This morning when I woke up I received an email from PiracyGuard.net and this is what it said:
Greetings, I am a Consultant working for PiracyGuard.net, a firm that assists digital product owners to fight piracy. It has come to our knowledge that there are pirated links of your theme ‘enFORCE’. So far, your theme has been downloaded 44 times illegally. The price of your theme is $15, which translates to $660 in lost sales that cannot be recovered.
We can help you to remove these links so your sales can go up again. Remember, you are losing potential revenue as long as these pirated links are active. If you would like to see a sample of these pirated links or would like additional information, please reply and I will be happy to coordinate with you. Cheers!
Have anyone else been in a similar situation. Is these guys real. I thought ThemeForest had there own sort of police doing this job. Should I contact them?
Any guidance will be appreciated as I am really concerned about losing sales
First, themeforest will do nothing against piracy, so don’t expect anything. Also, those guys who sent you this email are just trying to make money from you. Once your file is uploaded on such sites, its almost impossible to get it removed, so in that case you will lose your money also.
And finally number of times your file is downloaded illegally does not mean lost of your sales. Most of the people just downloaded it cos it was available to download, if they would have to pay, they won’t.
If someone can’t download your item for free, they will download another one for free, they want something for free more than they want your template. I don’t think removing pirated links would translate to more sales.
I also received a similar email today. Piracy will never go away, even if you throw thousand of bucks to the so called companies that are sending these emails.
First, themeforest will do nothing against piracy, so don’t expect anything. Also, those guys who sent you this email are just trying to make money from you. Once your file is uploaded on such sites, its almost impossible to get it removed, so in that case you will lose your money also.
And finally number of times your file is downloaded illegally does not mean lost of your sales. Most of the people just downloaded it cos it was available to download, if they would have to pay, they won’t.
If someone can’t download your item for free, they will download another one for free, they want something for free more than they want your template. I don’t think removing pirated links would translate to more sales.
It’s a scam. How do they know how many times your theme was downloaded? If you contact them they will upload your theme to some file sharing service to give you a proof.
I think an author either once ran or does run a site like this. And I have no doubt he/she had good intentions. But the problem is, there will always be people who want to make money with this type of service who don’t have good intentions. And these people are probably the ones who upload your stuff to warez in the first place. So because of that, we should always avoid these types of services.
Warez is a never-ending battle, but if you care enough to fight it, FreshKiller makes it pretty easy.
I think an author either once ran or does run a site like this. And I have no doubt he/she had good intentions. But the problem is, there will always be people who want to make money with this type of service who don’t have good intentions. And these people are probably the ones who upload your stuff to warez in the first place. So because of that, we should always avoid these types of services.
Warez is a never-ending battle, but if you care enough to fight it, FreshKiller makes it pretty easy.
Yes, Very true. These guys are the ones that uploaded your stuff on free sites and then want to get your money. They also contacted me last year and I never responded so they uploaded one of my themes to multiple sites to drive their point home. Very nasty guys.
I don’t care if my theme is downloaded for free. In fact its much better when I know these guys end up buying the theme because they will need an update after a few weeks.
I got a similar message for my HTML theme, but didn’t believe that person. He gave me some download links, but who knows he himself might have added those to the download sites.
My live demo and original download files of the HTML theme are different. The links contained the files saved through browser source option and also didn’t had the documentation. SO i didn’t bothered to contact that person.
Definitely a scam. Majority of piracy sites laugh at take down requests.
Also if someone does download your theme illegally then you can sit back and laugh.
1: They get no updates.
2: No support.
3: Those who upload the themes usually add in their own malicious code ranging from a simple tracker to having the ability to completely hijack the website.
Only morons download paid themes for free off a pirate site.
