My Design is Beautifully Ripped Off

I was shocked knowing that one of my Photoshop freebies being hijacked by some other Bloggers for their own benefit. Since this was my first experience, I’m getting intense to find out how to prevent this issue.

You can tell how your work of art becomes popular using site tracker tool. As I’ve been checking my stat regularly, I found that, one of my Photoshop freebies gets good attention from some reader segment. I used “Round Corner Photoshop Brushes” as anchor text for every link related and image alt. I didn’t mean to search down for hijacking items on my design. I went to Google to find out how my blog post rank result in “Round Corner Photoshop Brushes” keywords. Sadly but true, I found 5 sites doing copyright violation on my design. They simply erased my watermark tagline on the preview image, and replaced it with their own logo, as if they have created it by themselves. No link back or attribution definitely, and they provide re-self-hosted link to download the file.

Carefully compare these two image snapshots! The image below is originally designed by me, and at the next one is thief’s handmade craft upon my original design.

I protect all of my designs under CC license ,

but I wasn’t sure how it would work effectively since my country (Indonesia) is not available in license governed by the Copyright Law of a specific jurisdiction.

This annoying experience could happen to anyone…to designers who blog, blog journalists, or blog researchers. Anyone who stole your valuable contents should not deserve the time and effort that you spent in such easy way

Bhizwiz wrote a very useful article: Prevent Content Theft and Copyright Infringement

It contains brief explanation of steps to take when your contents are stolen.

But I still feel such a dilemma on this matter. Would those thieves coming back with another form of attack if I’m willing to take those steps?

I remember how Bittbox , clearly stated licenses and usage when presenting its early design freebies series. I quoted this from its nice article freebies: Free Vector Glass Header Designs – Fancy

“I would like to clear up a little confusion with this post: These Files are FREE. Some of you were confused because I stated that “You may, under no circumstance, redistribute these files” (I already removed this statement, as well as the readme file in all of my downloads). What I meant by that is: You may not rehost my original zip file on your own site, and offer my files as a download, as if you created the files yourself, that’s all. Every single file I offer is completely and utterly free. You may use them however you see fit. Use them as is, modify them, put them in your new software app. Hell, use them as part of a logo! I don’t care, as long as you don’t re-gift them. I’m tired of an Ugly internet, so I decided to flood it as best as I can on my spare time, with some good shit. I hope that clears things up. And thank All of you for the kind reviews and comments, your feedback is priceless to me. Cheers ~BittBox.”

Just for a good reference that I want to point out, I like how BittBox presents its Free Design Resources based on specific License and Usage

Freebies download can attract much reader, but….most of the time, this is quite tricky and needs extra handling.

If you are a BlogCatalog user, you can enter a discussion about this violation which I started previously...your feedback will help me a lot…and lots of Bloggers who experienced the same thing. Help us stop this problem to role again next time ahead.

Related Links:

• Copyright Explained: I may copy it right?
• Think Vitamin - Copyright: get to know the facts
• Creative Commons: Meet the License
• Prevent Content Theft and Copyright Infringement
• Creative Commons: How it Works in Comic Illustration