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link6155 — Call to fellow deviants!
Published: 2014-07-21 15:34:50 +0000 UTC; Views: 13475; Favourites: 5; Downloads: 0
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Hello everyone,
I usually don't use dA journal to write about anything other than update on what I'm working on, but I have some important issues to address. As the Windows theming committee grows, it has been becoming harder and harder to control thief. As a result, I find myself constantly battling against thieves who shamefully steals my skin. What's even worse is that people are monetizing them for money through ad links or putting in dangerous adware through installation packs (aka skinpacks). Here is my theme, Acid, being used without my consent: techdhruv.com/fusion-skin-pack…. It was posted by the deviant thedhruv . Like most skinpacks, the installer for this has adware and toolbars that the average user would not know how to avoid. The average skinpack from this person doesn't even give proper credit to where he has gotten the theme from. Usually, he would just put down "Thanks *username*", which is very deceiving and does not imply that the person being thank is the creator of the theme. It's an absolutely disgusting way for people to make money through deception and exploiting the ignorance of people.
Another problem with skinpacks is that they are often very poorly put together. An average skinpack is made by taking someone's theme, a random rocketdock skin that doesn't even match with it, and some random icons. This takes away the beauty that the theme's author was trying to present and makes your desktop look bad.
So what I am asking from you guys is to spread the word about skinpacks so that less people would fall less for these imposters and give hard working themers the attention they deserve.
Update: I thought I share with you guys the conversation I had with thedruv:
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Comments: 47
He only took it down on dA because he had no choice, however, I have little control over what he does on his website. The best I can do is file a complaint, but the host has not responded for weeks now.
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You can ask him to take it down from his website, then report him to deviantART to take down his account if he doesn't. As far as I've known, deviantART help desk has been quite reliable.
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What The Fuck You All are Commenting here!!
Skinpacks Are Cool And The Creators Of SPs Are Sharing Your Work and 1000000 of People Downloads That.... Did U Ever Thing Y Peoples download That or I Say "Like To Download That..." Because They Are Easy Soooo Easy... that is y all r like that stuff and y u not u them to earn money hmm....
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You can't deny that skinpacks are made from taking other people work. Just because something is "easy", doesn't make it right. Did I say I didn't want skinpack creators to not make money? No, I said that it's wrong for them to make money from stolen work. Nothing you say will change these people opinion, so either you step down or be prepare to take them on.
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I agree 100%. Skinpacks are some of the most buggy pieces of crap! Every time someone releases a theme, some Skinpack dweeb will "Feature" it on the Skinpack site, or some SP group here (like their doing the creator some huge favor), then proceed to hack the theme into a frikken Skinpack which, like you said, often has mis-matched 'extras', very little or no credits to the original, no permission to re-post it, a name that doesn't have anything remotely to do with the original.
I tried like 2 times, in th past, to run different Skinpacks....and I'm a pro at installing themes....Both times the SP screwed my system up. I wish these SPs would be BANNED from DA.
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Actually, downloadsp has been banned several times on Deviantart, I'm just surprise he keeps coming back even though knows he's not welcomed. I think there needs to be a policy change when it comes to what exactly is plagiarism and what is sharing.
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Even antiviruses are trying to STOP these adware installers (Virus alerts when attempting to download one)! SkinPacks should END and never come back! I agree 110% that SkinPacks should die as well! And it would be great if anyone that joins with the name "downloadsp" or makes things on Skinpacks.com should be reported that are NOT WELCOME HERE!
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This is absolutely disgusting. People who do this piss me off. A lot. Fortunately I've never experienced this (I think?), since I guess it's targeted towards better works of art that people will actually download. There's an endless amount of sites that do it, all a bunch of little kids sitting on their computers. I mean, I think the real point is that credit means a lot to us when we try so hard to work on something, and then we see it being literally sold with all those ads by someone who not only ruins it but claims that it's all their's with no proper credit. Those ads make everything worse, because you're trying to give this stuff to people free with no adware, all with a simple click, while someone else is making money, no matter how much, off of it. It's like me stealing a really nice and amazing Lambo (or Ferrari, Maserati, Porsche, pick one 
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You think that's disgusting, just wait until read the conversation I've had with him (added it to the journey entry).
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There are so many things that piss me off about people like that. First of all, he seems angry that you made him delete it, yet he has no right to be angry! Second of all, one whole month to steal someone else's work?!?! I could take a few minutes to combine multiple themes into one installer. Then there's how, when distributing the theme, he says "thanks" to the true creator of the theme, as if the guy helped him make this amazing theme. Truly pathetic.
Oh, and did he really delete it from dA and his website, and whatever other ad-filled websites he put them on?
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He only deleted on DeviantART, on his website it's still up
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File a complaint to the hoster, I guess? Back when I created one of my first websites, I used someone else's wallpaper (after asking, of course), but he still filed a complaint for some reason and my website was down within hours.
