Kendo - 5:51 pm on May 27, 2012 (gmt 0)

Unfortunately there's not much you can do. A lot web developers download whole sites and use them for templates. Pages like "privacy policy" and "terms of use undergo" a simple name replacement for company name and away they go. If someone wants a form dropdown listing all the countries in the world, do you think that they do the research and build one adding one country at a time?

Quite often a web developer can be operating under the instructions of the client, and they don't give a damn. How often do you hear "I found just what I mean on such and such a web page" so the developer saves the page, JavaScripts, images and all.

We found that one page had been pirated by a client's competitor, that provided quite an indepth explanation of the reasons for the topics existence and cited by Wikipedia as the #1 outside reference.

The pirate had performed a simple company name replacement and changed the header. When we contacted him his excuse was that he had to start somewhere. I have heard this excuse many times when catching up with thieves... they believe that stealing is the only way to get started.

The client was very keen for justice, but when you look at the situation from an outside perspective you can see suing can cost a small fortune that won't be recompensed. It's always the backyarders who are the offenders, and they are not worth suing.