Jacob thought that he did a good job designing the company’s tech support Web pa
ID: 3820052 • Letter: J
Question
Jacob thought that he did a good job designing the company’s tech support Web page, but Emily, his supervisor, isn’t so sure. She is concerned that Jacob’s design is very similar to a page used by the company’s major competitor, and she asked him whether he had used any HTML code from that site in his design. Although Jacob didn’t copy any of the code, he did examine it in his Web browser to see how they handled some design issues.
Emily asked Jacob to investigate Web page copyright issues, and report back to her. In his research, he learned that outright copying would be a copyright violation, but merely viewing other sites to get design ideas would be permissible. What is not so clear is the gray area in the middle. Jacob asked you, as a friend, for your opinion in this matter: Even if no actual copying is involved, are there ethical constraints on how far you should go in using the creative work of others? How would you answer Jacob?
Explanation / Answer
If jacob has copied the 'html' code then it is a violation of copyright issues but as it is mentioned that viewing other sites to get design ideas would be permissible so as jacob has only viewed the site to get the design idea it is acceptable.The only disadvantage is that if their sites page matches or seems similar to that of the others, so 'uniqueness' of their own site which can be or could have been created would not be present as their page will look similar to as that of others. But technically copying the code is a violation, but having same idea implementing in a different way is acceptable. But there is a thing like a minimum amount of similarity should be present. a developer can not take the full idea(design/layout) of the existing site that can also come under copyright issue.
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