Relentless Copycat
October 5th, 2006 Filed in: News & Updates Jump to commentsA fellow visitor contacted me today regarding my Illustrator tutorials being ripped by a web development company, called Prowebb. This is not the first time my work has been STOLEN. It shocked me when I’m being doubted about not being the original author of the materials. When I kindly asked for my work to be taken off their website, the response I got in return was: “How do I know you are the original owner of the content.” How can I prove it? Well, some of the tutorial screenshots have my logo on it.
It is illegal to publish any copyright material on a website without giving credit and being authorized to do so. Besides the law, there is also an ethical aspects involved. All people, not just designers, know the basic concept of claiming work that is not yours to be established as stealing. You can be inspired by someone else’s work but don’t steal. Your actions reflect your personality, and to certain extent, your capabilities. Ironically, this company is providing web design and development services.
The last email I got from them was: “I will have the tutorials you mentioned below modified to insure they are not breaking any laws.” So, does this mean it is ok to steal, as long you can find a way to around the laws?
Final Update & Conclusion
Oct 27, 2006
Prowebb has finally accepted my request and removed all my tutorials on their site. And as I promised, I have removed all screen captures and links that are referenced to Prowebb in my post. Thank you for all your support. You guys have made a difference.
October 6th, 2006 at 12:04 am
It’s ashame that there are people like this who show no respect, and to make it worse they are in the web design business. You couldn’t have put it any better Nick. This company needs some business ethics.
October 6th, 2006 at 2:04 am
I sent an email to technical support of their host Liquid Web. It is against the hosts Terms of Service to host copyrighted material. Didn’t you put any watermarks or other hidden text?
October 6th, 2006 at 4:58 am
How pathetic, I hate people like this, too lazy and think they will never get caught. Morons. And also using your logo in one of the tutorials, pure genius.
October 6th, 2006 at 5:34 am
lool it’s exactly the same content, with your pictures! And they claime that they don’t know that works belong to you??? do they apologize to you?
October 6th, 2006 at 6:08 am
LOL, this is funny, cant beleive they are even using your logo…DUMASS’s
Oh hi by they way, love your site, working in england and is very quite here in the office, and you have got me through the summer!
October 6th, 2006 at 8:32 am
Unfortunely this thinks still happen on the net. Is hard to protected your work of people that don’t have ideas enough to create their own material.
At least they could get your some credits.
October 6th, 2006 at 8:37 am
Sue the bastards!
October 6th, 2006 at 9:14 am
they sell design but they have tutorials on the site.HA HA, what do they want …there customers to learn how to do the art work them selves . im off to give them some shit.
take it easy dog keep up the good work
October 6th, 2006 at 9:37 am
They are lazy, wicked, ignorant buggers who don’t know the difference between ‘insure’ and ‘ensure’!! (see above). Don’t worry though - we know when how to spot classey designers and designs! Good luck, and keep your head up!
October 6th, 2006 at 9:56 am
Thanks guys. This is exactly my point. What are they thinking? Internet is so small, there is no way they can get away with this.
No apology, nothing. In fact, what I got was “how do I know you are original owner”. Hello, wake up! Look at the screencap, there is my logo.
October 6th, 2006 at 7:08 pm
oh wow, SO lame… i am sorry that those idiots aren’t offering to pay you for the rights or something.. that sucks mate
October 6th, 2006 at 8:16 pm
It’s really sad, but unless you want to pursue any legal action, I don’t think they’ll do much of anything. I’m not 100% sure on entertainment law, but if you can prove that you created it first, you own the rights to it. Don’t know if it’s worth the trouble…
October 6th, 2006 at 11:49 pm
Pathetic bastards…
Your site is great and its a source of inspiration for a lot of ppl… we all know who the real designer is. Keep you head up, and keep up the good job :)
PS. if you know a lawyer that could do you a favor… let him call the bastards and sweat a little :):):)
October 7th, 2006 at 2:25 pm
I’m sorry to hear you got ripped off, Nick. One of the inescapable troubles of creative business that there are always lesser folks who rip off the genuine creators.
It’s happened so long I’ve come to view it as a cost of doing business. The value inherent in having unique created work only lasts until someone else rips it off. The best economic strategy is to stay ahead of the rip-offs and try to realize the value of the work before it’s ripped off.
