How do you deal with Skin Thieves?
 

I often browse other people's forums... just to get ideas of the aesthetics of my own forums... But I was browsing through some forums of people responding on the Video-Directory mod when I realised that one of these forums had blatantly stolen one of my forum skins! Didn't even do it right, it looks ugly... and didn't even give my website any credit either.

My Forum: http://www.8wayrun.com/index.php?styleid=4
Stolen Skin: *** Removed ***
User: *** Removed ***

So how do you deal with something like this? This guy was emailing two weeks ago, asking if he could use my skin and if I would send him the PSDs. But I turned him down... yet he stole my skin anyways.

Was it a custom skin made by you?

The Skin on your site is made by ShenYu as stated in your footer.

If it was a skin customised just for you and was paid for then generally the skin designer can't really sell it on, but if you simply used there skin for free then normally you will find other sites that will use it to

have you been in touch with the skin designer to see if they've released it to anyone else??? :confused:

ShenYu is a member of my forums... its a skin he made custom just for us... he has not released it anywhere else. He simply made the mockup PSD; I'm the one who cut all the images and coded the skin... so he doesn't even have the data to release it elsewhere. Not to mention, a lot of the stuff on the skin right now wasn't even in his original PSD; a lot I customized myself.

Then honestly, how could he steal your skin?

umm... download the images/CSS off my page? the same way anyone steals any website design.

maybe you should watermark your skin to atleast make it less desireable to others.

All i can recommend is that you formally ask them to remove that skin from their site, You really should also have a skin copyright on your forum also.

Failing that then perhaps a complaint to their web host, saying that legal action could be taken against the site and the host also.

I wouldn't build your hopes up too much in that department, but never the less good luck ;)

Well I've been PMing him...

I would still email his host, keep up us upto date with this as i'm sure idiots like him effect us all at one stage or another.

Good Luck :up:

I have since contacted his hosts at http://www.klavye.net/

that really sucks, and to make it worst, his site is actually running more successfully than yours.

sorry jaxel, good luck with getting him to remove it. but from what i've come to notice, it's almost impossible to get people who stole your design to remove it. especially since he seems to have done a pretty decent job with it, and since he must've re-coded most of it himself, it probably was too much work for him to simply remove it and look for another one.

He didn't do a good job... it looks ugly as hell...

Either way... the way I see it, its easy as hell to steal a VB skin... just download all the images and download the CSS file... done.

It's a bit harder than that... Did you not modify any templates?

In any case, those who resort to stealing a style probably aren't running successful forums anyway.

I have found that the best way to stop skin theft is to contact the site owner, with a solicitors letter, if that fails then go to the server provider.

Here is some great additional advice:
http://lorelle.wordpress.com/2006/04...-your-content/

Of course I modified templates... but if you look at his site, he hasn't (which is why it looks ugly as hell)...

lol bud i got my new skin stolen within 10mins of me posting it on vb.org review forum.

altho the person stole it to offer to his forum members as a download lol

not even going to bother trying to sort it tbh. these things happen.

lol,10 minutes is pretty quick

Usually a DMCA notice informing them of the ramifications of their actions, and what harm can potentially be done to them for using such stolen work: http://www.google.com/dmca.html