Unlicensed sites
 

I have been reading this site for sometime, I have seen people talk about licensed sites and so on. Reporting ones that are not.

My question is this. What do you look for and what are they give aways. If they have a hacked out vb not licensed and they have the license info on bottom the copyright that is, how do you know if they are worth turning in or not?

I see many vb boards and I often wonder it is it legal one or not.

Anything that's supicious, report. Even if a licensed site is missing the copyright notice they're violating the license agreement.

The dead giveaway for all pirated vBs is that the latest version of vB isn't shown in the admin CP.

Ya but one can not get to there admin cp.

I just trying figure out how any are found supicious.

I personaly have my licence and in good order but I have no clue what some of the give aways are.

I see sites that use 2.2.2 or something and think why is it not updated but I am sure that can not be seen as a give away.

If in doubt, report. Jelsoft has a system that checks the URL.

I put the http:// in there, is that bad ;)

Not really NerdNations, they still check them. :)

I report sites...

That don't have the copyright notice.
Have an earlier version than 2.2.6
Generally look "dodgy" :p
Have a design that's done by someone else {e.g. vBskins.com} and which doesn't have copyright to them.

:)

... Thank you filburt :mad:

Pretty much everybody right now has a version earlier than 2.6.0.

LOL. Shut up :p I wrote it wrong, thanks for pointing it out though. :)

Just the basic stuff, old versions, copyright removal, rap sites (Just kidding ;)) etc. etc. :D

Any site that is run by a psycho...

http://www.psyplex.com/pics/autosnap3.jpg

most of the forgery's i've seen have been mobile phone sites

Version number is *not* a dead giveaway, its just as easy to get a recent version of vB as it is an old one.. In fact easier. There are versions running about same day as jelsoft releases.

Sometimes an old version just means "I've modified this board a lot and I'm too damn lazy to upgrade."

I'm not sure myself how I feel a forum is illegally running, I think sometimes you can tell from some of the posts, but I think a lot of the time, I can just 'tell', I'm sure there's logic behind it, but I don't know it :p

Well, I guess I will be the first to step up and admit this. At the beginning, I didn't go the legit way and purchase a license. I was downloading some stuff off mirc one day and saw vbulletin 2.2.9 on there. I heard about the forums from other sites that I frequented and was currently using a custom hacked phpBB board. I installed the downloaded version of vbulletin and within a few weeks, nukepirates.com sniffed out my sites and emailed me asking for the license number. I didn't know when I first downloaded the board that a license was required, but after a couple weeks of running it, I learned it was. So when I got the email from nukepirates, I immediately purchased a license from jelsoft.

Anyways, the point is.....

I'm living proof that jelsoft has a company working for them sniffing out these illegal unlicensed sites. I am now a proud owner of a licensed vbulletin board :)

Definately beats phpBB

lol, that would be me then

But like I said, it all comes down to suspicion. Better to be safe then sure. ;)

i know for sure that a site is using illegal vb. reported, and nothing was done to it. i know because i have admin priviledges to the forums.

You could always take the law into your own hands. ;)

This post was made in jest and does not in any way mean you should go out and delete thier forums

Just as with anybody else, the contractor that Jelsoft uses to handle pirated installations cannot take a site offline with its own free will. It requires the cooperation of the hosting company, especially for non-US-based sites where the law is not always helpful.

You could stop it yourself you know.

like how, should i just delete the whole thing or something lol. and these ppl, i think that it's wrong, but i don't want to cause anymore tension between me and them, which was why i chose to annonymously report them, instead of just taking down the boards myself.

In PHP include get it to randomly give out admin permissions. :)

The biggest distributors are probably p2p networks like BitTorrent.

roflmao, yeah install miserable users hack but set it for everyone!

You blew your anonminity by talking here

That would mean you'd report my site, since the skins i bought from extremepixels.com do not have copyright on - because i bought copyright removal.

My suggestion for you is to report site's without the skin copyright on to the skin author, simply because the skin is not asccociated with jelsoft, and it's not there problem.

If the skin author was then to turn around and say they did not buy the skin/copyright removal, then i would proceed to report them to jelsoft.

- Zero Tolerance

I think the thread has gone on long enough.

Piracy is wrong, report someone if you think they are a pirate. If they are not nothing will happen.