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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 3:46 pm
Hey, aren’t these your tutorials too?
http://www.techtutorials.info/drzadill.html
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!!