What on earth would Lord Reith say?

As long as it educated someone - he'd likely be fine with it.

He's probably turning in his grave more at the utter piffle that Aunty chooses to air these days.

???

And we give a poo because?

Oh dear...

Yeah, the design is copied.
But, writing this article didn't help it's author either.

There is NO Serbo-Croatian language, only Serbian and Croatian languages and the two are different.
And obviously the online translators don't work well either, as a sentence "Smo does raspati" does not exist in Croatian language (notice the word does - that's English).

Disgrace

Bloody disgrace, we have an a large number of designer, some with real quality, but somebody pocketed some cash for them self in the process if you ask me.

PS. there is no Serbo-Croatian, there is serbain and then there is croatian, two separate languages. It's like saying that there is English-Welsh language.

A fresh perspective

This site kinda looks like the mirror are you sure you haven't done a bit of copying here ?
And you should know we find the term serbo croatian very offensive.

?

There is no more Serbo-Croat language. Only serbian or croatian.

You should care because...

You should care because that is how it all starts, first you copy the BBC, then it's Big Ben and then Football Hooligans...

Seriously, didn't the BBC sue a poor gal for making knitted puppets of Doctor Who characters?

I thought Britts were consistent... (you guys are breaking my heart ;)

We can lend you some lawyers if you need them, we have way too many, each lawyer will come with a free can of Spam! Satisfaction guaranteed!

indeed

I agree, the HRT site looks very, very similar to the BBC site and I think a national broadcaster should have it's own visual identity, and if they don't, they shouldn't steal one from a well known broadcaster such as BBC. Looking at the code of the HRT site i saw that it has been done with TYPO3 CMS, so maybe they used a custom design :P
And how a national broadcaster could use a free CMS system? shouldn't they build their own?!

But more important: there is no Serbo-Croat language!!! There are only Croatian and Serbian languages!
What if I said that you speak American up there? You'd probably call me stupid, wouldn't you?

Greets from sunny Croatia

In reply to your article

I would like to respectfully disagree with you.

Fair enough, the two designs look somewhat alike... and the team contracted by HRT should be reprimanded by their own employers for being too lazy to think of something original, but they didn't actually steal anything. You can't copyright a webpage layout, can you? They didn't "steal the source code" as you put it in your article... they made a somewhat similar layout.

Layouts get copied all over the web, if you could sue over that you would have an all out war on your hands.

Now if the HRT idiots managed to get their hands on the BBC's source code and used it without permission that would be another matter.

As for the other idiots ( the index.hr website ) ... they have a vested interest in "outing" the HRT website, they are in direct competition, so you shouldn't be surprised about the amount the passion they put into this "amazing" revelation.

When you look at it objectively this whole thing is about a bunch of amateur designers with limited creativity using the bbc website as an example to build their own site. There was no source copying. It should be left at that.

Finally, you might find it interest that when the HRT spokesperson was initially contacted by the index "journalists" the HRT spokesperson claimed HRT was in cooperation with BBC and their aim was to depict HRT as the Croatian BBC. There-in lies the reason for any legal proceedings for misrepresentation against HRT from BBC.

My God!

The most interesting in this article is that Mr Andrew Thomas use the term “Serbo-Croat”. Ha, ha, ha… There is no such language. Even a for-year-old knows that the language in Croatia is Croatian!? Perhaps Mr Thomas should go back to compulsory-school before he starts to write articles for The Inquirer.

Translation (?)

The new HRT internet webpage is the shameless plagiarism of the BBC.CO.UK. From the simple look at the page is clearly visible that the HRT webpage UI is identical to the BBC’s one. From the modules selected, colour scheme, drag-drop modules... New HRT page was presented yesterday.

That was the point

Asked to comment on this, Janos Romer HRT spokesperson said “that was the point”. “We wanted to deliberately point out that we have technological level and level of innovation in BBC style, but that does not mean in any way that it is the finished design” said Romer, for whom is nothing problematic in the fact that page was taken (I assume BBC page was taken from them) because they did not take any of programming code. He also claims that persons who developed the page were in constant contact with those who developed pages for BBC.

It was always expected from HRT to be Croatian BBC

Romer adds that they are conscious of comparisons of those two pages but explains that “it is only presentation of technological direction of their way of thinking, and not finished product”.

He also adds that one can hear always that it is expected from HRT to be Croatian BBC, so they decided to go in that direction.
Even though Romer could not name developers, by looking into the source we could find names of the developers.

