I tried a couple of times to post about a website that contains A LOT of our ThemeForest/CodeCanyon items. Both times, my post was put under moderation but never made it to the public forum. What’s worse, I cannot even see it among my own threads.
This is a serious issue and my only goal was helping other authors protect their items.
I have already filed a DMCA Takedown Notice to Amazon (the files were mostly hosted on several S3 buckets) and have just heard from them that my notice was accepted, the material removed and the infringing account suspended.
Unfortunately, they have already moved to a different server and all the material is still downloadable from their website and an alternative domain they created.
I have also made Envato aware of the situation.
If you need further information, please contact me with a private message, since it seems that I cannot report any address here without triggering the moderation block.
I was suggested to include the website using dashes.
Here it is: [removed by moderator]
Also, you may need to know that both this domain name and the one where all the ZIP files are stored (www-wpstorage-ws) are distributed using Cloudflare. For this reason and because their website doesn’t include a direct email where one can submit a DMCA Takedown Notice (which is against the Copyright Law), the only action you can take is writing to Cloudflare by using the following form: https://www.cloudflare.com/abuse/form
Cloudflare will then communicate to their original web hosting service to take any further action.
They claim that the themes and plugins available from their website are free because WordPress themes and plugins can only be distributed under a GPL license. Of course, this is not accurate, as the Envato license is a SPLIT LICENSE.
Furthermore, they claim that the themes and plugins are 100% original. I downloaded my own plugin and could confirm this is not the case. Not only the code is altered but they also added a piece of code that communicates to their own server the administrative credentials of any website where those themes or plugins are installed.
This piece of code is added to EVERY item I tried to download and even to EVERY plugin included in every theme.
Since their website is using Cloudflare, I had to report it to them as well because it is not possible to report it directly to their web hosting (another illegal element: they don’t provide a direct email address where to submit your takedown notices).
If you want to see if your item is illegally distributed in that website, please send me a direct message and I will give you any further information.
I’ve been thinking of sending takedown requests since last year because every time I search my item on google I get a LOT of sites offering my item for free and some even for a fee!
BUT the only thing that is preventing me to do it is the fear of repercussions. I’m mainly afraid of chargebacks and 1 star ratings. have you had any kind of noticeable repercussion? How many requests have you sent?
Not at all.
First of all, the 1-star rating must be backed by a reasonable explanation. Envato doesn’t allow anyone to send a 1-star rating just for the sake of it. Especially when it comes from someone who has never tried to reach out for technical assistance: I doubt there are people out there purchasing our items just to give them for free on their websites and then leave a bad review just as a retaliation… I simply believe it is not a realistic scenario. After all, as you said, just to cut to the chase, you can accept the refund request and case solved!
Tens! In the last couple of years, I probably sent over a hundred. In order to make it easier, I partially automated the process with a form on the admin area of my website. It uses a template that I put together with all my relevant data and the form only accepts two fields: the abuse email address and the URL of the page containing the infringing material.
In 90% of the cases, you don’t even have to argue with anybody. Nobody hosts illegal files on their own webserver. What they usually do is linking a resource in some cloud storage. The cloud storage service, of course, is not aware. So, you simply write to the cloud storage provider saying that a given file is infringing your copyright and they take it down in few hours. At that point, you don’t even have to bother request to take down the page where the link was published… since the link is not going to work anymore.
Thank you for taking the time to answer my questions.
Believe it or not, when we launched our first (and only, so far) item, I activated a Google Alert and noticed our plugin started being shared just 2 or 3 days after it was launched, and it was the real thing (probably modified, didn’t bother to check). So I’m pretty sure there are indeed people buying plugins just to share them on their websites. My biggest concern is that these people may post a 1-star review (posting something like “this is a bad product”, or “support sucks” or something invented) as a retaliation for “ruining their business”, or at least that’s what I fear. 6 of the 10 Google search results for my item name are websites sharing my product and that gets on my nerves but the fear of retaliation is greater.
I was under the impression that you had to contact Envato in order to send these requests? Do you do it on your own? How do you claim ownership?
Absolutely! As I said earlier, I periodically scan the internet looking for my plugin and, when I find an unauthorized copy, I immediately track down the “abuse” email address and submit my DMCA Takedown Notice to them, first. If the post allowing to download my plugin references other cloud resources, I also write to each cloud service separately. This way, in case the provider hosting the web page advertising the illegal copy is not responsive, at least I kill all the links on that page, making completely useless. The cloud services are generally very responsive because the infringing material is stored on their server and they are responsible for it.
I simply write from the address of the website where my plugin is advertised (the one where the live preview is) and also reference the link of my product here on CodeCanyon. The DMCA requires that the Takedown Notice includes the URL where the original product can be found.
Except for the website I was originally referring to in this thread, my DMCA Takedown Notices resolved in two or three days at the latest.