swa66 - 9:30 pm on Dec 4, 2007 (gmt 0)

since he is re-designing the layout himself with new colors and images I don't see it being a copyright issue.

It depends on how much is taken to either fall under the derived work (copyright protects this) or either just using the "mechanical" part of making it work (algorithm like parts are not protected).

To be safe: reuse the algorithm, but stay away from copying it all as you're likely to create a derivative work if you do that. Esp. so if the CSS is elaborate in what it does.

It's like writing your new novel by first cut-and-pasting an e-book in it and then trying to remove the "trouble" content.
Write it from scratch for yourself and you're automatically in the clear.

Like I said... how many 2-3 column layouts can there be?

That the butler did the murder is not protected, the book itself however is protected. So the mechanical part (as probably given quite a few dozen times in the CSS forum, just on this website) is not protected, no matter of how many ways there are to do it.
The collection of such things in a specific way however is protected.

If the copyrightable part of it is the artist part of it then him changing colors and images should be enough...

I'm afraid not: let's look at an Andy Warhol painting: I put a filter on it in photoshop and it would not be a derived work? Just as translating a book from English to Spanish doesn't remove copyright of the original author, changing colors will not either.

who cares if he copies a CSS class that has a inline <ul> or nice floated divs set up already? How many ways are there to do an inline <ul> and how many ways are there to float a div?

A lot depends on how you use CSS I guess. But if you really fancy a more advanced CSS layout, I'd call it a work of art quite easily, and that would make it off limits.

The other thing that is considered is how it affects the original, if he changes all images and content then NO-ONE can make an argument that it would hurt the original site.

Amount of "hurt" isn't a parameter in copyright. E.g. how much does it hurt that you take a night picture of the Eiffel tower in Paris? Still the nightly lightshow is copyrighted (and enforced).