Software Author Takes Down Copycat Pirate   12/30/2004 - 1,095 views, 1 Comment

Try telling that to Nigel Cross, owner of Xequte.com, developers of a number of software packages including SmartPix Manager, Mega View, Ez Pix, and Diji Album, among others.

Unfortunately for Cross, one of their software products, “MailList King”, is just ripe for abuse by, and therefore very interesting to, spammers.

Obviously, at least on the face of it, Cross is not catering to spammers, as MailList King represents a tiny fraction of his product line offering, the rest of which has nothing to do with email, or indeed the Internet at all.

However, Aunty asks you, what about the sort of person who does cater to spammers? Are they likely to be otherwise on the up and up?

Not hardly.

So while perhaps shocking, it should not be particularly surprising to learn that someone who purchased MailList King from Xequte subsequently copied the program and started selling pirated copies of it.

But they didn’t just stop there, oh no. Perhaps on the theory that imitation is indeed the sincerest form of flattery, the miscreant (let’s call him “Mohammed”, because that’s what he most often calls himself in this story) copied the look and feel of the Xequte site, and even swiped some of the Xequte product icons, and linked the icons to other spamware which Mohammed was selling.

Products with such spammer feel-good names as “Eazy Bulkmail” and “E-Campaign Pro”.

Ouch.

Cross wrote to Mohammed, demanding that he stop selling copies of MailList King, and that he take down the content which he’d swiped or copied from the Xequte site. He also wrote to Mohammed’s ISP.

Mohammed responding by piling a heap of abuse on Cross’ head in his reply email, and then took it a step further by forging a smarmy response alledgedly from Mohammed’s ISP.

But perhaps the unkindest cut of all, and that which underscores the real moral (or lack thereof) of this story was the actual response from Mohammed’s ISP, who almost immediately warned Mohammed that he had to take the illegal content down, or they might have to suspend his account.

Not “you have committed an illegal act, your account is toast”. “We might have to suspend your account.”

Yeesh.

In the end Cross was able to convince Mohammed to remove the offending software and webpage, but only after pointing out that even if his ISP was slow to care about the pirating, they probably would care a whole lot about his having forged a nasty message in their name to Cross.

Is it over?

Perhaps, for Cross and Xequte. But perhaps not. The ripping off of website content and style, not to mention software piracy, are far more common than most might think. Indeed, if you have a website, and particularly if you make money off your content or products, it behooves you to do a regular search of the Internet to see if anybody has swiped your stuff.

Aunty is sure that Mr. Cross will be doing just that from now on.