It’s now approaching July 2010. vBulletin has seen a huge number of converts to Invision Power Board and is still struggling with stabilizing the existing feature set. I think we’ll only start to see themes come out in greater numbers in quarter four of this year. If vBulletin decides to call the fixes and promised basic functionality version 4.5, you’ll start to see another revolt yet again. If vBulletin 5 is presold in 2011, it could make the previous fiasco one look like a pre-school dispute. Right now they have alienated their own community. Even the “free marketers” e.g. evangelists of the software have been finding it difficult to deal with the new Jelsoft aka vBulletion Solutions (case in point, Brandon Sheley and his great vBulletin Setup site.)

I run a large legal forum using vBulletin. If it weren’t for Google rankings and backlinks, I might have considered moving everything I have to Invision Power Board a while ago. It’s a great piece of software and does much of what I hoped vBulletin would have done instead of what they are doing now. Times are interesting… we’ll see.

I was given a lifetime ban from vBulletin.com for voicing my protestations over the licensing change.

Are there any legal challenges pending?

I notice to upgrade to 3.8.5 (a maintenance release) I have to sign a new licensing agreement.

The license was originally governed by the laws of England & Wales. The new license transfers this to California.

I haven’t accepted this agreement yet.
If I use vB4 I cant use the blog I bought. It also appears to be very “buggy”.
So I’m planning on sticking with vB3.

I’m still angry that IB treated loyal vBulletin customers so badly.

I’d love to see this challenged in court.

The Consumer Protection from Unfair Trading Regulations 2008
The Consumer Protection from Unfair Trading Regulations 2008 implements the EU’s Unfair Commercial Practices Directive and introduces a general prohibition on businesses not to treat consumers unfairly and obliges businesses not to use:
• aggressive practices (such as pressure selling); nor
• misleading practices (includes both acts and omissions).
One of the key tests in the Regulations is whether the commercial practice in question materially distorts the consumer’s economic behaviour (e.g. was the consumer persuaded to make a purchase they would not otherwise have made because of the commercial practice?).
A breach of the Regulations is, in most cases, a criminal offence.

And to the follow up posters, don’t misunderstand – Bob Brisco isn’t his spending time drafting notices. This is a command decision where it appears that Internet Brands has decided to send a message to vBulletin licensees – by wielding a massive hammer – that it will come after licensees like gangbusters if you cross their line even for harmless actions. Honestly – I’m feeling somewhat uneasy about what repercussions I might face and voicing my own opinion about their actions – I still use vBulletin.

DCMA takedown notices are usually sent for copyright violations that cause actual financial harm. I can’t imagine how this caused vBulletin harm. What is even more amusing is that Brandon mentions that vBulletin didn’t send a takedown notice to sites that posted “leak” announcements that sold their software. From Steve Machol’s message that was allegedly leaked, it seems that they knew that many customers would feel incensed by the new (and rather outrageous) licensing terms and describes it as a “tsunami.” After reading the DMCA notice from Bob, it makes perfect sense that he’d have the gravitas to actually imply that his outrageous $175 upgrade price for the vBulletin forum was solely intended to give current vBulletin forum owner’s one choice of any value – to upgrade to the vBulletin Suite. From CEO Bob Brisco’s Blog: “You may have noticed that we’ve priced vB 4 products to strongly encourage adoption of the Suite by offering a much larger discount on the Suite. This is very intentional.”

This all makes me wonder whether Internet Brands is tracking every vBulletin forum owner’s site, both for negative publicity as well as scavenging for vBulletin sites to buy at bargain prices, which seems to be what their company does. They do require owners list the site URL installed and tracking is a less further stretch to the imagination than finding Brandon’s notice and sending a DMCA takedown letter. I’m not sure what to make of all this.

PS – Brandon – I wonder how you feel about your earlier comments here now that vBulletin apparently sent you a takedown notice!

PPS – The plot thickens – Bob Brisco claims the DMCA Takedown Notice is a hoax as does an announcement on vbulletin. Why would anyone do such a thing? Could this be another marketing ploy?