[wp-hackers] When shady people resell your work...

[Casey Bisson]

Dino,

I don’t have any direct experience with this, but the http://www.fsf.org/ and http://www.gnu.org/ might be able to offer advice on this matter, if not actually be able to help connect you with a lawyer who can help act on the matter.

Sadly, their GPL violation page is really vague http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-violation.html , and I don’t think they’ve got deep pockets, but worth a try. I say this because it’s likely important for the organization to establish and support legal precedence for license enforcement, so cases like this may be of interest.

—Casey

On Apr 21, 2014, at 8:34 PM, James Currie <jamie at wunderdojo.com> wrote:

> That's crap. If he's ripping off your work and selling it, and counting on you not being willing/able to put in the resources to fight for your proper rights that not only screws you, it sets a bad precedent for all of the rest of us.
> 
> If you want to set up a fund to take contributions to go after this guy I'll be the first to pony up a bit. I've benefited immensely from the amazing community around WP and I'd hate to see people like this start to put a damper on everyone's willingness to share their knowledge, experience and code.
> 
> Jamie
> 
> ------ Original Message ------
> From: "Daniel" <danielx386 at gmail.com>
> To: "wp-hackers" <wp-hackers at lists.automattic.com>
> Sent: 4/21/2014 7:49:15 PM
> Subject: Re: [wp-hackers] When shady people resell your work...
>> So are you going to take it further? That would be a good lesson to teach
>> Regards,
>> Daniel Fenn
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> On Tue, Apr 22, 2014 at 12:42 PM, Dino Termini <dino at duechiacchiere.it> wrote:
>>> Hi all, just a quick update on this issue, for those who might want to go
>>> through the same process.
>>> 
>>>  As suggested, we sent a few DMCA Takedown Notices to all the services
>>> involved.
>>> 
>>> Once Mr. Blagodarskly (the guy who's selling our plugin) got a copy of those
>>> notices, he replied with a counter notice affidavit.
>>> 
>>> Apparently, if he does that, our only option would be to seek "a court order
>>> to restrain the subscriber from engaging in infringing activity relating to
>>> the material on the service provider's system or network".
>>> 
>>> Oh well...
>>> 
>>> Dino.
>>> 
>>> On 4/9/2014 8:39 AM, Ryan McCue wrote:
>>>> 
>>>> If they remove attribution, they're in violation of the license, so
>>>> their license is void.
>>>> 
>>>> If this is the case, here's what I'd do:
>>>> 
>>>> 1. Send them a DMCA request
>>>> 2. If they don't respond, send their host a DMCA request directly
>>>> 3. If *they* don't respond, send their registrar a DMCA request (they
>>>> probably won't do anything, but might contact the host and tell them to
>>>> respond)
>>>> 4. If nothing has happened still, send Google/etc DMCA requests to get
>>>> them removed from search results
>>>> 
>>>> ----
>>>> 
>>>> DMCA is the most powerful tool you have, but it only applies if they've
>>>> removed attribution. If they add attribution, unless there are other
>>>> license violations, you can't use the DMCA.
>>>> 
>>>> Also note: If your premium add-ons contain copyrighted resources (not
>>>> PHP, since that's covered by the GPL; images or CSS aren't automatically
>>>> though), you can also use that.