Authors and developers, according to the source of the page are: Jurica Železnjak and company Kumulus d.o.o. Aleks Achimovic was mentioned as their external partner. Kumulus d.o.o on the internet is represented only as the company for water, gas and heating installation.
After asking several times if they contacted BBC and asked for the permission to use the design, Romer said yes, so it is confusing that in the source of the page copyright is assigned to HRT 2008, if the authorship obviously belongs to BBC.
We tried asking Rormer who developed the page, but he directed us to Maria Topic-Crnoja, editor of the new media, who is responsible for their pages.

We tried contacting her several times during the morning, we were informed that “she is out and because it is HRT day, we assume she will be unavailable the whole day”. We could not get her on the mobile either.

NO such language...

Mr. Thomas,

Your so-called "serbo-croat" language does not exist. Croatian has always been spoken by Croats. There was a short attempt pushed by serbs in the late 1800s to form a so-called "serbo-croat" language but it failed. In fact the new "language" was serbian replacing Croatian. Croats were forced to speak serbian in the military and government. This was quickly oppossed by the Croatian people.

Your comment is very offensive and only adds to serbian propaganda and nationalism. By denying the Croats their own historic language you are in fact denying them their own history and culture.

Bad design

The new BBC site design isn't as good as the previous version, maybe the Croats would have been better off copying the old design.

copied?

I'd say it's more "inspired by" :)

meh

"It's like saying that there is English-Welsh language."

Its more like British and American English, or Dutch and Flemish, at least they are mutualy inteligible. Or put it this way, i can swear in 'Serbian' that i learned from a 'Bosnian' speaker and still be understood by Croatians.
On the other hand i can swear in Welsh and just pretend i was sneezing, hardly anyone in England can tell the difference.

Translation in a flash...

To cut it short, the article says that HRT (national television) confirmed that their web pages were done in cooperation with BBC technical staff and that nothing is in question here.

It also says that this is not the final design but a first step to a technical level of BBC pages and then move forward.

:) Well, who knows...

Get in line

They aren't the only design thieves:

www.rtl.hu

...even more blatant!

Serbian

There is no Croatian language! The Croats lost it when they abandoned their Chakavski language. They accepted the Ijekavica Serbian dialect. Every linguist expert in the world will tell you that there is more difference between Northern (geographical) Italian and Southern Italian language than there is between Serbian and the so called Croatian language. Croatians made 15 % of their "new" words in the last 15 years.

Blame the USA

I worked inside the Soviet Union in the early 80's before the wall fell.

Because the programmers in countries such as the ex Yugoslavia and Bulgaria were forbidden access to hi-tech PC processors such as the Intel 80386, otherwise known as the Intel386, i386 or just 386 and later the 486. The programmers had to make do with slick and very slimmed down code to make the older 286 systems work!

When the wall fell, almost overnight all those folks were whizzed by Lear jet to Palo Alto, to start working in the USA.

Sadly those left behind can not really even write web pages, so they steal.

Is the BBC web site intellectual property worth protecting? What is expected if you give the Croat authors a good slapping.

Just another lost source of information about the common man struggling in Central and Eastern Europe.

Somehow the booming sound of the BBC Home service intro music seems a little fainter.

Eurovision

Have none of you heard of the EBU? All the European national broadcasters are continually in dialogue and much of the technical direction is lead by the BBC. It's not at all surprising that other national broadcasters are using the research done by the BBC to define their web presence.

So!

I am tempted to think so what. As an ex-employee of the BBC, this doesn't worry me. The BBC gets billions anually from the British public, that any Crotians may get a little benifit without the BBC audience suffering seems like everyone is a winner.

BTW there are a lot of us who seem to be under the impression there is such a thing as Serbo-Croat, so if you disagree, it requires a little expansion.

take a look at rtl.hu

has anyone taken a look at
www.rtl.hu ?

striking similarity as well!

Well...

I would comment on this article, but my knowledge of American-British is pretty rudimentary.

Serbo-Croat thing..

OK here's an explanation.

Serbian and Croatian language are a bit simmilar - sort of like Spanish and Italian. During Tito's reign these languages were officially "renamed" to Serbo-Croatian and Croato-Serbian respectively, all in spirit of "brotherhood and unity", even though most of ex-Yugoslavia citizens considered these terms ridicilous, unnecessary and confusing to begin with.

After the war in Yugoslavia and subsequent separation this terms are not used anymore, ever. In fact, calling Croatian language "Serbo-Croatian" wasn't ever really tolerated by Croatian people, but is now considered especially rude and ignorant, considering all that has happened in these parts of the world.

Serbo-Croat ???

A Serbo-Croat language does not exist almost in decades.. how can you be a reporter and not know this?
It's as if I said that the French resistance was still hiding somewhere in London, possibly in some cafe.
A refreshment of your general knowledge would do you good. Perhaps a vacation in Croatia?
Or is it Serbo-Croatia in your terminology. Regards from Croatia, and good luck on the next EURO qual. :P