Is it a bad idea to move the content on the right of the page?
I recently discovered a blog which has an original layout:
The left half of the page contains by the name, two menus, the social buttons and the copyright. Most of the space is not used, and is filled with a useless background image.
The right half of the page is an actual blog article, i.e. the content which actually matters.
download bmml source – Wireframes created with Balsamiq Mockups
At first, I found it a very bad idea because half of the page is wasted. But after imagining how would I format the content differently, I ended up with virtually no space gain:
The copyright and social buttons move to the bottom of the article (since the reader is expected to first read the article, and only then think about sharing it or care about copyright).
I still find there is something inherently wrong with the original layout. My new reasons would be:
The fact that it's different from other websites where the primary content is either on the middle or practically middle of the page (like StackExchange sites), or on the left.
The dark background of the left pane attracts even more unnecessary attention and distracts from the actual content.
However, it doesn't seem like a strong argument against such layout. So:
Are two layouts I illustrated below (i.e. the original one and my modification) equally valid? Why?