So, in recent months, I was made aware of a few past occurrences where certain fansites had very obviously stolen the stylesheet from one of my Coppermine premades and were using it. This was, surprisingly, not the only time I’ve come across this issue as of late. Especially so because I personally have seen the proof that these few fansite admins haven’t bought the theme that they’re using the stylesheet to (yes, the view source reveals all my friends). They very cleverly saved the stylesheet from my demo site and layout structure HTML and then applied it to either an older premade of mine that they actually bought or another designer’s Coppermine theme.
I have to admit, this is pretty discouraging as a designer. I’ve been very fortunate not to have experienced much theft or copycat-type situations in all my years of designing, but this is still surprising to me. Why I never thought someone might simply save the entire stylesheet of one of my themes instead of purchasing the theme itself clearly proves that expecting my hard work and creativity to be respected was too much to ask for.
So, because of this discovery and the multiple examples I have seen firsthand, I have decided to remove all live demos of my Coppermine themes from this point forward. I have already removed all current Coppermine themes available from my demo sites. I regret that everyone won’t be able to see a live demo of any of my themes now or in the future, but until I feel comfortable making live demos available again (if ever), I will continue to provide screenshots of all Coppermine themes instead.
Will this stop the theft? No, that’s just the nature of the internet. But removing the live demos is at least one measure I can take to prevent further theft by not offering my themes to them on a platter. Who knows, it might even motivate them to actually purchase my themes if they want them so badly.