Well this is my site:

And today I found this site belonging to a Renderosity community member:

This dude just downloaded my site and replaced my images with his own! This is just to blatant.

What an asshole.
Start by finding out in which forums he hang, and publically ask him why hes steeling other peoples webpages.
Whats his nick here?

Edit, Btw, if you click on "his" updates, your images are still there, as well as your name on some of the pages.

Message edited on: 11/18/2004 13:16 ...and edit, never mind the nick, ive found it.

Message edited on: 11/18/2004 13:22

"Edit, Btw, if you click on "his" updates, your images are still there, as well as your name on some of the pages" yepp... that the way I found out about it via my stats/logs I found his nick by searching for his name in the community member database.

I suggest sending the guy an email, informing him that copyright violation is a crime in most countries. Or contact his web providor and inform them about this. They should be able to close his webpage.

Also, if you look at View/Source you'll see all the stuff still in there. I'm guessing that it was done in innocence - years ago when I didn't know how to set up websites I did something similar, because I didn't know how to organize tables. I wasn't really trying to steal someone's site, just wanted a base of tables to mess around with. Have mercy on him.......

What a dooofus! I also think it's ironic, or more likely moronic, that the dude even copied the "copyright" symbol, as though to protect himself from being "copied". This guy is pathetic.

Haha.. now I also know how he looks. Yepp.. messaged him about it. I'll see how he reacts.

imitation is the sincerest form of flattery...

yeah, flattery like that would piss me off. granted, bazze's reacting in a much nicer way than i would. drac (horsies in your inbox)

btw, that guy, from the looks of his name is russian/ukrainean, etc. Those guys, as most people in Eastern Europe, simply don't give a rat's ass about copyright. You might be able to talk to him, but there's nothing you will be able to do to him. Sending an email to his ISP or hosting provider isnt't going to get you anywhere.

drac
(ergo, horsies in his inbox)

Message edited on: 11/18/2004 13:46

"most people in Eastern Europe simply don't give a rat's ass about copyright." Tell me about it - I'm born in Poland

oh, then you know. nm :)

pog may be on to something...he may havejust wanted to copy your format...it's a lot easier to copy source then edit then it is to go from scratch. He may just be a lazy editor....or an ass....I'm not ruling that out. :)

Attached Link: http://www.protware.com/

FLASH is a good option too...

sorry, but no-right click scriplets would piss me off even more than someone stealing my page :D drac (with issues)

no-right-click scripts are only there to give people more incentive to steal images. I've never seen a succesful one. I'm with Kemal. You can't check the source of a FLASH movie.

Attached Link: http://www.renderosity.com/viewed.ez?galleryid=813785&

The guy is from Bulgaria. Drac, he's your neighbour. :-) Apropos protware: DOESN'T WORK! Does! Not! The author knows crap about crap. I can copy whatever text I want from his page. I can right-click and save whatever I want. I could probably print the page if I had a printer installed. Damn Internet Explorer-centric ... Furthermore, encrypted HTML is not HTML anymore and defeats the purpose of the standard. If anybody doesn't have javascript enabled, the site is unusable. BTW, don't start me on sites done in Flash. And there are programs which can dissect a Flash site, too. erlik (with many more issues than drac)

What a dickwad! Hey, I like the pic with the mouse ;-)

If he stole your site, innocence is no excuse under the law....
.
If he is a member here report it to one of the Admins, get him banned from this site, and then send him a 'cease and desist' letter, you can find a sample at;
www.rightsforartists.com. Then send a letter to his ISP, see the rights site for a sample and how to do it.

I personally take a hardline on this type of thing because people think both artwork and sites are free for the taking just because they are on the web, copyright notices not withstanding, and until every web designer and artist exercises their rights, this type of thing will continue.

I make a living doing artwork, and if someone steals it to give away or sell, it cuts into my life and how I'm able to support it. I know alot of you do this as a hobby, but if 'you' let them get away with it everyone who makes a living doing artwork or web design suffers.

Please persue this person for violating your copyright, until people learn that what isn't yours you can't have or use, this type of thing will go on and on....

