Serious Copyright Violation

Envato Authors Author Hangout
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This guy (link removed), is reselling items from many Graphicriver Authors. How? I’ve called him and he states that he sells the customization of the items, to potential customers. Doesn’t this require an Extended License ? If not, there is a huge problem. Me and all the other authors put all the effort making the flyer, sell it for 6$, earn half of the price, while this guy sells the customization (editing texts) for 90$ or more.

I did a reverse image search for some of his items, and i got graphicriver authors as results. Some of them are
neongraphik, dusskdesign, eatmeforlunch, hotpin, mesmeriseme_pro and blerc.

What he says is that he is not selling my item, but the service of customization. In any ways, this is a ridiculous excuse. I quote envato:

Extended License: Use, by you or one client, in a single end product which end users can be charged for.
Regular License: Use, by you or one client, in a single end product which end users are not charged for.

Now I’ve already sent tickets to envato & facebook, since this dude made a webpage for our items… But i just wanted to share with you guys, since this matter is quite delicate.

Thoughts? Isn’t that Illegal or have I completely lost it?

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Hi, what should we do?

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First of all, is this legal ?

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Im really pissed off, ok ok, it’s only 1 item from me, you guys have more, but i dont think this is legal.

Dusskdesign told me, he is not allowed to resell as is, but modified or part of a bigger art yes.
I cant understand this, it’s obviously that he is buying with regular license, change ONLY the text and re-sell it.

This is not modifying as part of a bigger theme!!!
The style is still the same.

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Where’s dusskdesign when you need him

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He is not allowed to resell the flyers as is even with extended license (wich he does not have), and for the excuse he said, about customizing the flyer I guess he might pull this off if he redirects the buyers to envato for the purchase and then customize the flyers.

Anyway the best thing to do is send a dmca to google to get his site out of google index. Only the copyrighy owners can send dmca’s.

3 Likes
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There you are like a boss. Thanks Dussk, you were fast :smile:

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Nice! Changing resolution of GraphicRiver image and reselling it for 100 EUR!

Of course he is not alowed. He is selling the images and it’s not something he is not allowed.

As far as I know he can use them as demos of his services but not selling the items to clients.

I think that Envato should send DMCA to him directly?

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I’m not sure about this, but I think if he buys one regular license of the respective item, he is allowed to sell the customization, and he can set the price.

Think about ThemeForest. Most of the buyers are web design agencies. They purchase a stock template/theme for a few bucks and sell the end product for hundreds or thousands of dollars. Oh, and it’s totally legal.

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Regular License: Use, by you or one client, in a single end product which end users are not charged for.

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There’s nothing wrong with this. The end user in this instance, is a punter viewing a poster advertising an event. The person who orders the poster customisation is not an end user.

As long as he’s buying a regular license every time he does a customisation, then it’s all good. Or an extended license in the very unlikely instance that end users will have to pay to look at a poster.

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Honestly, this small detail you and sekler are pointing out is beyond my logic. So i just have to wait and see what the stuff will say. And how do we know that he hasn’t sold more than one customization already? If so, why does the extended license exists? If you are correct, then we’re making flyers for no reason at all. Sniff

Thanks for the replies all

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Here’s the kicker:

Use, by you or one client, in a single end product which end users are not charged for.

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And how do we know that he hasn’t sold more than one customization already?

It’s the same as any buyer. There’s no sure-fire way for us to know if they’ve used that single use license just the once, or more than once.

If so, why does the extended license exists?

There’s a bunch of reasons why buyers might still need an extended license. Say somebody makes and event poster that is free for people to view, but they then add that event poster to a t-shirt so people can buy them as a memento. That’s just one example of when somebody would need an extended license. But making stuff for clients doesn’t automatically mean an extended license is required… it’s what the client is going to do with it that counts.

If you are correct, then we’re making flyers for no reason at all.

You’re making them so people will buy them. I’m making stuff so people will buy them. This guy has set up a website that, if successful, should result in him buying lots of your flyers, and other people’s flyers, and bringing more profit to Envato. We should give him a little cuddle rather than calling in the feds.

As for charging $90 or more… kudos to the guy!

1 Like
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threads like these pop up every few weeks and I’m always astonished how authors here seem to have no idea what market they are working in.

What do you think who buys your flyers if not people who either need a flyer themselves or (and here comes the important part) are designers themselves who have clients they just customize the templates for.

As long as those designers buy the correct license for the client (that can either be regular or extended) you should all be happy that they chose your work to offer their clients because that is essentially another chance of selling a license for you guys.

Buyers like that, i.e. Designers that will focus on customizing a few items are the best you can get as a stock author because they are returning customers.
I would be very careful to piss them off with DMCAs just because you may not understand the license terms as good as your customer does…

If he doesn’t buy a single license for each client then it is indeed a problem but as the price is way higher than the license price it is at least imaginable that a part of the money he gets from his clients is used for buying the license.

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Under any circumstances he is not allows to to resell any of the work and if he was doing what he claims he is supposed to have link to send clients to the original work! Not to mention that i hate his customization already on site and he will receive a DMCA from me!!!

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You might want to read into what a DMCA is. If you send it without any legal basis you may get into trouble yourself.

And from my point of view, you have no legal basis because what he seems to do is buy your work and then customize it for a client which is totally fine.

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@Creattive said it. This is exactly what you are selling when you sell your work on the Envato marketplaces: the license for a user to customise your work and sell the resulting customization on to one client. Every time this dude customises one of your templates, he needs to buy a new license. This is good for you. You should be welcoming the business.

The templates you sell need no modification, they just sit there and sell. Customising the template is new each time and will take a little time and client liaison. If it takes an hour or two, then the price of $90 for western Europe is perfectly normal - cheap even. The initial time input on your design is high, and you recoup your time and effort through sales volume, which this industrious customer is helping you with as far as I can see.

If you feel that this is out of whack, it’s not because this guy is audacious for selling at a fairly standard price, it’s because you and Envato marketplaces are selling your items for too little. But that’s another issue.

What alarms me is that authors might be sending accusatory emails or DMCAs to a perfectly legitimate, dare I say typical Envato customer.

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@Creattive If you look closely he is not offering the customization on any template but on specific ones that he already bought once! Guys are we serious here The guy is not offering services and has 2-3 examples on his site but 12 design and pricing each item if this is legal in our days then lets close everything and go around modifying patents of products and sell them as modifications!

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And what about the link of the initial flyer location ? Each and every flyer is baptized with a new name. This seems to be a “don’t find the owner” method. Shouldn’t he link to the original material as we authors often do with fonts, photos, or any other external material in general? Meh, i am more confused than in the beginning, since many people here have a different opinion which is supported with good arguments.

Ties Rope on Ceiling