It's not about NOT wanting to fight back.  But if you're boxing against Floyd Mayweather and you get knocked down would you throw in the towel or get back up knowing there is 100% chance of it happening over and over again?  Me personally i would throw in the towel and call it a day because there is no way i can win.  Same thing in this situation, you're up against something you just can't defeat, something software developers spend millions of dollars to beat but can't, its a losing battle.  Sucks, but it's true.

Also, just for the record i know what this situation is like, I was selling visual styles (msstyles) years ago for XP before windowblinds was really big, and I was upset when my stuff got pirated and people were trying to recreate the theme from screenshots etc.. I understand what it's like on that end, just so you know, but it doesn't change the fact that no matter how upset i got or how much i wanted things to change, it was still gonna happen.

It may be futile from your point of view, but if it stops 10 people from pirating a skin, at least for while, then it was worth fighting. The point is that if you can do something to discourage rampant piracy and it doesn't hurt your target audience, there's really no reason not to do it. Otherwise, you may as well just make the product available on your own website for free and hand out CD-ROMs on the street corner. With its games, Stardock addresses this by providing a lot of free support and updates to its products that you can only use if you have a key tied to your account. Is it perfect? No. But clearly it strikes the balance that the company wants to achieve between providing a baseline level of IP protection and not inconveniencing legitimate users in any major way. Why shouldn't master skinners look for some similar solution?

I think Jafo's ideas are pretty solid and as a person who occasionally buys a master skin but rarely tinkers with any, I think it'd be just fine to encode the downloads. I understand that some people want the option to play with the art or tweak a few things but I suspect that's a small percentage of the customer base--and really there are plenty of free skins that you can use to learn skinning, if that's the objective.

Total agreement here Cyndi!  I found the vermin who is posting my for sale work and vStyler's at that illegal site. Their user name and IP address(es) are now blocked from our sites!  The idiot actually used the same user name, even on the illegal site!  He/she is from China I found out.  I emailed him/her to remove all the illegal stuff, but that probably won't happen. Gee, I wonder if they used the same user name here?  Off to find out!

im sorry it happened to you too.

i also no the feeling of its not going to make a difference.

maybe we can't stop them. but it sure will be nice to at least put a dent in them.

my daughter does her own art so i know how hurt she was when someone tried to claim her work as their own.

and thats it in a nutshell.

I'm not confident that it can be done without creating as many problems as it solves...but I wouldnt mind being wrong.

There are a ton of sites hosting Master Skins along with lots of other stuff. So stopping a few sites will not make any difference cause it is not them it is ALL the different file hosting companies ( Rapidshare, Hotfile, Megaupload etc ). All people have to do is search those file servers and download. The internet is full of evilness and always will be. You might be able to put a Tiny indention in it but not enough to make that much of a difference! More Power to you! Holla

You are going to die [eventually] so why prolong it....go through all the trials and tribulations of living?

Living is futile too as it is guaranteed to be only temporary.

k10w3 got it right....it's not [just] loss of income...it's loss of RIGHTS...of OWNERSHIP.  If it's MY stuff I'm not going to have some arsehole in some other part of the world commercially benefiting from it without my say so.

These sites don't do it for the love of it.  They are commercial entities....whether money laundering for organized crime or what...I don't give a toss.

But the next person who says "what does it matter...the pirates wouldn't be buying it anyway"...I'll just kick in the head or out the door.

THAT IS NOT AN ARGUMENT for condoning piracy...nor is it an argument for condoning indifference.

Your IP...if NOT vigorously protected at each opportunity can subsequently be demonstrated as clearly of no importance to you and so you relinquish legal control [assuming you can exert any in the first place...considering arse-hole countries that ignore others' property rights].

There is always the mutterings of IP-banning entire countries [the ones that ignore copyright]...that'd go a long way towards stifling the 'trade'...but skinners themselves come from all over, too.

Yes it's a fact of life that the internet is the home/haven of piracy and IP theft and ID fraud.

It's also the home of paedophilia rings.

Let's accept them as well as...."you get rid of one site...what's the point...another will spring up in its place".

Great ideology, that is.

Someone needs anger management!  Are you seriously comparing living to trying to stop piracy? Are you crazy?

Well if that's how you see things then have it Batman.. go fight crime and take down the bad guys one site at a time, you'll be a hero!  You're argument is ridiculous, not only for the crazy off the wall comparisons you've made, but because this topic has obviously gotten to you and is driving you mad.  Sure it's a loss of more than just money, but regardless of what you want to believe in your made up world, all people that download things from the internet, legal or not aren't looking for a profit.  Nobody is dying to get their hands on some black market master skin so that they can ship cd's out to all the kiddies around the neighborhood and profit from it and grow to have all the money and girls a person could ever want.  While you're at it, let's compare peodophiles to people pirating master skins.. are you hearing yourself, good lord.

