RIPPING Commercial Themes!
 

It has been brought to my attention that a member here has commissioned another member to RIP one of my Private Commercial Themes, namely the TREK TALK Theme for trek-talk.com.
Is this acceptable behaviour on this site then, I thought ripping was frowned upon here.
This is the thread with the request:
https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/showthread.php?t=218792
The request may seem innocent but a friend of mine here was approached to rip the Theme, he refused of course, the member here asking for the rip has already taken the statusicons.
This is the site I made TREK TALK for:
http://trek-talk.com/
I am very concerned about this.

Sorry - there's nothing you can do about someone admiring your style and wanting a similar design. Happens all the time = Get used to it or shut down your site. Be flattered perhaps... Truly though - There is really no way to stop people from ripping your style unfortunately - I see it all the time and who's to say the style wasn't originally birthed in someone elses mind...?

Hmmm - I'm sure you do not want to hire an attorney for everytime someone "borrows" an image from your site. Surely no... If yes - you may want to tell your attorney(s) to begin their hunt with Google Images :)

At anyrate - not to be a complete smartass - but that request you linked to is not requesting a rip of your site. It's someone who apparently admires your concept and wants a SIMILAR style.

I actually responded to that thread (without having looked at your site) because I am a Trekkie from way back - I thought it would be interesting to build a custom Star Trek themed vBulletin style.

Anyway - were I you - I would not worry about your theme being ripped - it's kewl - but it's not all that to be honest - and the images you have used for the header have been "borrowed" from elsewhere and you do not own any of the myriad Star Trek images that can be got 'round the www --- So - I think the lesson here is - what's good for the goose - is good for the gaggle. Respect the fact that someone admires your style as to emulate it.

Welcome to the worldwideweb :)

Jacquii.

Ooooh, thanks for the reality check and wake up call.

$300 to design a skin and implement it haha. That's a pathetic amount of money for the time involved in designing a skin.

No one realizes this though. 300 is usually not enough to even upgrade a skin from X to Y *cough*

Why do you think they come here. Because people are stupid enough to create a style and implement it for this amount. And take note, 0 posts by the person requesting, chances are this one will end in disaster. People will never learn.

It seems enough for some, however. I guess everyone is looking for a bargain these days. Ultimately you get what you pay for, and I suspect that someone doing that kind of work for that price, will leave them with a headache when it comes to maintenance and upgrades :)

Exactly!

You get what you pay for & EidolonAH, at least they are making it BASED off your style and simply did not use it and remove your copyright/branding as I have seen that so many times it makes me sick.

You release it here and if I like it I will use it, I will honor your credits etc but that is just me and we can't think everyone else is like us or even someone we like. Different minds can think alike or the norm completely opposite :p.

that link shown surely is not a request to rip.
But I against ripping because I am in this business. However I cannot stop it from happen even my skin is cheap.

I had something similar happen to me , but the other way around , i had a commercial forum rip off my images .

Having this in my footer probably helps some

Cost me ~$2,000 for Registration .

I contacted them and asked them to remove them. They told me that they "got the idea" from me but made them from scratch.

I investigated see attachment ....

then reported to them that the images were the same they just hacked em up . I told them if they removed them i would make them custom ones .. and so i did and all is well