Home > .Net, C# > Hello, you have been ripped off !

Hello, you have been ripped off !

January 9th, 2009

Hi,

Sometimes you get a reminder of how nasty our business can be. Like every other business there is people trying to benefit from your work, stealing your ideas, attacking you behind your back and so on…
Of course these people often lack the originality, the skills and top of their lack of morality and respect.

This morning I got an unexpected email from someone I really respect for his work: Mike Griffin of EntitySpaces fame (by the way, ES2009 looks terrific !). You may know him since he pioneered with a few others the OR/M in the .Net World and maybe from MyGeneration a tool I used a lot. I’m just sorry he contacted me for such a sad story.
He kindly warned me that my old favourite article on CodeProject was ripped off and copyrighted by a guy on Dreamincode.net.
You can see here the 2002 original: http://www.codeproject.com/KB/recipes/command_line.aspx
And before they delete it the 2008 ripoff: http://www.dreamincode.net/forums/showtopic47895.htm

Amazing no ? Actually I liked the layout of Psychocoder version of my article. I was suprised by Mike Griffin email and feel more curious than angry. The ripper copyright is even more restrictive than the original which is unacceptable. Overall I feel sorry for the guy that did that. He is harming my work. He is apparently a moderator of Dreamincode.net which cast a bad shadow on the website. He is trying hard to build his presence on Dreamicode.net and there is probably no bad ways to achieve his goal (and win the 25$ ?). It could be interresting to investigate further his contributions to find other possible ripoff.

This is quite a strange way to start the day.

Richard Lopes

Edit: Chris Kenworthy the owner of the site Dream.In.Code took the matter very seriously and resolved the issue promptly and efficiently. Actually it has been resolved the same day I was informed. Shortly after publishing this post he already had taken adequate action. Thank you very much Chris.

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  • Richard,

    I'm the owner of Dream.In.Code. Although I've already responded to your thread at Dream.In.Code I felt I should address what we have done to resolve this situation, and what we do with every piece of content submitted to Dream.In.Code to protect the intellectual property rights of authors like yourself.

    First, let me thank Mike Griffen for bringing this to your attention. We respond quickly to copyright infringement and you are welcome to email me directly in the future if you spot another duplicate tutorial/code snippet.

    The tutorial in question has been removed from Dream.In.Code and the person that submitted it has been contacted to find out why your code was used in his tutorial without proper attribution or licensing.

    Protecting intellectual property rights is very important to us, and because of this we check every piece of content submitted to Dream.In.Code using Copyscape before approving it. If a duplicate is found, we reject the code snippet or tutorial and advise the author not to submit copyrighted material. I have run your article, and the tutorial on Dream.In.Code through Copyscape again and was unable to find a match which is why we would not have found your article when we approved the tutorial.

    Thanks again for bringing this to my attention. While we try to do everything we can to protect authors like yourself, there are those few times when copied content slips through the cracks.

    Best Regards,
    Chris Kenworthy
  • Dear Chris,

    I am very impressed and reassured by your prompt action on this matter.
    This is the mark of your commitment in making the developer community a better place.
    I would like to thank you very much for that. I understand that this is difficult and probably more an more difficult to check for ripoff. Some are not obvious.

    I have discovered Dream.In.Code by the same occasion and it looks like a great place full of great content. I will think about it if I have an article to publish.

    Please be assured I'm not angry. As I said I just think it doesn't help the community where the piece of code belongs. I just think that was lame.

    Best regards,

    Richard Lopes
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