fact-uk.org.uk/site/contact/index.htm
August 19th, 2008 at 4:32 pm
The interesting thing, Colin, is that I was trying to work this out quietly. If we could’ve reached an agreement, I would have publicly stated that there was an agreement, and there’s no issue. However, there is no agreement, so it’s out of my hands.
August 19th, 2008 at 4:37 pm
[...] Baggett, the developer of my lovely Darkwater WP theme, has had one of his themes ripped off by none other than Gordon Brown, Prime Minister. If you look at the bottom of my blog you’ll [...]
August 19th, 2008 at 4:38 pm
Understood Anthony. I think trying to work it out with them was the best thing, it’s unfortunate how they seem to be handling such a situation. Good luck in whatever you decide to do
August 19th, 2008 at 5:01 pm
@Jonathan Rothwell - Where on earth are they claiming copyright on the theme? Rebuilt or not?
@Anthony, I believe they have followed the licence that you supply with the theme download.
You say the attribution that I expect from each website that uses that theme.. Unfortunately people cannot read your mind.
The licence you supply is a verbatim copy of the one supplied by CC. It does not state that you expect the attribution to be in the footer of web pages using the theme.
If you have specific requirements for attribution in a specific place, you must state them clearly in your version of the licence
The attribution *is* in the CSS file which I suspect is the one thing nearest your original theme. Certainly, the HTML on the pages is significantly different from the HTML produced by your theme. So it may be they did re-write much of the theme php files, but based the CSS on yours (though as mentioned by someone else, is is very different).
Jusy my two-penneth, IANAL, IMHO, etc.
August 19th, 2008 at 5:25 pm
@Mike Rouse: Downing Street may not have needed much convincing to use an open source solution at all. After all, the E-petitions site built by mySociety is available as free software (GNU Affero GPL, IIRC).
August 19th, 2008 at 7:36 pm
[...] Anthony Baggett Speaks Up→ [...]
August 20th, 2008 at 4:33 am
@Mike Little,
I’m with you in that IANAL.
I think the issue is really to do with “honesty” and “fair play” here.
Anthony created this template and released it to the world for free, only requiring that anyone who used it, gave attribution to the designer.
New Media Maze, have removed the attribution that was in the footer and there was no mention anywhere on #10’s site of the original author of the theme. More importantly, they have removed the Copyright notice from the footer and thus broken the license conditions. This is in direct breach of Anthony’s copyright IIUC.
Although I am sure that they could weazle their way out of this with a sufficiently well paid lawyer, it strikes me as a terrible way to run an apparently “professional” business: Charge the best part of £100k to build a website based on Open Source code, use a free theme and remove the attribution and the license from the product. It stinks.
More fool to Number 10 for being so “had”. NMM must have seen them coming…
August 20th, 2008 at 4:50 am
[...] theme’s developer says [...]
August 20th, 2008 at 6:31 am
[...] imagine Anthony’s surprise when he discovered that his NetWorker theme for WordPress had been used by the British government without honoring the [...]
August 20th, 2008 at 7:08 am
But, if you believe them that they rebuilt the theme mostly from scratch (not the CSS, the php to generate the pages) — and the evidence seems to point to that *; then they are retaining the attribution on the CSS file derived from Anthony’s work.
*There is very little, if anything, in the home page source which could have been generated from Anthony’s original PHP code.
And especially, the footer of the page is not generated by Anthony’s code (even without the copyright notice).
And the notice in the footer of Anthony’s original theme says “Copyright (c) 2007 //blogname//. Design by Anthony Baggett”
Where blogname is dynamically replaved with the name of the blog. And the separate sentence says that the design is by Anthony (wtih his name as a link).
So if they *had* left the copyright notice in the code (or copied it into their code) ti would say “Copyright (c) 2007 Number10.gov.uk.”
I think Anthony needs to learn how to copyright is code properly.
But I *do* agree NMM should be a little more proactive as they are the ones getting the bad press over this.
