Together, we beat SOPA in a huge victory for internet freedom.  But this Saturday, internet freedom protests are breaking out in over 200 cities across Europe.  Why?

Because the companies behind SOPA are using international trade agreements as a backdoor to pass SOPA-style laws

SOPA’s supporters are pushing two agreements: ACTA and TPP¹.  ACTA would criminalize users, encourage internet providers to spy on you, and make it easier for media companies to sue sites out of existence and jail their founders.  Sound familiar?  That’s right, ACTA is from the same playbook as SOPA, but global.  Plus it didn’t even have to pass through Congress².

TPP goes even farther than ACTA, and the process has been even more secretive and corrupt.  Last weekend (we wish this was a joke) trade negotiators partied with MPAA (pro-SOPA) lobbyists before secret negotiations in a Hollywood hotel, while public interest groups were barred from meeting in the same building.³

Trade agreements are a gaping loophole, a secretive backdoor track that–even though it creates new laws–is miles removed from democracy.  Trade negotiators are unelected and unaccountable, so these agreements have been very hard for internet rights groups to stop.

But now the tide is turning.  Fueled by the movement to stop SOPA, anti-ACTA protests are breaking out across the EU, which hasn’t ratified ACTA.  The protests are having an impact: leaders in Poland, the Czech Republic, and Slovakia have backtracked on ACTA.⁴  Now a massive round of street protests in over 200 cities is planned for this Saturday February 11th.

We’re planning an online protest this Saturday to support the protests in the streets.  Why?  Because together we can drive millions of emails to key decision makers–and start tipping the scales like we did on SOPA.

Can you take part?  Click here to get the code to run on your site!

We just built an ACTA & TPP contact tool, and it’s not just a petition.   It’s code for your site that figures out the visitor’s country and lets them email all their Members of European Parliament–the politicians who will be voting on ACTA in June–or the trade negotiators behind TPP.  This direct contact between voters and their officials, driven by websites of all sizes, was instrumental in the fight against SOPA.  

We can use the same tactics to defeat ACTA & TPP, but we need your help!

Support the street protests with a flood of emails to the officials responsible for ACTA & TPP.  Get the code for your website!

Don’t have a website?  Tell officials in your country to scrap ACTA & TPP!   And spread the word about Saturday’s protests! 

This is going to be tough fight.  But we need to make secretive trade agreements harder to pass than US law.  If we don’t, our internet’s future belongs to the lobbyists behind SOPA.

This is just the beginning,

–Holmes Wilson, Tiffiniy Cheng, Joshua Blount & the whole Fight for the Future team.

P.S. This map of ACTA street protests in Europe is amazing. The largest has almost 50,000 RSVP’s!

Sources:

1. For more information on ACTA, read these excellent articles from Techdirt and La Quadrature du Net. For information on TPP, read this Ars Technica piece. For video, watch this.

2. Obama’s signing of ACTA may have been unconstitutional. See Anti-counterfeiting agreement raises constitutional concerns and Techdirt.

3. Hollywood gets to party with TPP negotiators, public interest groups get thrown out of the hotel.

4. Ars Technica: Czech, Slovak governments backing away from ACTA, too.

The Funniest

There were many sites that blacked out, went dark or just had anti-SOPA/PIPA messages on them for the protest, but there were some that deserve special recognition for being just plain out hilarious. The Oatmeal page, above was my favorite.

Then there was FARK:

While a bunch of other sites are going “dark” to protest SOPA/PIPA, we’re over the moon about the whole thing. Why? Honestly, we’ve been bringing you the latest news happening across the internet for 12 years, and we’re tired. And SOPA/PIPA is the perfect excuse to quit. While SOPA might be “almost dead,” it’s not quite all the way there, and under various drafts of both SOPA/PIPA, Fark could have its DNS assignment (the thing that turns an IP address, like 10.0.0.1, into words like Fark.com) revoked without notice simply for linking to content that could come under foreign copyright claims. This means, even if it is actual news in and of itself, if we link to it, we can be shut down. And thank God, cause we’re about ready to crack under the strain of being on top of the news all the time. Here’s a helpful video we’ve put together to explain why you should support SOPA/PIPA:

Most Visually Appealing

American Censorship.org

Others

Wikipedia
Mozilla
Google.com
Wordpress.com
Reddit.com
Warrior Forum
Full list here

There are some Internet Marketing courses floating around that advise you to register an exact match domain name for trademarked products to promote those products. There are numerous reasons why this is a bad idea.

The number one reason why it is a bad idea is that using a company’s trademark can get you into trouble with the company that owns the trademark. They can send a cease and desist through their legal department, they can sue you for big money or they can file a UDRP to get the domain from you.

Of course, there are legal uses for trademarked domains, but you would need to hire a trademark attorney to determine that for you to avoid trouble. There’s parody and fair use, but most of the time, your use will not fall under either one of these if you plan to use it for commercial use.

