I've got some venting to do, so here goes....
As usual, I put up a freebie for the month. Downloads were, as usual, heavy the first week, then became steady the following week. I went over my traffic limit a bit that second week, and thought "Great! They're really loving this goodie." I paid for the overage, and had a bit of a swollen head thinking so many more people like my creations. Then last week, my bandwidth went through the roof!! It seemed like every other day I was paying for overages & buying more bandwidth!! After spending over $50.00 in exceeded bandwidth, 2 very kind fellow scrappers emailed me telling me a Yahoo group, ScrappersParadise, was "hotlinking" to my downloads. Now, I'm not living in a box, I've read about this happening to other designers, but was lucky enough to avoid it ~ until now. And not only are these members of ScrappersParadise stealing bandwidth from us, but they have actually had the nerve to give away kits that were for sale!! They don't give a hoot that what they are doing is wrong. They've actually stopped accepting new members unless you have a referral from a current member. And if you've signed up in the past month & have not participated, they will unsub you! They know we're on to them, but also know it is very difficult for us to stop them.
So, as a designer who has been "burned", I beg all who read this & who may be a member of this group, to unsubscribe and put a stop to the piracy so that we may continue to give you the freebies you love & not be forced to raise our prices to cover the losses.
This concludes my ranting & raving for the day. Hope you all have a better day that I've had :)
Monday, March 20, 2006
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4 comments:
I'm so sorry this has happened to you. It's a shame these people don't care that they're stealing from you. I don't know what they're thinking!
You have shared so many lovely creations with us and this has got to be so frustrating and angering. Don't blame you for being steamed!
Hi, First off I'm so sorry this has happened to you. I have been visiting the site http://scrappers.blogdrive.com/ and leaving Comments on there to let others know when they visit their Site that they are Criminals. I think I'm as Steamed as you are. It makes me so so mad how this can happen. It's just not fair that people like that win all the way round, first by stealing then by affecting so many innocent people that will miss out on any Freebies. So So Sad.
scrappinsoto@yahoo.ca
This is an Email address of one of the people who did this. It is wrong and they should be told. It's not right and it affects all of us.
I have been reading alot about this going on lately. I am not tech savvy enough to really umderstand what all the bandwidth stuff is, but I do understand stealing is stealing. Hope a way is developed to stop this so you can share your passion without worry, and especially cost!!!
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