Copycat sites interlude.

There are many many blogs and websites that deal with plagiarism in various ways out there these days. From or equally myopic pals that compare one ads visual execution to another, to those who deal with big fashion shops rip of small artists T-shirt design. Let's do a roll call, shall we?

Well, there's Badland, that's us, where even you can step up and post a pairing if you feel like it.

Badland was the original twist of this site, after seeing Zeldman's ad graveyard (which both myself and claymore are in), I figured the "death on foamcore" spot was taken and decided to make a copy-cat department instead.

After doing it for two years the Swedish advertising trade press took notice.

Joelapompe has been around doing the same thing in France for almost as long.

He's now even made a book about the twin ads, which can see the review of here.

The irony of two people doing the same idea for a website at around the same time back in the nineties is not lost on us. ;)

There is "Copycunts" a fresh contender running since May, which is a bit like a yotubefied Badland with extra swearwords.

There have been quite a lot of these of the years, let's see how long they last.

You thought we wouldn't notice is an open blog where anyone (like here) can grab the megaphone and show off a pairing with a few choice words since 2006. Occasionally it falls into the trap of designers slagging other designers, but most of the time you'll find gems here and the community will keep digging to sort out how a copy happened.

Urban Counterfeiters opened in 2006 and died (?) in 2007 - another open blog that concentrated on Big Evil Corp ripping the designs of small artists. It had a great run, as people blew the whistle on infringers working at anywhere from Urban Outfitters to Abercrombie & Fitch.

We met a new pal on twitter, he runs Plagarism Today he founded it 2005 "as a way to help Webmasters going through content theft problems get accurate information and stay up to date on the rapidly-changing field."

Today's top story over there is that Fav.Or.It site shuts down, an un-favourite site of many publishers. Newsgrist likes to keep tabs on copycat and or infringing works that make the news, such as the Obama Image that Shepard Fairey filed a pre-emptive lawsuit with.

If you're keeping an eye out for our work on the web, try checking Tin eye the reverse image search and copyscape for text.