The last week was a hectic one. Not only did I have to work a lot on some projects, but I had to take care of some unpleasant business too. It was late in the afternoon when I got a message from my good friend Adriana. Something like: “Hey, a kid stole your template from MyBB.ro .. see what you can do about this”.

I was already breathing heavily when I got to the site .. and looked at a thread. The teen who did this, even bragged about the fact he was able to mimic my style on his personal forum. He was good. Those of you who create skins know how hard myBB is to skin. And still, the kid made a duplicate of my skin in few hours. God he was good.

People say that imitation is a form of flattery .. well, when you see someone copy-paste your hard worked UNIQUE skin for a forum, believe me flattery is the last thing you feel. Let’s see how I was able to deal with this.

1. Make sure he knows I know

I contacted him on email, on my site and even on this forum. He deleted the post on his forums, but on mine the thread remained with all the information. I didn’t get any answer on the email though.

2. Try to talk some sense

The problem is that many of such offenders won’t quite care about the fact they stole something. I got something like: “OK, tell me what images to delete, the code is public”.

WAIT A SECOND: the HTML and CSS code is public indeed. THE COMBINATION used in my template IS NOT. We all use letters to form words .. these are public indeed. But copy a book on your site and see how nice the author reacts. A CSS based template for instance is created by the genius of someone who knows how to manage this code. I am sure the author wouldn’t be too thrilled to see me steal the exact code and use it on my site. If your site looks like mine, I’LL GET YOU.

I had some issues in the past with stolen articles and a logo, but I was able to come to a deal fast. I told them to remove the stolen content and they did this in few hours.

3. Prepare for the battle and make a fuss about this

OK. I am not the one to let something like this go unpunished. In the end it’s clear who stole and who’s the original creator. Still, even if people won’t respect his site, knowing it’s got a stolen layout, I don’t like seeing my layouts being copied. So I prepared the ways to try and come to a deal.

I was prepared to talk to his parents. I looked at the whois for the domain and I had ALL the information I needed to start getting more personal. I was also prepared to write him an invoice for the layout. OK, do you like it that much? PAY for the darn thing and we’re OK. I was sure he wouldn’t pay, but it would scare the parents

Make a huge fuss online. I started discussing this on some forums I am active in, giving a direct link to my site and just the address (unclickable) for his site. Yes, I got some traffic too … and they all agreed that it’s a clear copy-cat.

Prepare the lawyer. I have a woman lawyer who’s ready for such issues, I can prove with sources the dates of my designs, I am sure I’d have given him a run for his money in the court too. Would I go this far? Quite possible. I do have my own firm now and can talk some more business. And by knowing how to “milk” all this episode traffic wise, I am sure I wouldn’t regret it that much.

THE END: after putting my plan on the forums (discussion with the parents, lawyer, a chat with the host to suspend his account etc.) I was contacted by him and he changed the layout in minutes. I was sad to see a 14 year old work till midnight on the changes, but in the end it wasn’t my fault he stole the site.

What also made me sad is that the kid is very good with this. I am sure that even without stealing layouts he’d be able to come up with an awesome theme. Some people are very gifted. Let’s hope they learn in time to respect other people’s work and know how to develop original themes.

Did you have such problems? Why not tell your story?

Filed under: Internet by ramona