ELR statement on the Vapour Depot drama

Announcements
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If you haven’t followed the DIY debate on Facebook today, I will give you a short run-down.

A while ago, Vapour Depot approached me and asked if they could design some “mixing packs”. Sets of flavors to make a specific recipe. Knowing the DIY-community I thought it was a good idea, so I gave my “OK”. Who haven’t wanted to make a recipe, only to find that they don’t have all the flavors?

Anyway. Vapour Depot misunderstood my “OK” to also include one-shots of these recipes. They did not do this out of greed or anything shady like that.

Vapour Depot had 8 one-shots up for a short while, and sold 71 bottles. The total profit from this was £91.72.

I am contacting the authors of these recipes to ask them if they want their cut, or if they want the money donated to CASAA.

The profits for these recipes will be donated to CASAA:

Ella’s Shortbread Biscuit, by Ella

Grants Vanilla Custard my way by Ole Frederiksen

Birthday Cake by NotCharlesManson:

Queen’s Cookie Jar by SthrnMixer:

The profits of Fried Ice Cream By: Boogenshizzle will be donated to Charity for the Kids:

http://e-liquid-recipes.com/recipe/1079325

As for myself, I didn’t earn anything from this. I only earn a small % if you go to the flavor detail page of a flavor and click on the “Buy here”-links.

Vapour Depot had no ill intent.

I would like to ask you a favor: If you were one of the people rating Vapour Depot 1-star because of this, I ask that you remove or update your rating of them. Giving them a bad reputation from a misunderstanding is not fair, and not in the spirit of our DIY-community, but that is my opinion.

Anyone that knows me, knows that I am all about stregthening the DIY-community.

How much are you paying for using ELR? I’ll tell you: 99.2% of you pay nothing, and I don’t mind that. I only want people to be able to be part of the DIY-community and not smoke cigarettes :slight_smile:

Love and happy vaping!

Lars

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We love you Lars! I’m not on FB and had no idea about any of this but thanks for letting us know you get a little something for people using the “buy here” links. I’ll be more diligent about clicking them when I use any of those vendors. :+1:

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Thank you Lars for all you do! I know my little yearly donation can’t possibly pay for what you have done for the diy community with ELR.

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Lars, I’ve always hoped that you make a killing off this site. The total suite of services is outstanding. Somehow you have made a place that is, most importantly, just quality people communicating on common ground. I love it. We all do.

I think it’s naive to think that an aggregation of public vaping knowledge could not turn into profit. That doesn’t change anything about what I’ve said above or the benefits I continue to enjoy in this community. I honestly do hope you make a killing and I’ll be going out of my way to buy via your links and also use Vapour Depot now that I know to do so.

I’ve said my peice on what ‘public’ means. Lars, you are the man. You don’t have a shady bone in your body. If you can make money off my PUBLIC recipes, you would deserve to most, as folks who do nothing but browse the net could do the same thing. I DO NOT understand how anyone could be bothered at all by what you have described.

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Please feel free to donate a dime or two if you haven’t already - or if you have; feel free to do it again! :+1:

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@Daath, I’ve been meaning to donate(As I’m sure a few of us have), but I was wondering: Do you get a link fee for people clicking through the affiliate links to the sites we use, such as ECigExpress, Bull City, Gremlin, etc?

I’m not asking to drop hammers, but if you do I’d rather come here first, click the link on the resources page and go to my preferred vendors so that you get a bump in the wallet. Normally I just go straight to the vendor site, but if there’s a way to shovel some pennies your way I’d gladly do so as I’ve grown quite fond of the site in the short time I’ve been mixing.

As always, thanks for all of the work that you do, and a HUGE thanks for giving us this valuable resource. Cheers!

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I will never understand why people get so enraged over their public recipes being used elsewhere. It’s almost like they have no idea what the internet is, and that they can post anything, without fear of someone else seeing it, using it, or copying it.

I get the part where it sucks to have someone else making $ off of something you created, but, as cold as it may sound, that’s on you. It just seems common sense to me, that if you don’t want anyone to see, use or copy something you made, don’t put it on the f’ing internet!?

People want to be “credited” for their work, and in a perfect world, sure, that’s a reasonable request, but again, it’s the f’ing internet!? That’s quite a tall order, to expect every single human being on this planet, to be respectful and honest. Sadly, it’s human nature. It’s an exhausting, relentless battle to debate this. We all know what people should be or act like, but it will never be that way. People are greedy. People are conniving. People are vengeful. People just suck. More so, when they are anomalously hiding behind a computer screen.

