We Found Out Who Ruined Christmas

Written by John Cow on December 26th, 2007

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We just received an email from Mr X. (wishes to remain anonymous) who gave us the heads up about a thief who stole the JohnCow Wordpress theme and is now offering it on his warez forum. Merry Frigging Christmas eh?

Just to show you how cheap this loser is, he actually asked if he could get a copy of the theme for free first which was obviously declined. Now we have a pretty good idea how he managed to get his hands on a copy, one of the PayPal transactions was done with an account that didn’t belong to the buyer - they stole those details too and we ended up refunding the account holder $79.

We get robbed of our content daily by tons of RSS scrapers, but we don’t really mind. Our posts don’t cost us money. The Wordpress theme we developed and promoted however does cost us money. And nobody likes it when someone else takes away your money right?

We did a little investigating and with the info Mr X. provided us with, we found out that the little thief resides on the Digital Point Forums - his signature;”Get The Stuff Being Sold On DP For Free”. Bet once other DP members find out that this little turd is stealing their products to give away for free to build his forum traffic, they won’t be impressed. We also found the thief’s blog URL where he wishes everyone a merry Christmas. Bah Humbug!

After reporting him to abuse@rapidshare.com (not that it’ll matter since he seems to be selling premium rapidhare accounts too) we had a chat with the guy on DP where he bought his hosting from. Fortunately the hoster understood where we were coming from and agreed to remove this from his servers asap. We’ll have to wait for the outcome of this, but we’ll be watching things closely.

Anyhoo, lets not forget that we’ve got 750 Entrecard credits to give away. This weeks random winner is Reno from CyberStreetReport. Congratulations! The credits have been transferred to your account.

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58 Comments »

Comment by Allyn Paul
2007-12-26 16:20:52

Dude, that’s lame!
It is kinda ironic they guy wished folks a Happy Christmas while he’s in the midst of committing a crime eh?
AL

 
Comment by InvestorBlogger Subscribed to comments via email
2007-12-26 16:21:11

JC,

I visited his website, and was surprised to find out some other information. Will copy via email to you …

Kenneth

 
Comment by Rome
2007-12-26 16:52:04

now we all know who the SOB is. Nice job on the investigating. :wink:

 
Comment by reno
2007-12-26 16:56:37

A cow’s Christmas should never be ruined. Sorry about the thief. :mad:

Thank you for sending me 750 milky credits this morning. :smile: I am going to have to bragg to my readers about all the calcium I get from John Cow’s blog.

 
Comment by Yebot
2007-12-26 17:14:45

What a tool.

From his blog, “I am a 15-year old guy who shall be constantly giving you tips and whatnot so that even YOU can earn money on the web.”

15 year olds should do nothing but shut up and listen.

 
Comment by sir jorge
2007-12-26 17:17:07

oh well….

it could be worse somehow.

 
Comment by PunkCash Subscribed to comments via email
2007-12-26 17:21:38

what a fkn loser! :twisted:

madcow ONE, douchebag ZERO!

 
Comment by vhxn.com
2007-12-26 17:28:21

Sorry to that looser, Good find Cow

 
Comment by Mike Huang
2007-12-26 17:46:24

Milk Man, I understand how frustrated you are that your theme got stolen and I have a friend that prevents these type of hacks for all bloggers. The friend of mine can basically copy any theme, but he chooses not to. Instead he helps prevent others from “ripping” a theme. I’ll be sure to introduce him to everyone when we’re ready :)

As for Mr. X taking your theme, you really shouldn’t post a link to his site even if it is needed. I’m sure after this, he’ll actually receive some buyers…

-Mike

 
Comment by Mike Huang
2007-12-26 17:51:12

I’ll talk to my friend and see if he can help you out :)

 
Comment by bylla Subscribed to comments via email
2007-12-26 19:11:05

Please keep us updated on this since kids like this shouldn’t be allowed on the Internet :(

 
Comment by Cigar Inspector
2007-12-26 19:31:24

I really feel for you, JC.
Nothing worse than the thiefs in the blogosphere…

 
2007-12-26 20:15:40

Stupid moron. Same goes with the one who hacked David Airey’s site.

 
Comment by Arpit Agarwal Subscribed to comments via email
2007-12-26 20:29:16

Such idiot morons bring bad names to the DP community..
But I think Mods are doing a great job at DP.
That thief is gone.
:)

 
Comment by Bill Subscribed to comments via email
2007-12-26 20:56:20

That’s a shame but if someone wants to steal something….its tough to stop them. The theme won’t do him any good other than at Digital Point of Sitepoint because his site has no traffic.

He can’t sell it without advertising it somewhere so just keep an eye out.

Merry Day After XMas everyone. Did you write your goal plan for 08 yet? I did.

 
Comment by HalaMadrid Subscribed to comments via email
2007-12-26 21:00:12

You should prevent stuff from happening, everyone can take your template but those people don’t know how.
johncow.com/wp-content/themes/
And they can download it. You should chmod the folder XD
Good luck.

