Funkyou was fully stolen from OkapiStudio by Stefan Lucut and Citrus Media.

check this:
http://www.okapistudio.com/?p=48
http://www.okapistudio.com/?p=82
http://web.archive.org/web/*/www.funkyou.ro

Funk you too!!!!

THE TRUTH BEHIND THIS NEWS

Four years ago I created the brand Funkyou. The idea came from my desire to turn the commonly used negative expression “fuck you” into a positive brand. That's what the Funkyou brand wanted to stand for, along with some other commonly used expressions that I’ve redefined in the spirit of the new brand. "Funk you too", "Who the funk" and "What the funk" are just three of these expressions that I thought could support the brand along the community.

Among the elements which combined started the Funkyou brand, was the Funkyou.ro website.

At the end of December 2006, my team at Okapistudio and I started working seriously on our new launched company. Most of the time we were pretty busy, so, we decided to put Funkyou.ro on hold for awhile. The domain expired after 2 months, at the beginning of March 2007, as it was registered on MyX – a monthly fee service providing domain registration, the only one in Romania who accepted card payment at that time.

Meanwhile our MyX registration was expiring, the companies that register .ro domains started accepting credit card payments (not just bank account transfer), so, buying a .ro domain for an year or a lifetime became an accessible option that lead to our decision to let our MyX registration expire, with the soul purpose to aquire it again from one of the new domain register companies mentioned. Although it was not a smart move from our side to let the domain expire, the community was running in a close creative circle of friends and a few thousand outside readers. Even though at the time, it was taken in consideration on Cpluv, Sursftation and other know portals, in our mind it was still a small playground where we can have fun along with other people like us.

Few months after a lot of work on our side, OkapiStudio became a stable company, so we decided to concentrate on our “on hold” projects, and think about the new website we should design for our Funkyou.ro community.
As we turned our attention to the project we found that our domain was bought on 30 March 2007 by Citrus Design, a design company located in Timisoara, Romania.

As the site was still blank, we never thought too much of it and we just considered we lost a domain name to a shady company. Name hunting companies are all over the world, and the future of the domain was not certain for us since there was not too much information at the time on the Citrus website (you can check Archive.org).

Earlier this year though, our friends started to ping us and ask about Funkyou.ro, main reason being that Citrus was announcing on the homepage of Funkyou.ro plans to launch a creative portal and a magazine with the FunkYou name. Of course, we decided to call Citrus and ask for an explanation. I guess they were not expecting the call that soon since the person that responded the call said he knew about us, that things are complicated, and that they will call us right back in 15 minutes. Probably just needing some time to get their story straight.

Yet on the callback, the story took a different turn as we took notice of the fact that these people where aware of the Funkyou.ro community, as they were active members on our old website.

Out of nowhere, as we were talking, they stated clearly that their intention is to continue what we started, without feeling the need to ask for our permission or at least try to find out if Funkyou.ro was just a website that they considered dead and abandoned or it's part of a bigger project (they knew for a long time about OkapiStudio, they knew me, so, they were definetly aware of who or where they have to ask in order to get information about this).

I honestly don’t understand how people I know, people that have the expectation and deserve to be respected in this industry, can turn to such lame techniques to get famous.

The fact that they haven’t came up with a brand new concept, that they use the same name, with the same content and meaning, that they have the same type of activity, the same target, the same message, the same….everything and the fact that Citrus Design registered the Funkyou.ro domain after less than a month from the time it had expired, all these things make me believe that they weren’t capable of making their own concept so they had to steal one.

The web.archive.org tells us clearly that, on December 10, 2006, Funkyou.ro as a creative portal was still an OkapiStudio property ( http://web.archive.org/web/*/funkyou.ro ).
Soon after this date we stopped the website and on March 10, 2007 the domain expired, exactly 20 days before the new owners bought it. In their “Statement” section, the authors of the new site claim that on March 30, 2007, the domain was free for over an year and this is why they thought we abandoned the project.

The products from “Featured Product” section, Sunnyday Shop from “Partner Shop” are OkapiStudio property and the new “owners” of the domain do not have the permission to use it.

Despite all that, Stefan Lucut and Eduard Muresan state that what they are doing is normal, ethical and moral.

Funkyou is a brand of OkapiStudio. Citrus Design, Eduard Muresan and Stefan Lucut don’t have the right or the permission to use it.

Here is how it was and probably will never be again:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/ratdoesit/2757210943/

------------------------------------------

Gabi Lungu
Creative Director / OkapiStudio
http://www.okapistudio.com

Here are some notes on this post:

- Gabi Lungu or Okapi Studio did not invent the concept of an online community and everyone has the right to do one if they feel up to it.

- The old FunkYou site was nothing more than chat space. At no point in time were there any indication from Okapi or Gabi Lungu that the site is going to be more than that.
In contrast to that, we've developed a much larger project that involves publishing a book and doing workshops - but of course they can always say that we've stolen that idea from them as well (so, people, refrain from publishing books or you'll have problems with Okapi)

- To say that something like "FunkYou" is their creation is just childish... Check with any registar how many other domains named funkyou.?? exist in the world. Would Okapi go after them as well???

- The design is authentic, not copied in any way. The domain was bought legally, and if I remember correctly you can still buy a domain if it's available and the previous owner could not find the time, interest or resources to pay a mere 30 euro to secure it for life (.ro domains are not payed yearly but with a one time fee)

- In the end, I believe that if we would announce that we plan to build space ships to take designers to paint the moon, we would still be labeled by Okapi as thieves because "probably" they also thought about this, so I believe this conversation in pointless.

- FunkYou is run by a NGO (official process for the registration of this NGO is still in progress and this is why Citrus did register the domain). The founders of the NGO are myself, Stefan Lucut and Emeric Pongor. So, if Okapi has a problem, they should direct it to us, not to Citrus. From this point of view, Citrus is entitled to claim damages to their image in case this conflict continues.

- We've worked on this project for 5 months so far and we're still working on developments... All Gabi Lungu and Okapi did was to sit back and complain. I haven't seen anything from them so far... Just that they are thinking of stuff and we are stealing their ideas (like mind readers)

So that is it as far as we are concerned. This place is supposed to be an inspiration point and not some stupid quarrel.

Gabi, I think you should give a chance to this new release of Funkyou.
The old version was very nice and it really helped me become a better designer through the information exchanged there, but this new version seems to have a lot of potential and you should help instead of accusing Citrus Design and making a mess of it.

I think the Romanian design community needs this project.
So go on now kids, kiss and make up.

In order to put this matter to rest, we've prepared the following statement:
http://www.funkyou.ro/notification/