This may be cliche, but if people are copying you or using your public ideas, the only thing you should be focused on, is the fact you are doing something right. You should be flattered that your public ideas are sought after, copied or used. Continue being that guy. The guy that has ideas people want. The guy that people copy because they themselves, are inferior. Expand upon that. Just don’t place your cherished ideas on the internet, which is akin to posting your invention on the grocery store’s bulletin board… In every grocery store on the planet.

I don’t know, maybe I am just jaded, from decades of being in the recipe based profession and have dealt with it my entire life. It’s just a losing battle and it will always be.

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Meh… You do you Lars… your base knows what’s what. :sunglasses:

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I’ve been a long vocal advocate against the unauthorized use of recipes for profit. I’ve seen many people have the attitude of “well I post them so other can make them I don’t mind if someone profits from it”, quick turn to “I can’t believe this company is profiting off my recipe”, once the shoe is on the other foot. A few of the ones in the top ELR spot in fact. One thing I’ve always said, is that I understand that people out there will take advantage of others work to make a buck. Nothing will stop that. And we have absolutely no legal course unless trademarks are involved (and even then that number is low). But one thing we do have is our voice. There has been exactly 17 vendors using unauthorized recipes, that we’ve gotten to change their tune once we made our voices heard. If you can count this situation that’s 18. Most of these companies just don’t know anything about the DIY world and how it works, and they’re completely willing to fix their wrongdoings if they are made aware. So if all it takes is a little yelling to make sure that some of these amazing artists don’t hold back their best recipes in fear of recipe theft, I think that’s a fight worth fighting for.

Just my 2 cents.

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powerful statement and as always @daath you are appreciated without this site id still be twiddling my thumbs wondering what do i do now or next lol again ty

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As mentioned above, if you go to the flavor details page, such as this:

…and use the links in the “Buy here”-section, I will get a commission.

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Thanks for the clarification! My brain is a bit muddled today-had some nerves in my neck fried a couple of days ago, and the drugs are making cohesive thoughts troublesome at times.

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Not being a FB user I also didn’t know about this. This is the VapourDepot in the UK?

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  1. If you’re making a profit off your recipes, why would they be public?
  2. If you’re not making a profit off your recipes, and they’re public, what right do you have to complain?
  3. It’s the internet - how naive do you have to be to make your recipes public then expect no one will copy them…for whatever reason?

Before I started bitching about this, I’d want to check myself with these 3 questions. I’m sorry, it just seems ridiculous that anyone would have a complaint over someone making a profit off of a recipe they posted to a public forum. To me it’s the height of arrogance.

That said, if Vapour Depot is using any of my recipes and feels they owe me royalties or anything, first, they do not. Secondly, if they did feel they wanted to share profits, any monies can be sent to directly support ELR, CASAA, St. Jude’s Research Hospital, Cancer Centers of America, or any other organization with similar values or missions.

You can’t authorize or forbid the use of your recipes when you plaster them all over the internet. That would be like the cops planting a $100 bill in an ally, then sitting and waiting for someone to see it, pick it up and stuff it in their pocket…then bust them for theft. [quote=“Wayne_Walker, post:10, topic:144130”]
There has been exactly 17 vendors using unauthorized recipes,
[/quote]

That you know of. You may be shocked to learn how many small shops there are scouring the web looking for recipes to copy and sell.

Same here. But it’s Facebook so I can only imagine.

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To me, there’s a difference between blatant stealing, unintentional breach of etiquette and providing a service.

Let’s be real, most of us never buy retail juice and would never know if our recipes are being used. An intentionally dishonest company will change the name and we’d never know. Then, the honest companies who used recipes they thought were open source only to get yelled at, try to make it right whether they legally have to or not.

I feel like these cases are separate from what boils down to a mixing service like Vape Crafters or what it seems like VapourDepot was doing. When your lifestyle doesn’t allow you to mix your own, and you order a one shot or even a finished juice using a recipe here, you aren’t stealing the recipe. The company isn’t profiting off that recipe, they’re profiting off your need or my need to have something mixed.

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Lars, I thank you for everything you do for the community.

I do however don’t understand why people can’t donate a small amount to the site to help improve the servers and what not.

It’s great what you have done here and I appreciate it.

Many thanks

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I must admit that I have never seen the Donate button, maybe it’s because I use an Adblocker. But even after disabling it here, I still don’t see it. Where should it be?
I did however just make a donation as I searched Donate and found the https://www.paypal.me/lgp link.
Thanks Lars for this amazing site!

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@benjy337 it is at the very bottom of your recipe page

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If you haven’t donated before, it’s at the top of “My recipes/favorites”:

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If you have donated previously, it’s just a “Donate”-line at the bottom that you can unfold :slight_smile:

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