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?
July 19th, 2007 at 4:39 am
Hi im from the netherlands and i realy loved the tutorials. And i realy do think that it is stupid to steal. Why do poeple do such things ? money ofcourse. The tutorials are realy good and if you take just a litle effort in to it, you can use one of the tutorials and make something for your self. Just like i did i used the bamboo tutorial to make a fictive poster.
keep up the good work.
to al you stealing ” be creative “.
July 18th, 2007 at 5:47 pm
Never knew you were from the Markham, Ontario area. I’m just in Scarborough and I’ve been to Pacific Mall many times. But what can you expect from a mall that’s sells so much illegal stuff.
I just go their for the arcade upstairs, since arcades are hard to find these days.
July 18th, 2007 at 2:13 pm
couldn’t help but to notice the irony here… not sure if you know but the OBN.ba print ad is actually celebrating labour day in Bosnia or International Workers’ Day on May 1st. Sretan 1. Maj means “Happy May 1st.”…
I was born in the country where the ad was run but live in the same city as you are working as a designer
~phukinphunnysituation
PS. not right to steal but funny…
July 18th, 2007 at 1:07 am
Well if you’re not going to take action, you should be flattered. You shouldn’t get pissed about not getting the credit you deserve. You already get a lot of credit here on your blog. Obviously, everybody likes your stuff. It is your reaction to the event that determines the outcome.
July 17th, 2007 at 10:15 pm
I absolutly love your work, people shouldn’t steal someone else’s art. How flattering it can be, it’s stil wrong.
I live in The Netherlands. I always check this site: http://www.nalden.net is this your iTheme too??! I hope not, anyways keep up your great work!
Tjauw!
July 17th, 2007 at 5:20 pm
Be proud as they steel u.
They cant make too many steps with someone’s others foot.
You can create and they can’t.
Be proud and sure that even they will became rich one day, stealing yours or anybody else’s work they wont sleep softly in their beds at nights, they know what they did. For them the worst is not that they steal but that they cant create. Its eating brains Nick thats the worst punishment for them.
Take care and create, I really admire u :)
Thanks for the tutorials.
July 17th, 2007 at 11:20 am
check out the website of the TV-Station and compare it to this german TV-Station web site.
July 17th, 2007 at 9:14 am
I hate people who steals work from other people :(
July 16th, 2007 at 10:12 pm
I’ve seen my logos and work ripped countless of times. I designed quite a number of Aqua logos and wallpapers during my ‘Mac loving’ days. Myself and JairoB were well known on the scene.
During my trip to Shanghai two months ago, I went to a tech center where I saw our wallpapers being displayed on quite a number of stores! I couldn’t believe it! They were using my work to advertise their products.
Oh well. It’s flattery I guess.
July 16th, 2007 at 12:58 pm
Phoenix:
I was referring to the footer link in the second site which mark.z came up with, not the previous one that I clearly stated violates Nick’s License.