I'm more surprised this is being reported by the BBC than anything. What makes this case any more notable than countless other web-design piracy cases? Is it the Chinese angle?

Or is it that the MSM is supposed to be doing some negative reporting about China after the Western fiasco in Copenhagen?

It is literally the slowest news day of the year.

BREAKING BREAKING News at 10, people steal designs.

Can someone steal my design, I'd like the publicity

I can't believe this made BBC. My sites have been pirated several times.

http://novaurora.com (original) http://person-design.com/ (chinese knockoff)

As lead designer at Mint.com the site design/code was copied a half dozen times that I knew about.

This article could also be on The Onion. You know when they describe some everyday thing as if it was news, which makes it funny. By trying hard to imagine it was on The Onion, I managed to get a minimum of joy out of reading it.

Also it is funny that BBC reports it. Maybe an article in The Onion about "BBC reports theft of web design" could be even more funny.

How much do I have to pay someone to rip off my site so that BBC will write an article about mine? ;-)

This sounds familiar. It happened to Plurk apparently.

In other news, Tuesday.