Copying of a university website

A story about the copying of the Brown University website revealed an interesting snag:

Fortunately for UAH, Brown University takes an equally tolerant attitude towards the borrowed copyrighted code. According to Scott Turner, the Director of Web Communications at Brown University, his school “viewed the similar designs as a compliment.” The only issue Brown had with the duplicate website arose because of Brown’s use of Google Analytics. Google Analytics is a service that tracks data about the use of a website using code from the page. Statistics about use of the UAH website were feeding into the statistics for Brown website. Turner confirmed that “For the period April 29 to July 4, 2008, we were recording hits on the UA Huntsville home page. This is because our Google Analytics code was copied and pasted into the code of the Huntsville home page.”

story by Lisa Barbella, Lessons in Plagiarism: The UAH Copycat Website

[UAH = University of Alabama, Huntsville]

As they say at the Harvard Business Review: Plagiarize with Pride! (unless you are Lee Simon).