Harvesting content

how to deal with content theft

[ahmadb12]

On our site we have a very clear TOS preventing users from legally harvesting our site. If a user is logged in then that person need to agree to the terms.

A specific software application was written by a company to systematically fetch large portions of our content (a business directory) and it hit our server some 600,000 times attempting to obtain a very specific format (vCard) we make available to users. The placement of our vcards requires them to violate our robots.txt

It is very obvious from the log files what the purpose was (ie get index page, fetch ID numbers of items and pass them to a specific format (vcard) which is not even available on the index pages - though it is predictable)

I have already informed their host (still awaiting a reply) - what other organizations should I inform in your view? We have confronted them with it and we are also seeking legal advise at the moment.

It should be noted that both our companies are residing outside the US - however their host is a prominent US based host and ours is Canadian based.

Any suggestions are welcomed.

[Webwork]

Whenever I'm confronted with similar issues I look to the source of their income: How are they making money? What is there income source? Who else is profiting from their improper behavior?

Most companies don't want to be drawn into litigation arising from someone else's illegitimate, improper, illicit or illegal conduct.

If you can identify an income source - outside the perpetrator - then clearly define what the perp is doing wrong, write a detailed letter and explain to the third-party income source how they are implicated by the wrongdoer's actions and how, if the conduct doesn't stop, you will be filing legal actions against both entities.

Talk to a lawyer.