Violation Against Our Wordpress Themes
I only allow my free Wordpress themes to be downloaded from this (mystical-twilight.com) site. I keep track of the download count, and with reason. I’ve recently discovered a few places offering my themes for download.
One site nicely took my theme down as it was their visitors submitting and uploading themes. They didn’t see my page where it says “Do not offer our themes for download“. But the person submitting them would have seen my note. Please, don’t submit my themes anywhere where people can download them. Now my download stats are invalid and this is upsetting for me.
I found a site, themesbase.com, offering my themes. I couldn’t find contact information so I used the comments to tell them to remove my themes. I contacted the host as well. My 2 themes which were being offered there were removed, but then today I see them back up and the site now has a contact form and a notice across the footer.
All themes and styles are uploaded by the visitors of our site,
ThemesBase.com is not responsible for any copyright infringement, if you have any problems please feel free to contact us.
LMAO! The site is just over a month old and they claim ALL themes and style were uploaded by visitors! Folks, have you see how many they have? It’s clear they gathered the content themeselves, to start at least. Go download a theme, open footer.php and look at the encrypted code! THAT they cannot blame on visitors, they did it themselves, and it’s wrong!
Well wait til you read this next bit. While they make the statement above now after me threatening legal action, there’s no way around the fact that themesbase.com has placed encrypted code (see prior blog entry) in my themes’ footer, and all the other themes there as well.
This code once parsed by the browser places links back to themesbase.com and a floral shop online. The whole reason I found all this is because in my Wordpress admin dashboard, I saw this incoming link on the right, agppa.org.au/blog/. I went to check it out, as I normally would.
I see he’s using Blue Tech and my link is removed, leaving just a “Designed by” in the footer and then underneath, links to 2 other sites, which I didn’t think anything of at the time, but I clicked the themesbase one and discovered the website which this whole entry is based on. I left a comment at agppa.org.au/blog/ telling him my link needs to remain in the footer, then after finding out it wasn’t him who removed it, I explained the situation and asked him to download the correct theme from my site, which he did, thanks Roger! 
I am not sure if my link in the footer was missing because maybe agppa.org.au broke something or if the encrypted code in my prior blog entry is telling it not to display. If you can tell what his code does aside from what Shawn mentioned, let me know, I need to know if it was causing my link to disappear.
Also upsetting for me is a person leaving a comment for one of my themes and saying…
I really liked the look of this, until I installed it. Unfortunately, it does not validate. Some type of silly attempt was made to encrypt something in the footer, which threw off the validation.”
Gee, thanks themesbase for sticking encrypted code in MY and others free themes’ footers and causing them to not validate, on top of the insult of trying to profit from everyone’s hard work.
Either way, I will say this. I’m not happy about this. All the people who are using my themes and downloaded them from themesbase are now linking out to some criminal’s sites and I am not getting credit for my work.
The host for themesbase.com replied to me and said the following:
Hello Colleen,
I will forward your message to our customer but you will need to comply with
DMCA before we can take action. Please see our DMCA compliance in section X
here: choopa.com/corporate/terms_and_conditions.phpThank you,
David Gucker
dgucker {at} choopa.com
Lastly, after using the contact form at themesbase today and explaining why I don’t want my themes offered for download, they’ve once again removed one theme, however they didn’t remove Blue Tech because it INCORRECTLY is credited to Becca Wei, I want everyone to know this site is sticking encrypted code in the footers of free themes, for his own gain. If you’re USING a theme, fine, put links all over the place, I don’t care. But DON’T go repackage someone else’s hard work and offer it for download so your link is in the footer of hundred’s of sites for work you did not do, this is completely wrong.
At this rate, 100 sites can offer them for download, and if they all got it somewhere else, what? They can just add their link to the footer after the other 100 links in the footer, see, that would be silly. What this site, themesbase, is doing is wrong. Aside from offering my themes for download when I made it clear it’s not allowed… he’s linking two of his own sites in the footer. That note they placed up today in the footer is a lame attempt to protect themselves when they’re actually still doing something wrong by modifying the themes code for profit. Yes profit, a floral boutique which sells bouquets of flowers.
