I know it sounds a bit condescending to say it DaWebMassa, but you can't really judge until you've had one of your own designs ripped. This whole 'flattery' nonsense fades very quickly when you've spent months on a design only to find someone else stealing it in an afternoon and making a profit from it without even a nod in your direction.

As for the talk of lawyers and litigation, it's a natural step to take when there are those who take advantage of the talent of others for their own personal gain. When the design being stolen is being sold commercially, it's only right that some form of compensation should be sought for loss of earnings.

As I say, it's very difficult to understand the high emotions involved in something like this until you've experienced it for yourself. I've always taken a zero-tolerance approach to those who try to steal my work, and I don't intend to change. I've certainly made enemies by being such a 'hard ass', but at the same time the number of people who think it's a good idea to take my designs rather than use their own creativity have decreased steadily. In fact, my last skin was the first to escape the rippers entirely, despite it receiving the best response from the public so far out of any of my work.

The term 'witch hunt' implies that there are no true guilty parties and it's all just paranoia leading to unfair treatment of individuals. If things like this help to spread the word about the protection of artists' legal rights then on the whole I think it's all worthwhile. There are bound to be a few cases of mistaken identity, but in cases as clear-cut as this one I don't think anyone can honestly say that the offending designer doesn't deserve some form of punishment, be that a slap on the wrist or a fine.

Their response was essentially "Sure, we took the idea from Abracadabra but we drew it ourselves in Photoshop..."

This is not a issue of being inspired by, it is an admission of directly recreating a commercially distributed product and then turning around and making it a part of their own product.

This is not any different that someone taking taking a Commercial Program, decompiling-compiling it typing out the exact same source code and recompiling it, then selling it under a different name.

It is NOT a rip, it is not ripping a freely released skin/theme, it is theft of a commercial product.

This is theft any way you wrap it up and present it.

My spelling has gone to the dogs....