Ask Felgall

Since I started selling PHP scripts from my site I have had three copies of one or other of my scripts stolen. I know this because right from when I first started selling the scripts I have had code in place to at least track when a copy of one of the scripts I have for sale has been downloaded.

The first occasion when I had a script stolen was before I implemented the IPN script that automatically emails the purchased script to the buyer after Paypal clears their payment. Back then I had a link from the page that you get to after making the purchase that allowed the buyer to download the script. In this particular instance the thief simply looked up the destination page in the source code of the page that linked to Paypal and went there directly without actually going via Paypal. Paypal has since introduced a way to encrypt the form to prevent this from being able to be done. What this thief didn’t know was that the page with the download link was set up to email me whenever a copy of the script was downloaded and since the download was actually done by emailing the script to the buyer, the thief had to give me their email address in order to steal the script. Due to the time that they picked to steal my form2mail advanced script I was able to watch them install the script on their site and soon after they finished installing the script I used their new contact form to contact them to advise them that I knew they had stolen the script and would take further action if it was not removed immediately. Since their site was actually part of a school web site competition it would have been very easy for me to advise the competition organiser if they hadn’t complied and removed the script. I am still not sure why they stole my advanced script since the free version would have been quite adequate for what they needed.

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