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 29th, 2007 at 11:26 am
Inspiring my ass. One thing is to get an idea from another work. A different thing is TO COMPLETELY COPY A WORK AND TO PRETEND TO BE THE ONE WHO DID IT.
I own a blog and I am using a wordpress template made by N-Design. The funny thing is that I didn’t download it here, but on a p2p network. It was in a template collection, and the copyright on the bottom was removed. I found out who the author was and I putted it back.
The point is: dudes like this guy work FOR FREE and they allow you to use THEIR work on YOUR website, the only thing that they ask is to say that they worked for you for free. Is that a problem? Then don’t use it and work on your own.
I am surely inspired from n-design and my next works will be somehow inspired from its style, that’s sure. But I won’t COPY its work, that would be a different thing.
I have no time to make my own template for now, but when I will have the time I will make my own and personal template, but until that day I can’t see any problem in saying thanks to N-studio for giving me a good template for a while. Thanks to them I already opened the blog, and I can work without any rush to my template :)
June 29th, 2007 at 8:14 am
Must be a little flattering to see your work get stolen so often!
June 29th, 2007 at 6:11 am
No, that TV company is not that big,hell, ther country is small,it´s yet to be descovered and it has many financial problems!
ofcourse, that´s no excuse note for them, or anyone else!
So, Nick you won´t get som juice out of that copyright, so don´t bother…it´s not worth it..
June 29th, 2007 at 5:50 am
You should really try to sue the Tv company…. They are so big that you could realy get som juice out of that copyright!
June 29th, 2007 at 5:44 am
Unfortunately Nick, ur Illustrator design (football player) was stolen in my country too. It was also used for flyer, for football match ofcourse.
I´m from Croatia, country near Bosnia & Hercegovina.
I´m sorry…it´s everywere,
Can´t you protect in some better way?
June 28th, 2007 at 2:49 pm
That is just too bad. Granted, it is cool that someone admires your work enough to use it in something, but to not give any credit (or permission) is totally not right.
Thanks for bringing awareness to this increase of graphic thieves.
June 28th, 2007 at 12:14 pm
I think it’s quite flatering to your work. This means that your work is widely appreciated and loved. I think most people steal ideas, images, templates they love very much.
Indeed it’s frustrating, but Internet thievery has and will always exist on the Internet and there’s not much you, me or everyone can do about it, unfortunately.
June 28th, 2007 at 4:20 am
Yo! your works are impressive!
*Salutes*
Really love them!
But didn’t give even a pixel of credits to you, that’s TOO MUCH!
Awww man TV Station! Those are rich dudes who can really afford to pay!
The software system, if they are so poor and still building their company;
at least they can give some credits to you instead of claiming it like their own creations. Very misleading.
=\ $35CAD.
I feel the pain.
I’ve a few college juniors who once ripped my wallpapers and re”edited” it then print as card to sell it off BUT claimed as their own creations.
The Best Web Gallery - that’s the ultimate overload level.
How to report them?
(IF they are distributing it for commercial purposes & didn’t give any credentials.)
There are ways to watermark your creations and implement scripts to “disable” users from downloading your GUI’s automatically.
For websites, you can report to their web hosting companies.
Besides Creative Common License & some other copyrights & cyberlaw issues.
But different countries practice it differently.
Else bombard them in the comment sites & fully publish out a violation of copyrights copycats. Shame them to the max.
June 28th, 2007 at 1:34 am
Wait, do I see correctly? You’re saying some one stole your text CSS styles? Don’t you think thats a bit of a … HUGE stretch?
You can’t copyright orange links/whatever.
Give me a break.
June 27th, 2007 at 11:15 pm
so cool,i like it!