[pilgrim_fgau]

<rant>

so im starting on a new project, its very small, one or two pages for a brick paving contractor. Cut a long story short, I ask him to send on all his copy, images of his work for a gallery to showcase his work etc and I get a reply with a link to gumtree.

I ask, "what's this?", whereby his response was, "well I do the same work as this guy, and I like his images, so if you could just copy it and stick it on my site it would be perfect"

what the hell is with some people?!

</rant>

[brightonmike]

Just explain to him that you cannot copy somebody else's work because if you did so you would be liable for legal action.

If he doesn't like that, you drop the project.

[nublue]

Yeah, had that kind of attitude a few times! Really annoying, makes it almost impossible to do a good job when you get a client like that.

I would tell them the importance of good copy and images and maybe try and sell them some copywriting/photography services if they can't be bothered doing it themselves.

Although more often than not with this kind of client you will no doubt end up caving in and doing what they ask, just so you can get paid for it! If so, just make sure you have a decent contract in place that makes it clear content was the client responsibility, leave your link off the site and dont put it in your portfolio.

[nfc212]

If you knowingly copy images from another site then you won't have a leg to stand on.

If the client supplied you directly with a set of images which they purported to have the legal use of then all well and good, it is their responsibility if they pinched them. The same goes for copy.

Make sure you keep files with copies of all correspondence with clients, whether paper or electronic. It could keep you out of the civil courts.

[porkchops]

nublue, on 06 February 2012 - 11:58 AM, said:

Although more often than not with this kind of client you will no doubt end up caving in and doing what they ask, just so you can get paid for it! If so, just make sure you have a decent contract in place that makes it clear content was the client responsibility, leave your link off the site and dont put it in your portfolio.

That's bad advice.

Even if you have a contract in place any legal proceedings wouldn't be worth the amount you've inevitable made off this client (especially since someone who isn't willing to purchase images isn't going to be forking over a medium-large sum of money).

Your best bet is to do your best to inform them about best practices for dealing with imagery and if they still insist on copying another site's content you should fire the client and move onto someone worth your time.

It's your job to advocate for the client, and if you can't do that it's better to drop them than to let the client get into trouble because you care more about money. Web design is really a business of relationships, and a pissed off customer will hurt your word of mouth marketing more than you'd imagine.

[nublue]

porkchops, on 06 February 2012 - 02:28 PM, said:

That's bad advice.

I take your point and it wasn't really advice, more of an understanding of the situation. My advice was in the second paragraph of that reply