- Sold between 100 000 and 250 000 dollars
- Author had a File in an Envato Bundle
- Has been a member for 4-5 years
- Author had a Free File of the Month
- Won a Competition
- Author was Featured
- Item was Featured
- Bought between 10 and 49 items
Did i get your attention ? good. Now straight to the point: a recent item (which i wouldn’t mention) was taken down because being a shameless rip.
And by shameless i mean that i ran diff tool against original and ripped html/css code and the tool found out that of the total 202 lines, 188 were exactly the same, line by line, char by char.
That’s a shiny 93%. It could have been worse only by uploading the original item as-is. If “Themeforest rip” was on wikipedia, you’d find a link to this item in the “References” section.
So why i’m posting this ? Because it took Envato 4 days to take this crap down, probably waiting for the original author to send a DMCA but, even worst, the frikking ripper account, who had this single item for sale, is still there.
Are you serious ? That’s how you protect your authors ? designers and developers working their ass, every day, to run a business around your marketplaces ?
And two more things about this whole “we-only-take-items-down-if-a-DMCA-is-sent policy”
1 – a counter DMCA would be enough to have a copycat for sale again
2 – if an exclusive author is found selling the same items in other places you don’t require a DMCA to take them down.
Our wallets are not less important than yours.
- Has been a member for 4-5 years
- Item was Featured
- Author was Featured
- Bought between 100 and 499 items
- Referred between 200 and 499 users
- Exclusive Author
- Microlancer Beta Tester
- Author had a Free File of the Month
+1
Not only it harms authors but buyers who also spend their money on ripped themes with no support after they are removed, and with “stolen” design which is bad per se.
Seriously this DMCA policy just doesn’t work as it should.
- Has been a member for 3-4 years
- Attended a Community Meetup
- Repeatedly Helped protect Envato Marketplaces against copyright violations
- Bought between 50 and 99 items
- Canada
- Community Ambassador
- Beta Tester
- Contributed a Tutorial to a Tuts+ Site
- Envato Staff
I agree it totally sucks to get your hard work ripped off, but you should really be talking to Support about this bitfade. They’re the ones who can take the appropriate action. While anyone on our Support team can take down a file, disabling an account is a more serious matter and can’t be done by just anyone. Please let Support know and they would be more than happy to address the situation. Thanks!
- Europe
- Sold between 100 000 and 250 000 dollars
- Has been a member for 2-3 years
- Referred between 50 and 99 users
- Most Wanted Bounty Winner
- Exclusive Author
- Bought between 10 and 49 items
Yes, and the support takes 3 weeks for a reply. Simply great.
- Bought between 50 and 99 items
- Exclusive Author
- Has been a member for 1-2 years
- Netherlands
- Referred between 50 and 99 users
- Sold between 50 000 and 100 000 dollars
Perhaps Themeforest (or rather Envato) has grown too fast, too quickly. I see no more personal interactions from Collis except for very serious matters. Support takes far too long to respond, if they even respond. To be honest, this isn’t what we should expect from a multi-milion dollar company.
- Item was Featured
- Exclusive Author
- Has been a member for 3-4 years
- New Zealand
- Referred between 10 and 49 users
- Bought between 1 and 9 items
- Repeatedly Helped protect Envato Marketplaces against copyright violations
- Sold between 50 000 and 100 000 dollars
Perhaps a tune originally performed by Envato…
- Sold between 100 000 and 250 000 dollars
- Author had a File in an Envato Bundle
- Has been a member for 4-5 years
- Author had a Free File of the Month
- Won a Competition
- Author was Featured
- Item was Featured
- Bought between 10 and 49 items
KingDog saidWhy should this be needed at all ? since support already took down the item, why they didn’t do the same with ripper’s account or contacted who could do it ?
I agree it totally sucks to get your hard work ripped off, but you should really be talking to Support about this bitfade.
I’ve dealt with code stealing myself multiple times and you know what answer i got from support each time ? send a DMCA .
If i’d break my exclusive author agreement by selling my items elsewhere, Envato would lose money and take immediate action against me but refuses to do the same when dealing with copycats, which only damage my earnings.
Even in a case like the one i mentioned, where rip is using 93% of the original item code, nothing will happen until somebody files a DMCA .
Why ? Envato doesn’t lack smart people being able to see the obvious but they just decided the official policy is not to. Authors are left alone defending their own work.
Plus, anybody can file a counter DMCA and what you going to do in that case ? To sue the ripper ? Seriously ?
You’d just forced to accept the fact that somebody stole your work and is going to make a profit from it.
- Australia
- Bought between 100 and 499 items
- Community Superstar
- Exclusive Author
- Has been a member for 2-3 years
- Interviewed on the Envato Notes blog
- Microlancer Beta Tester
- Sold between 1 000 and 5 000 dollars
Simple.
Move offender to naughty corner, which …
Remove until adjudicated Author priveledges, inc uploading and sale of other items.
If found guilty of plaguerism etc, ban account.
- United Kingdom
- Sold between 10 000 and 50 000 dollars
- Exclusive Author
- Most Wanted Bounty Winner
- Interviewed on the Envato Notes blog
- Referred between 10 and 49 users
- Bought between 10 and 49 items
- Microlancer Beta Tester
- Has been a member for 1-2 years
The author who stole my theme and put it for sale 3-4 weeks go is still trading on here even though the author was found guilty and item taken down.
I know this is against the rules about talking about it but I have contacted support and the email I got was we take this very seriously bla bla bla.
- United States
- Has been a member for 4-5 years
- Exclusive Author
- Author was Featured
- Sold between 50 000 and 100 000 dollars
- Item was Featured
- Contributed a Tutorial to a Tuts+ Site
- Author had a Free File of the Month
KingDog said
I agree it totally sucks to get your hard work ripped off, but you should really be talking to Support about this bitfade. They’re the ones who can take the appropriate action.
Envato’s relationship with authors is broken and has been for a while now. And the “contact support” policy is basically the reason why. I don’t mean this to offend anyone. I know the forum moderators are just doing their job. But the days of having a forum discussion that actually matters to anyone besides us are long gone. How do we know this? Because Envato doesn’t participate in these discussions anymore.