One place on the Net to check for US Trademarks is TESS. You can check for international trademarks here. It’s still a good idea to get a trademark attorney to search for you, especially if you are creating a long-term brand and want to be absolutely sure there are no trademarks on the name you choose, but these two sites are good for a quick check for trademarks.

There are occasions when a company that owns a trademark will allow you to use their trademark. It never hurts to contact the company and ask them for permission and get it in writing if they allow it. It’s the quickest and safest way to find out if using a trademark will be safe.

Another reason not to use trademarks in domains is that quite a few affiliate programs, like Amazon for instance, does not allow you to promote their products with trademark domains. They will close your account right up if you use one.

There are other types of trademark infringement that are also a bad idea. One of those is called Cybersquatting.

Wikipedia: Cybersquatting (also known as domain squatting), according to the United States federal law known as the Anticybersquatting Consumer Protection Act, is registering, trafficking in, or using a domain name with bad faith intent to profit from the goodwill of a trademark belonging to someone else. The cybersquatter then offers to sell the domain to the person or company who owns a trademark contained within the name at an inflated price.

This not only includes a company brand name, but can include celebrities names and typo domains where the misspelled domain is very close to a trademark.

One thing I hear frequently in forums is “there’s a million domains registered with iPad in it.” Don’t take that for permission to use Apple’s or anyone else’s trademark. They’ll get around to you sooner or later. Most companies that have gone to the trouble of registering and getting a trademark, are going to do what they need to do to protect that trademark, so don’t be stupid. Either hire a trademark attorney or just don’t register trademarked domain names.

Contacting your representatives is easy!

Contact your Represenative. – All you have to do is enter your zip code in the box on the right and hit “Submit Zip”. Your representatives information will be displayed, then all you have to do is CALL THEM or FAX them! You can use this FREE Fax service to Fax them.  I’ve even included a template letter to send at the bottom of this post.

Contact your Senator by using this look up tool. – Simply select your state from the drop box on the left. CALL BOTH OF THEM!

How long will this take?

3-5 Minutes per representative if you keep to simple talking points. 9 – 15 minutes for all 3 representatives.

Will my representative actually listen?

YES!…Well maybe. Most have no idea what SOPA is. Mine didn’t, his aide had some ideas but not a clear understanding. But that is beyond the point, he now knows someone in his district cares about this bill being defeated. I HIGHLY DOUBT ANYONE IS GOING TO CALL IN TO SUPPORT THIS BILL. The more negativeness this bill generates, the better.

What are some talking points?

I would recommend reading up a little on SOPA, as it has changed in the past few weeks from its original version. The EFF has this PDF with a very basic summary of the bill.

 
Source: Warrior Forum
Stop SOPA … or else you could find many of the sites you use on a regular basis permanently closed to you. And maybe find your sites closed to many of your regular visitors.

The Basics

SOPA (the Stop Online Piracy Act) is a bill currently in the US Congress that would allow the US Government to add sites to a blacklist, preventing anyone in the United States from accessing them. The stated goal is to limit access to pirate (“warez”) sites, and sites that sell counterfeit physical products. Fake Rolexes, designer clothes, prescription drugs, etc.

The intent of the bill is something we strongly support. Piracy affects those of us in the Warrior group more than most, as a lot of us make our livings selling our own intellectual property. Our membership includes tens of thousands of authors, musicians, graphic designers, photographers, programmers, copywriters, videographers, public speakers and others, from nearly every creative field.

We feel the impact of digital thievery first hand.

This bill is not the way to handle the problem. It is a disaster in the making.

It would damage the Internet’s basic security infrastructure, possibly require ISPs to monitor every site you visit, and make the operation of any website that contains user-generated content (blogs, forums, digital marketplaces, and social media sites) too risky for investors and new developers.

Wikipedia has posted a good basic summary of the potential problems. Read it. It is frightening. And you need to be scared.

How It Would Work

Here’s the simple version: If the Justice Department or any copyright holder accused a site of “encouraging or facilitating” piracy, the government could order that site removed from US-based search engines and ad networks, forbid payment processors from handling transactions for them, and require ISPs to block access to those sites by their customers.

Let’s consider how that might apply to this forum… There are currently over 335,000 pages on this site. If just one of those pages contained a single post promoting an illegal download, or one WSO seller has used graphics or code from a copyrighted product without permission, or we miss just one Chinese spam for counterfeit goods, we could be blocked.

Would it matter that we actively look for and delete those posts? Maybe, but only after the process had begun. And we’d probably never know about it until the block was in place.

The amount of time that it would take to correct such an unjustified blocking would cause permanent damage to any interactive site. Shifting the membership away from a destination for that long nearly guarantees the site would never recover.

