"stealing" swf files

[Maggee]

I never paid much attention to this before now, but just realized that you can copy .swf files from your temporary internet files folder after you have viewed it from a web page. And someone copied mine and appears to be passing it off as his.

This person emailed me and asked if he could put my 911 tribute on his site, and I told him he could link to it. I checked it out tonight. He did not link to it...he put it on his page and the title is... "MY tribute to the WTC tragedy of September 11, 2001". He also has his copyright underneath it with no mention of the person who actually made the movie.

I have asked him to at least give me credit for it. If he ignores me and if he continues to take it for his own work, is there anything I can do about it?

The funny thing is...he even took my button link to the tribute off of my main page and is using it as his own. He couldn't even make his own button, lol.

[necromanthus]

Stealing is quite a JOB in our days.
But what do you say about "SWF sniffers" or "SWF scanner" (promoted even at koolmovers.com).
It's the pirates ages for sure !
cheers (and don't be so sad)

[Bob Hartzell]

My neighbor who is a graphic artistic had a magazine cover that he designed stolen by another artist who passed it off as his own. My neighbor had a lawyer send a threatening letter to the company that bought the stolen art. I think the problem was then quickly resolved. You are probably protected under the law but it might cost money to resolve the situation. You might try contacting the company that hosts the person's web site.

[johnie]

To be honest sending a letter to the site owner and then to his ISP is your best recourse. After that get a lawyer.

The SWF format is not safe from copying. To make matters worse if the user has a copy of mozilla (Or any browser that still uses NS plug-ins) and QT and have set QT to handle SWF Mime types they can right click and save as source from the web page. I have written an article and posted it on KoolMovers on how to fight this type of theft but nothing is 100%.

SWF Scanners and the such typically show the guts of the SWF and don't really steal anything, with an exception of a few, except they do allow you to leach images and sounds from the SWF but you could already do this without a scanner.

[Maggee]

Well, I have learned a valuable lesson here... from now on I will at least add a copyright notice inside my movies. I guess you CAN teach an old dog new tricks!

But my complaint to him seemed to work. He put my name under the movie, but still kept his copyright and the title. I asked him to please change the title, as it was misleading and was made to look like it was his work, not mine. Apparently he did not want to do that nor would he link to my page. Although he has not yet answered my last email, the movie has been removed from his site, unless he just hid it from me, lol.

It looks like he now has a new link there....the picture that was in my preloader is now on his site with a poem. The picture was not mine, it was a download that had been freely distributed at the time, so that is not a problem. But I wonder whose poem it is, lol.

I was a little upset when I found out what he had done, but I think it's kinda funny. Of course, if I were a real artist and getting paid, and someone had stolen my work, I would be on the phone to a lawyer in a heartbeat. I sure hope he is not a member here and reading all this...I wouldn't want to embarass anyone.

And thanks, guys, for your help

[mmreed]

Well... in a cynical sense....


Theft is tribute....one at least admired the work enough to steal it.

[Maggee]

That's true, and something I had already considered, lol