I’ve already contacted two designers about what’s been done to their free themes code.
I am planning my next step in this whole mess, and in the meantime, I am seriously reconsidering offering free themes. While I loved doing it, this has put a damper on something I loved to do, yes it’s rained on my parade folks. 
Only I, Colleen Chard, have rights to offer for download my own work. We’ll see what happens.
Oh and this theme you’re viewing as of this post, is new today, hope it’s easy on your eyes, it’s called “Cosmic Cluster”.
May 10th, 2006 at 10:47 pm
Colleen, I am so sorry you are having to deal with this. I hope it can get straightened out without having to resort to legal action. This is absolutely outrageous!
May 10th, 2006 at 11:25 pm
Thanks Jill!
I wish I wasn’t dealing with it either, it’s just more stress I don’t need. My themes were taken down at least but they’re doing this to many others and to me that sucks.
May 11th, 2006 at 7:42 am
I know exactly how you feel. Once upon a time I created a beautiful website in my html days and someone copied it directly by using the exact source code and downloading all of the images I had designed and photos I’d collected. They then had the cheek to ask me to be their sister site. It upset me to the point that I took the site down.
Your case is a real shame, but hardly surprising; your themes are amazing. Try not to get too upset about it, they say immitation is the great form of flattery. Rest assured that you created these themes, they belong to you and morally you are in the right.
Please don’t stop giving them away, it’s people like you who are what the web is all about. Not some daft prat who steals other peoples ideas and then sells them via advertising for a flower shop.
If this doesn’t console you then bare in mind that my site uses your corporate-pro theme and I love it! I’ve been looking for a theme I’m happy with for ages and yours makes my site look lovely.
May 11th, 2006 at 2:07 pm
Colleen, contact Wordpress, they might be able to do something to raise the attention of this wankers using your themes (and others too!) I wish I could hack cos I’d hack their arses off - bastards
May 11th, 2006 at 4:40 pm
Awsome new theme Colleen!
Well, I myself released a skin for IPB a while back and already had a couple of violations. The way I try to think of it is that this just comes with the territory. Some people will steal your work, but hopefully those that respect it make it worth while at the end of the day.
I would say do what you can to go after the violators. Work on a plan that makes it worth your time stealing your stuff. The sites that remove our credit from the skin receive a nice invoice from us with a charge for the credit removal ($39), and a fee for removal of credit before the purchase of the permission to do so. Some peeps pay up, and appologise. I think the trick is to make it look like you’ve dealt with this before, and this is only the first card. Make it easy for them to comply, but at the same time worth your time. The casual crooks get a good scare out of a well organised pursuit. They are worried you are severl steps ahead of them, and want out at the first sign of trouble…
… but that is just my experience. I am sure it does not apply to every case. With peeps putting in their own credits, this should be easy to deal with: contact the flower shop and ask them if they are aware of people using stolen property to advretise their shop. That should get them to pull the adverts quickly, and hopefully put the crooks that place these links out of business.
May 12th, 2006 at 4:29 pm
wow. that’s seriously evil. i’ve seen a lot of sites scraping wordpress themes, but this is a new low.
it’s understandable that their hosts won’t do anything without a DMCA request, but what they’re doing is evil enough to warrant the effort. (i wouldn’t want my host taking down my site without serious evidence against me)
May 12th, 2006 at 5:16 pm
He doesn’t understand why designers care if he adds his two links to our themes…
I think it’s obvious why we don’t like it!
May 12th, 2006 at 5:47 pm
He does not need to understand the rules. He simply has to follow them. His understanding of the situation has no impact on it. It’s really very simple that way…
May 23rd, 2006 at 8:27 am
Sorry to hear this Colleen, it is truly a crooked world out there. Please keep us uptodate on what has, is, and will be done with this situation.