Blocking use of my theme without proof of purchase

I have been having trouble with people running my theme without actually having purchased a license from ThemeForest. While I’m not an ungrateful kind of guy (I’m extremely thankful for all of my sales), I am getting sort of sick of it. I almost considered using a mechanism on the theme that blocked functionality without the user entering in a public key or password of some sort in the theme options panel. I have two questions for the community:

1) Is this in any way against Envato’s terms of service, or could this be construed as shady or unethical in any way at all?

2) Has anyone else gone about integrating something like this into any of their themes? If so, how did you do it?

Thanks everyone, and happy holidays!

Brian

I don’t recommend such practice cause you may scare off “good” buyers and the “bad” one still find a way to bypass you block

It is unethical and not allowed to sell a file that is blocked on purpose or has purposely implemented bugs. Considering not all buyers are good at WP or HTML or whatever, this may be a bit confusing to your average Joe , but, I believe that using the Envato API and the license key would be allowed, in any way, the forums are the right place to direct this question. I also suggest you contact supportor staff to give you a definitive answer!

unfortunately doing that will most likely make your problem worse, people tend to try and bypass “locked” items more than stuff thats not it would almost be a target on your themes for people to try break and share, if that makes any sense

OrganicBeeMedia said
unfortunately doing that will most likely make your problem worse, people tend to try and bypass “locked” items more than stuff thats not it would almost be a target on your themes for people to try break and share, if that makes any sense

Agreed

Thanks everyone, this is exactly why I turn to the forums – it’s full of people smarter (and more experienced) than me! Your replies definitely make sense.