Lawyering up is always a possibility, but it’s rarely a sound economic decision.
Having said that…if you can find no satisfaction writing a personal letter to the “content provider,” follow it up with a letter to their web presence provider. Explain that their client has violated your copyrights of work that took considerable investment to develop, that you have contacted them with a request to cease and desist the use of your work, and they continue to distribute work they do not have the rights to use.
Can’t promise anything, but if their web hosting company takes it seriously (and they often do) it might wake up the offenders up when their domain stops working.
Incidentally…while the copyright was indeed violated, the far more egregious violation (in the eyes of intellectual property folks, lawyers, etc) is the misappropriation of your brand…the logo, names, and images which represent your business image.
Y’see…while copyright is about your right to get the rewards for a given workwork, brand and trademark misuse is viewed as an assault on your reputation and can affect your entire livelihood.
Here’s wishing you well and good luck with it!
October 7th, 2006 at 5:14 pm
I’ve had this happen as well to a few tutorials I wrote a while back. They removed any mention of the author (me) as well as the Web site name.
You could always name your files with n_design in front of the image name. They’d then have to go to all of the trouble (if they even do) of modifying the file names. Another option would be to include a small version of your logo in the image; perhaps lower it’s opacity so it’s not overwhelmingly visible.
October 7th, 2006 at 5:17 pm
Ah, well, these folks DID steal one of my tutorials. I just looked through their Illustrator tutorials and found my cloud tutorial. Original tutorial is here:
http://www.ergodraw.com/tutorials/Cartoon_Clouds/cartoon_clouds_01.php
October 7th, 2006 at 5:54 pm
Nick,
why don’t you digg this and see how high you can get it. You will likely get more traffic and show up who has really done the work. You could also contact their ISP.
Your website is great.
October 7th, 2006 at 9:20 pm
You should take legal action either way. It is absolutely wrong that they just stole your tutorials from under your nose and make profit from it! As a fellow designer, I am pissed with you, and I hope a solution comes quickly.
October 7th, 2006 at 10:09 pm
This is really poor business behaviour from the company that have stolen your work. Who are they?
October 8th, 2006 at 4:47 am
Public Cease and Desist
There you go, Nick just send them a Public Cease and Desist to there website and there ISP and Hosting Provider after they get the Public Cease and Desist they have to remove the content by law.
October 8th, 2006 at 11:58 am
haha my favorite is how
http://www.ndesign-studio.com/wp-content/uploads/2006/10/5.gif
actually has your logo in it.
rippers suck.
October 8th, 2006 at 5:39 pm
If they’re “modifing” to insure they are not breaking any laws, it means that it is stolen work…
So bad people and they usually think they’re pros…
October 9th, 2006 at 12:03 am
What a shame, sorry to hear that.
October 9th, 2006 at 12:11 am
Here I finally found the URL of the copycat: http://prowebb.com/mos/category/Tutorials/Illustrator_Tutorials , if you want to know who.
October 9th, 2006 at 4:59 am
I hope they paid for the theme that they are using on their website. Its a theme from Joomla template design company called Rockettheme. See http://demo.rockettheme.com/ and select the Sep 06 - Mobius theme…
October 9th, 2006 at 6:50 am
Stealing is already very bad, but a design company stealing? That says a LOT about this company’s methods… I mean, if they steal their tutorials, why not copy other sites for their clients? shame on them.
What I find amusing is their poll, I wonder if “in the future” means “when we find them and rip them”
And another thing that I really don’t understand, is why a design company uses a premade for their site… this has nothing to do with stealing (though maybe they didn’t even pay it) but if they can design for others, why can’t they design for themselves?
Anyways… do contact their host. I’ve done it before and depending on the host it works perfect.
I love your site by the way, I visit it from time to time, you’re really talented. Keep it up!
October 9th, 2006 at 9:33 am
Nick,
I don’t know if you have resolved this problem yet or not, but I remember coming across this link a while ago from Lorelle on WordPress.
http://lorelle.wordpress.com/2006/04/10/what-do-you-do-when-someone-steals-your-content/
There’s a lot there but it may help you with the next steps if you are having no luck.