Along with that, there is no requirement that payment processors re-accept a site that has been blocked this way. You know how these guys work: They don’t care if the site is eventually found innocent. They’d label it as “high risk,” and never deal with it again. And they’d probably start creating whole new categories to lock out, just to avoid the headaches.

“You let visitors post on your site? Sorry. We don’t accept interactive services in our network.”

And, unless the ISPs are working from a centralized and regularly updated database, it’s unlikely most of them would ever remove the blocks once they were in place.

Mistakes would almost certainly be fatal to the target sites. We’re talking about legitimate sites that provide real value for their visitors and real incomes for their operators and their families.

It is unclear at this point whether the legislation would affect sites based in the US, or if it applies only to “foreign” sites. Even if it doesn’t start out applying to sites hosted in the United States, do you really think it will stay limited to “offshore sites” for long?

And how do we justify sitting by while our friends around the world are subjected to this potential for arbitrary blocking within the US?

Don’t Think This Will Affect You?

Maybe you aren’t involved in a market where this would seem to matter, and you’re not interested in the principle of the thing. Consider a few possible examples that might make the reach of this Congressional folly clearer.

Any blogs you like? Keep in mind how many of them are hacked every day. One of the main activities for those hackers is pointing the victim sites to online shops selling illegal drugs.

*POOF*

Gone.

Hang out at any scrapbooking sites? A lot of them let the members share their original page themes and other digital scrapbooking elements. If one clueless designer uses graphics from a catalog or other copyrighted source, your fun little hobby community could be taken away from you. And the site owner could lose their income.

Use shareware or freeware? Legitimate software libraries, like CNet’s, would be prime targets. After all, it only takes one mistake.

Do you surf using proxies to protect your privacy? Forget that. It’s only a matter of time before that’s marked as a refuge for pirates and they’re blocked.

Have you ever tried to keep track of which sites are pirating your products? If you live in the US, you can forget that, too. Once they hit the blocklist, you can’t see them. Which means you can’t take any action to reduce the damage.

That’s just the tip of the virtual iceberg.

The real damage will begin when the pirates implement new systems for distributing their warez. Evading a domain-based list is child’s play for experienced people, and pirates really don’t care if it’s illegal. If they did, they wouldn’t be pirates.

And it won’t just be the traditional pirates who join in. Anyone who’s studied history knows that prohibition just romanticizes the suppliers and users, and creates networks dedicated to serving that “heroic” image.

And, of course, there’s the problem of retribution. If the US starts arbitrarily blocking access to foreign sites from within our country, how long do you think it will be before other countries develop similar approaches to advancing their political goals, and block their citizens from accessing sites they don’t deem suitable?

At that point, it isn’t even nominally about piracy any more. It’s about politics, pure and simple. If you doubt the temptation, consider how quickly nations in the Middle East tried to block their citizens from accessing western social networks at the first sign of unrest over the past few years.

Think about how this would look to the world after all our comments about the Chinese “Great Firewall.”

If you believe our bureaucrats would be careful enough to only list sites that existed for the sole purpose of piracy, remember: These are the same bureaucrats who listed a then-sitting US Senator (the late Edward Kennedy, of MA) on our anti-terrorist “no fly” list.

What’s your recourse if someone accuses you of “encouraging or facilitating” piracy and you’re found to be innocent? Good luck with that. The only way you could get any satisfaction there would be if you could prove they wilfully and knowingly made false allegations.

Ask your lawyer what the chances are of proving that. Be prepared from them to laugh and say “Zero.”

This is the single most dangerous piece of legislation to regulate the Internet that has ever had any real chance of becoming law in the US.

What Can You Do?

If you live in the US, contact your Senators and Representatives and encourage them to vote against SOPA (H.R. 3621) and PIPA, the Senate version (S. 968).

When you contact them, be calm, clear, and concise. Tell them that you support the goal but oppose the legislation, because of the damage it will do to small businesses and the security of the Internet in general.

If you feel the need to cite a source for them, point them to the Wikipedia article, which lists a number of US government studies and reports that show just how much damage the legislation could do.

And be clear that you don’t want to see an edited version of the bill passed. This thing is not just poorly implemented. The concept itself is flawed and dangerous.

Emails count a little. Phone calls and faxes count more. A short, clear printed letter mailed to them counts the most.

If you’re contacting your representative, mention H.R. 3621 (SOPA). If it’s your Senators, the bill number to mention is S. 968 (PIPA).

You can find the contact information for both Senators and Representatives at Contacting the Congress. Just select your state, type in your zip code, and click the “Submit It” button.

When contacting them, be sure to either mention your name and address to the person you speak with on the phone or include it in your correspondence. They want to know you’re actually one of their constituents.

Remember to be polite, clear, and brief. These folks are trying to protect your interests. Most of them simply don’t understand the potential problems the bill would create.

Calling them, or typing a brief letter and putting a stamp on it, will probably take less time than you were about to spend in this forum today. And it could make a huge difference.

