The Dan Cederholm v. LogoMaid spat has turned into an ugly mess, with the perhaps overly helpful crowd siding with Dan turning into something of a lynchmob.

I fully support Dan's position that LogoMaid (or one of their agents/designers) ripped off his logo, and LogoMaid should have respectfully apologized and taken the logo down. For some reason they decided to insult Dan, threatened to sue, and basically the thread on Flickr turned nasty at that point. Various bloggers (myself included) chimed in defending Dan, explaining aspects of copyright law (with varying degrees of accuracy), and generally enjoying the pile on. Accusations were made that LogoMaid's proprietor was creating "sock-puppet" accounts on Flickr to defend himself, and the tone and language of the "debate" went into a downward spiral.

I'm glad the members of the design/blogging community showed up to support Dan. But to let the tone of this, well, whatever-it-is, degrade to name-calling and threats is depressing and is a good example of descending to "their" level. This is not the way to support a guy who has been a model of professionalism and class.

Let's let it go, folks, and get back to creating the original content we've been defending.

Update: Sincere or not, looks like LogoMaid has apologized. Would have been more effective at the start of the debacle.