Point taken, I removed the whois information I wasn't as thorough as I usually am about that stuff.

However, the advertising link is valid.

Also, it's valid to report the nulled copies they blatantly have up. vB has resources we regular users don't.

Yep I've reported them on that front as well. Chances are they themselves are using a nulled copy as well.

Since they are probably hosted in a country that doesn't care about copyrights the advertising is probably the easiest to get them with thou.

you not going to get nowhere so dont waste your energy.If you take one down they just move to a new host and send new url out and the only loser will be you wasting your time on it.
My view on sites hosting vb hacks is i simply dont care.I come here to get what i need and thats all that matters to me.Remember a hack is like everything else,its only useful if someone can find a use for it.Many hacks will be copied from here and posted on other boards,but that dont mean there is 1000`s of users lining up to download them.

I'm not attempting to take them down, my attempts are focused in cutting off their profits.

Allow me to interrupt.
As I am also the victim of piracy.

There are 4 threads linking from the vbteam concerning request to rip my stuff even my skins are sold at a very affordable price.
But I dont really care about them because I got overexposed. At one time a vietvb also releasing my skins and I contacted them because their thread doesnt recognise me as the rightful owner.They release it just like their own.

go here and report for breaching the terms of service.

Wouldn't it be best reporting them to their sponsors each and everytime?

Hit them where it hurts. I'm sure with the people visiting their forum, they go there because they don't want to pay for anything so cutting into their income/revenue by reporting them to their ad sponsors thus the owner will need to pay for the upkeep of his/her site from his/her own pocket.

I'm sure if enough people made reports these ad companies would need to delete/void their ad account.

Maybe nexy can step in here and answer this one for me and tell me it cannot be done with every ad company they use.

actually it can be done with "legal" advertisers... but most of them are offshore... it's a complete/complex network i must say, even i do not understand the goals there... nobody get paid or what? **

it's easy for anybody to alert googleAds, they just cut the ads and take legal actions to be refund if they ever paid them before... which is rare, or we would've heard of them. but most of these pirates sites are not financed because of the ads, they use them to spread the words... these sites are found because people search for them and google show the links, no matter the piracy or not -- google is not there to enforce any law.

i evaluated personally the number of copies spread on the net for my own releases over the last 5 years... less than 10% of the entire count of my own releases on vb.org and my own place... that means i loose 10% of incomes each day. will i have to invest 10% of my time to track them and make them pay or die?...

when you go at McDonalds, they loose 15% of all of what they cook, it goes directly in the trash, or is dropped on the floor because some kid hit the bucket. do they loose 15% of their time tracking kids to not loose these buckets?!... they prefer making more fries... :)

ok, we're not that big as McDonalds, but the more we do, the harder is for them to release and support all our work. ;)

note: ** ads like the one you see on vbTeam... you will never be able to break their deals. these ads are offered by their host, which is offshore which is paid by the ads to display unsollicited ads, which is there only to make profit from hosting illegal websites... etc...

Wow I never been to vbteam before now I just seen their site and I must say they are pretty much organised and the people and staff of that forums seem to be very skilled. I am not mentioning the name of the person but there is a guy who even managed to make a vb4 style from the pictures released recently for vb 3.8.x already!!

They also seem to release their own addons and product modifications, skins apart from stealing stuffs from here.

I don't meant to praise them but I would say they are pretty organized for an illegal site.

Taking them down may not work by cutting down the ad revenue they get. I hold a decent phpbb forums myself with good traffic but my ad revenue never crossed 40 or 50 tops bucks a month. I don't think they will be depend on that to run their forums.