October 9th, 2006 at 10:02 am
I wonder what is original on their site. It looks like they just take everything from others and put it together…
October 9th, 2006 at 3:03 pm
The fools forgot to remove your logo from the logo tutorial. If you have your logo copyrighted you can go after them for this. Even if you don’t if you have had this published in any of your contributions to the various publications you can show proof that your logo is yours and that you’ve engaged in business and contractual work under the name and logo. My cousin is a business attorney and I emailed him a link to this post so that he can look it over and see if he can help you out. I’m tired of designers getting worked over by the lazy people out there.
October 9th, 2006 at 9:54 pm
That fact that your logo is in the tutorial is just sad -_-
October 10th, 2006 at 12:20 am
Send a DMCA request to Google for copyright infringement. I would get those a**holes canned in Google.
October 10th, 2006 at 10:27 am
You know Nick, I am thinking of starting a site that basically records all the “websites: out there that have ither copied your work, used your work as theirs, or simply out right have stolen your work. I remember the one we found on a “corporate site” selling CMS and bought it to your attention. They have removed the template, but because of that one instance, we never did go with them. Keep up the amazing work man - your shit blows every other illustrators stuff so far out of the web-water its not funny. Your tutorials are “Still the shit man”!!
October 10th, 2006 at 11:43 am
Please digg this article: http://digg.com/design/Relentless_Copycat as I need more voice from the public. Thanks.
October 10th, 2006 at 12:23 pm
Look at the search input, with a horrible background and no seach button.
What a shame!
October 10th, 2006 at 2:43 pm
I has digg your post and i will post it in my blog.
October 10th, 2006 at 4:01 pm
Hi Nick
Follow this:
http://www.pixel2life.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=20185
I see other sites tutorials on there as well, send a DMCA and get them shut down.
October 10th, 2006 at 4:21 pm
Mmhh…Shameless! They don’t even mention you?!?!? This means war! I will write an email to them emediatly and get back on that when they (if they) have replied.
Dammit!
October 10th, 2006 at 4:54 pm
Hi Guys
Just reading your article and I have to say I have had similar experiences, there are to many companies out there stealing other peoples work and passing it of as there own its ridiculous,
October 10th, 2006 at 5:23 pm
Not only have they ripped your tutorials they have ripped off many others, by first glance of their sections I don’t think any of it is original content.
And the fact that the N is in the 3d logo tutorial says it all.
I would do what Brian Gilley stated, this must not be tolerated.
Btw. love the new site.
October 10th, 2006 at 5:36 pm
Here’s my 2 cents.
I’ve found it amazing how quickly you can get a website designer to do the “right thing”.
Wanna know how?
Contact everyone in their portfolio with the evidence of their wrongdoing.
Here’s a copy of the message I am writing to the first 10 websites listed on the wrongdoer’s portfolio:
To whom it may concern,
The designer of your site, Prowebb, is using plagiarized material in their website and may be using plagiarized material on yours. I invite you to view a discussion of their most recent theft of intellectual material at:
http://www.ndesign-studio.com/blog/updates/relentless-copycat.
I recommend that at the very least you contact Prowebb and request they provide you a written assurance that none of the material in your website is not violating any copyrights.
I apologize if you have already received similar e-mails regarding this matter, it is not my intent to inconvenience you.
Thank you,
Robert Kruger
October 10th, 2006 at 5:50 pm
Oops, I just re read my message and I found that “none of the material in your website is not” is a bad way to say what I meant
Please drop the “none of” if you want to carry on the torch with the next 10.
October 10th, 2006 at 9:03 pm
Hey, i’m sorry but i think that it’s really rude to be picking on this one company. I mean, you don’t want to know how many websites I’ve seen with those SAME EXACT tutorials…i’m not saying that you’re not the original author, because i believe you are…but i seriously think it’s not right to make an article about this ONE company. If you want to make an effective article, you should talk about companies in general who take from your site, because there are many more other than this one that you’re talking about.
October 10th, 2006 at 9:20 pm
Nick, I have been following your site and work for a few years now, and I’m so sorry to see you being ripped off. I cannot believe the attitude that these guys at ProWebb have taken. They really don’t realize how much trouble this is going to cause them. If they were smart (which I doubt), they would have taken simple action and taken the copied material down. It is YOUR logo on the page even, for crying out loud.
They are goading you on and need to be taken out.
October 10th, 2006 at 11:12 pm
Hi Nick,
its a shame to see this sort of action.