The letter to his ISP normally will get his site pulled, and there isn't d*mn thing he can do about it....in fact the IP doesn't even have to inform him his site is being pulled, they just shut it down.....surprise, suprise!!

Sorry if you have already done this....but, you might want to post this in the copyright forum as well...Cooler, likes this kind of stuff ;). I'm sure he can help tremendously.

@ Erlic :) Dissecting FLASH, yes, but much harder to deal with than HTML editor and code (I mean, HTML is nothing more then "cut" and "paste", basicly)... But, there is like literaly hundreds of free very nice HTML templates on the web, WTF that moron was thinking ???? @ Zhann: ISP's in Bulgaria do not give a damn about issues like that, best thing is to bann his arse from Renderosity !

Bazze, I agree with Zhann. We shouldnt just throw our hands up in the air and spit out expletives and say to ourselves that nothing can be done about the situation. Simply because other countries are not inclined to follow common civil decency, international commercial laws and respect copyrights doesnt mean they should be spared international public nagging and nuisance correspondence besieging them to stop the practice. Perhaps with enough pubic resentment displayed, these ISPs may find a reason to change their ways particularly if it hurts them financially. Perhaps we can start something here if you can provide us the appropriate email addresses for the ISP involved, we can make a concerted, united effort to bombard the ISP concerning this violation of public trust practice. Maybe even involve other forums here to take issue. I for one would certainly take the time to write to them, I think its worth the effort.

Well, after sending the cease and desist, send him the penalties for infringement, these will be upheld through the Berne convention;

"...For those unaware of the penalty for copyright infringement, this could happen to you;

The owner of a registered copyright can enforce his rights by bringing a civil lawsuit in Federal District Court. Or file with the FBI and Interpol to set up the necessary court and arrest paperwork for those who are international offenders. In addition, the U.S.Federal government itself can act. Criminal actions can be brought by the U.S. Attorney; and Customs and Postal officials may seize and impound infringing articles that are being imported. Recovery of attorneys' fees is possible if the suit is successful. The penalties for infringement can be substantial.

In civil actions brought by the copyright owner, the court may order forfeiture and/or destruction not only of all infringing articles, but also of any implements used to manufacture the infringing articles(read that as YOUR computer and All your software). The court may even order seizure and impoundment of such articles prior to trial, and in some cases, without prior notice to the alleged infringer.

In addition to obtaining an order stopping the infringement and ordering destruction of infringing articles, the court can order payment of any provable damages, including lost profits. The copyright owner can elect to receive "statutory damages". The minimum amount of statutory damages that can be awarded for copyright infringement is $500; and the maximum is $20,000. If the infringement was willful, the potential statutory damage award is increased to $100,000 for each act of infringement.

In addition, attorneys' fees may be awarded. In addition to civil penalties, copyright infringers can be prosecuted under the federal criminal laws. All willful copyright infringement is a criminal offense. The lowest penalty is conviction of a federal misdemeanor, with a prison sentence of up to one year and a fine of up to $5000

More serious penalties are levied against infringers who make multiple copies of a work, or who copy expensive works. It is a felony, punishable by up to five years in prison and a fine of up to $250,000 to willfully infringe copyrights of others by making, during a 180-day period, ten or more copies of a work which have a cumulative value of $2500 or more. Second and subsequent offenses carry a 'prison terms' of up to ten years in addition to the fine. Companies which willfully infringe can be assessed up to $500,000 in fines..."

Oh come on, you could drive yourself mad taking something so seriously. An e-mail is going to embarress the guy into changing the site. He's obviously an amateur, it's not like he's copied it and started charging people for it. I can see Zhann's point of view as well - I once walked into a pub in the city and found that THE WHOLE PUB was decorated with illegal copies of something that I'd made as a limited edition (the mouldmaker had taken a sly mould for himself). But that guy doesn't know his arse from his elbow about HTML, to such an extent that he doesn't even know enough to remove your links. Stuff like that really isn't done from malice, but from ignorance. He hasn't copied your images, far as I can see. He probably didn't even realise that you had made the site yourself. Sometimes ignorance IS an excuse, in The Real World.

He leeches files from my site (dump shows that he uses my stylesheets from my site)

I've already tried contacting the idiot but no response.

