themes.wordpress.net …and justice for all

The crime’s background: A couple of days ago a typical “justice case” took place – themes.wordpress.net blamed me for creating double accounts and uploading / sponsoring rip offs. First accusations is that I, Liza Kliko, and the owner of web2themes.com (who also wrote a comment on his blog about it), are the same person. The basis, however, was too blatant to miss – our themes, which happened to be uploaded on the same day – FeeltheFreedom (web2themes.com’s) and Bluewell (mine) were perhaps so obviously similar, that even blind could see these themes were created by the same designer. I must say I enjoyed reading Moderator’s furious public post in which he, with full confidence, throws his conclusions, and I think it’s really worth sharing:

203. @ Lorelei, Liza Kliko, Rui Castro, web2themes, digitalphoto or rcastro, Did I miss any of your aliases? You were BANNED for stealing credits and you still are BANNED. So do not try to cheat repeatedly because we will catch you.Darklight, Lorelei Bliss 2.0, Lizommi, Diary Notes, Bluewell, etc. are just a few blatant copies of themes by headsetoptions.org and mandarinmusing.com, Spring rain is a blatant copy of a Kaushal Sheth theme.You have multiple charges on you:
     1. Repeat stealing, you were banned because all your themes were ripoffs. You cannot claim to be a WordPress designer if all you do is take a popular theme and change it’s graphics (even worse, without permission from or credits to the respective authors).2. Inspite of being banned, you duplicated IDs and dared to upload more ripoffs using aliases.

     3. You’ve also duplicated themes with your duplicate ids.

     If someone finds any theme from loreleiwebdesign.com, web2themes.com, toptut.com on this site, do inform us.

     WARNING to contributors and sponsors of stolen themes: If you support ripoffs, directly or indirectly, you are to blame equally, and if you sponsor stolen work repeatedly, all themes sponsored by you would be banned too.

     Comment by Moderator — June 19, 2007

Sweet. Actually he did miss about 20 of my other websites in his list, which should be reported in case anyone spots them, but I’d hate to make him feel that his research was incomplete, so let’s leave it like this. He claims I am banned – was and will be, however I can still (last tried today, on June 26th) successfully log in with my “Lorelei” usename and don’t understand WHY he says it all but doesn’t actually bother to close / ban / de-activate my account for real. If my account was removed, I wouldn’t be able to take this screenshot tonight, right? Besides, why would I be creating double ID’s in the first place, if my initial account exists?

The Drama: My reply to outstanding “Sherlock Holmes” job was: (see also this comment on WP themes viewer)

@ Moderator,

It’s always amusing to see someone’s anger, especially when it misses the target. Well done on finding out that Liza Kliko is Lorelei’s real name, it appears in my every site/blog, including account registration here, and I never attempted to hide my identity.

Rui Castro/ web2themes / rcastro is someone I don’t even know, though I had seen the person on digitalpoint forum. If he created double account(s), it has nothing to do with me anyway, and since you claim we are the same person – it only proves how unprofessional is the attitude at Themes Viewer. No need to threat saying “we will catch you”, because like I said, I never even tried to register another ID. I did ask digitalphoto to upload my theme, doesn’t make us to be the same person, and I did not know it was against the rules.

Yesterday I emailed you with the fixed credits on my theme, as you requested (of headsetoptions.org or mandarinmusing.com, I hope you do know it’s 1 person). I never denied basing my theme on his coding, and I was in contact with the author, with whom we resolved the issue FULLY 2 months ago, you seem to be the only one who has a problem with it. I also offered to send you PSD files of Lizommi, Diary Notes, Darklight, Lorelei Bliss etc – you did not reply to that email, you did not agree to see a proof, yet you keep claiming my DESIGN is ripped. Fine.

And yes, the themes mentioned above are similar and I know now that they can’t all be uploaded since their design is alike, but did I ask to put them all back online? I emailed you the new theme I was planning to upload, which is currently up on lizatom.com, coding based on Earthling, and has credits in both css description AND footer link (same story about Bluewell theme, up on lizatom.com/Bluewell), and if you claim it’s a “blatant rip off” of Earthling’s DESIGN, than I am obviously wasting my time trying to prove it.

Regards,
Liza

The Irony: Yes, additionally I was blamed for ripping off another theme’s php code. However, I am not going to deny this, I indeed mercilessly ripped it off, adding a lot of lines such as <?php get_sidebar(); ?> <?php get_footer(); ?> and many others that leave no doubts as to who’s theme was ripped. Jokes aside, however, I did base some of my themes on another designer’s code, and I am talking about Mark’s theme – Earthling, which coding I’m also using for Charm theme, my work in progress these days. The amusing thing is, as I said in my reply, I spoke to Mark and DO have his permission to use his Earthling’s coding structure, assuming I am providing credits – and I do.