If every US citizen who reads this takes that few minutes’ worth of action, we can generate a ton of pressure against the bill. If we all just leave it to everyone else, we’re likely to be stuck with this as law, along with all the problems it brings.

It’s up to you. Choose wisely.

Source: Warrior Forum

Contacting your representatives is easy!

Contact your Represenative. – All you have to do is enter your zip code in the box on the right and hit “Submit Zip”. Your representatives information will be displayed, then all you have to do is CALL THEM or FAX them! You can use this FREE Fax service to Fax them.  I’ve even included a template letter to send at the bottom of this post.

Contact your Senator by using this look up tool. – Simply select your state from the drop box on the left. CALL BOTH OF THEM!

How long will this take?

3-5 Minutes per representative if you keep to simple talking points. 9 – 15 minutes for all 3 representatives.

Will my representative actually listen?

YES!…Well maybe. Most have no idea what SOPA is. Mine didn’t, his aide had some ideas but not a clear understanding. But that is beyond the point, he now knows someone in his district cares about this bill being defeated. I HIGHLY DOUBT ANYONE IS GOING TO CALL IN TO SUPPORT THIS BILL. The more negativeness this bill generates, the better.

What are some talking points?

I would recommend reading up a little on SOPA, as it has changed in the past few weeks from its original version. The EFF has this PDF with a very basic summary of the bill.

LETTER TO YOUR CONGRESSMAN

Dear Congressman xxx,
I am deeply concerned about the potential passing of both the Stop Online Piracy Act and the Protect IP Act. The Internet is an absolutely amazing creation that has connected people together from all parts of the globe in ways we once never imagined could be possible. Not only has it connected people, but it has also encouraged the sharing of knowledge, information, and ideas.

I understand that piracy is an issue that affects not only large industries and their businesses, like Viacom and NBCUniversal, but also smaller companies and individuals, including songwriters and authors. However, there are already measures in place to protect copyright holders, and there are actions that they can take when they see violations involving their copyrighted work.

The passing of these bills would have a severely negative impact on websites where people go to look up information, share ideas, learn, and connect with others. Websites such as YouTube, Tumblr, Facebook, and Google, along with our Internet Service Providers, would be overburdened by having to police their users. Such stringent regulations against them would hinder technological innovation and make innocent service and information providers be held liable for copyright violations committed by users of their services. Focus for these companies would have to go towards censoring and policing users instead of further innovations with their services, and I do not believe it is the place of any company to act as Internet Police looking for copyright violations uploaded by third parties/users of their services if they do not wish to.

Such legislation is unlikely to be effective because American Internet users will simply switch to offshore DNS providers. And at a time when American jobs are desperately needed here in our country, the passage of these acts will encourage companies to simply move their bases offline so that they do not have to bother with such restrictive and disruptive legislation.

Furthermore, the technological and security implications of this legislation remain unknown. It would leave both websites and consumers open to hacking, phishing, and identity theft. Again, instead of encouraging innovation, companies would instead be forced to deal with such security matters instead of furthering technological advancements.

I implore that you not only vote against the passage of these bills, but that you passionately defend technological innovation, Internet security, economic growth, free speech, and creativity through vehement opposition of these acts and the encouragement of your fellow legislators to oppose these acts as well. The future of the Internet is at stake.

Sincerely,
name

Address and zip

Santa Claus came early for me this year. Yea Santa!

Some douchebag from Ocean Springs, Mississippi attempted a Motion for Temporary Restraining Order/Injunctive Relief to try to take down my article about his WSO. The hearing was supposed to be on Dec. 20. There was a link online where I could follow the case on a daily basis, as there is with any of the cases in the Chancery Court, Jackson County, Mississippi.

Of course, I answered the lawsuit with a 129 page Answer document. So on Dec. 20, I visited the link to the case … and lo and behold … the entire record of the case has been deleted. Kaput. Gone.  I can only hope that the court also made the douchebag pay the court for wasting the Judge’s and the court’s valuable time with such a frivolous, poorly written, unfactual lawsuit. The  douchebag acted as his own lawyer, which goes to show, he who acts as his own lawyer has a fool for a client … oh, except for me… because I won.

Thank you Chancery Court, Jackson County, Mississippi for upholding the First Amendment of the Constitution … you know.. the one about Freedom of Speech. The douchebag’s Motion was so lacking in everything (like proof of the allegations and knowledge of Mississippi and US code), that it was ludicrous.

So then he pretty much copies that lawsuit and slaps on a different file number and title, but it’s basically the same lame crap only it’s supposed to be a suing me for 1 Million Dollars. ROFLMAO. There is no “Filed” stamped on it like the previous one and no Clerk has signed it and it can’t be found anywhere in the docket for the Circuit Court of Mississippi, County of Jackson. In fact, the Circuit Court isn’t even in session there until January. Even though it is a completely bogus lawsuit, I already have the Answer document prepared in case I receive something official from the Circuit Court of Jackson County, Mississippi. Hope the douchebag hasn’t earmarked that $1M to pay bills or for his kid’s education or anything important like that.

