Nasty WordPress Pirates Are Roaming the Internet

Thanks for the post guys! This is showing support and standing up for the viability and sustainability of premium WordPress themes… Would be interesting to see what your readers make of this…

If a theme designer has put work into developing a theme then they need some protection, premium or not.

There should be one place to download themes that can be trusted, even if they are sold and a code provided via a different site, and I think that should be similar to the plugin repository on WordPress.org.

The only way that users can be sure of something is to standardise distribution.

Digital products are like that, when it’s easy to pass around or sell it yourself, some people will do the unthinkable.

In my case its easier with e-books, but I also face the same problem with themes. As with e-books you can secure it so no one can change the content but this isn’t the case with WordPress themes.

Perhaps some form of encryption / licensing options will emerge as more people rip off themes and claim it as their own.

With all the quality free products that are available maybe the premium theme products should reduce there price to deter this.

I wouldn’t buy or steal the themes since there are enough free products avail that I can then customize to my liking.

Besides this isn’t some “o my gosh can you believe this” problem. How’d you get your first copy of photoshop?

We’re talking about a community yet what is being done to support the community. Selling high priced themes to your neighbor because they dont know any better?

I’m not saying its right and i do agree, designers should be compensated but be careful about give and take.

you are absolutely right…”business is business”

obviously the designer should be compensated.
obviously the thief doesn’t have any remorse so what can i say?
so the end user needs to consider who they are hurting. which would be themselves because they lose any support and the designer for their effort.

that prev comment should have been take care of your community and your community should take care of you. if you feel you are taking care of the community then there shouldnt be anything to worry about.

@ Adii: you are welcome. I personally love WordPress and felt it important to address this concern since it affects many of us.

@ Andrew: you know, this is a fantastic idea. having all premium themes on the one site and code them so nobody can steal. I guess I’m not sure if that is doable at present. But what the mind can achieve it can conceive.
@ Gobala: I do hope that there will be some way to digitally secure premium WordPress themes (now here is an opportunity for a savvy coder).

@ James: Like you, I also believe that there are many great free themes available. However when it comes to branding a business or a name, nothing goes beyond a premium theme because they are unique or at least not flooding the marketplace.

With branding, one of the most important parts is to stand apart from the masses and present ourselves as a unique entity and that includes a unique theme.

For people like you, it is nothing to rip apart a free theme and make it your own, including customized colors.

But this differs entirely for people like me. While I can hack some of the code in WordPress my knowledge isn’t good enough to understand the structure of themes and therefore I couldn’t do everything I wanted comfortably.

So I go and get a premium theme and customize to make it my own.

But most bloggers don’t even know what a widget is or how to work with them. So what about these guys?

They need a premium theme if they want branding and therefore we need to help protect these designers intellectual property.

Do I own a “black” copy of photoshop? No I don’t. I would even know where to look until not so long ago.

Let’s not forget that WordPress designers run a business from home that pays their bills and puts bread on their table. They are not a multi billion dollar company who doesn’t give two hoots about losing a few (in their calculations) programs on the black market. Plus they don’t really give a toss about you as the consumer. But WordPress designers actually do, otherwise they wouldn’t provide support forums, feedback, setup help and a rather extensive comment section.

perhaps Karma will catch up with you whenever you do good things or bad…

[...] puis, je suis tombé sur un autre article qui montre bien la difficulté de vendre des thèmes payants sans se faire piquer le boulot… [...]

[...] not speaking about the many websites offering you a more or less modified Premium theme for free as you can already find on the Internet, but about new [...]

I believe that we should never give our money to pirates or ever support them. The big problem is that,as a guess, 99% of web users will never know that the product that they are buying is coming from a pirate and not the original developer. I personally would not know one persons work from anothers so I would not know if I had been giving my money to a pirate instead of the original developers.

There is a business on the internet called PLR. Basically you buy articles, do some changes and they are now your products to sell. So long as they are not an exact copy of the original then it appears to be legal. I don’t do it and I don’t like it but is this what is happening to Wordpress themes now ?

It may be ripping off and I do not agree with it but if I spent hours or days writing an article then somebody legally buys it or just copies it and then changes a few things and calls it their own then what is the difference ? I would be very unhappy that other people are profiting from my work and this is what I don’t like about PLR, it is taking somebody else’s work, changing a few bits and then selling it as your own. It doesn’t matter if it is articles or templates, the problem is that if it is not identical to the original then it must be different and thus it becomes new. We all know this is wrong but legally can we do anything ?