Prosecutor’s Last word: Moderator’s response to my post above was simply as follows:

@ Lorelei,

All the themes you uploaded earlier were ripoffs, be it copied from headsetoptions.org or kaushalsheth.com. You dared to ask for permission to reupload the same themes without due credits again, even after a few months now. And stop lying, there were no footer links to any of the original authors when I removed your themes. If anything, your email clearly says you don’t want to provide any footer links.

You can give me all the names you want, I don’t expect any better from someone of your stature.

Comment by Moderator — June 20, 2007

Criminal’s Last Wish: The “convictions” got blindly general and started to cross the line. So I decided to reply with a rather polite comment, which will more or less sum up my experience with Themes Viewer and what I think about it. I wanted to be rather concrete to discourage further discussion on the matter.

The original URL of my comment is this or this, I posted twice (with a 2 days break). As you can see by the missing response, the comment has never been approved, or… oh oops, was filtered to spam. Probably Askimet’s fault, nevertheless to avoid such an injustice on software’s part, I spaced out the url’s dots so that they won’t be recognized as hyperlinks by the spam filter. Luckily, toptut.com has a less powerful spam protection, so I can show you what *exactly* did I say, a comment that Moderator found inappropriate to be posted publically.

@ Moderator,

You can accuse me in lying as much as you want, I offered to provide .PSD files of all my themes 3 (three!) times now, and since you refuse to see them yet KEEP accusing me in cheating it makes you nothing but an unethical and unprincipled moderator. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t hold it against you; I should think you are probably very young or maybe just inexperienced with authority requiring tasks, yet.

If you see no footer link to Earthling theme at toptut.com/darklight, lizatom.com and lizatom.com/Bluewell, I am sorry to say, at best – you did not waste your time looking. If anyone else in here has difficulty detecting the footer link with credits, please don’t hesitate to post below.

I’ve been a member in apex-ethics.com for over 2 years now, and won many world’s top awards for web design (liza-kliko.com/art/awards.htm), such organizations *always* demand proves of author’s work, PSD files, written copyright permissions and always wish to satisfy themselves on material’s authenticity. I have experience working with such structures, whose professionalism never gave space to personal liking or disliking (if any), and consequently never failed.

I’d regret being banned, if it was from an ethical community with professional attitude, which I thought it was, or at least maybe it used to be; but if Themes Viewer operates like some teens forum where whatever you say or do falls on outright moderator’s deaf ears, perhaps it’s my gain not to be eligible to participate.

I do think, however, that this website needs one more mod, who will spare time helping other members, as judging by the posts above, there are more complains about the moderator’s injustice, rather than about the ripoffs.

Thanks for your time, and good luck fishing out more double accounts and ripoffs.

Regards,
Liza Kliko

The Aftermath: So, that was it, my ‘unspoken words’. My reply has never been posted even though I attempted to post it twice, but the bad, falsely given name – remained.

On the day my themes were removed, I had to refund almost 200$ to sponsors, who paid for a sponsored link, though to be honest it’s the last issue I think about right now. I know some designers who’s themes were removed never even contacted the sponsor so I think crystal clear honesty here only gives me credit. I don’t even care been accused (don’t we all get unjustly blamed sometimes in life?) but I want to have my chance to have a say, especially when I bloody well know who is right and who is wrong.

Moreover, I am not the only one. If you will browse through the comments posted in the themes.wordpress.net blog you will notice that many accounts has been deactivated for no reason and users complain about removed themes, yet not much can be done about it when such a huge organization like Themes Viewer is gathered in hands of someone who does not even give its community members a chance to say what they want. I wonder if I am the only one who’s comment ever got disapproved.

Post Scriptum: Lastly, if you, the reader of this post have doubts (which I think is natural) about the origin of my themes’s design, please don’t hesitate to email me (at NOSPAMoceannymph@gmail.com) with any theme’s PSD file request (one per person, please). I honestly have no reason to keep them as a proof of my design’s authenticity as the only person who is in charge of “justice” in Themes Viewer refused to see them 3 times and I see little point in keep emailing him offering to show the evidence. Would I bother to post all this play here if I was guilty?

Should you decide to comment on this post, don’t think twice before expressing whatever you feel; I always DO approve all the comments regardless them been negative or possitive. Theme Viewer’s managing structure still has a lot to learn.