[Brad]

Originally Posted by AuroraStorm

I found a site that was redistributing paid works of some coders and warned one coder of what was happening. She, in turn, posted a thread about it warning others that their works were stolen but the thread was censored by a mod because I guess she wasn't supposed to post it. I was on my way to notifying some of the others when I saw her being dressed down about it so it made me back off.

Now, I'm not a coder and I appreciate the hard work of those who put out fabulous work but it seems to me that vb only want to hear about it when their software is ripped. The coders do a lot of work to enhance vb software and it would only seem fair (to me) to at least allow them some way to warn others when the works have been stolen.

You are correct that Jelsoft doesn't "care" that hacks/mods are begin uploaded to warez sites. Well I wouldn't go so far as to say they don't care..when I was an admin here I did all I could to control it and we even went as far as designing a way of tracking who downloaded said files. The reason they don't track them anymore is due to one person (a coder) complaining that the .zip files he was uploading were begin modified on the fly. So if you want to complain about vB.org not begin able to control this problem you have one of your own to blame.

As for the thread in question I didn't see it but I'm willing to bet she posted a link to the site which is a no-no. Even if it was a "pm me for link" type of post I would have deleted it too...

What it comes down to is this; As programmers and designers we are responsible for our own work. So if we want to pick and choose where it is released it's up to us to hire our own lawyers and start fighting these warez sites through the legal system (if that is even possible, a lot of places don't respect copyright laws).

In summary;

1. Jelsoft is only concerned with stopping people who pirate vBulletin.
2. It's up to whomever released the modification to deal with people that distribute their work. Send DMCA notices..hire lawyers...pay court fees...etc.
3. Hunting down the people that upload modifications is useless as there will always been more people to replace them.

Something to think about; Is it worth spending time/money shutting down sites that distribute modifications that were released for free in the first place? Keep in mind that users of such sites have a hard time getting proper support because they can't post here. Also keep in mind that you're not losing anything if your free modification is on a warez site...if anything it's helpful to you because it gets your name out there. The warez scene respects quality code and programmers just like we do here...is a little promotion on a shady site really such a bad thing?

Last but not least; People that use warez software rarely pay for commercial software anyway. So even if one of your commercial modifications is on a warez site you probably didn't lose any money. Heck you might even make some money. A lot of people use warez software to try out things before they buy them.

The point I'm trying to drive home; You gotta learn to live with warez and the people that use it because it/they aren't going away any time soon. The scene is as strong as ever and as long as usenet is still active I don't see it slowing down anytime soon.