Urban Outfitters Rip Off Independent Artists?

This article, "Anatomy of a Trending Topic: How Twitter & the crafting community put the smackdown on Urban Outfitters" is interesting for two reasons:

1. Photographs that show graphically that Urban Outfitters, in at least one case, seems to have totally ripped off an independent jewelry designer.


2. A case history of how that accusation spread through a relatively small set of twitter users and tweets and seems to have forced Urban Outfitters to pay attention.

There is lots of stuff on the web about ripoffs in general - "You thought we wouldn't notice". Also an interesting comment thread on this page: "Did Urban Outfitters rip off an indie designer, yet again?" where you can see a bit of a debate of whether in fact the original design was truly original.

Things are never as simple as they appear...