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 $35CAD. I quickly took some pictures with my camera phone and asked the owner where did they get the products from. The owner told me they brought their products through several level of connections, thus unable to trace the manufacture.
Best Web Gallery being ripped
Shortly after I launched Best Web Gallery, I found a site just ripped it exactly the same, but replaced with a different logo. They even copied my gallery entries and screenshots. As usual, I sent them an email and asked them to remove the design and related content. However, I didn’t receive any response. So, I submitted to Digg and got more attention. Then, the site quickly removed the theme in the next day.
How did I catch them?
Well, the Internet is very small. Unless you don’t publish your site online, otherwise the chance of you getting spotted is very high. Most of them are reported from visitors. The others are traced from referral links and tracking codes.
What should you do if someone stole your work?
I’m sure I’m not the only victim. What would you do if someone stole your work?
Send them an email? Half of the time, they don’t even have a contact number or email address on their site. If you are lucky enough, they will apologize and remove your work. The worst I’ve seen they just ignore your emails and pretend nothing happened. Or even worst they will claim as original and question you back “are you sure you are the original creator?”
Find a lawyer and sue them? It is probably not worth the value to sue them because most of them are small business or personal website. The lawyer fee will probably cost you more.
How do you handle your copyright infringement issues? Any advises or suggestions that you can share with us?
June 21st, 2007 at 12:08 pm
So did you ever find out who stole your artwork and printed them? Or you just let it go? :$
June 21st, 2007 at 10:16 am
Well Nick! i like ur great designs and works.actually i learnt a lot about Illustrator from u!…
talking about “Stealing Trend”,i remember one of ur illustrator design were(Its a DJ girl)used on the cd cover for some remix album stuff.
June 21st, 2007 at 9:52 am
lol it’s not wise how blatantly obvious people can be with their copying. I’ve had bits of my coursework copied at Uni before, and it was actually a guy I lived with. He even went as far as to copy what I had written on my C.V. 2 years previous. Pure egg!
June 21st, 2007 at 9:35 am
Nick, your themes are fantastic. I’m using Glossy Blue on our podcast network and have heavily modified the graphics - however, I still credit you for the theme. What’s wrong with people?
Oh, and seeing your work being sold on canvases in some market?! I would’ve been sick. People are bastards.
(added you as a friend on Flickr too)
June 21st, 2007 at 8:35 am
Like on MattBrett.com, I’d like to say congratulations on your rip! You are now officially one of THE greatest designers around!
June 21st, 2007 at 8:13 am
Hell, sue them and foot them with the fees or maybe remove them yourself.
June 21st, 2007 at 6:59 am
Oh my days!
How obvious are those rips man.
There are two things you should do.
Number 1:
Regarding the work that is being sold you should sue there arses or request that all money sold is given to you.
Number 2:
Personal and non-profit use of your works should not be sued. Just try to contact the people and get the work removed. If they persist to ignore or keep the work on after you prove its yours then perhaps take action.
I hate people who rip work that is not given to people to re-use. I have used a few of your free icons and other free vista style icons from one other site but this is ok because they are free to re-use as long as you dont try to make profit from them.
Rippers are scum who dont have any talent so should either gain the skills or give up, sad idiots!
Good luck Nick LA
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