Designers: What do you do when you find a forum that removed your copyright?

[Audentio]

Dear Audentio, you just don't get it.

No, I fully understand, I just completely disagree.

I say: it is wrong BY MY OPINION to place a copyright sign on a theme if you posted it on a public forum and encouraged others to use it.

What do you want to achive by doing that?
You want to advertise your works to your business clients ("please visit such and such site to see my work...")? Then you have to disclose it in your theme's license agreement otherwise what moral right would you have to accuse others in dishonesty?

Unlike you, I have a job online. I make money off of my free services through sponsorships. People who see my copyright and really enjoy my work will contact me and sometimes pay me to make them a custom piece of work. Lots of people do this, in fact, I got so many, I had to close down free custom work for awhile since I was getting ten requests a week. I rarely advertise my services, this is all done through one single, hardly noticeable, piece of text in the footers of my templates and skins.

I cannot copyright everything visibly. The logos I make for free and the logos people pay me to do, I cannot stamp a watermark on there, nor would I want to.

Scripting is another thing...I would be willing to bet that you could not find a freelance coder who does not copyright his or her scripts.

The copyright is a way to show ownership as well as to show other people what you, or your company or business or forums or whatever, has to offer.

And, after all, the users of your themes are actually developers or even programmers, same as you are. Offering them your help and then charging for it is similar to abusing your junior brothers.

99% of the people who use my themes for vB, MyBB, phpBB, etc. have no idea what web development or programming is. Just because you are doesn't mean everyone else is.

And I don't know where you get the idea that I charge people for my work...do you see any "Pay me before you get help" posts by me or any
"Pay me before you use this skin"? NO! I don't know where you got the idea that I charge for my stuff. I think you need to get your facts straight before you decide to call people out and name call.

MyBB staff has worked tirelessly on MyBB software, plugins, and perhaps even more so, support. Neither they, nor I, nor anyone else who offers support, demands money.

I'm a professional programmer and I have shared thousands of ideas and pieces of a code. What, if colleague comes to me and asks for help then I need to tell him: yes, I can help you only if you tell my manager that it was my idea? Is this right?

Er....?

I guess, the copyright sign is too strong tool to be used here. I wish there were some other, lighter signs for IT industry, like "Based on ideas" or "Design Ideas Of", do you undestand what I mean? It would be like wearing the dress with the label:" Designed by Valentino" or "Designed in Paris". Who would want to hide it?

Again...I have no idea what you are talking about...