Aye, that's really, really weak. I honestly hope you take this as far as it needs to go. And nobody is really innocent, these days. This person knew for fact that he was copying when he clicked, "Copy", and that he was using it for his own stuff when he clicked, "Paste".

He's dumb enough to link to the stylesheet on your site?

Muahahahaha! 8D

You could have fun with that. Seriously...

Anyhow, it's just a matter of renaming your original css to something else. Then edit your pages to reflect this. Then make a new css file under the old name and let the fun begin.

But then again you could try the other way you were talking about, it's your site and your call.

Message edited on: 11/19/2004 04:06

Then make a new css file under the old name and let the fun begin. ROTFL - yeah, that'll get his attention if he's ignoring e-mails

Send him to sleep with the fishes.

Guess I'm ignorant, I assumed HTML was like open source and you could copy and paste and make it into your own. Didn't know there were copy writes involved with a webpage's design. Of course I would make adjustments and such to anything I copied, ie change background color, font style etc, but thats just me. And before anyone comes near me with dead fish or horse heads I haven't copied anyones websites, lol.

NONONONONONONO, any content you have on your site whether html, flash gif, jpg, whatever, that you did is under copyright, that's why at the botttom of site pages you see

'Design and content copyright by SOnSO 2004'

Ang if you copy someone else's website, whether you make minor or major changes to it that's STEALING COPYRIGHT, plain and simple...The html used to create the site in it's original form(including all Bazze's css style shts) was coded by Bazze and is under his copyright. If the guy had coded his own site this whole thing wouldn't have come up, but he STOLE Bazze's site lock, stock and barrel, verbatim, without any changes, that's a criminal offense in it'self not to mention the guy is stealing bandwidth as well, and that's jail time....=)

Message edited on: 11/19/2004 16:22

If you learn to 'use' html, or use an editor to create your own site that's perfectly alright, you just can't take something tha isn't yours and say it is, changes or no... Think of it this way, someone takes your artwork and changes a color or two and then puts it in the gallery with THEIR name on it. People will assume that this guy came up with the idea, concept, textures, models etc. they don't KNOW that it's yours and it's stolen.....then you one day stumble into his gallery to find YOUR artwork with his name on it....how do you feel?? Same with a website, Bazze came up with the concept, images, navigation, etc. they are his, and under his copyright, he has every right to feel angry and upset...

I see most of what your saying Zhann, I guess I'm not seeing the whole thing. I mean if I want a table then the code I type to make that table is the same as about a million other people with that table in their site. Once someone had this cool fading in going on when you went to their site. They can't be the only one allowed to use the code that makes their image fade. I wasn't talking about using someone else's images. Yeah if the guy used Bazze's images then hangem :-D

Ang, you don't know that they didn't create that special effect themselves, and it's the fact that if YOU 'code' something, whatever it may be, you have sole copyrights to THAT code as it is on your site integrated with your other items. Taking someone's else's code is theft. If you create a table you have copyright to THAT table. But if you copy and paste a table from someone else's website, that's theft and copyright infringement. And 'yes' maybe they created it or maybe they had permission to USE it, but you taking it with copy/paste is still theft and copyright infringement.

So as a rule of thumb, if you didn't create it, coding or artwork, you can't just take it and use it. And what makes this whole thing ludicrous is there are sites for learning html, xhml, css, THAT ALLOW YOU TO USE THEIR CODING to help you learn how to do it. So there is absolutely no reason to steal someone's else site design through their coding.....and that's what Bazze is fighting, the coding designates 'how the site will look, it's design' so the guy doing this is stealing, it's lazy, it's wrong, it's criminal, and should be punished...

Message edited on: 11/19/2004 23:56

End of story.
The guy has apologized and removed the site.

Message edited on: 11/20/2004 02:39

Y'know before I learnt HTML I used to always view source and and least cut some of the content only cause I did not know how to do what some really cool artists were doing. Course a lot of times I would ask first, but I would find it a bit flattering unless I was making money off it or they were hehe.

Attached Link: http://www.albinoblacksheep.com/flash/myhtml.php

Gawd, that was a trip, extreme strange....