respect the design

44 flash guru joe skilloze of illgraphs studios created a lovely website a couple of years back for photographer peter hurley, which featured an outstanding flash-based portfolio viewer with a user-friendly admin console. the site was beautiful, truly one-of-a-kind, and something that you might call skilloze's signature piece. anytime i had a client of my own looking for flash work, i'd use hurley's site to sell 'em skilloze's skillz.

enter rich troost. troost is the operator of talentnetworks.com. an associate of peter hurley's, troost approached skilloze to recreate hurley's portfolio viewer for his own site, but wasn't willing to pony up the finances to do so. being an original product created specifically for hurley, skilloze refused to compromise his artistic integrity and resell the same code to troost at a discounted price: he would create a new, custom product for troost, or nothing at all. troost declined.

instead, he hired someone else to completely jack skilloze's design and code, and is now reselling the service to other photographers at $795 a pop.

talk about a shady scumbag... i'm not a big fan of intellectual property laws, but this is one instance when i feel that someone's livelihood is actually being threatened by the theft of their art. rich troost should be ashamed of himself, and should be held accountable for his actions. his clients and potential clients should be aware: this is the underhanded manner in which talentnetworks conducts business, and they should not condone such behavior by acquiring services from troost.

in the meantime, skilloze is contemplating legal recourse.