My guess is taking them down will be a hard task or possibly not possible.

regards

They love the attention and could care less about all these attempts. If they could be shut down or even hassled, they would have been long ago. You folks are pissing up a rope, so to speak ;)

they are not "skilled pirates", they are skilled coders who were deceived by vb.org ... this is different. the real pirates, the ones who hack softwares, there is none there... nullifying vB takes 30 seconds for anybody who ever take a look at the code, it does not need any skill to do so, any coder on vb.org can do it eyes closed.

there is more than just vbteam where you can find skilled vb coders, but they usually work for bigger projects than their own sites... there is some good companies that offer customization of your forum, and most of the time, when you see a skilled coder leave vb.org it is because they are hired by big companies that need their work 24/7...

By saying skilled I mean they are not just some dumb idiots who just steal the stuffs from here and run a site. They seem to have knowledge about what they are sharing in their just like vb.org.

To me that site looks like vb.org except that they have a different forum style and less traffic when compared to vb.org of course.

and all the "clients" are leechers who have not a single knowledge about how to manage a forum... at least, the licensed members at vb.org buy their software, they usually have a minimum of goals when opening a forum...

My guess is that people have tried and failed taking them down, and I'm pretty sure at least some of vB.orgs rules are being violated by just talking about them, but heres my 2cents.

Sure they copy the skins and hacks released here, but that just means more publicity for you, I think that they leave copyrights and linkbacks intact, and I'm pretty sure that they click installed on the mod/skin.

As far as I can see, they don't 'null' vBulletin, they merely redistribute copies nulled by other groups... and to null one copy of vBulletin, you must first buy it, so vBulletin is gaining a little money, surely.

They are organised, as far as I can see, and I see that they have the same type of questions that are found here, in the general discussion area, and they offer the same advices.

If this was all they did, offer vBulletin support and hacks, would they not be the same as vB.org?

Just wondering, and not defending them or anything.

Distributing nulled versions of vBulletin is illegal and can end up costing you large fines or land you in prison. So yeah, a little different than here.

Note that.

That generally translates as:

"If they weren't distributing nulled vB, but just the hacks and support and skins found on vBulletin.org, wouldn't they be the same type of site?"

they are not the same type of site for one reason: the members are not privileged to receive support... they are there because they are too poor to pay for the service, so they do not deserve the same interest from the guys who have the talent there... the real coders there who help the others are not "really" interested to help, they do it "for the cause"... which is pointless when your goal in life is to go higher.

everything is a question of perception.

Just another excuse for stealing IMHO. I'm pretty damn poor, and I manage the $60 a year.

I'm going to be quite blunt, if I typed half the thoughts in my head down I would be banned on the spot. That kind of little self justification running around in your heads even on it's lowest level appraising in some parts and being a bit spiteful and witty in others honestly in my opinion is what's wrong with this world. It's wrong no matter how you say it or laugh about it in between the lines. Go there and download a mod someone has hidden something in... go ahead, I hope you enjoy then come running back here posting about being hacked. Now tell me in several long paragraphs how you don't need to be lectured or how that can't happen because you did this or you know this, none of you who posted seem to know enough to make a loud voice in this thread, I can't hear you :erm: :confused: :erm:

Edit: And for the punks on that site, if they had half a clue and were trying to help the community or "your" community they would be here contributing, now chew on that the lot of ya'.

you may be getting me wrong.. I am not going to use the mods released in that site or whatever or neither I have any special interest in them. No matter what I will stick with the official support provided here and on vb.com.

But after just browsing through their site I just noticed they are just good and its an honest opinion though they are illegal. If my opinion hurts you in some way its just the way you are taking it and I have nothing to do with it or with that site. I just said what I felt thats it nothing more to it.

thanks

The bottom line about those that run/contribute there and any other place like it is they are nothing, I repeat nothing more than punka@@ thieves with over inflated ego's or perceptions of their own self worth. They are the same kind of people who never contribute anything of worth to society in real life. They think they are "all that" yet they have to do what they do in the shadows or on off shore hosts because they are thieves. If they were "all that" they'd start their own legitimate businesses or sites and make something of themselves rather than enrich their own pockets off the backs of those of us that do. I'm sure some of them are reading this thread...so yeah, I said it to you and you know who you are ;)

amen to that SMack I agree if it wasnt illegal....id remove their site from the net by all means and im sure most of you know the way id would acomplish this ....im suprised some hasent yet...but im not goin to cause i dont deal with low life trash like them i bet they all live in trailer parks with their aunt sassy and leech off the next mans internet connection..

