Stealing Trend

June 21st, 2007 Filed in: News & Updates Jump to comments

So, 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?

# 181

July 21st, 2007 at 1:35 pm

dang! This sucks. I feel sorry for you…

* chanel.

# 180

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.

Corinne

# 179

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.

# 178

July 21st, 2007 at 11:08 am

“Meme”, you do have a website, and it’s http://c0rinne.net . How do I know? Because while you were making that faulty screenshot, you’re logged into your website on Wordpress. You dumb bitch. You’ve been after me for some months now, blogging about what I blog about, commenting on other sites about me. I understand your jealousy and lack of directive with your own piece of shit site. I advise you to get a new hobby and quit the obsession with me. Thanks in advance.

Bryan

# 177

July 21st, 2007 at 9:43 am

By the way, if you were wondering, I’m not gonna report you to 2advanced.com for stealing their logo design.

drakazzel

# 176

July 21st, 2007 at 5:02 am

Collin, what’s your web site? =D

aronil

# 175

July 21st, 2007 at 1:58 am

I can’t agree more with this. There are points of stealing. Even if some say that you should be proud that your work is stolen. It is still unfair, considering the amount of time effort and work you’ve placed into your sites. You are brilliant-start-from-scratch-learn by-yourself example, and I really admire that.

# 174

July 20th, 2007 at 3:56 pm

Let me start off by saying that you are a great designer and you have a lot of great work posted here but there is a lot of finger pointing going on for someone who largely stole his logo from another company. 2advanced.com has been around since about 1998 or so and has had a logo that is just about identical to yours. Eric Jordan, founder of 2advanced has his work stolen all the time and it just has to be taken as a form of flattery and that’s all that can be done. It’s great when people can come up with ideas of their own but admittedly most people have run into a lack of inspiration. Again, kudos to your work, I’m not putting any of it down, I’m just saying that we work in a world where imitation is the strongest form of flattery.

Collin

# 173

July 20th, 2007 at 2:38 pm

Dude, im with ya on this. Im a staff member at a website that makes web scripts online - and people steal and rip our codes non stop. Why cant they just get a life?