Of course, since his WSO hit the Warrior Forum, a handful of new douchebags are now copying his GPL/ripoff scheme to profit from commercial themes.  There’s one new site, GPLPress.com who is hiding their identity behind whois protection who attempted to run a WSO on the Warrior Forum much like the Most Shameful WSO of the Day. This new WSO was first placed in Classifieds on Warrior Forum by mods instead of the WSO Forum (since the themes he is selling are not a unique creation of his own), and then deleted completely. It can still be seen in the Google cache. 

Then there’s another douchebag who jumped on the douchebag bandwagon by selling ThemeForest/MySiteMyWay themes (2 of them) and another developer’s theme (1) in a package of 3 for $10. He claimed that they were made for him by the original developer. Funny thing is, I asked the developer of those themes if he was aware of this offer on the Warrior Forum, and of course, it is news to him that he was hired by the dirtbag to develop those themes. But douchebags rarely ever tell the truth, do they?

So thank you again Santa Claus for the early Christmas present and I hope you have an ample supply of lumps of coal to deliver to all the douchebags out there that profit from other people’s hard work and creativity.

Merry Christmas all and Happy New Year.

I was sending out some DMCA notices for something that belongs to me that was being uploaded to filesharing and BlackHat sites … you know the drill. Typical low life pirate crap. I came across several sites that were promoting pirated products and running Adsense at the same time. I know that Google has a link to report Adsense abuse and spam in their index, so I used that and reported at least 20 sites that were promoting pirated products and running Adsense.

You know what their response was? In spite of sending a DMCA with the infringing page listed and the product name listed, etc., they issued a response saying they didn’t see any infringement and therefore would not be suspending the Adsense account of the [pirate].

All the hoopla over the big, bad Panda update and how Google wants only relevant results and “quality content” and blah blah blah.

Legally Sell or Giveaway PREMIUM WordPress Themes – Comes with Over $1000 Worth of PREMIUM Themes

My Review

How to Leverage the Hard Work and Creativity of Others for Your Own Personal Gain

See Also Bogus Lawsuits and Douchebags Get a Lump of Coal for Christmas

Yep, I purchased this seller’s “product” so that I could provide an informative review of this “product.” This WSO is all about profiting from other people’s hard work, by giving away or selling or leveraging in other ways, Premium WordPress themes and plugins. It’s a tiny pdf that explains GPL licensing for WordPress themes. You can, of course, get all that GPL info for free at the link above or thousands of other places on the Internet for free. There are 3 1/3 pages just talking about GPL. Then there’s two 1/3 pages with all his “creative” ideas on how to monetize all these free premium WordPress themes and plugins. The ideas are a no brainer that anyone with the ethics of this seller could easily conjure up.

The themes he was distributing were old versions of Woo Themes and Gabfire. As an example, I examined six of the Woo Themes he gives a link to and the files were all from 2009. The new Woo framework with all the bells and whistles that provides, plus all the security updates, including timbthumb.php update is not included. Do you know how many updates there’s been to Woo Themes since 2009? A lot.

When this seller was asked if he purchased these and were they downloaded from the source, he said yes, he purchased them in 2010 (liar, liar, pants on fire). When asked to provide proof of purchase, he blew that off. If these were downloaded from the source in 2010, they would not be files from 2009, now would they? I posted the changelogs and a screenshot of one of the 2009 versions he distributed with the version number on it … irrefutable proof that these files had not been downloaded in 2010, as he had said they were. My posts/proof that he is a flat out liar were deleted. Until he was busted, he was distributing 2 year old files that he downloaded from who knows where, containing who knows what malware and links in them.

It’s actually the lure of the Free Premium WordPress themes that are selling this WSO rather than the “course” he’s promoting. If he hadn’t added that little ebook on GPL licensing (which you can find out about all over the Internet for free), the listing wouldn’t even be eligible for a WSO, since none of the themes he is giving away are his work. People love freebies, right?

Listen to this bit of copy from the WSO listing …

I am going to teach you how to legally profit from the hard work of others. Everyday, I leverage the hard work of others to build massive email lists, add huge bonuses to my products (loose description of what he sells), and build loyalty amongst my followers.

It’s all around us… work that is done for us and ready to be leveraged. No, I’m not talking about PLR. I’m talking about WordPress Themes and Plugins.

