A while back, I wrote about Big Creek Pentecostal Church stealing the Word of Grace web branding and site template. Well, they're at it again. It seems that taking down the original stolen site was a temporary move and the webmaster must have felt that enough time had gone by that we'd all forget. Luckily, my friend, Matt Adams happened to stumble across the site and find the re-stolen template.
Awesome.
Now, the question is: what can we do? I don't work for Word of Grace and I don't want to interfere, but this issue gets me so "hot and bothered" that I hate to let it lie.
So, here's what I'll do...
E-Mail Jim Mullins at jmullins@bigcreek.org
That's the guy you want to e-mail. That's the guy who's in charge of the website and the same guy who claimed that he paid for the stolen site template. Chalk up another victory for good, honest, Christian ethics.
If you go to Big Creek Pentecostal Church, I'd really be questioning what else is going on at your church.
On 2007-06-07 13:20:37, matt adams said, "ergg"
it looks like our emails may have worked. Or Mark @ WOG and maybe some lawyers took care of it. Big creek is back offline.
I apparently need to add them to my once a month check ups.
On 2007-06-12 07:42:08, Steven Garone said, "Stealing...bad?"
Stealing is only bad when you get caught. If they slap their own water mark on it, they can eBaum your church much as they'd like. The internet is the lawless west... We need mob justice... Mob justice solves everything...
On 2007-06-12 16:51:22, Danno said, "Untitled"
anthony... you KNOW i designed that. I have been meaning to have my lawyer call you and talk to you about stealing my designs.
:D
On 2007-06-14 09:10:23, Skwigger said, "Same Web Developer?"
Did anyone think that they might have the same web developer? He's probably ripping them off charging for a custom website when he builds them all from a template. It may not be the church at fault.
On 2007-06-14 09:29:29, Anthony said, "Nope"
I personally know the people who developed the Word of Grace website. I know for a fact that they have not allowed anyone else to take their template and re-brand it for another church. Also, since this has happened before, they should know better before re-posting a site they know is in violation of copyright. It seems to be a case of "it's been a few months since anyone from Word of Grace has checked out our site, maybe we can get away with re-posting the illegal site again."
Apparently, their excuse the last time this happened was that they purchased the template from a website. Of course, they could provide no proof of this, nor would they provide the URL for that website.
Trust me, what they're doing is wrong, and they know it (this is the second time they've taken down the site). I ended up writing an e-mail to both the pastor and the webmaster and never heard anything back, but they did take the site down--probably as a result of a phone call from Word of Grace.