What to do when a college makes redesigning your site into a course?

without your permission or knowledge

[goodroi]

I open my email to find a google alert telling me my brand name is being mentioned online. That is great! So I click to the webpage that Google found and see my content on a redesigned page (new logo, navigation etc). My first thought is not a happy one since now I need to spend time making sure this duplicate site is removed.

Then I notice the url - it is an edu. I start backtracking the directories of the URL and I realize that a college professor for a web building class has made my site the semester project. There are about 20 students and they have each uploaded a redesign of my site for the last ten weeks (each week their skills are better). Now there are about 200 duplicate copies of my site on this edu url.

They removed my copyright notice, removed my ads and do not link back to my site (even scrapers link back to you). I am not sure what I am going to do. There is some small potential for creating duplicate content issues. I am not too worried since it is many directories deep on the .edu with no links. I am getting my site redesigned by them which could save me some nice money. On the other hand, If I don't defend this attack on my copyright it could weaken any future court case I have. Thoughts?

[purplecape]

I would start by contacting the professor directly and explaining your concerns. He may take the attitude that it's an academic setting, and so fair use, so don't come on too strong.

If it were me, I'd want an agreement that the materials will be taken offline at the end of the class and that you can use any design that comes out of it--a quid pro quo, use of your site for the use of their design.

If he's not willing to take the materials offline, I'd contact the webmaster for the university. I did that when someone copied an entire article of mine and posted it on a university site, and the webmaster was very cooperative in removing it.

[pageoneresults]

Hmmm, they usually do that stuff on an Intranet and not at the Internet level. It happens to me all the time. I actually enjoy it. After they are done tearing apart our pages, there are usually links that end up in pdf tutorials all over the place. Those are priceless.

Nurture that one! Handle with Kid Gloves. Make it work for you. One solid .edu link can have a nice return in the overall scheme of things. Yes, just one. ;)

[ken_b]

Isn't there room in the continuum from "no use" to "fair use" to "blatant abuse" for a little "limited use, by permission"?

Maybe seek some "more favorable" online recognition and attribution (like a link on a page that passes PR and/or credibility in noticeable quantities) in exchange for being a willing test subject.

[Tastatura]

I open my email to find a google alert..

There is some small potential for creating duplicate content issues. I am not too worried since it is many directories deep on the .edu with no links

emph. by me
if you got G alert then google found that deep uri and knows about it - unless someone manually submitted url to g ( doubtful) there is a link to it from someplace, and potential for duplicate content. how g, or other SEs, resolve that is a different matter....

[goodroi]

hi tastatura,

i was referring to external links pointing to it. there is one internal link that google could have followed. i would say more likely it was indexed because one of the 20 students had a google toolbar installed. regardless how google found it there is minimal links pointing to the content. since my site is an authority site that is frequently referenced and has lots of links i am not overly worried about duplicate content problems. even google should be able to determine my site is the one to rank and not be filtered out.

[D_Blackwell]

Hmmm, they usually do that stuff on an Intranet and not at the Internet level.

This shouldn't be 'live' IMO. I would have a very hard time buying 'fair use' with multiple live copies of my content. Not acceptable for me.

I have had a few individual students select various of my sites for their 'project' (never a gaggle). Have gotten emails explaining the project, asking permission to use the site for the class, and I've always been fine with that. Interestingly, I have always asked for follow-up - that I would like to see the final cut. ONCE I got follow-up. In fact, she sent me an email every couple of weeks for the whole term with a link to a password protected directory which had links to the progression of her work. She had some strong graphic skills (mine are pretty rudimentary), and I sourced out several projects to her for a couple of years. Lost touch eventually, but she was a winner. Nobody else ever followed up with anything whatsoever. About the ratio of what one would expect these days I think.

[g1smd]

I see no issue at all in having it ON the web.

The issue comes if any of it is being indexed by search engines.

Sensible usage of a Disallow rule in their robots.txt file is all that is required.

[Quadrille]

Take any good advice that come out of it, and ask them to to use noindex?