Premium WordPress themes are big business and my product will show you

How to Legally Sell Premium WordPress Themes and Plugins, while Keeping 100% of the Profits

Ironically, he is distributing his “course” as an exe file to prevent sharing on the blackhat sites. Seems he would like to protect his “intellectual (and I use that term loosely in this case) property.” Hey Buddy …sharing is caring. Right? And you should have heard him scream and holler like a bitch when another of his products was shared on blackhat sites all over the Internet. Any infringement on his products, whether real or imagined, is met with his wrath and fury, but he doesn’t seem to care about pillaging those who develop WordPress products for his own gain. Legal … yes. He can get away with it legally. Ethical? Moot point. He has no ethics.

If your company wants to develop for WordPress, you have to swallow the GPL licensing for the parts of your code that use core WordPress code. This “software should be free” model is shoved down the throats of any developer that wants to build products to be used with WordPress by WordPress founder Matt Mullenweg. Contentious? Of course. It’s no secret that Woo Themes and Chris Pearson, the creator of Thesis had bitter confrontations over this issue (and probably many others), but Matt Mullenweg won in the final round and both Woo Themes and the Thesis developer had to swallow this licensing in order to continue developing their themes for WordPress. Quite honestly, if there weren’t talented developers who created themes and plugins for WordPress, I wouldn’t even use WordPress. The default themes given by WordPress are butt ugly and their functionality would be mediocre without the great commercial WordPress plugins available. It took the hard work of theme and plugin developers to make WordPress worth using.

Pillaging for Profit

Matt Mullenweg describes himself as an “Open Source Hippy.”

WordPress.com founder Matt Mullenweg said everything, not just software, should be open source and described himself as an “open source hippie.” Recently, the site’s founder professed his love for all things open source. Mullenweg was cited as saying, “I believe morally and philosophically that not just software, but everything should be open source,” according to ZDNet at the GigaOM Roadmap 2011 Summit in San Francisco, California. Source

From another interview, he describes his philosophy on GPL as being much like the Golden Rule, “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” It’s people like this seller who then exploit the GPL by interpreting it to give them a license to pillage other people’s products for their own personal gain, hardly the real spirit of GPL licensing.

If anyone doubts that it is NOT Woo’s intention that their themes be given away for free, here is the post on their blog that talks about this.

So what does this mean?

The only thing that really changes, is that there’s no more restrictions on a Standard / Single and Developer License i.e. you can use these themes on unlimited domains irrespective of the package you choose (view a comparison of the different packages here).

The themes aren’t free and you still need to buy them! (i.e. there’s no hidden download link somewhere)

Of course in the forum that he frequents, you’ll hear him defending intellectual property rights, but in practice, that sentiment is quickly discarded when he can make a buck from other people’s hard work and get away with it. This seller defends his behavior under the guise of legality. Yeah, it’s legal, but anyone with an ounce of brain matter knows that the companies that develop and sell premium WordPress themes and plugins are in to make money, as they should be.

A lot of hard work, talent and creativity go into those themes, and it should be rewarded. Do the right thing and ignore parasitic charlatans. Reward the people who develop for WordPress and bring so much extra value to the platform. If not … no need to waste $10 on the course that teaches you to profit from other’s hard work. In a nutshell, you can get away with giving away, selling … whatever WordPress themes and plugins under GPL licensing. It does not give you the right to give away the parts of their product that are not licensed under GPL. As an example, the Photoshop files for Woo Themes are not GPL licensed, and therefore cannot legally be distributed, but I doubt that will stand in the way of the crowd that does this sort of thing. Do what he did to monetize. This con artist basically launched a WSO that provided filesharing links to around 70 of these themes. Not only does he make $10 a shot for each sale, but he is building a huge list, so give them away, use them to build a big list, stuff the themes with your ads and links and upload them everywhere, use them to get traffic to your website, use them in a membership site or as bonuses or OTOs, put them up somewhere and charge for them, whatever. He even suggests that you acquire GPL licensed plugins and change the Paypal donation button in them to YOUR Paypal button. Anything goes. There, I just saved you $10 bucks.

WHAT YOU DON’T GET WITH A GPL LICENSE

This seller is distributing these themes via the ordinary filesharing sites that you can find all kinds of stolen and pirated stuff on. There’s no telling what he stuffed them with before uploading. After all, do you trust a theme from a guy who advises in his course to stuff that theme with whatever you want in there, your links and encrypt it to prevent it from being removed?

When you buy a beautiful, highly functional theme from a theme company, let’s say Woo Themes for instance, you get excellent support in their support forum for the theme and you get very timely updates every time WordPress is updated or they add new features, which is often. You also get clean code that is free of malware and spam links.

As in the recent update, some updates are security updates. Woo Themes updated all of their blogs when a vulnerability was discovered with the timthumb.php file that many Premium themes use. You get no support or updates from themes that you don’t pay for.

Because free WordPress themes are so popular, they are a favorite way for spammers, scam artists, and hackers to cash in or just wreak havoc by delivering malware to unsuspecting users. They simply download the themes, alter them by adding base64 encrypted codes in the functions.php file of the themes. When the code is decrypted, they contain malware or spam links. Find out more about malware distribution through free WordPress themes in Anatomy of a Theme Malware and Why You Should Never Search For Free WordPress Themes in Google or Anywhere Else.