Oh, and don't you just love how he considers himself a "Professional Artist of Design and Interfaces"?
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-.-
www.brinvy.biz/
This website has stolen all my wallpapers, no credit. At least no adware.
I clearly stated it was free as long as I got proper credit.
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They did put "by dakoder" at the end of the title though.
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I know, but I said with a link present to original page. Besides, that's from the file name.
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This is a battle I could not win when my themes started popping up on various websites. Its nearly impossible for them to stop as once the item is removed, a few days later you see a new user account that uploaded the same thing. XD Its one hard thing to deal with when creating things for the internet.
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DA user cu88 has been doing the same with other people's work including yours. Why can't people with no talent just accept they have no talent and not try to steal from others to make themselves feel better? It's frustrating.
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I have another point about cu88: Face it, he is trying to infect your PC with malware doing whatever he can to including filling his site with Ads and putting his files on ad/pop-up filled file sharing domains! If anything, it is very rare that you get clean sites open on his site!
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People (especially in 3rd world countries), will do anything to get money. In this case, people like cu88 and thedhruv takes other people work and use it for profits through advertisement and adware. Even then they are making very very small amount of money (about .02 cents per visits). It's a very despicable act and I'm hoping that dA will actually take a look into this. Since the start of dA, it's been very artist focus site and barely any attention has been given to customizers.
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Sent a DMCA claim to the web hoster and file hoster, laugh while you see the site do down ^^
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Are the files hosted elsewhere? Because in that case you can send a dmca claim to the file hosters.
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They are also hosted on the same page unfortunately. I too have already contacted the site's host, but I haven't heard from them since.
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Thinking about making something that prevents msstyles from being wrapped in a skinpack.
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Any progress on that anti skinpack?
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That would be great! I'm just hoping dA bans skinpacks completely because they are nothing but monetizing tools.
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So you did contact hostgator with a dmca claim?
www.hostgator.com/copyright
LOL they don't accept mails about DMCA, that itself is against the law. I knew hostgator was bad but this it beyond bad.
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Yup, I've filled out that form
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Depending on my own experiences with this kind of stuff, i would say, this is a fight you cannot win. Maybe you can make him remove your stuff. But next day there will be another little boy who tries to earn some cash with others work. It is a neverending story. Maybe they have some permissions from some artists. Only i'm sure they are not telling that it is for monetizing, while asking.
In fact you give up control of your work by releasing it. Sounds bad and is bad.
Baddest of all is that you can unselect the adware while installing, and it installs the toolbars and trash anyways.
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Well not fighting is just letting them win. We can't stop people from stealing, but we can educate people to avoid these kind of things. The less people download these skinpacks, the less money they make.
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Good luck. Iwas fighting for more than 5 years with more or less success, and i'm alittle bit tired of it atm.
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Well then we all must spread the word even if we are theme creator or someone that likes the original themes!
Edit: They is a new journal entry to attract these people to look at your warning on my user page.
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No matter what we do, these guys will never change their behaviour. They are no artists and no customization lovers. They only see the commerce.
Sometimes i try some of these packs in a VM. Most of it is crap. Almost none of the uninstallers work correctly. After using 3 skinpacks you have to reistall your system. A while ago i tried one pack, and got a unbootable system afterwards. I contacted the author and told him what he made wrong. No response. Two weeks later the corrupted file was still online.Poor.
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We must still NEVER give up on stopping these art thiefs from using these themes/other art on thier own programs and still fight for hopefully someday, all of us will win the fight!
PS: Same thing happened on the uninstallation of the Yosemite 2.0 skinpack on my other netbook except for it was explorer.exe that wasnt loading even when I got the explorer.exe file from this PC running the same OS.
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Maybe we should make a online petition and send it to DA.
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Probably, but then skinpack installers could have a warning on them.
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That's true.
Btw. How do you like this transformation pack?peterrollar.deviantart.com/art…
Contains no work of others.
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Great one! Great try at a no alt-app transformation pack.
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Obviously I´d recognize one of your skins, but what you´re saying is that there is no such thing as a legit skinpack, at least for Windows?
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More often than not, they're poorly made unfortunately. I have yet to find a good skinpack that has some thoughts put into it. I personally find skin packs to be useless in their current form because the content in them could easily be installed without the need of an installer. While it is easier for users to have everything setup for them, they also end up installing junk on their computer or they have a hard time removing the skinpack.
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Yeah I just install things myself. Only thing that could persuade me was if it could install library icons.
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Someone is already working a tool just for that: seahorsepip.deviantart.com/jou…
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Immense thank you. It´s the only thing that I find lacking whenever I customize my UI. That and the fact that I can´t find fitting icons for the theme I´m using.
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