Mike
August 20th, 2008 at 7:20 am
[...] pierwszy rzut oka są tylko podobne. Jak jednak podaje ntbag.com, strona rządowa powstała z użyciem szablonu stworzonego przed ntbag.com pod WordPressa. Szablon [...]
August 20th, 2008 at 8:39 am
The Register would love to hear about this I expect.
August 20th, 2008 at 8:47 am
Hey Anthony. What a carry on. I hope you are able to resolve matters. Had to have a snigger at the tweet from number 10, the “everything’s fine, nothing’s wrong” sort of thing… what a surprisingly unique response hey? ;p
August 20th, 2008 at 9:34 am
[...] imagine Anthony’s surprise when he discovered that his NetWorker theme for WordPress had been used by the British government without honoring the [...]
August 20th, 2008 at 9:41 am
[...] more the designer of the theme is alleging that Number 10 (or the agency that built the site) has removed the footer attribution and is [...]
August 20th, 2008 at 9:59 am
Hi Anthony,
Great to read of your attempts to settle this in private, rather than blow it out of proportion.
Still, some nice publicity for your themes all the same.
August 20th, 2008 at 10:52 am
The MD at New Media Maze has gone on the offensive. http://www.newmediamaze.com/index.php/antbags-theme-the-facts
Now, what he says “may” be factually correct. But, they have, nevertheless, not exactly played by the rules that we know one should follow…
I also have a lingering question over the license. Have they changed the license for the design? I don’t think they can. If they haven’t then it’s a CC-by-sa and should be “Share Alike”… I realise that they have “shared” it with their customer. But typically one would make any contributions as public as the original source.
Like I said, they might be able to weazle around on legaleze, but it just isn’t cricket old boy…
August 20th, 2008 at 11:25 am
Thank you for the link, Open Sourcerer.
Doubtless it is probable that there are many factual elements, however I’m not sure that what Dave says is entirely true. Please consider these two apparently contradictory statements and see if you feel there still may be a case to answer by NMM:
a) “He did use some of Anthony’s CSS and correctly attributed him for it in the css file …”
b) “…you can compare the code and satisfy for yourself that our code is completely original and in no way borrows from Anthony’s work.”
I don’t work at NMM. I’m also not an open-source developer. I’d be happy to be an objective and impartial local representative if you choose that this matter should be resolved in the manner Dave suggested.
August 20th, 2008 at 11:41 am
[...] - http://antbag.com/copyright-flaw-of-british-prime-ministers-website/ [...]
August 20th, 2008 at 12:31 pm
[...] from antbag.com, the author of the theme discovered that his NetWorker theme although heavily modified is being used while breaking the Creative [...]
August 20th, 2008 at 1:04 pm
No, it’s not cricket.
Most of us know, a lot of wordpress themes do get taken and changed - it does happen - but to do this on the most high profile website in the UK can only show woefully inadequate care and attention to detail by the agency concerned.
Slapdash, Shoddy, Lazy, Arrogant, Stupid are a few words that spring to mind.
August 20th, 2008 at 1:07 pm
And there is an article on Digg, I suggest Digging it.
http://digg.com/tech_news/British_Government_Caught_Pirating_On_PMs_Website
Looks like it’s made the front page
August 20th, 2008 at 2:06 pm
The way I understand the CC licence is this:
I download your code, i find it don’t quite do what I want, so I rewite bits and unltimately end up re-writing all the PHP from scratch and keep most of your CSS and the file structure too (by ‘accident’). BUT because I STARTED with your site I have ultimately based all my work off YOUR code, as such I am fully bound by the terms of the CC licence.
Surely I am correct in this interpretation? and if so NMM are still completely bound by the CC licence?
August 20th, 2008 at 3:12 pm
[...] to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!British Prime Minister’s #10 blog is apparently not honoring the copyright agreement of the theme developer, in spite of the Creative Commons licensing. Theme copyright infringements are a serious issue that [...]
