3D Warehouse and model thieves.
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you put it in public hands, suck it up.
if you want copyright laws don't publish it publicly. 
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I agree. What about making components that are crucial to model and embed your name in them? I know they can explode them but at least it will give them second or third chance of being honest.
Or maybe someone needs to write an encrypted model-like program so that no one can modify them 'without written permission'?
Just grasping at straws here.
Rick
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Just post a review of the offending model, telling everyone that the model is in fact yours. Provide a link to your model in the review. That way anyone seeing the stolen model will get to see that you are the creator and the other person is just passing your work off as their own.
Beyond that, what more should be done? The "thief" is probably a 12 year old boy who's only done it to try and make out he's a better SUer than he is to his friends. Google won't want to be messing about with chastising him because it's hardly important and when the kid grows up they won't want to have chased him away.
Just be thankful that he's spending his time stealing free models and not scratching your car or breaking into your house.
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You won't get anywhere by simply clicking the "Report a Violation" button...it might as well not be there. You could try commenting on the model page itself, if comments are enabled...or even PM-ing the guy, if there's a link.
Failing that, you'll need to go to the DMCA page and give a blow by blow account of the offending model. http://sketchup.google.com/support/bin/request.py?contact_type=dmca_complaint. We have had notable success by using this route, lately, but I'm not promising anything. Let us know how you get on. -
Just make a signature!
This can't prevent people to steal your model, but will reveal to the rest of the world how moroon they are
Look at is my original model:
and this is the re-textured (badly) model of "max"
I asked him to be so kind to write in the descriptiond that this is a derivative work, or at least put a link to my model.
He didn't answer.
I reported this fact to Google, but nothing changed.But anyone that will give a deeper look to the model, will notice that max forgot this:
... and there is also a tiny vectorial signature inside it.
If the thief is so smart to delete your signature, then you can really go to the DMCA page with some solid arguments.
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i still don't get why someone who would put their stuff on 3DW would be bothered by this
. your obviously putting it there for others to use. some people use differently than others. 
are you looking for some kind of thunder that someones stealing? if so just post screen shots of your work not actual models and let everyone be inspired by it. -
Can we get a link to the original model as well as the stolen model?
Scott
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Question: Could the Sketchucation folks set up a new locked message area that just has these incidents? That way the Google folks could see in one shot all that is actually going on and other folks could also see. I'm sure we have one or two Google folks who frequent this site. And if they didn't, perhaps an invite is in order.
Just a comment.
Rick
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We could do that however I am afraid the Google folks would care very little. According to the TOS, this is a legit thing (to post derivative works without giving credits).
What I regularly use the WH is to share things that I don't care people use as their own (like plant entourage and I generally do give the credits like in this collection and I even contacted the author and asked for permission although she gave the things away for completely free and without the demand for credits) then for things that I do NOT want to share like these models therefore I do not let people download them or models that are actually "Help files" and which eventually end up in TaffGogh's collection here (mixed with others' models). Of course, I do not mind if people download these.
So the conclusion here is; do not share anything with others unless you do not mind them using it without credits given. What is the "border" between derivative work and just repainting a couple of faces? As we cannot tell, we cannot get the Google Folks to go into action either.
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Whenever somebody reuploads one of my models and claims that they made it I just leave a 0 star rating and comment asking them to give credit to the real modeller - it makes no difference usually but at least it gets the point across.
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Yeah. And first of all feels better, too, doesn't it?
And certainly that's all you can do. Then that guy comes here and starts complaining about bad ratings and comments.
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@gaieus said:
So the conclusion here is; do not share anything with others unless you do not mind them using it without credits given. What is the "border" between derivative work and just repainting a couple of faces? As we cannot tell, we cannot get the Google Folks to go into action either.
A long time ago, I was told not to put ANYTHING anywhere on the web that I did not mind people ripping-off. There is no security that will prevent determined content thieves from taking whatever they want.
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