[Roms]

Originally Posted by DirectPixel

Okay, want to hear my official stance about this? I personally think you should not be making this style in the first place.

If anybody were to release the SkyBlue skin to the public in conjunction with the admins at vB.org, it'd be me.

You mean well with all the time and effort you've put into your project, but at the end of the day, like infantrymen mentioned, you're seeking to obtain permission after the fact. Which, by the way, is completely illegal.

Creating an existing skin from scratch is painstakingly easy. There is no creativity involved and everything becomes so much easier to do when you can simply use the eye-droplet tool to obtain an exact color scheme. Whether you created the skin from scratch or not, I simply don't care. The fact of the matter is: your end-result intentionally looks almost exactly like vBulletin.org's skin. And have you obtained permission yet? No. Therefore, you are currently in violation of US and international copyright laws. Which means, if I wanted to, I can easily mail off a templated DMCA violation letter to your host and ISP and get you shut down. Luckily for you, I wont.

At the end of the day, it seems to me as if you're going to be going ahead with this either way. It sounds to me as if you are simply trying to seek official permission to justify what you plan on doing anyways. Why else would you spend all the time and effort up-front?

Me, along with quite a few other members of the forums, have expressed our opinions against your stated intentions. Whether or not you go through with this is ultimately your choice--but at least have some respect for the original author. You come in here showing off this skin with barely any prior notice to either me nor the vB.org staff, and worse yet, you don't even mention vBulletin.org nor my name in the footer. That's just not nice.


Just because there are a lot, does not in any way make the act of doing it legal.

I could not agree more.

(Originally Posted by Corriewf) At the end of the day, there are thousands on thousands of styles out there that look much like each other in someway......Heck I know of a couple of style for other softwares like IPB and PHPBB that were converted to vB. No one is complaining about that.....

Just because people aren't complaining doesn't make it right.

(Trigunflame) Im not brushed up on copyright laws, but Im pretty sure its not illegal to create something that "looks" like "something" as long as its not a trademark, logo etc..

The bulk of vbulletin styles are nothing more than color codes in the first place; and im pretty sure you cant copyright that

What is this style if you want to get specific.. blue with transparent clouds and some line work; this is not the first of its nature and its not unique.. ive seen many like it and actually have got an opinion from many graphics artist saying the design of this theme was copied from another site..

Now im not liberty to say whether it is or not, I dont care.. im not a graphics person but Im pretty sure it would not be against the law for this guy to create a theme based off his original work with inspiration from another work.

Regardless if you or vbulletin.org give him permission or not.

Similar or not the fact is he did copy this style pixel for pixel. It's exact and that's what he intended, there was no "inspiration" what so ever. Now he wants everyone to validate him and say it's okay. It's already been copied, why is he asking permission now???