I don't care for your threats of kicking me in the head or out the door, you're tough guy bs isn't gonna work with me, i'm entitled to my opinion as are you and if that's what it's come to on wincustomize, then by all means kick me out, so i can go pirate some skins and launder money for my organized crime and whatnot... who knows maybe i'll start the worlds first peodophile skinning club, you know with all the money i've made from pirating "master" skins. /sarcasm

Good lord, back away from the keyboard for a while.. please.

Now I know you have a wobbly grasp of reality...

Windowblinds was THE GUI skinning choice long before XP was released, when competition was eFx [and one other I can never remember].

We [Stardock's software users] were skinning for 'generations' of Windows OS before the FUD 'war' on Deviantart.com with the people hacking uxtheme.dll [violating MS's IP] back around 2003-ish.

Skinning ripping/piracy/IP theft has been around since skinning's inception - think Win95 vintage, not XP. The dll hack [msstyles] was itself a EULA issue which its skinners conveniently 'ignored'....and towards the end tried to argue that it was 'only' hacked in memory ...as if that made it OK.

If I had a dollar for every time I had been contacted by someone concerned about his [or others'] IP being pirated/ripped I'd be stinking rich by now.

So....the fight has been on-going since the 90's.... there are several sites that are 'no more' [thanks to our efforts - Stardock AND community].... and plenty of people who have been ejected from our skinning community [and those of the other skinning sites]...so positive results ARE attainable.

You may dismiss our collective efforts as 'futile' [thanks for that]....but I prefer to call it 'on-going'....

In my 'made up world' getting something for nothing - when there is supposed to be fee payment...is called making a 'profit'.

I'm well aware of how long stardock and windowblinds has been around, and although I expect your reaction to be severely biased for obvious reasons, windowblinds up until WB5 was very simple and didn't offer much that you couldn't get by hacking the uxtheme.dll once XP was released.  I'm aware that windowblinds existed before that, but was overrun with bloated/ugly themes that hadn't changed up until a few years ago.  Windowblinds was the skinning choice because it was pretty much the only skinning choice before XP, but that doesn't mean it was award winning by any stretch.  I suppose people that hack the uxtheme.dll are on par with pedophiles and drug lords as well right?  I mean i know you're obviously "pro" stardock but aren't we past the whole "ITS VIOLATING THE EULA.. RAAAAGGGGEEE" stuff yet.  Its free, it's an alternative, doesn't mean it's better than windowblinds, but it's an alternative for some people.  But man, you really do need to step off the high horse for a moment, because you make it sound like the whole world is evil except for you of course.

I dont think thats what some of us are saying.

I said little is lost from non sales to pirates.I didnt condone piracy.I just have to guage whether the time I could potentially WASTE by even attempting to protect my property is worth more than my time  spent making more and better product.I can guarantee you which is more satisfactory.

I also have to be concerned about the customers satisfaction.If protecting myself vigorously, hurts them then what have I gained?

I can spend my time creating or spend it righteous and pissed off...my health allows for little of either.

That being said,if it really bothers the individual skinner,by all means,give em' hell!I did at first...even had some small victories.Sadly the stress of trying to keep up with it was too much.So I try to ignore it.

I even signed up at one of the sites and singled out one of the bastards that was giving them away.The other forum people recognized my name and were actually pretty nice to me.I only went after this guy because he was claiming to pay for all the skins and then giving them away to impress all his forum buddies.

I went there to let them all know he also disputed the charges on the skins he bought so he got them for free...he wasnt including that part.He was a truly nasty piece of work.He even followed me here and said he wished I would die.

My point Jafo is your post sounded somewhat judgemental if the IP holder wasnt going all vigilante on these assholes...I just dont have the health,will or time.I do thank Stardock for going after some of these sites because I benefit from that.

Heck,just typing all that made me tired...later Jafonator.

oh yeah,...I was banned from the pirate site...

and that is why it's YOUR made up world and not everyone elses, or maybe i'll join yours and go download some skins and tell my wife all about the profit i just made, i'm sure she'll be ecstatic, you know with all the gold and diamonds she'll be able to buy from my downloading.

It's not biased at all. It's simple reality.

Prior to the uxtheme hack and XP [and since]...Windowblinds has always been MORE capable of altering the GUI than its alternatives.  It is why it is popular now/still, particularly with skinners....the ones who who know what it can and can't do.

It's almost 'fun' reviving that old FUD [if it wasn't borderline libel] but it has no bearing on this thread/topic....and is tangential at best.