LOL, man...

<thread>
It will never change. If the MPPA, RIAA, ESA, etc can't stop them, what makes you think vBulletin can? Sorry to be so blunt, but complaining about it in here isn't going to do a thing. My modifications get posted across the internet, but I don't create threads complaining about it. Just look at it this way: you can get the modifications first, the updates first & the help when you need it.
</thread>

It's not like the good ole days when you could leave your door open and not worry about people stealing content out of your house. Content insurance companies never existed, and employed people to begin stealing from your house. About the same time when you had to bike 5 miles to collect your loaf of bread from the local bakery which wasn't actually local but the next town away riding on cobbled paving roads.

Bye heck, youngsters nowadays.

now discuz board ( china ) copy a lot of mod to included with discuz :erm:

anyways...i just received an email from Adtoll

Email

Response:

So they are now aware about what activities are going on that this website(and im sure im prob not the only who has emailed them)

Cleaned up the thread.... if you guys can't play nice and not get into verbal slinging matches, the the thread will be closed.

I also got a similar response this morning

Have to say it but its in the advertisers best interests to look into this; if its found to be true, they can confiscate and keep the accrued publisher revenue. We all know how trigger happy google can be on 'Click Fraud'

you do not want to understand, don't you?

the advertiser is the host, and the host is offshore for ONE reason...

they don't care of what YOU think, they are right, they do what they want, they advertise where they want...

Settle down man..

why not use the cube coding so they can't null it or at least it would take em some months
just take a look at vbplaza mod the newest one is not even nulled lol

it is not nulled, but nobody use it anyway... check all the cubed releases, nobody use them, they are costly and not popular... question closed.

no one use it b/c it cost$$ lmao there r lots of ppl who want to use it if its free...

you would be surprise how many ppl will use it.

i know people would use these paid addons, no question about this... people like to use free stuff because they hate to pay someone for the job done... that's what we call slavery in numerous countries.

Yes, of course, we are all slaves now because we do the addons for free.

I think this thread has reached fantasyland.

you did not understand my comment, Paul, as usual... tsss

No nexy I think paul understood correctly. You know perfectly well you meant the members/contributors of this forum who were slaves because they provide their time and products for free. Simply because your not this type of person or fall into the category of giving (probably more taking) this doesn't mean we are slaves to jelsoft.

Personally, I don't regard myself as a slave here. I don't post to gain or receive any financial incentives (which some people aim for in this thread) but rather because I post to gain experience. Not slavery nexy, and, like glass we understood your remark quite clear which makes your involvement in this thread truly transparent.

There's a few comments you can get away with in this thread but most of it is pure and utter garbage which you know already (you don't need me to point that out to you). Here i was expecting to go for 3 out of 3 in the way of agreeing with you. You fall short in your comments nexy you need to go another route and quit clutching at straws.

some people here just think paranoid, that's the only reason why you think "I AM" the bad guy here... that's so pathetic, it's just like you need to point at me when you have no more arguments.

working for free is slavery ?!... so why do i have 100% of my stuff provided for free on my site? i was commenting badboyz opinion on "if it would be free people would use it"... funnily, i'm sure that Shelley would be 500% happy to be paid for the packs she's releasing... no?!... you do your entire stuff just for the fun, you hope to never have a paid client, you wish to be on the free market forever, being paid with peanuts ??

stop "trying" to flame on me, because you fail.

effectivly Paul, this thread is becoming a real circus...

edit: and oh, i was refering to people not willing to pay for good job to be slavery... learn to read english.