The best and safest place to get free WordPress themes is from the WordPress.org official WordPress theme repository. The best place to get Premium WordPress themes are from the theme author’s website. Any other distribution, especially from file sharing sites, is very risky and not worth the few bucks you’ll save by trying to find commercial, free Premium WordPress themes.

It’s up to you to decide whether or not your website is important enough to purchase the themes directly from the vendors and receive clean code that is updated frequently and support is provided. It’s really a no brainer for me, but I build my sites for the long term. I use a lot of Woo Themes … have bought many developer versions of their themes and the support and updates are world class. They’ve fairly recently added a framework to their themes that makes setting the options and adding advertising a real breeze.

Their themes are extremely easy to customize. I use a highly customized version of the Gazette theme for my plrstyle.com sites. The customizations include a larger sidebar for better advertising display and a more attractive header area for customizing your header.

Then there’s the issue of website flipping. Do you really want to use a free theme with no support and questionable coding for the sites you sell? Not me. I want to be able to stand by the themes I use and provide an update or support when necessary.

What it boils down to is that you get what you pay for. Pay nothing … get an old theme, containing possibly malicious coding and backlinks to the distributor’s sites, no updates and no support. Your business is probably worth more than that. I know mine is.

Some of you may have heard about Google’s latest Brain Fart … Sidewiki. It’s an add-on to your browser that sits right on the left hand side of your website, taking up a large amount of room (room that would have been your website), and allows any Tom, Dick and Harry to literally say whatever they want to about your site, without you having the ability to moderate these comments. Google says you can report abusive comments, but it’s entirely at their discretion as to whether or not it is abusive. Essentially, Sidewiki is a parasite on the Web that free rides on the hard work and the investments website owners.

To top it off, they have not even given website owners the option of opting out of having Sidewiki comments alongside of their site.

There are many reasons why I find this objectionable … more than objectionable … it’s downright evil.

1. First off … it creates a huge distraction. Here you are, working your butt off and maybe even spending cash to get traffic to your sites, and now you have this enormous conversation hosted on Google going on about you and your site completely out of your control.
2. Google is stealing your comments. Many site owners work very hard to develop a relationship with their readers and get a lot of comments on their blogs. This dialogue with their readers is an important part of their blogs and makes your blog more valuable. Well, Google is stealing that. Now they can just use Sidewiki to comment, but it isn’t moderated in any way and it isn’t really threaded so you can’t respond to a particular comment.
3. Google is providing the means for spammers and for competitors to sabotage your blog. Competitors can drop by and pretty say anything they want to discredit you or attempt to ruin your reputation. Spammers can drop by and offer their bill of goods … cialis anyone? How about some viagra? Maybe a little peep show? Blackhatters and other garden variety spammers are already testing it’s usefulness for getting traffic from your site to theirs using Sidewiki and it’s only a matter of time before the programmers have bots that can do this to thousands of sites at a time. This is very evil.
4. How long do you think it will be before Evil Google runs ads on Sidewiki that competes directly with your own ads, thereby stealing your ad revenue that you’ve worked so hard to get?

So how do you fight Google? Are they likely to listen to the feedback of webmasters? If past history is any indication, I doubt that there is a Google solution on the horizon, but that doesn’t mean that you have to just take whatever Google decides to dish out.

If you want to block Sidewiki on your blogs and your static sites, here is a script that does just that. The Evil Sidewiki sidebar is still shown by the website and a user can leave a comment, but as soon as the page is refreshed, the comments do not show. Poof … gone!

If you’re as outraged at Google hijacking the Internet and your websites, send Google feedback here.

Send Toolbar feedback – Toolbar Help

If you do business online and receive payments via Paypal, you probably already know that Paypal does not protect sellers of digital downloads from unscrupulous buyers.  A buyer can, and many do, purchase an item and then immediately file a Paypal dispute.  Many sellers will just issue a refund to keep their Paypal accounts in good standing, even if they know that the dispute has been filed fraudulently for the sole purpose of receiving the product for free.

I have heard over and over in forums that there is little you can do to fight back against this type of Paypal fraud, but that isn’t exactly true.  You can’t recover the money they sent if you refund, of course, but you can prevent them from using the product they bought on a website.

Make sure when you are making sales online, that you keep all correspondence and have good records of the sales you make and downloads.  I personally use DLGuard for my sales and downloads, as I feel it’s the best and most secure way to deliver downloads available.  In DLGuard, you have a record of sales, downloads, customers, customer’s emails, etc.  You can also ban by ip or email someone who has previously requested a refund or that you don’t want to do business with again. You need documentation of the sales and downloads if you are going to fight someone who rips you off via Paypal dispute.

