Is a Winner of The 10th Philippine Web Awards Guilty of Plagiarism?

By Rico, 6:06 pm Wed Nov 28 2007 - News - 76 Opinions

A few hours ago, an anonymous source provided Technograph with evidence of apparent plagiarism by Einsteinarts.com. The Arts and Portfolio winner of the 10th Philippine Web Awards uses the same platform located at 24-7media.de/os/popup.html. The “fully functional web template” is currently being sold for $3,000.

Einsteinarts.com/main.html:

24-7media.de/os/popup.html:

Technograph approached Einstein S. Gan, the owner of the site, for clarification. Mr. Gan admitted that his portfolio site was an imitation, but stressed that it was purely accidental and that he “didn’t really knew [sic] about the 24-7media site.” He also claimed that he “added all my own actionscipts, icons, content, background, etc for my own site. I know the skin still looks very much the same to the site you have provided…That’s because I was using it as a template for my own site.”

The guidelines of the PWAs clearly state that “The entry must not be plagiarized in terms of content and design from a copyrighted source, such as another Web site.” Is Einsteinarts.com guilty of plagiarism? If so, then Media Gateway Inc., the organizers of the Philippine Web Awards, have broken their own rules. Admittedly, the definition of plagiarism in the visual sense has been confused by the proliferation of free website and blog themes. Technogra.ph uses the Semiologic theme, a highly-customizable platform that many other websites use.

In any case, it is clear that Media Gateway should look into this matter further. At the very least, they need to clarify their guidelines for next year’s competition. Read Technograph’s other articles on the 2007 Philippine Web Awards.

Update: Einsteinarts.com is down.

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