Thieves are afoot.
October 14th, 2009
I wanted to mention something quickly and I hope nobody minds the brief interruption of this announcement and please, bear with me if I seem drawn out more than I need to be. I’m hazy with some hell flu crap. Annnyhow…
This person *here* stole a theme from a lady I greatly respect and admire out here in the wilds of the WWW. Her name is emarsha and the (original) Blackberry theme that s/he stole from her is *here* its pretty damn sad actually. Marsha works very hard to create beautiful themes to share with all of us and she puts her heart into every one. She is a beautiful and creative young woman and she deserves credit for the themes that she designs.
The thief also stole *this* theme from *here* which is another hard working design team called BerryFreeThemes. These people are taking precious time of their own to create and share these themes free of charge with the public and they only hope that someone will like their work enough to notice them, maybe make a donation and who knows what more can come from a talented artist sharing their visions and aspirations like this? We all dream!
Anyhow, emarsha is kind of like a mentor to me and she doesn’t even know it. It was mainly because of her gorgeous themes that I finally decided to download Plazmic and learn how to create themes of my own. Its a process I enjoy immensely and I don’t ask for anything either, people are more than welcome to make a donation to my paypal if they wish but it is not a requirement, m biggest joy comes in seeing the little indicator on each theme showing that someone has liked my theme enough to download and use it. Thieves like the person I’m referencing in this post are just selfish attention pigs who haven’t got the creativity (or honest decency) in their whole body that people like BerryLove or BerryFreeThemes have in the funk under their toenails.
I apologize for this rant, truly, but taking someone’s work and posting it, redistributing it as though its your own, without any credit or compensation, is theft plain and simple. I’m all for the whole net neutrality thing and sharing and creative commons junk as long as the artist retains rights to the work as in–someone else cannot take the item in question and use it for their own desires like attention, limelight or profit.
Forgive me but from now on, I’m adding a weblink into my themes, you’re more than welcome to hide the weblink in a folder or menu click it to make it hide altogether, I won’t be upset, as a form of signature and protection against these kinds of thieving shitheads–its safer for you and for me…
Thank you for reading and please–do not download anything from “DeStyle” aka mobilethemesworld.com because anyone who would go to the trouble of raiding someone’s web site file manager to steal software would likely go a whole lot further if they could, do not trust anything you find on that site, period.
**EDIT: since this post went live (and a whole bunch of people jumped on him) the thief has fixed the entry for emarsha’s stolen theme to direct back to her site which is, I suppose, better than nothing. People will still need to actually go to BerryLove to download the theme. The other stolen theme I pointed out in this post has been removed altogether. Just the same : please do not trust that site–every single theme on his site has been taken from another developer and so far, he has only made efforts to appease the developers who have thus far caught him. Are you or do you know a Blackberry theme developer? Please contact them and have them go through his site, people like that must be stopped and forced to a reckoning. It is NOT ok to steal someone else’s work and claim it as your own, ever.
Awww! Thanks for the wonderful post Sam. I’m glad I gave you the motivation to create themes and your themes are beautiful! (my kids were excited to see the super mario one!)
MrTolles is trying to find a way to hide our files. The server is locked down so I’m not really sure how he got the cod files! It’s just a shame that people do this when the themes are in fact FREE. I don’t mind the repost, but don’t claim it you own, kwim?
Sam @Reply:
October 14th, 2009 at 9:50 pm
@emarsha, you’re more than welcome! My husband helped me get my Berry a bit over a month ago and I’ve been so in love with it that I wanted to make it pretty, I found your site and you stunned me with your creativity! I had to learn Plazmic, it all just looked SO cool!
Good luck keeping the creep out of your files, from the looks of that site he’s been stealing all over the place, I hope someone reports him to his hosting company!
And I’d let someone repost my stuff too, if only they asked and at least gave some kind of credit, its only fair :-)
Actually, this is a good post on the nature of intellectual property rights in the digital age. I’ve had my own work reposted all over the place, and a couple of times someone else took credit for the article. Since I never intended to make a dime for the site, and since I always thought the ideas were mor important than the attribution, I never said anything. But this is different. Someone is hoping for remuneration, and thus attribution becomes more important.
.-= X. Dell´s last blog ..The Grounded Walrus: The Making of a Sad Man =-.
Sam @Reply:
October 23rd, 2009 at 2:30 pm
@X. Dell, its a hateful selfish thing when people feel they need to steal to make themselves appear intelligent and/or creative. I get incredibly angry, incensed even, but I also pity them, they’re most often caught and then they just look pathetic. I’m not against people reposting and sharing, in fact, I appreciate that, I just don’t want them trying to take credit because that just plain hurts.
There is no honor amongst thieves I guess is there? What a shame.
.-= rage´s last blog ..Sunday Slop-The job hunt is on =-.
Sam @Reply:
October 25th, 2009 at 7:15 pm
@rage, Hopefully dude learned his lesson. Hopefully the other devs he stole from will have a little look/see…