I sell turnkey niche blogs at Niche Blogging Treasure and on a couple of occasions, a customer, without contacting me for a refund, has filed a Paypal dispute, saying item was not as described.  Of course, that is sheer nonsense in this instance, since the websites are an exact copy of the demo.  If you’ve seen the demo, you know what you are getting.

I’ll give you an example of what I did to fight one ripoff artist.  The customer purchased the Yoga website from my site.  He then filed a “not significantly as described” Paypal dispute.  I refunded his purchase and sent him an email confirming his refund with a statement that his license to use the site or the Woo theme or the content was no longer valid.  He sent a response back saying something like … bite me.

Needless to say, that pissed me off.  Pissed me off enough to do something about it.  Here’s the rationale I was working under.  If you sell a product and refund a product, the customer is no longer the owner of that product.  If the product is a website, and he installs the website after being told that he no longer has the right to use your copyrighted material, he is in violation of copyright law.

Mosts hosts take copyright violations pretty seriously.  All you need to do is gather all the documentation together of the sale, the refund, proof of your ownership of the product, etc. and file a DMCA notice or what is commonly referred to as a take down notice. Sounds like a lot of hassle, but it really wasn’t as much hassle as I expected.  I Googled for a sample DMCA notice and then revised it for my purposes.

You will need to find out who hosts the website and that is easily found out using this website: http://who-hosts.com/.  The host is who you will send the take down notice to, as they are the ones who are hosting copyrighted material.

This method should work not only if you have sold a website, but if you sold an ebook and the ripoff artist is selling that ebook on a website or even through Ebay or they have uploaded it to another site.

I had very good results doing this. The host immediately contacted me and told me that they had sent the notice to their customer and gave them the weekend to resolve the issue.  He waited until Sunday night to resolve, but he did in fact, remove the theme and the original content from the site and was left with one very ugly website using the default WordPress theme.

Copyright infringements are also an Adsense TOS violation.  So I went to the site and clicked on the “Ads by Google” underneath the Adsense.  Next click on the “Send Google your thoughts on the site or the ads you just saw” link.  That’s where you can report a violation.  I sent a report using this method and got an email back with the fax number to send a take down notice.  I faxed a copy of the takedown to the number they gave me.  I never received a response, but the site in question is no longer displaying Adsense ads.

So now you have a method that has worked for me in combating Paypal dispute fraud.  Hope it works for you too if you need it.

Here is a copy for your swipefile of the DMCA I sent, with all the personal information removed

To: HOSTING COMPANY
cc: Google, Inc.

My name is YOUR NAME and I am the owner of COMPANY OR WEBSITE.  A website that your company hosts (according to WHOIS information) is infringing on at least eleven copyrighted articles owned by my company. He purchased the site from me and after launching it, requested a refund from Paypal, which was granted.  After refunding, I informed him that he no longer had license to use the Woo theme under my developers license or the content that came with the site.  He refused to remove the theme and content. You can see the Paypal transaction plus refund at PAYPAL PROOF SCREENSHOT.  You can also see the site he purchased from my site here: http://nichebloggingtreasure.com/category/gallery/dietfitness/yoga/.  This is my business, and my intellectual property and can only be used for personal use if purchased from me.

Therefore, the articles are copied onto your servers without permission and he is even hotlinking to my images that I purchased from iStockphoto without an iStockphoto license to use them.  He is also using a custom made Woo theme designed for me without my permission from me or without a valid license from Woo to use the Woo theme.

These articles are being used without permission or attribution. The original articles and photos, to which we own the exclusive copyrights, and the infringing copies can be found at:

URLS OF YOUR MATERIAL AND URLS OF INFRINGING MATERIAL

This letter is official notification under Section 512(c) of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (”DMCA”), and I seek the removal of the aforementioned infringing material from your servers. I request that you immediately notify the infringer of this notice and inform them of their duty to remove the infringing material immediately, and notify them to cease any further posting of infringing material to your server in the future.

Please also be advised that law requires you, as a service provider, to remove or disable access to the infringing materials upon receiving this notice. Under US law a service provider, such as yourself, enjoys immunity from a copyright lawsuit provided that you act with deliberate speed to investigate and rectify ongoing copyright infringement. If service providers do not investigate and remove or disable the infringing material this immunity is lost. Therefore, in order for you to remain immune from a copyright infringement action you will need to investigate and ultimately remove or otherwise disable the infringing material from your servers with all due speed should the direct infringer, your client, not comply immediately.

I am providing this notice in good faith and with the reasonable belief that rights my company owns are being infringed. Under penalty of perjury I certify that the information contained in the notification is both true and accurate, and I have the authority to act on behalf of the owner of the copyright(s) involved.

Should you wish to discuss this with me please contact me directly.

Thank you.
YOUR NAME

ADDRESS

PHONE

EMAIL