August 20th, 2008 at 3:33 pm
You know I was kind of with you at first here but methinks you are milking this issue for all it’s worth.
“the more exposure this story gets, the more quality links I will have pointing to my website”
~ apparently your words
August 20th, 2008 at 4:44 pm
Guys,
I still don’t know exactly how I feel about this, but as far as I’m concerned, the issue is dead. Looking back over the emails, I imagine I could’ve handled things a little better.
I will readily admit that I got angry when I talked to Dave on the phone and felt completely patronized. The remark about the “quality links” was an attempt to reciprocate my anger, which I will apologize for. And I got even more ticked when he told me in an email that he expected an “equally public and enthusiastic apology”.
I’ve just arrived home from a long day, and was actually surprised that this hasn’t died down by now. I hope that it will now. It’s just a stupid theme. Stepping back from the situation, it’s really not worth all this. After I’ve had a little time to think, I will follow up with another post.
August 20th, 2008 at 5:59 pm
Disclaimer: Forgive me if I am wrong; I accept that I may be mistaken and this comment is not intended to be inflammatory. That said:
Given that WordPress itself is released under the GPL, the theme in question cannot be released under Creative Commons, but must also be released under the GPL. This is because it uses WordPress tags and would not function without WordPress.
Note that I am not referring to the design itself, but the code that makes the theme work in WordPress.
August 20th, 2008 at 6:19 pm
Anthony–they don’t have a leg to stand on. I used to work in the IP business and they are clearly totally contaminated and, as you say, have breached the terms of their agreement.
Brown is so toast and everything he touches or comes within a mile of at the moment is going so wrong–this was meant to make him cool and this is so, so uncool.
Seriously, if I were you I would stop talking to these pratts and call Max Clifford and sell your story to the British press. You could have quite a big pay day. Keep those emails! Play this right and these bozos will be crawling to you, begging you to go away!
I know this may not be funny for you, but I find it quite extraordinary that they aren’t being very, very, very polite to you. Maybe the smart thing to do is just forget about it; I don’t know. Bit I think they should certainly put in the link and offer an apology, and link to that too. Good luck!
August 20th, 2008 at 6:23 pm
Soory I messed up that link to Max Clifford; here it is: http://www.maxclifford.com/.
August 20th, 2008 at 6:30 pm
This should be milked to the max.
Give the man a break.
It will probably be the only payback this guy gets for being done over by someone who should have known a lot better.
And when I say done over I mean shafted, screwed over, abused - those type of things.
August 20th, 2008 at 7:27 pm
Welcome to the front page of Digg via http://torrentfreak.com/british-government-gets-caught-pirating-website-080820/
August 20th, 2008 at 7:38 pm
Seriously. Get over yourself.
You’re quite obviously acting the worse here, as the other party hasn’t done a single thing wrong, while you have attempted to skew their reputable business in a negative light.
And now you retract your earlier moronic posts, saying it’s a silly issue, yet you still refuse to post an apology for the harm you’ve done them?
August 21st, 2008 at 3:10 pm
Chris,
Had you waited about having your verbal diarrhea, you would have seen that I did, in fact, get over myself with a follow up moronic post.
August 22nd, 2008 at 12:33 am
Hello guys,
its really quite interesting to get information about this. but this topics look like a sticky rubber. if we think about this topic it will go long and long. thanks, nice post..
August 22nd, 2008 at 4:41 am
NMM haven’t done anything *terrible” using someone else’s CSS layout code in their Number 10 theme, they’ve just made an attribution boo boo. However being exposed as ignorant of licensing law maybe a hard pill for NMM to swallow - remember they are a London New Media Agency and full of self importance. A credit somewhere would be so simple, yet when in a hole, they continue to dig and draw more attention to themselves for the wrong reasons.
NMM’s PR skills appear even worse than their Wordpress design, which is quite an achievement. The lousy way NMM have adapted his theme makes me wonder if Anthony would even want a credit, but some money I guess would be nice.
http://tinyurl.com/6ya6m9