razorsedge
May 31st, 2011, 05:56 PM
HI One and all here at VC :)
I thought it was a good idea to make this post to clear up some issues regarding the making and posting of themes for download.
There has been some people going around saying that theme files are the property of Microsoft and that we as such are stealing or ripping Microsofts product by making themes then making them available for download for you as members of Virtual Customs and others alike on many different sites.
Last week I received a notice from mediafire about my Star Trek theme that it had been pulled down by a complaint from someone about the theme the notice was from Microsoft to mediafire in regards to anti piracy I will post the e-mail below here.
The file star trek.rar has been suspended for a reported violation of the DMCA, our Terms of Service, or our Acceptable Use Policy.
The reason for suspension was:
Content belongs to Microsoft.
Information about the party that filed the report:
Company Name: Microsoft LCA World Wide Anti-Piracy Team
Contact Address: One Microsoft Way, Redmond WA 98052
After receiving this notice I contacted the return e-mail address that was included in the e-mail complaint I had also received to my windows live account. I was curious as to what anti piracy laws I had broken as with all my themes the rar contained only the msstyle, .theme file and extra images for editing any of your dll's such as the explorer frame, start orb and shellbrd and so forth. The package contained no dll's from the windows operating system and all the images were created by me so I was stumped as to what anti piracy laws I had broken.
I sent a reply to the anti piracy dept of Microsoft as per the address in the e-mail I received this was the reply that was sent:
I was just wondering what it was that I have done to break any piracy laws. This was a normal windows 7 theme based around Star Trek it does not contain any windows files besides the msstyle and .theme file all images inside were created by myself.
So I am just puzzled to what it was that I have done to have a complaint filed against me, is it illegal to create windows 7 themes as I see them all over, the application used to make them was purchased msstyle builder legally through their website, this is just a hobby I do in my spare time.
I was wondering just what my error was in regards to this as I don't want to be breaking any piracy laws just doing something as a hobby if you could please clarify this for me I would greatly appreciate it.
After I sent that reply I received a reply back from Microsoft I will post below:
Thank you for sending your message and enquiry. We are conducting a review to determine the reason for the action and will get back to you shortly.
So i waited for a few days I was very curious to see what was going to happen with this issue to clear this up and make sure that we were not doing anything that Microsoft did not approve of. Today I received this reply from Microsoft:
Apologies for the delay in getting back to you. We had some law enforcement assistance cases that required my attention.
After review, we've determined that action was taken based on a false positive and we have now taken immediate action to revise our system so as to prevent this re-occurring.
Please accept our apologies for any inconvenience that may have been caused. If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact me.
I appreciated that Microsoft had taken the time to look at this issue to show that we can make themes and post them for download and its completely legal as long as you are not including windows operating system dlls in the theme packages. The gentleman Peter I delt with was very nice and respectful towards me and it did not take them much time at all to look into this problem and get back to me with a solution.
So in conclusion to make themes for windows such as we do at Virtual Customs and post them for download is legal and ok to do in Microsoft eye's we are not breaking any anti piracy laws by creating themes and letting you download them. I would like to add that if any of you have received complaints regarding this or had one of the people that has been going around saying that what we are doing is not legal saying that everyone who does themes is ripping off Microsoft you can contact me by pm I can give you the contact info for the anti piracy dept. of Microsoft and Peter who handles the complaints is very nice and easy to deal with.
I thought this information might be useful to some members but especially to the themers here at VC thank you for reading :)
I thought it was a good idea to make this post to clear up some issues regarding the making and posting of themes for download.
There has been some people going around saying that theme files are the property of Microsoft and that we as such are stealing or ripping Microsofts product by making themes then making them available for download for you as members of Virtual Customs and others alike on many different sites.
Last week I received a notice from mediafire about my Star Trek theme that it had been pulled down by a complaint from someone about the theme the notice was from Microsoft to mediafire in regards to anti piracy I will post the e-mail below here.
The file star trek.rar has been suspended for a reported violation of the DMCA, our Terms of Service, or our Acceptable Use Policy.
The reason for suspension was:
Content belongs to Microsoft.
Information about the party that filed the report:
Company Name: Microsoft LCA World Wide Anti-Piracy Team
Contact Address: One Microsoft Way, Redmond WA 98052
After receiving this notice I contacted the return e-mail address that was included in the e-mail complaint I had also received to my windows live account. I was curious as to what anti piracy laws I had broken as with all my themes the rar contained only the msstyle, .theme file and extra images for editing any of your dll's such as the explorer frame, start orb and shellbrd and so forth. The package contained no dll's from the windows operating system and all the images were created by me so I was stumped as to what anti piracy laws I had broken.
I sent a reply to the anti piracy dept of Microsoft as per the address in the e-mail I received this was the reply that was sent:
I was just wondering what it was that I have done to break any piracy laws. This was a normal windows 7 theme based around Star Trek it does not contain any windows files besides the msstyle and .theme file all images inside were created by myself.
So I am just puzzled to what it was that I have done to have a complaint filed against me, is it illegal to create windows 7 themes as I see them all over, the application used to make them was purchased msstyle builder legally through their website, this is just a hobby I do in my spare time.
I was wondering just what my error was in regards to this as I don't want to be breaking any piracy laws just doing something as a hobby if you could please clarify this for me I would greatly appreciate it.
After I sent that reply I received a reply back from Microsoft I will post below:
Thank you for sending your message and enquiry. We are conducting a review to determine the reason for the action and will get back to you shortly.
So i waited for a few days I was very curious to see what was going to happen with this issue to clear this up and make sure that we were not doing anything that Microsoft did not approve of. Today I received this reply from Microsoft:
Apologies for the delay in getting back to you. We had some law enforcement assistance cases that required my attention.
After review, we've determined that action was taken based on a false positive and we have now taken immediate action to revise our system so as to prevent this re-occurring.
Please accept our apologies for any inconvenience that may have been caused. If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact me.
I appreciated that Microsoft had taken the time to look at this issue to show that we can make themes and post them for download and its completely legal as long as you are not including windows operating system dlls in the theme packages. The gentleman Peter I delt with was very nice and respectful towards me and it did not take them much time at all to look into this problem and get back to me with a solution.
So in conclusion to make themes for windows such as we do at Virtual Customs and post them for download is legal and ok to do in Microsoft eye's we are not breaking any anti piracy laws by creating themes and letting you download them. I would like to add that if any of you have received complaints regarding this or had one of the people that has been going around saying that what we are doing is not legal saying that everyone who does themes is ripping off Microsoft you can contact me by pm I can give you the contact info for the anti piracy dept. of Microsoft and Peter who handles the complaints is very nice and easy to deal with.
I thought this information might be useful to some members but especially to the themers here at VC thank you for reading :)