How Do you protect against Piracy?

Diabolique said
He can buy themes using fake pre-paid credit cards.

Fake?!? Are you saying those cards do not need a real full name? How is that even possible?

WPScientist said

Diabolique said
He can buy themes using fake pre-paid credit cards.

Fake?!? Are you saying those cards do not need a real full name? How is that even possible?

prepaid credit cards dont require any personal information

OrganicBeeMedia said
prepaid credit cards dont require any personal information

Well Serbia is stuck in 1995 so i guess that’s why i don’t know about that.

Few years ago if you wanted to buy a prepaid sim card for a mobile phone you had to give your personal info which will then be linked to the card.

WPScientist said
I have an idea.

Someone mentioned that his theme got pirated with only 3 sales. So one of those 3 is a pirate, with a bit of research Envato can figure out who it is and ban his account.

Now, listen up before you say “Well he’s just gonna make a new account”. Envato has info about his method of payment (paypal, moneybookers, credit card) so we can find out who he is.

First offence

Ban his account and his paypal/moneybookers/credit card so he can’t deposit any money, so he can’t purchase anything.

Second offence

If he decides to do it again (i don’t think he will thou) and we catch him (won’t be hard knowing all his info from the previous offence) we sue him, we’ll have enough evidence, he’ll go to jail. Again, i don’t think it will come to this, noone wants to go to jail for pirating $50 WordPress themes.

I know he’s not the only one, but maybe he’s one of the bigger pirates, even if not i’m sure we can stop them all eventually. Get one of them, let everyone know we got him and a lot of the other’s will s**t their pants and reconsider.

And i have another little idea but it’s not for a public forum, we’ll talk about it more privately if possible.

As far as I am aware you don’t need an account here. Also, these people might use a fake account (just registered). Also, what about hacked accounts? Too many things to think about for this to work.

WPScientist said

OrganicBeeMedia said
prepaid credit cards dont require any personal information

Well Serbia is stuck in 1995 so i guess that’s why i don’t know about that.

Few years ago if you wanted to buy a prepaid sim card for a mobile phone you had to give your personal info which will then be linked to the card.

Hahahaa :)) +1 :))) and +1 country as well :))

WPScientist said
I have an idea.

Someone mentioned that his theme got pirated with only 3 sales. So one of those 3 is a pirate, with a bit of research Envato can figure out who it is and ban his account.

Now, listen up before you say “Well he’s just gonna make a new account”. Envato has info about his method of payment (paypal, moneybookers, credit card) so we can find out who he is.

First offence

Ban his account and his paypal/moneybookers/credit card so he can’t deposit any money, so he can’t purchase anything.

Second offence

If he decides to do it again (i don’t think he will thou) and we catch him (won’t be hard knowing all his info from the previous offence) we sue him, we’ll have enough evidence, he’ll go to jail. Again, i don’t think it will come to this, noone wants to go to jail for pirating $50 WordPress themes.

I know he’s not the only one, but maybe he’s one of the bigger pirates, even if not i’m sure we can stop them all eventually. Get one of them, let everyone know we got him and a lot of the other’s will s**t their pants and reconsider.

And i have another little idea but it’s not for a public forum, we’ll talk about it more privately if possible.

WPScientist said

templattica said
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

Sounds like reallity in Serbia I’m very glad that you could actually support your family and that speaks about you more than anything else. Keep up the good work and good luck with sales. Pozdrav Pozdrav

50K is for 2 years so it’s 25K annually (for the past 2 years anyway, was a lot less before).

Even so, it’s still a lot of money for Serbia, if i kept everything for myself anyway. But because Serbia sucks i have unemployed parents (“bivsi privatnici”) and a few more close family members who i have to financially support (total of 5 including me) and on top of that try and put some money aside to start a business for them so they can earn for themselves.

I can’t support them forever and one of the reasons is that TF income drops constantly. If it continues to drop like it does now i’ll be on the streets a year from now.

So yeah, those who use my pirated themes literally take food out of my mouth.

And yeah, i did study hard and i do work hard. For 7 years now (i’m 24) i barely had any social life, i spend 90% of the day at this desk and only social life i have is one night per week (either Friday or Saturday).

And i’m sure i’m not the only one, so that’s why it sucks that they steal from us.

Now, i would like to apologize to everyone for writing this little life story of mine.

My last theme got this morning its first 2 sales and it is already on the free hostings. What can I say…

seal said
My last theme got this morning its first 2 sales and it is already on the free hostings. What can I say…

Life is life. Good luck with sales mate, there’s nothing more we can do, so until there is something we must concentrate on the job at hand.

Cheers

seal said
My last theme got this morning its first 2 sales and it is already on the free hostings. What can I say…

Yeah, saw your template there… I can name you a few sites that you could monitor and send DMCA ’s as soon as you notice some of your files. Btw I must admit that if there were no such sharing sites, I wouldn’t have find out of ThemeForest.

And I bet we all did, at some point, download something illegaly