How to Learn the ISP?

Learning the ISP of copyright infringement site

[alottolearn]

Hi,

I have recently discovered photos and text from our website on a competitor's website. Unfortunately, the website is not registered with the U.S. Copyright office. (I am now in the process of watermarking all photos anyway.)

In reading some other posts, I see that some people have been able to contact the ISP to alert them to the copied material. How does one learn who the ISP of a website is?

I'm really getting a bit of a lesson regarding this type of thing since I discovered the copied photos!

Thanks for any tips!

[stapel]

If you're on a Windows box, open a DOS window and type "ping" and then the offender's domain name. When your machine pings the domain, it does so by IP address.

Take that IP address, and do a WhoIs lookup, for instance at http://ws.arin.net/whois [ws.arin.net]. This should give you at least a lead on "where" the site is living.

Hope that helps a bit.

Eliz.

[alottolearn]

Thank you ... in reading another post, I was able to gather how to find the name server, which I did this morning.

Now to decide how to proceed with this ... I was reading this page: www.keytlaw.com/Copyrights/copyrightlaw.htm and read a paragraph that I'm not too sure about reading sending a Cease & Desist letter ("Possible Adverse Consequences of a Cease & Desist Letter").
I read somewhere else to just send a certified letter telling them of their offense and telling them to remove the material from their website.

Then, there are the comments people have made about some people not taking things seriously, in which case it might be better to just contact the ISP first and skip the politeness ... I'm not quite sure. I just wish it was previously registered work ... that would make me feel much better!

Thanks again,
Kathy