Yeah that would be a double edged sword...good for the creator bad for skinning. And since I hate MyColors that would end any Master skins I'd buy. This really sucks that nothing can be done about those people.

It's times like these I wish I had some hacking skills...I'd be all over that place like a bad politician messing things up before they kicked me out. 

Sad to say ...shit happens....I'd bet its not the only site out there giving away all the master  and stardock skins.  I know one master skin thats been downloaded 10 times more than its been sold.

Yes Please Neil, if my colours has it, I dont see why master skins cant have it, afterall stardock takes half of the profits from master skins,

so it should be in stardocks interest to do so.

Not everyone has their own site ID, i dont, and im sure not every master skinner has one.

I am sorry for my late reply to some personal Pm's but im awake now, its 5.45 am in the morning here.

Lightstar has done a bloody sensational job helping me with this. thankyou matee, you effing ROCK.

we need to do more here to protect our master skins,

The problem with this Kitty is you would lose sales as well doing it this way. As much as I like skins I hate MyColors since you can't make other stuff from the skin and I just hate the way MyColors messes up my machine. What we need a good pitbull hacker!

RomanDA

 and SVIZ are needed then.

I definitely agree but I would hate to lose the ability to tweak master skins that I purchase.......for some reason or another, I've had to actually fix some issues I had with master skins, not to mention I like tweaking them to my liking. This protection plan limits users like me, who actually pay for skins.

Maybe we should try thinking of another way to protect them. Things get kind of complicated because master skins are sold on other sites besides wincustomize. Argh I don't know what the answer is. Maybe we could flood the pirating site with fake master skins which are just empty .wba files?   

yeah if we could protect them and still be able to tweak them, that would be awsome.

Nice to see Stardock (Neil) is suggesting a way to protect these from being ripped.

Perhaps a registration system like the one used on the Dreams that Stardock Designs sold as Master skins could be used. That along with encrypted graphics would help a great deal.

I'm not a programmer so I'm not sure if it could be done, but it's definitely in Stardock's best interest to protect the Master skins from being ripped.

Solve this problem - new wincustomize community contest??

Don't copyright laws protect this stuff....if not what's the point of the law then? Maybe we need to do it the old fashioned way and show up at their doorstep with bats.

Not all countries respect copyright laws, such as this one.  This is why so many of them are based in these countries.  

so then, can something be done to protect our master skins, like a registration code or something that can only be used on one ip address?

I don't know what the technical aspects are of what can be done to protect them.  Neil would know far more about what would be feasible and cost effective, if any.

Right now, I would suggest getting the download links (rapidshare, mediafire, etc.) and sending them DMCA removals.

Neil....

The solution "might" be to provide the system as an option [to the uploader].... so there would be two 'classes' of Master skin....one that was protected and thus 'safe' from abuse and another option [for the Master] of leaving it as is....maybe more popular to tweakers...but also exposed to potential piracy.

Here's a thought....

Pain in the bum but.....

ALL Master WB skins are sold "protected"....and cannot be altered/tweaked.

Buyers who wish to tweak it can contact the Master and obtain a second 'unprotected' copy directly from him/her via email.

The Master 'marks' each version emailed out differently...in a way only he/she can determine  [digital signing in the hidden bits of a Jpeg, etc].

Then...

The tweaker can tweak....

But if the tweaker also attempts to Pirate/distribute ... the version distributed can be traced to that person.

Then....that person gets a visit.

DCMA removals are not respected in Turkey Island Dog, where this website originates. They do not even know what that is.  This is an international ring of thieves so to speak, Turkey, the Netherlands, fake addresses in the U.S., fake names, protected WHOIS information so you cannot contact anyone, etc.  If you type in the .com domain name of this site, it goes to a Turkish language site.  If you type in the .info domain it goes to an English site.  If you type in the .net domain it forwards to the same English site also.  This is probably a useless battle unfortunately, but I am giving them hell anyway!  I have sent multiple emails to different addresses, but of course no one answers.

Oh, and another problem that I think may occur is that the people that own the website, also own the file distribution services.  They give two download links for each illegal download, and both of their "Contact Us" pages are identical and provide you with the exact same auto-reply.

I dunno, but why not Post these skins in a password protected archive (Like PGP Encrypted) and you cant use it without the password for the archive....then maybe it'd slow them down a bit if they had to BUY the password or key......just an idea

Because it would be useless effort in that it is the people or persons buying these skins who are the ones giving them out to the illegal sites in the first place.

that sounds like a great step forward and a good solution to help us protect what we make here. I hope Neil can help us.

This sounds like  good idea! Protected and still able to create stuff for it.

I agree!

Many sites such as this, don't actually host the downloads, they post the links to the downloads to sites such as rapidshare, mediafire, etc.

They have a depositfiles link for the Prowler skin.  The DMCA can be sent to - http://depositfiles.com/en/abuse_copyr.html

Obviously some sites are DMCA friendly, and some are not.  All you can do is try.

I would love to be able to encrypt my skins. I would even pay a small yearly fee, to do so. Something to think about Stardock...

This will always be a never ending battle. Half the planet cares about the artist, the other half doesn't (They just think of them selves).

Some will even buy the skin and give it away free, just to make friends, in the community their in. For ever "one" iI stop, there's 20 more I don't know about. It's an endless job.

As for the encrypted images, I agree, if you want to make skins, there is no problem requesting the images from the author. Plain and simple.

Sounds like a good idea to me.