"Wow, the Metalab stuff looks great. Let's ask for a quote!"
[asks for, gets quote]
"Crap. That's way out of our budget. But we do love that style of design."
"Hey, design intern, can you 'shop some of our content into their layout to serve as a functional mockup until we figure out what we're going to do for the real design?"
[intern shops in content, mockup gets posted to wiki, internet drama ensues]
The infraction really seems to be that this is public. Knocking off other sites for purposes of internal mockups and basic functional blocking seems totally sane.
Internal design or not, saying to your hypothetical intern "hey go knock off the design of the company we decided not to hire until we find something else" is whack.
"Wow, the Metalab stuff looks great. Let's ask for a quote!"
[asks for, gets quote]
"Crap. That's way out of our budget. But we do love that style of design."
"Hey, design intern, can you 'shop some of our content into their layout to serve as a functional mockup until we figure out what we're going to do for the real design?"
[intern shops in content, mockup gets posted to wiki, internet drama ensues]
The infraction really seems to be that this is public. Knocking off other sites for purposes of internal mockups and basic functional blocking seems totally sane.