LiveWire = Banned?

In my defense, I would like to post about the situation.

The style was publicly available online for download. This person told me about it and where to download it. So I did, and I used it. I had it up on my website for almost a year; without anyone ever saying anything.

I got an IM from Chruser and this is what was said:

[04:52] Zelaron: Nice rip there. [04:53] Zelaron: With Google ads and all. [04:59] LiveWireeed: Thanks, It was nice at first, but it got old fast. It attracts the wrong audience and spirt to the community. I have plans on doing a redesign with the upcoming vBulletin release. I wasn't actually the one to rip it; someone else was. They where just kind enough to send me the zip. [05:01] LiveWireeed: Well what do you know, I've been banned. lol [05:02] LiveWireeed: You have to admit though, it was a nice rip.

He never said anything to me after that on AIM that night, instead he made a post about it at vBulletin.org. Which can be found here: http://www.vbulletin.org/forum/showthread.php?t=93958

He then sent an email to my webhost, which so happens to be a very close friend of mine. So I sent Chruser an email which said the following:

Hellow Sir, Deaths, my administrators, says he found that style at a site where they were available to download for free for public use. If you could prove, however, that the style is licensed to you, then we would be talking about an illegal distribution of your work. But then again, maybe my administrator is simply lying, even though I would doubt that? However, I will take down the style with proof of you being the actual author. Ask your attorny to send me a confirmaion, and I will gladly take the style down as well. -- Best Regards, Ken Iovino Jr

He then IMed me on AIM about 20 mins after I sent that email. This was the conversation.

Zelaron (6:46:32 AM): What are the alternatives? LiveWireeed (6:47:58 AM): Give me a day or so to upload a new style, and unban my zelaron account. LiveWireeed (6:49:14 AM): (quote=Deaths)I offered them quite a good price for the skin but never got a reply from WW, you can mention that.(/quote) Zelaron (6:53:26 AM): That is nice, but you will have to be more substantial than that, regarding my previous experience with your less successful attempt to "rip off" Zelaron's "Synthesis" theme, and the registration of another domain name very similar to zelaron.com for the sake of misleading users. Zelaron (6:53:54 AM): I have to depart for roughly 30 hours. Goodbye. Zelaron signed off at 6:54:09 AM.

Afterwards, I decided to take the style down from the public; I'm hoping Chruser will unban my account here at Zelaron, because I wouldn't want the style to be avaliable to all 4,000 of my members who want to download it. Unless of course Chruser can have his antorney send me a confirmaion; that the style is indeed has a copyright and is licensed to him.

LiveWire