Amber Leigh Turner is a freelance web designer who recently launched a community website aptly called Students That Freelance.

In yesterday’s article, Amber relates how she discovered through Statcounter that someone was using her work without her permission. She subsequently used Myows to have the copy removed and even received a letter of apology.

Are you wondering how that is possible? Then read her very well written article Why No One is Invincible from Copyright Infringement on StudentsthatFreelance.com

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If you are a designer, your bread and butter is your creative work. Unfortunately, the internet and other digital technologies have made it easier for copycats to steal your work or pass it off as their own. The law of copyright is there to protect you. But if you don’t know how copyright works or how you can use it to protect your work, it is pretty useless.

In this series of articles, we hope to arm you with some working knowledge on copyright and how you can use it to protect your creative work.

What is copyright?

Without getting into the legalese, copyright is basically the right to stop other people from copying, publishing or adapting your creative work without your permission.

Looking at from the opposite angle, the owner of the copyright in an original work has the exclusive right to copy it, publish it, display it, distribute it, or make new works from it.

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Yesterday I showcased Tim van Damme’s Wall of Shame, a rather fun way to treat copyright thieves.

Today I’ll present a similar approach, from Panic, the software makers who bring us Coda, Transmit and other Mac apps that have become part of our every day life.

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Tim van Damme is famous for bringing the simple landing page back in fashion.

As with all things awesome, his website has been copied numerous times by lazy design thieves. Obviously, Tim doesn’t approve.

So to tackle the bull by the horns, and have fun in the process, Tim decided to list perpetrators’ sites on the WALL OF SHAME.

Good for him, I personally think it’s a great initiative for any non-commercial site. But I wonder if he’s tried contacting the sites’ owners with a Cease and Desist letter?