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 27th, 2007 at 7:25 pm
dont make a big thing about it, the internet gets big with inspiring (stealing!) grafix websites mp3 movies and scripts, allthrough some rips are real lame :-)
June 27th, 2007 at 7:05 pm
This is definitely not a new fashion — this is how the Web was since always — you think that someone actually released the GIFs that you could see on all the websites everywhere?
I’d say that it was a conscious and deliberate design decision. Back then the Internet was meant for collaborating, not doing business.
Is there a solution for that? I certainly hope that some day the law will catch up to the technology and we will be able to live in harmony…
June 27th, 2007 at 2:16 pm
Ah, fallait s’attendre a des trucs du genre !
Faut juste porter plainte et faire constater cela par un huissier !
June 27th, 2007 at 1:23 pm
Sorry, that was dumb question # 9. Your terms do include… “You may modify, translate or distribute”.
June 27th, 2007 at 12:49 pm
Hey Nick, just wanted to check in here and make sure that my personal mod of your GlossyBlue WP theme isn’t in violation of your copyright. If it is, give me a shout and I’ll be happy to take it down.
Cheers,
Scott
June 27th, 2007 at 12:13 pm
Agreed, this stealing non-sense needs to stop. Make your own stuff and be original you newbs!
June 27th, 2007 at 10:16 am
How to avoid it?
I think maybe if you use a Creative Commons License in your work people wouldn’t steal it. You would be offering it to them :D
June 27th, 2007 at 4:57 am
Oh I forgot! Greetings from Mississauga! :p And no I haven’t been to Pacific Mall but I’ve heard of it.
Any good?
June 27th, 2007 at 4:52 am
I find that when folks have problems with stealing that the victimized sites can use Digg to rectify the problem. The beauty of the Digg effect is that the website who stole your stuff would be bombarded by tons of people which as anyone knows…the Digg folks can bring any site down to its knees.
I’m glad you’re protecting your stuff properly since I love the wallpapers you make. Emails, as you said…work half of the time when complaining. Hope you get your stuff back from the brink!
Perhaps, a significant watermark would deter these ppl?
June 26th, 2007 at 11:44 pm
hey….i am in the same situation as you. I am at Hong Kong right now and one day I was shopping…and saw my work on a display wall inside the shopping mall. I was so shocked. (you can look at my webpage to see my artwork called Flying Lemons). I called the managment office and got the company who did the display. And we settled a compensation fee….coz I don’t want to make this a big thing….
but everyone is telling me to sue them.