 
Comment by Javo
2007-12-26 21:13:44

well I saw at least more than 4 blogs with your template cow, is not my theme/blog and I felt angry when I saw all those blogs with your template, just with different colors…well you did all you can for now. Good luck

 
Comment by Web Cosmo Subscribed to comments via email
2007-12-26 21:41:16

The theme does not all look similar in my opinion. I don’t think you do much about it. After all its free wordpress, you didn’t write the code behind it.

 
Comment by HalaMadrid Subscribed to comments via email
2007-12-26 22:17:57

Well you should at least thank me for the info I gave you. XD

 
Comment by Simon
2007-12-26 22:36:27

Amazing people like that don’t get banned from DP - blatantly advertising in your signature that you’ve got warez copies of goods isn’t particularly smart.

 
Comment by 30 Day Man Subscribed to comments via email
2007-12-26 22:43:12

Thats some serious ‘BS Mofo Scenes’ you’ve got on your hands there.

Hope this lil’ nuff nuff gets his cyber arse smacked up.

Hey hook me up with those EC’s if possible! Count me in.

30 Day Man
http://www.30dayman.com

 
Comment by Steve
2007-12-26 22:47:44

Hey John, I posted a comment saying thanks for stealing. My email was a dud and my website i provided was http://goatse.cz

LOL

PS: Don’t visit goatse.cz. Its wrong.

 
Comment by shy guy
2007-12-27 01:30:57

Rilex Jc..
He can’t do and will disappear if don’t have identity.

 
Comment by -Paul
2007-12-27 01:51:58

is this the same guy..?? http://entrecard.com/details/3172

 
Comment by vhxn.com
2007-12-27 02:42:27

Reno Congratulations winning the Entrecards credits :???:

 
Comment by Darron Beetge
2007-12-27 08:47:30

Those the lowest of the low, worse than finding a lump of coal in the ‘ol stocking.
Not the best way to end a probably otherwise great Christmas.

 
Comment by chetan
2007-12-27 10:45:35

I see him banned on DP now :)

Good find cow!

 
Comment by The University Kid
2007-12-27 11:39:41

I was Mr X… :razz:

Heh, the idiot had been irritating me for months now. Ah well. :smile:

 
Comment by Hyder
2007-12-27 11:43:23

Good Job Cow!

Punk kid stealing the theme like that! :mad:

 
Comment by Imran Subscribed to comments via email
2007-12-27 12:30:38

Hi john,

I mailed him and now the link you provide me its now deleted. You can check yourself :)

 
2007-12-27 15:31:19

If there’s only one in truth in all of life it is this. People suck.

Thank you, that is all.

 
Comment by Blogging Experiment Subscribed to comments via email
2007-12-27 19:23:05

Actually, I think there is fairly solid legal footing for what this person is doing, at least in terms of distributing the theme for free. Since I also sell my theme, I don’t like it one bit but, I think it may be legally defensible. The way WordPress is licensed, I believe the General Public License extends to WP themes as well, which would allow distribution of any theme for any price (including free) that they wanted. Now, obviously stealing the PayPal info is against the law and a whole other issue. However, the GPL issue was discussed in great detail on my blog when I first announced that my theme was for sale. There’s a lot of info there that I’m willing to bet most people don’t know.

 
Comment by Liza
2007-12-27 20:26:06

heh, welcome to the club of WP theme designers…lol, i have all my themes offered om warez sites, at least they are free tho and they don’t bother to remove my links, but still annoying. You are lucky you fished that guy out!

 
Comment by David Harrison Subscribed to comments via email
2007-12-27 21:07:43

Sucks, good find, ive seen it float around other places so far, seems to be fast at spreading :(

 
Comment by Ava Subscribed to comments via email
2007-12-27 21:23:06

Argh…he’s on my Entrecard widget right now!!!

 
Comment by Usman Money Subscribed to comments via email
2007-12-27 22:59:25

Wow what a loser. He got banned from dp too.

I wouldn’t even like a jacka** stealing something that I paid for. :mad:

 
Comment by sven
2007-12-28 18:22:35

just read this and can only say, screw that ripper… it’s just… Bah I do not even have to moohs to descirbe it. Just ugly to use something someone else created without having the rights for it.

 
Comment by Nicholas James
2007-12-28 19:58:34

n00bs suck and warez n00bs are even worse :!:

 
Comment by Neotrepreneur Subscribed to comments via email
2007-12-29 18:00:02

@ Yebot . Dont freaking put all 15 years olds in the same basket just because some twat was posting up warez.

 
Comment by Darron Beetge
2007-12-30 10:12:34

He got what he deserved. Wordpress themes are not GPL unless you are basing it on the default theme.

 
Comment by Amit
2008-01-04 17:19:38

Hi Bob, Your theme is on many warez forums now.
Also from this losers blog, his paypal his herrfarrar@gmail.com, file a complaint with Paypal and also get his account banned. :evil:

 
Comment by xStatic
2008-04-21 17:35:01

Man that sucks..
But you cant just say warez sites suck, most people on those type of sites believe in sharing - NOT stealing!

 
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