Stealing Trend
June 21st, 2007 Filed in: News & Updates Jump to commentsSo, what is the next web trend after the Web 2.0 trend? Steal. I’ve been noticing this trend for a while and in fact it is rising. Rippers now on the Internet steal anything from text content, graphics, icons, design templates, to coding scripts. Almost every other week, I get an email from visitors telling me who stole my work. By the way, thanks for reporting copyright violations to me. This becoming an issue and I really want to bring it up. I have setup a Flickr gallery to showcase the ripped work. Here are some of the sample cases.
TV Print Ads (new)
Two days after I published this post, someone sent me another email reported my work being stolen by two Bosnia & Herzegovina TV stations - OBN.ba and RTRS.tv. He was nice enough scanned the newspaper ads and sent it to me. Although, I’ve never seen the actual ads but I believe they just ripped my high resolution wallpapers (without any editing). This is ridiculous, from a TV station?
SWsoft Sitebuilder
SWsoft Sitebuilder is an online application that allows users quickly build their website without any programming or design experience. The hosting provider will install the Sitebuilder on their server. Their clients will use the online wizard to pick a template, fill in the content, and then upload to their web space. I found several of my artworks were included in the application as a template. I certainly did not give them permission nor sold my work to them. It was actually a media/hosting company who reported this to me.
Canvas Printouts
Believe me or not, I found these in a local shopping mall, Pacific Mall. If you live in Toronto area, you probably have been to the mall or know about it. It is located at Kennedy and Steele. I was shopping at the mall and found my works were selling at a retail booth. They printed my work on a large size canvas and selling for $35CAD. I quickly took some pictures with my camera phone and asked the owner where did they get the products from. The owner told me they brought their products through several level of connections, thus unable to trace the manufacture.
Best Web Gallery being ripped
Shortly after I launched Best Web Gallery, I found a site just ripped it exactly the same, but replaced with a different logo. They even copied my gallery entries and screenshots. As usual, I sent them an email and asked them to remove the design and related content. However, I didn’t receive any response. So, I submitted to Digg and got more attention. Then, the site quickly removed the theme in the next day.
How did I catch them?
Well, the Internet is very small. Unless you don’t publish your site online, otherwise the chance of you getting spotted is very high. Most of them are reported from visitors. The others are traced from referral links and tracking codes.
What should you do if someone stole your work?
I’m sure I’m not the only victim. What would you do if someone stole your work?
Send them an email? Half of the time, they don’t even have a contact number or email address on their site. If you are lucky enough, they will apologize and remove your work. The worst I’ve seen they just ignore your emails and pretend nothing happened. Or even worst they will claim as original and question you back “are you sure you are the original creator?”
Find a lawyer and sue them? It is probably not worth the value to sue them because most of them are small business or personal website. The lawyer fee will probably cost you more.
How do you handle your copyright infringement issues? Any advises or suggestions that you can share with us?
June 21st, 2007 at 5:46 am
“Coolsite 8″ LOL :D
By the way… ripping/stealing has been around for years, it’s not a new trend.
Most are caught out though, and remove the stolen content which is good :)
June 21st, 2007 at 5:32 am
What a shame !
But what can we do to prevent that kind of stealing ? I think legal actions are quite long and very expensive…
The good thing : it’s just mean that people really like your job ! Me too :D
June 21st, 2007 at 4:42 am
If someone is seriously stealing your work there are three steps to follow:
1) write to the site via email and letter (their Who is entry may provide this if it’s not on the site) informing them of the copyright breach and request they remove the offending content.
2) If they refuse or don’t co-operate then repeat but send letters to their hosting company or any other ‘brand’ that you can see is supporting their site. Big corporations who can be sued don’t want to be involved in legal disputes. Normally a host will appply pressure and then just turn off the site.
3) If the above fails then proceed with legal action. Even a ’serious’ letter from an attorney or lawyer should be enough to prove you are serious without having to go to court etc.
Hope this helps.
Colin
June 21st, 2007 at 4:20 am
Nick, have you contacted the sitebuilder co. and if you have what is the response you got form them?
June 21st, 2007 at 4:15 am
Hi Nick,
I think that stealing trend is a horrible thing to do. It only proves that people envy you and your talent.
I am a 30 year old Graphic Designer from Israel. Building my website, I have some questions. (and I am sure others would be glad to know too)
Lots of websites upload vector items and even complete editable files for everyone to download.
What exactly can we use?
For example, if I downloaded a vector file of a couple dinning in a restaurant and there is a bottle of wine on the table that I could really use instead of re-designing it. Would that be ok?
Can I use it on my website or on a restaurant menu? (for sale or as a bonus?)
What are the limits to avoid copying or “stealing” (by that I don’t mean duplicating arts)
What goes though minds of Designers that allows everyone to download their vector file? What exactly are they allowing us to do with it?
Maybe you have some of those answers … :)
Thanks,
Monalisa
June 21st, 2007 at 4:13 am
That is bad. Fortunately I’ve never had anything like this happen to me (probably because I don’t get half the exposure you do) but it would make me seriously angry.
You wouldn’t expect anyone with half a brain to rip from such a high profile site but I guess they do :(
Hope you manage to sort this out!
P.S. Cool Site 8 looks awful now, no wonder they felt they had to steal a design.
June 21st, 2007 at 3:37 am
The situation is more worse in some countries. Stolen designs, contents, even websites are all over the Internet…
June 21st, 2007 at 3:29 am
I hate when this happens…
Be creative on you own, dumb-asses!
All the best from bonn, Oli