Iva already done what richard did and contatcted the companys porfolio clients to warn them.
Hope you can shut them down.
Best regards from portugal
October 10th, 2006 at 11:29 pm
Oh and by the way, i see that your tutorials aren’t copyrighted. I would suggest that if you don’t want anyone to take anything from you, you should copyright it as your own…otherwise it just says that you are not the rightful owner of that material. I don’t know if I’m the only one that stopped by your site that thinks it’s wrong to be so angry at only this one company. Send a message out to all the companies that have stolen from you and be sure to copyright your stuff. It’s the only solution. Other than that, you just seem like a big baby blaming it all one one person. If you would like to contact me, I can show you many others who have the same exact tutorials as you do and you will see that it’s wrong to accuse one company by itself.
October 11th, 2006 at 12:51 am
Is it just me or does Anonymous read guilty, like hello Mr Anonymous have you never heard of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act?
If you can prove that material you created is being used on a website that is not under your control, the company hosting the website is OBLIGATED BY LAW to remove that content, if they ignore the request then it goes to the domain registrar.
Did you miss © N.Design Studio 2006 it’s on every page on this site, you don’t have to display it on every word and image.
October 11th, 2006 at 12:52 am
#45 Anonymous, you obviously have a very poor - err should I say non-existent understanding of international copyright law. Hopefully this will clear things up for you, from www.copyright.gov/help/faq :
“When is my work protected?
Your work is under copyright protection the moment it is created and fixed in a tangible form.
Do I have to register with your office to be protected?
No. In general, registration is voluntary. Copyright exists from the moment the work is created. You will have to register, however, if you wish to bring a lawsuit for infringement of a U.S. work.
Is my copyright good in other countries?
The United States has copyright relations with most countries throughout the world, and as a result of these agreements, we honor each other’s citizens’ copyrights.
October 11th, 2006 at 3:17 am
Thank you, Donna and Grafik, for the copyright clarification.
To Mr. Anonymous,
I'm certainly not just picking on this particular company/individual. If you could send me all links who have stole my content, I 'm sure will do something about it. As a designer, I respect copyright, I will not steal people creative content and take credits of it. Imagine someone stole your art, put his signature on it and claimed it is his. How would you feel?
I also want to make another point, up to this moment, ProWebb has not taken any of my content down yet. They just ignoring my message and emails…
October 11th, 2006 at 5:12 am
Don’t know if you know, but some of your tutorials have also been ripped by a site called GFXTURK.com. Here’s one: http://www.gfxturk.com/3d-effects/t-3d-graphs-397.html
This is another site that seems to be composed entirely of ripped tutorials.
October 11th, 2006 at 5:15 am
PS: They’re hotlinking your images, too, so you might want to do something about that.
October 11th, 2006 at 7:43 am
hi Nick, i’m very glad for this. The WWW is full of these things,
anyway i think who stolt you has lost his face (i hope you understand what
i mean). bye (and sorry for my english)
October 11th, 2006 at 10:55 am
SaucyJack:
It has been my experience that statements like, “You are a bunch of thieving bastards and will hopefully die soon and in great pain” are not very effective at convincing plagiarists to stop.
I have gotten two replies so far my emails to the first 10 of the companies listed on P.r.o.w.e.b.b’s (I don’t want their search ranking to improve)
The first response was:
“thank you. we will take a look. we are curious to know how you found out about this?”
and the second was:
“Thank’s for the information, unfortunaly I have tried to copy the designer serval times with no response.What is a copy right voilation on my site??? I will work on getting it updated?”
It appears that Rui Magalhães has contacted the second group of 10 in the portfolio on PW’s site.
I encourage others to copy and paste the message below to the next 10 and post on this blog so we can get through his entire client base. Be sure to add your name at the end and let people know which sites you’ve sent to so we don’t repeat efforts.
To whom it may concern,
The designer of your site, Prowebb, is using plagiarized material in their website and may be using plagiarized material on yours. I invite you to view a discussion of their most recent theft of intellectual material at:
http://www.ndesign-studio.com/blog/updates/relentless-copycat.
I recommend that at the very least you contact Prowebb and request they provide you a written assurance that the material in your website is not violating any copyrights.
I apologize if you have already received similar e-mails regarding this matter, it is not my intent to inconvenience you.
