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 22nd, 2007 at 8:15 pm
Nick - I think you should take some action about SWsoft sitebuilder. Perhaps find a lawyer and sue them.. They deserve to pay for your work. I can’t believe that they stole your work.
June 22nd, 2007 at 7:32 pm
Just my 2 cents worth (which is more than I’ll get from the work I’ve seen stolen)…Unfortunately, it’s not only individuals who inadvertantly rip-off art here or there…While at a local mall one day, I saw ‘what seemed to be very familiar designs’ on printed shirts…and when I got close enough, it hit me: ‘Hey, I did that!’…and when I inspected the tags, I realized this wasn’t even the company that purchased the designs!…
June 22nd, 2007 at 7:03 pm
Been following your site through several incarnations and always enjoyed the content and attempted all of the tuts and help that you put up.
So I think that someone claiming you property is shite and they should be told to bring it down ASAP, even when they are claiming copyright of your graphics as panick-serenade has done
June 22nd, 2007 at 4:55 pm
Todd H - We are not talking about kids here. Read case sample #1 - SWsoft Sitebuilder is a large global corporation and I think this is a serious issue even such a big company will steal design.
I think we should have a community to ban the copyright violated sites.
June 22nd, 2007 at 4:49 pm
Its the kid learning at a young age. When we had our Nation FBLA Leadership conference the other year when I was in high school, we had like 3 people that got kicked out off Website Development for copying OTHER websites…and they were horrible copies!
June 22nd, 2007 at 3:45 pm
Oh my god, it’s sad seeing these cheap rippers take work from people who really deserve the credit. I’d say there should be stricter punishments, and last we should all find ways to destroy the “stealing trend” from cheap pathetic thieves.
June 22nd, 2007 at 1:32 pm
i made a phoenix look alike theme too (coz i like it so much) but luckily i never use it for my blog :)
June 22nd, 2007 at 1:25 pm
Ive notice alot of people do this just to have content to litter up with Adsense ads.
This is how it commonly takes place…
“Let me use Wordpress, pick out some of the most popular keywords, steal this well known sites stuff because noone will notice, and place 20 ads all over the site. Who cares about the legal end, I will be selling this on SitePoint shortly.”
June 22nd, 2007 at 1:20 pm
Hi Nick
you should submit this to Digg.com and expose these guys, don’t forget to send a DMCA to each and get their sites closed down.
Good Luck
June 22nd, 2007 at 9:54 am
send me an e mail if you want me to contact him.