How Do you protect against Piracy?

There’s no way to stop it. End of story. I buy a theme here and don’t want to wait for 5 more minutes after I pay for something, just because of some other guys I don’t know and don’t care about. Trust me, you don’t want to hurt your customers just because of some cheap guys that will never buy the theme no matter what you’ll do. And my honest opinion is that you should focus on creating awesome themes instead of worrying about copyright stuff / why buyers don’t get your theme / etc. If after 7 sales you have this concern, what will you do when you’ll reach 500? Blaim Envato because you’re not rich yet?

FinalDestiny said
There’s no way to stop it. End of story. I buy a theme here and don’t want to wait for 5 more minutes after I pay for something, just because of some other guys I don’t know and don’t care about. Trust me, you don’t want to hurt your customers just because of some cheap guys that will never buy the theme no matter what you’ll do. And my honest opinion is that you should focus on creating awesome themes instead of worrying about copyright stuff / why buyers don’t get your theme / etc. If after 7 sales you have this concern, what will you do when you’ll reach 500? Blaim Envato because you’re not rich yet?

Hahaha :))) no way. This wasn’t about how many sales I have, not at all. I actually checked a few themes on google just to see how things stand after seeing Freshface’s software. I checked mine and a couple of yours (FinalDestiny) and got shocked when I saw what happens to yours. Just wanted to know if anybody around here had some way of encrypting info, but I guess I got my answer loud and clear.

Cheers!

Encrypting the themes is the worst idea ever. And if you encrypt it, the customers will be mad, most of them don’t have coding skills and have trouble finding some css files. And, It’s enough for one coder to decrypt it easily and publish it somewhere and all your work is done. Just don’t think about it, those are not your market, who appreciates the work will buy the themes

FinalDestiny said
Encrypting the themes is the worst idea ever. And if you encrypt it, the customers will be mad, most of them don’t have coding skills and have trouble finding some css files. And, It’s enough for one coder to decrypt it easily and publish it somewhere and all your work is done. Just don’t think about it, those are not your market, who appreciates the work will buy the themes

+1

FinalDestiny said
Encrypting the themes is the worst idea ever. And if you encrypt it, the customers will be mad, most of them don’t have coding skills and have trouble finding some css files. And, It’s enough for one coder to decrypt it easily and publish it somewhere and all your work is done. Just don’t think about it, those are not your market, who appreciates the work will buy the themes

WPScientist said
What sucks the most is that they’re stealing money from people who aren’t rich, they’re stealing money from people who try to earn for a living. WP themes aren’t movies or music, the authors aren’t millionaires, they’re literally taking food out of our mouths.

P.S. Now you’ll look at that badge bellow the avatar and see “Sold between 100 000 and 250 000 dollars” and think “look who’s talking about money”. My share is 50K for these 2 years, but believe me, i’m actually in a bad financial position.

- Slobodan (the developer)

Don’t get me wrong. but 50K in Serbia where average annual income is 3K is pretty nice amount But I don’t have any doubts that you’ve put a lot of time in studying and worked hard for every single dollar

WPScientist said
What sucks the most is that they’re stealing money from people who aren’t rich, they’re stealing money from people who try to earn for a living. WP themes aren’t movies or music, the authors aren’t millionaires, they’re literally taking food out of our mouths.

P.S. Now you’ll look at that badge bellow the avatar and see “Sold between 100 000 and 250 000 dollars” and think “look who’s talking about money”. My share is 50K for these 2 years, but believe me, i’m actually in a bad financial position.

- Slobodan (the developer)

+1

am_themes said

BenSheppard said

am_themes said
I was thinking about something but I’m unsure if Themeforest would agree with this. I was thinking about adding malicious code to our themes which would be removed easily if you know where to look at, and ask our clients to contact us directly to solve that problem. That would of course mean having to log into hundreds of servers and clearing that code, but it would at least protect your items. What do you think?

What if you’re going on holiday, say, two weeks, luck you 4,000 people buy your theme, what are they supposed to do until you get back?

Well as I stated earlier, it’s not only my problem or yours Ben, it’s everybody’s INCLUDING Envato’s. So if we all join forces we could fight this off. Sure, it wouldn’t be anything pleasurable, but something like a “group support” from authors and Envato’s support staff so that nobody would have to wait for me to come back from a 2 week vacation.

I know it’s farfetched and won’t happen, but nothing will unless everybody interested joins forces. That DMCA mail thing Freshface tried is a respectable attempt, but it’s like fighting the 300 spartans with a bunch of fat ladies. All you can do is hold them back for a while.

If any of you ever heard about a piece of SEO software called SB (Don’t want to market it, so that’s why I shortened it); they’re using the paypal transaction id and the paypal name and take 24 hours to activate your account, but nobody ever complained about that. Solutions CAN be found, it’s just that this is a battle which authors can’t fight unless the marketplace offers the appropriate weapons. We need our shotguns.

+1

BenSheppard said
so once the ghost code is taken out, what’s saying those files won’t be torrented, trust me I can poke holes in every one of your ideas, that’s why piracy still exists. There is no way around it

FinalDestiny said
Encrypting the themes is the worst idea ever. And if you encrypt it, the customers will be mad, most of them don’t have coding skills and have trouble finding some css files. And, It’s enough for one coder to decrypt it easily and publish it somewhere and all your work is done. Just don’t think about it, those are not your market, who appreciates the work will buy the themes

+1