Thank you,
October 11th, 2006 at 12:11 pm
Maybe not, but that’s how it gets you sometimes.
I doubt that politely-worded petitions will have much effect, either.
October 11th, 2006 at 2:26 pm
I sent out emails to their customers, i received 8 emails from prowebb. They maintain 8 of the websites mentioned in there portfolio and in charge of handling there emails. I also found out they have another office in Chula vista, San diego.
October 11th, 2006 at 3:09 pm
Love your site. I’m sorry this had to happen. These things cannot be preventeed. Adobe and macromedia programs are being pirated eveyday and still nothing could be done to prevent that from happening. This thread is not going to help much, it’s only sending more traffic toward there site and resulting in more page hits. One thing i noticed, they maintain good site design and SEO ranking for all topics on there site. I’m surprised they would do such a thing. Did you try to contact them.
October 11th, 2006 at 4:11 pm
To Jim, I don't agree with you because if I don't do anything this time, next time will be worst. If you follow the link on comment #49, notice GFXTURK.com quickly removed all copyrighted materials? But Prowebb thinks it is right to steal and use stolen content to market their site/services. That is so wrong.
October 11th, 2006 at 10:16 pm
I am so sorry that this has happened to you. I just found your website today and the first thing I see, you were plagiarized. I’ve been too and by magazines! I’ve fought and nothing has ever been done. I know the feeling, but the good thing is that you have plenty of people helping you out so I guess this will be sorted out soon =)
I feel really bad though for the people who are paying this “company”. I bet they steal elements of others people’s designs for those new designs. Like, not necessarily an entire ripped design but compossing a design from stolen bits. Yeah, it’s been done to me too. Like little thingies taken from here and there. So obvious.
I feel bad for the people who have paid this company because it’s not real work what their paying for!
October 12th, 2006 at 2:03 am
[…] N.Design Studio […]
October 12th, 2006 at 2:30 am
Oh my god. They did such a terrible job on the Stamp tutorial.. take a look at their logo (final step)
October 12th, 2006 at 4:01 pm
As a huge fan of your work, I’m shocked they would boldly take it that far even after you have caught them in the act of stealing.
Just goes to show you.. a crook will be a crook even when caught.
Keep up the great work, and I hope this doesn’t deter you from publishing more helpful tools for new webdesigners such as myself.
October 12th, 2006 at 11:11 pm
Hi Nick, I completely understand how you feel, sorry to hear that people have been ripping your tutorials. But on a lighter note, this is one AWESOME revamp of your website!!
October 13th, 2006 at 3:46 pm
Hey, aren’t these your tutorials too?
http://www.techtutorials.info/drzadill.html
October 13th, 2006 at 3:49 pm
Whoops. I now see that they’re direct links to your tuts. Should’ve taken the time to look before I leapt.
I guess that’s not as bad as I thought. :)
October 13th, 2006 at 4:28 pm
But didn’t Steve Jobs say good artists copy, great artists steal? Lol. j/k Haha. glad to hear it’s been resolved.
October 13th, 2006 at 7:35 pm
Congratulations for your victory!
And its a good thing that Prowebb do the right about the “stolen” contents.
Good job!
October 14th, 2006 at 12:24 pm
that is horrible, I would probably watermark the screen shots, put your name identification at the corner etc to protect your work.
October 15th, 2006 at 4:35 am
sure enough as night follows day, those people will regret what they did to you. stealing artwork from somebody and taking credit for them, will not make them rich, some bad effect will happen to them or their loved ones, what goes around comes around…
October 15th, 2006 at 6:18 am
am sorry, for my words below, i do not wish anything bad to happen to anyone, but i wonder if the conditions of this people are so bad that they would go around stealing other’s work. for an artist his or her artwork is his or her source of income, if that is taken away, then you might have taken the food on their tables as well…. just sad people do this….
October 18th, 2006 at 4:23 pm
Hello from Toronto, I am glad you sorted it out I cannot believe people steal like that. I really like your work :)
October 18th, 2006 at 6:48 pm
Hi,
I can totally understand, I actually had something similar happen to me, actually worse. I was being hosted on a free webhost, and after a while the owner of the host contacted me about his interest in my site. He seemed interested, and was asking a lot of questions about the images on my site and the scripts I had written for my site. I got a little suspicious and answered his questions vaguely (I didn’t want to give out all the details and innerworkings). So after a while everything is fine, until one day the host contacts me and tells me the site is too popular (we were getting a bit of traffic, about say 100 visitors a day) and that he can no longer host us. So I make a copy of my site, I thank the admin for hosting us and I moved to a new host, and the admin terminated the account.
