vBSkinworks.com slaps me with DMCA Violation, for doing nothing…

Sunday, October 5th
by gilbert

As you all may know, I have been working hard these past couple of weeks in relaunching my old gaming site, zonaxbox.com.  Last week I decided to drop, wordpress ad go with my old forum software VBulletin, because there is a lot of support for gaming sites.  I renewed my license with Jelsoft, the company that makes Vbulletin, and went on to install the old theme I had installed back in 2006.

Because I am running a newer version of vBulletin, my old theme doesn’t works, so I went to vBSkinworks.com, and shoot them an email asking on information on how to run the x360 style on vbulletin 3.73.  I get an email back from contact@vBSkinworks.com, saying the theme is no longer supported but that they will replace it for free with one of their most recent skins, so i go and start browsing their site checking what new skin catches my eye, and I see one that  has not been released yet called “Battlegear” (see below image).

A couple of weeks pass and Battlegear is released, so I contact again vBSkinworks, I even purchase another skin for my Mac site, I am waiting calmly till the transaction takes place. And i get an email saying my paypal was charged and is just a matter of minutes while i get my ski and get to work on my site.  An hour later I get an email from paypal that the transaction was not completed and i got a full refund.

I tried getting the skin a couple of times, I even emailed vBSkinworks, they said it was a paypal issue.  I verified with paypal and everything was ok.  When I try for a last time, before the entire process is done, I get an email from someone in vBSkinworks, saying “you think we are stupid but we are not.  the stupid one is you…”, and shortly after my paypal account gets refunded.  I write back, and this “John” said that he knew zonaxbox.com was pirating his themes and that he was not going to sell me anything.  I responded to him that I didnt knew what he was talking about, that there was a confusion somewhere because i wanted the skin for my site, and that I was a long time client of his company.  He never replied back, when I went to his site, I was “Site-Banned”, so basically I couldn’t get to his page or email them anymore.  I wanted that skin for my site so bad, that I contacted a friend of mine,gave him the instructions and told him to buy it for me.  He went and got it, I transfered him the money from paypal, and in a couple of days i had the skin.  I uploaded it to my site and started modifying it.  This was a week ago.

Today I get this email from Dreamhost, my hosting provider:

“We have received a formal DMCA (Digital Millennium Copyright Act) notice
regarding allegedly infringing content hosted on your site. The specific
content in question is as follows:

“‘the vBulletin forum software GUI design “BattleGear”‘
located at:
http://www.zonaxbox.com/forums/

The party making the complaint (John C Simpson –
contact@vbskinworks.com), claims under penalty of perjury to be or
represent the copyright owner of this content. Pursuant to 17 U.S.C. §
512(c), we have removed access to the content in question.”

After thinking about it, I am not going to pursue this event, and I have removed the content and taken the loss of the purchase. I purchased a design from another company and I am continuing my project.