Yeah, good luck with that everyone.  Some of the sites have no way of contacting them.

Thanks for the attempt ID.

It's too bad that sites like this don't get hit more often by the same kind of creeps that whacked a well known legit skinning site. Good sites are suffering to stay afloat while sites like these continue to flourish.

The remarkable thing here is that skins that go up on Wincustomize are on that site THE SAME DAY. I think it might be time to tie all (Master at least) skins into the registration system of Impulse. How hard would that be Stardockians?

And the reason these sites can flourish is they have almost no operating cost. ANY money they make from scamming you, stealing your data using their "custom script based downloaders" that install trojans, malware, etc. is free profit for them. It's truly disgusting. They rip off intellectual property which they use as bait to rip off people that want to get it for free themselves.

I don't think that would matter much.  Regardless of the registration system, they are still just .wba files.  Lets also remember, many master skins are sold on other sites aside from WC.

Yeah, and unfortunately it only takes on person to buy it and then give it away to the rest of the world.  Basically, it all boils down to morals, of which they have none.

I am curious if there would be a demand for a possible option to use a similar system for master theme protection as is currently used for some MyColors themes?

The downside would be the users would be unable to modify the graphics themselves other than using the recolouring and texturing features built into WindowBlinds.

Problem with download links is a lot are servers in other countries and I know the site in question... I reported them to WC about a year ago....even went as far as contacting the Web Sherriff and the sever is located where DCMA,etc. means nothing...

Damn, These asshole Pirates

the one Vampothika menchened earlier but now I don't see it's name any more

has.  

Alloy Updated Jul 20, 2010 by Z71

posted on that site...

not even 1 day and Stolen..

I'm sure that was obtained from Ross' site directly. I saw it up on that site earlier today (before it was approved here on WC)

Edit

Yeah that would be a double edged sword...good for the creator bad for skinning. And since I hate MyColors that would end any Master skins I'd buy. This really sucks that nothing can be done about those people.

It's times like these I wish I had some hacking skills...I'd be all over that place like a bad politician messing things up before they kicked me out. 

Sad to say ...shit happens....I'd bet its not the only site out there giving away all the master  and stardock skins.  I know one master skin thats been downloaded 10 times more than its been sold.

Yes Please Neil, if my colours has it, I dont see why master skins cant have it, afterall stardock takes half of the profits from master skins,

so it should be in stardocks interest to do so.

Not everyone has their own site ID, i dont, and im sure not every master skinner has one.

I am sorry for my late reply to some personal Pm's but im awake now, its 5.45 am in the morning here.

Lightstar has done a bloody sensational job helping me with this. thankyou matee, you effing ROCK.

we need to do more here to protect our master skins,

The problem with this Kitty is you would lose sales as well doing it this way. As much as I like skins I hate MyColors since you can't make other stuff from the skin and I just hate the way MyColors messes up my machine. What we need a good pitbull hacker!