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?
August 5th, 2007 at 2:21 pm
In some cases, a web designer will purchase a pirated “clipart” CD with a lot of pirated clipart on it. In other cases, yes, they may rip the whole site. If you see your artwork submitted in some contents or used for a web site that values it’s reputation more or less, making noise about it is all you can do, and in the most cases, they will just wait to see if you can make enough noise to remove the stolen artwork.
Whoever has spoken here about the open source, must be erring bitterly. Open source is about license, and the author giving permission. It is never about stealing.
August 4th, 2007 at 4:55 am
that’s what i’m scared..my work is stole by somebody..that’s really make me mad..
July 30th, 2007 at 9:57 pm
I found a tutorial that may be helpful in at least protecting your CSS file: http://www.n1studios.net/tutorials/php/css-file-protection.html
If the potential ripper comes along and tries to view the style.css (or whatever name you’ve called it), they’ll reach a message which says ‘Protected’. It should work quite well to fix part of the problem with the web sites being ripped.
July 28th, 2007 at 2:30 am
What a shame for coolsite 8..
July 26th, 2007 at 5:36 am
some of it, you cannot say stealing because just they use your code..their interface totally different. you cannot copyright your layout..they are many similar layout in this world.3 column, 2 column, horizontal nav or so whatever.. if they ripped the design and it looks the same I agree..but if the layout skeleton..its wrong to say its yours.
July 25th, 2007 at 6:55 am
Hey N-design Studio, Thought you should know that i downloaded your pretty wallpaper of flow,phonix and the green one and got them photo-framed on my wall because they are truly great work! can’t wait to see more and don’t worry i’m not a thefe to sell or any thing :)
Love art & the colours :)
July 23rd, 2007 at 5:53 am
Luke 6:38 Give, and it will be given to you
Did you heard about the open source?
You should share you code, otherwise protect it programmatically.
July 21st, 2007 at 1:35 pm
dang! This sucks. I feel sorry for you…
July 21st, 2007 at 11:47 am
LOL. Say what you want Corinne aka Meme…the screenshot proves otherwise. SlimStat can only be accessed by the admin of Wordpress. Are you going to say now that someone was logged into your website and stalking mine at the same time? Someone who claims they “don’t and wish” that they had a website but logged into a ftp server to c0rinne.net and logged into YOUR wordpress?? You’re full of shit, as usual. While you were so busy trying to “bust me out” on some shit I didn’t do, you didn’t even realize you blew up your own spot. Bow out gracefully and leave me alone sugar nipples.
July 21st, 2007 at 11:42 am
Ok, so you’re irrational and wrong because at 1:51pm I’m at work, and I’ve never called myself Meme.