BUT the next day I check and the admin had put the site back online, with some text stating the site was for sale and to contact the admin to buy it. I immediately contacted the admin and told him that I had not given him the right to sell anything on my account, and that he had no right to sell my work. He replied that it was a misunderstanding and that he was trying to sell the url (e.g. the hosting subdomain so myusername.host.com) and not the site itself. I didn’t trust him, but he then replied again (without me replying) saying that he terminated the subdomain and wouldn’t be selling it. I hadn’t talked to him since then, but recently while doing a google search I found an old forum topic from that time (around April 2006) on a popular forum where the admin of that host was talking about my site and how he was offering to sell it to whoever was interested. He copied the details of my site that I had mentioned to him (e.g. image details, script details) on to the post so I know that the seller was the admin of the host. He clearly had lied, and I don’t know if he managed to sell my site but he didn’t get any replies in that forum post.
He actually said “The users site was popular, and I deactivated the account because they were using too much bandwidth. And now I’m selling the site to recoup the cost to as many people that want it”
It seems like he just wanted to sell my stuff from the beginning, and he made up a flimsy excuse. I’m almost certain that he still retains a copy of my files, and I can’t imagine that somebody would do something like this. I’d appreciate any suggestions or things that I could do.
October 20th, 2006 at 5:03 am
Good!
October 20th, 2006 at 11:38 pm
These people are ridiculous.
October 20th, 2006 at 11:44 pm
You know, you can probably assume that all their other tutorials are ripped too.
October 23rd, 2006 at 5:57 pm
On October 10th, 2006 at 4:21 pm I here stated that I would write an email to the copycat-peoples, I did, never got any response but I am glad to hear that it might have helped.
VICTORY!
October 24th, 2006 at 5:49 pm
that sucks to have your stuff taken from you…
October 25th, 2006 at 10:51 pm
I know its been handled in a very diplomatic way, but they deserve to be hit in the head with some live crabs for trying to adjust it so that its legal. Ol pumpkin patch skippin through, koala fur boot wearin, pickle tossing fools!!
October 26th, 2006 at 5:57 am
I’m glad it got sorted out. You do have a very lovely website design :)
October 26th, 2006 at 2:26 pm
Good!
October 27th, 2006 at 8:36 am
I CANT BELIEVE PEOPLE STEAL FROM YOU…
It’s really sad that people would steal from you Nick, and the governments of the world should start cracking down on these losers.
October 29th, 2006 at 5:53 am
Boo! That sucks but glad you’ve got that sorted out.
November 8th, 2006 at 6:56 pm
Can you post the site, so I can send some kind words to them.
November 9th, 2006 at 12:06 am
The issue has been resolved, so please don’t bug them any more.
Thanks for supporting.
November 17th, 2006 at 9:15 am
It’s so bad!!
November 17th, 2006 at 11:17 am
Actually, the 3D orb is still there…
January 2nd, 2007 at 8:25 pm
oh my god they do still have your tuts on their site.
“Illustrator Tutorial Create 3D Fruits using revolve effect” - its a copy of the “3D Bowl” tut. You need to seriously kick their butts and sue them!
January 2nd, 2007 at 8:29 pm
So, does this mean it is ok to steal, as long you don’t break the laws?
January 2nd, 2007 at 10:52 pm
Hope to some more great art and tutorials this year !
April 16th, 2007 at 12:56 am
E grande io ha trovato il vostro luogo! Le info importanti ottenute! ))
July 31st, 2007 at 9:12 pm
Heya!!
see filmsbuy.com site with thousands movies for downloads!! it is legal or no?
October 12th, 2007 at 12:14 pm
Congrats on getting them to take all YOUR stuff down! ;)
I’m confused though… why is a web design ‘firm’ offering tutorials on their site anyway? Isn’t that an oxymoron? LOL! “Hey, we want you to pay us to design your site, but we’ll offer FREE ways to do things yourself!!”
Uhh… LOL! Hmmm….