Those of you that read John Cow regularly probably already know; if you don’t, I suggest you take a look at his latest post about the theme ripper. Now, first off – let me state how much I hate warez peddlers – you only learn how bad they are when you’ve had one of your own products ripped – something that you’ve spent time and money on producing being given away for free – with no gain to you. I of course have had my eBooks ripped at least five times, if not more – so have a few friends that I know, and it’s not a good feeling at all.

If you read John Cow’s post, you’ll find that he was tipped off by ‘Mr X’ – that was me. Now, I’m not going to take the credit for finding out the information; while I’d love to, it was a friend that had also been pissed off by the same person, and after he did a bit of research, he found out about the Warez forum and alerted me. I did send off an email with his findings to Bob (owner of JCow.com), mainly because I’m one of the people who paid for the template and he did of course donate a generous ad spot to my contest (more on that later) – he deserved to know that someone was peddling his products. I’m not going to link to the thief, so that he does not receive any traffic from this – this is the same idiot that asked for a free copy before, and pissed me off on quite a lot of other things. If it was the first time doing something so stupid, fair enough – I’d give him a warning – but after a series of irritating offenses, this is the last time I deal with him.

What irritating offenses, you ask? Well apart from asking for the theme – this guy ripped nearly everything I did at the beginning of my internet marketing career – do you guys remember my eBooks about profiting with domains? Well, the theme ripper got it (I actually gave it to the twit free) – then came out with his own eBook with the same topic a couple days later – with pretty much the same content. Do you remember my proxy eBook? Again, same thing – two days after he read it, he wrote up a similar one. Now, obviously I couldn’t stop him from doing that – but how would you feel, if someone that knew f**k all about domains before reading something you wrote basically started selling a rewritten copy? Those were the first two. There are a few more; including copying a sales page and a domain name – I stopped giving the jackass stuff because I knew that, well – the next day would see a similar version of it. He also did irritating things like asking me to plug his products, spamming the comments section with links to eBooks he was selling and swap Entrecard recommendations (which I agreed to, because I was tired of the nagging) – do that with someone else, not me.

Is that all? No – this same twit asked me for a copy of the John Cow theme, one that I had paid for – stating that ‘well, he won’t know‘ . Sure, he won’t – still, you’re quite a c*nt for trying to steal from others, and an even bigger one for thinking that I’d help – as I said, if you think something is good enough; pay for it. If the theme cost hundreds, or even thousands of dollars I’d understand a bit better (still wouldn’t give it out though) – but it’s extremely affordable to even the poorest of webmasters – which this idiot clearly isn’t – which is why I politely told him to buzz.

With his name now shamed, I’ve cut off all communication with the idiot – he’s already been banned from Digital Point (again, not due to me, although I’d love to take credit for it), and I’ve blocked him on instant messenger. Starting a warez forum is not the smartest of ideas – sure, start a place giving away free stuff that you have the right to give away *cough* insert promotion for WebmasterDiscounts.com *cough* but starting a place specifically to give away stuff that you have stolen from honest webmasters – well, that’s not on.

What do you think? A tad harsh, or rightly deserved? Let me know. As for the John Cow prize, I’ve noticed I’m nearing 1,000 comments on this blog (currently at 9xx) – the 1,000th commentator (as long as it’s not me, in which case it’ll be the 1,001th commentator) on this blog will win the ad spot for a month, while I’ll do a draw to open off the New Year (on January 1st) for the eBook prize. So get cracking! Time to study now – still haven’t started and exams commence on the 2nd of Jan… ah! :twisted:

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!

40 Comments