A question of ethics, or contributory copyright theft ?

If anything, the profits should be given to charity if the original author isn’t willing to go through hoops to get his fair share.

Anyways, I’m not sure this forum is the place to be discussing such matters but perhaps with the up rise in authors voicing their opinion Envato is going to create an official statement regarding the issue.

I reported a user with blatant copyright, he uploads another piece with another texture stolen from a site that clearly states cannot be used for commercial purposes. I cannot continue to do their jobs and maintain ethical practices with the materials being listed on the site. Perhaps if there was a compensation plan for reporting this type of behavior, I would be more than willing to go above and beyond with investigating all files that were uploaded.

Perhaps a portion the profits of the affected item should be given to those who reported the item.

The issue is , if it isn’t discussed here … then where ?

Surely, such major issues cannot be relegated to the “Contact support” one liner !

lol

I’ve reported many an item for copyright reasons. I think this should lie with the reviewers as they should ensure it isn’t a rip (and sometimes it’s so obvious it’s laughable it gets passed). I think envato should ‘hold’ items for 2-3 days before public sale to check this type of thing.

I feel this will be yet another huge thread were staff will eventually come along and reply. We’re just playing cat and mouse with envato.

For reference, here’s all the copyright threads that have popped up recently:

I count 6 too many.

There appear to be two things being discussed here.

1) Someone else’s work stolen and uploaded here.

2) Someone ripped off an idea and created a product from scratch that looks like a product that someone else is selling but other than the idea they have nothing in common.

I don’t think it’s fair to treat both as violations of copyright.

1. is supposedly being handled by DMCA take downs and your asked to contact support with this [This is a violation].

2. ideas, procedures, methods, systems, processes, concepts, principles, discoveries, or devices, as distinguished from a description, explanation, or illustration aren’t covered by copyright. so unless the claiming party holds a patent, it should be perfectly ok to compete with someone else that has a similar product ( unless the code used to develop the product is a ripoff from the original ).

Ale55andro said
2) Someone ripped off an idea and created a product from scratch that looks like a product that someone else is selling but other than the idea they have nothing in common.

Ugh, NO! We’re all talking about copyright violation. Ripping work generally comes with copyright infringement. Must I include the 20 or so articles explaining why??!

xstortionist said

Ale55andro said
2) Someone ripped off an idea and created a product from scratch that looks like a product that someone else is selling but other than the idea they have nothing in common.

Ugh, NO! We’re all talking about copyright violation. Ripping work generally comes with copyright infringement. Must I include the 20 or so articles explaining why??!

SportTipsWorld said
Crazy huh, and trust me its a bad rip.. Disgusting ui, and poorly executed, demo is hideous etc…

It appears to me that someone tried to rewrite an existing product and not rip off the code but the general idea.

This pointless. Have you ever heard of “find and replace” ??! It’s pretty easy to just change functions comments and call it your own and act innocent. This is a big problem, there needs to be something set in place.

xstortionist said
This pointless. Have you ever heard of “find and replace” ??! It’s pretty easy to just change functions comments and call it your own and act innocent. This is a big problem, there needs to be something set in place.

Why do you keep wanting to derail the thread into something else. What you bring up is a big problem and is generally handled here through filing DMCA notices.

I’m only trying to respond to the op, who IMHO speaks of a totally different issue all together, unless I’m wrong.

@thecodingdude, threads started on the weekends (in Australia) tend to take us a little longer to get to, as we aren’t all working when they are posted.

You all know the reasons why we don’t allow copyright/warez conversations on the forums. Basically we don’t want to draw attention to bad behaviour or encourage it on our site. However, I am not going to lock or disable this thread right now, as I understand that you are frustrated and have questions about how we deal with these issues.

I’m currently working with Collis to write a post which addresses the questions you have asked and will be posting it in the next week. We know this is an important issue for you guys and I want to make sure we answer your questions as well as we can.