Referring to the allegations that you have included certain code created by Anthony Bagget in the Downing Street web site, I would observe as follows.
Firstly Anthony Bagget has made his work freely available for use by any person, both commercially and non-commercially subject to the terms of the creative commons licence. This advice relates to your use of some code from his css file in that work.
The terms of the licence state that in respect of derivative works (i.e works which use modified parts of Anthony Bagget’s work), your obligation is to:
“provide, reasonable to the medium or means You are utilizing: (i) the name of the Original Author (or pseudonym, if applicable) if supplied, and/or (ii) if the Original Author and/or Licensor designate another party or parties (e.g. a sponsor institute, publishing entity, journal) for attribution in Licensor’s copyright notice, terms of service or by other reasonable means, the name of such party or parties; the title of the Work if supplied; to the extent reasonably practicable, the Uniform Resource Identifier, if any, that Licensor specifies to be associated with the Work, unless such URI does not refer to the copyright notice or licensing information for the Work; and in the case of a Derivative Work, a credit identifying the use of the Work in the Derivative Work (e.g., “French translation of the Work by Original Author,” or “Screenplay based on original Work by Original Author”). Such credit may be implemented in any reasonable manner;“
The code you have used includes the following lines
/*
Theme Name: NetWorker
Theme URI: http://www.antbag.com
Description: An adsense ready theme from Antbag.com.
Version: 1.0
Author: Anthony Baggett
Author URI: http://www.antbag.com/
Theme Name: NetWorker
Theme URI: http://www.antbag.com
Description: An adsense ready theme from Antbag.com.
Version: 1.0
Author: Anthony Baggett
Author URI: http://www.antbag.com/
*/
Accordingly:
1. By including the name of the Original Author you have satisfied the first element, namely: (i) the name of the Original Author (or pseudonym, if applicable) if supplied, and/or (ii) if the Original Author and/or Licensor designate another party or parties (e.g. a sponsor institute, publishing entity, journal) for attribution in Licensor’s copyright notice, terms of service or by other reasonable means, the name of such party or parties
2. By including the Networker title, you have satisfied the second element, namely “the title of the Work if supplied“;
3. By including the reference to the www.antbag.com web site you have satisfied the third element, namely “to the extent reasonably practicable, the Uniform Resource Identifier, if any, that Licensor specifies to be associated with the Work, unless such URI does not refer to the copyright notice or licensing information for the Work;”. In the circumstances and given the use of an insubstantial part of a CSS file the extent reasonably practicable for such credit is to include in the source rather than in the web site itself. The style of the web site itself is entirely original and new and therefore there is no reasonable reason for there to be a copyright notice referencing Anthony Bagget on the site itself.
As Anthony Bagget himself acknowledges the visual appearance of what you have created is vastly different from what Anthony Bagget created.
4. By including the words “Description: An adsense ready theme from Antbag.com” you have satisfied the fourth element namely “in the case of a Derivative Work, a credit identifying the use of the Work in the Derivative Work (e.g., “French translation of the Work by Original Author,” or “Screenplay based on original Work by Original Author”).
You should also note that the obligations are qualified by the words “reasonable to the medium or means You are utilizing” and “Such credit may be implemented in any reasonable manner“.
I should add also that, even if you had not credited him, you would not be considered to be infringing Anthony Bagget’s copyright. That is because copyright infringement would require you do an act restricted by copyright in respect of the whole or part of the work and your use appears to be of a very insubstantial part of an insignificant element of the over all theme.
Accordingly it is in my view false to claim that you have infringed Anthony Bagget’s copyright.
It is also false for Anthony Bagget to say that he has not receive proper credit or attribution. As can be seen from the foregoing the requirements have been satisfied. He does say that
“The link that I place in the footer of each theme I have available, which points to this website, is the attribution that I expect from each website that uses that theme.”
However it does not say this on his site or on the Networker download and accordingly this should not be a requirement.
