Is someone profiting from your site and violating copyright laws?

A "browser" that inserts banner ads

[Marshall]

Need a little help here folks. About a month to two ago I accidentally ran across a strange referrer in my logs. When I checked it out, it was a "browser utility" company in Europe which supposedly compresses data thus speeding up the download. Apparently an end user can sign up for this or you as web master can insert code into your pages.

Regardless, they inset banners, full screen width, at the top and bottom of each page which scroll with the page. In short, they look like YOU put them there. On their site they claim it's not copyright infringement, but that they're merely a browser utility, but they automatically modify all links so the visitor stays within their "utility."

I have tried to find them again before I brought this up. Unfortunately, as I said, this was a while back and I cannot find them again. Has anyone heard of them, especially our European friends? Any help here would be appreciated.

[mack]

hi there.
I have come across this also when i carried out a search for my site title on google. I clicked on a strabge link and it was a web page with my content but one of their banners at the top and bottom of the page. In effect they where able to copy the content of every page on the web and profit from other peoples hard work and time. I feel this is totaly wrong and un acceptable. The company who used my site where a company called webwarper.net i mailed them and my site is no longer accesable using their browser ad-on. I simply cannot think of this as a browser ad-on because it scrolls with the page there fore it as a dynamicaly generated web page with an include of my page on it. Surely this must be against copyright law. anyway i would strongly recoment mailing them and asking them to remove your site from their system or bar it from being accesed on their "browser Add on"

good luck

[Marshall]

Thanks. The name of this outfit was driving me nuts. I've been checking my logs every day and searching the net in vain to find them. Have you or anyone else seen this done before? I like their disclaimer and owner appeal:
[webwarper.net...]

We do pledge, that placing on your pages special panels with advertisement and additional features, performed by WebWarper service, is not an infringement of your copyright. These panels are to be considered not as parts of your pages, but as new user interface elements, added by our software to user's browser.

[john316]

Hi Marshall

That outfit is just one of many who are hijacking page content. Some of the more prolific hijackers have their plugins for "content enhancement" attached to P2P file sharing software downloads.

I thought their "pledge" was a hoot.

Maybe the following should be forwarded to the MS legal dept:

" Panels of WebWarper are accentuated with special design, and are decorated in the same style as standard panels of Microsoft Internet Explorer browser."

[mack]

the "pledge" has a bug.. if they say it is a browser then they are breaching patent by adding it to ms software. if it isnt a browser it is breaking out copyright laws. either way they are making a skin from us all just think they have the ability to make profit from every single page on the internet and no need to ever build a single web page. The banners they display on the footer of the page are supplied by commision junction jc.com maybee our abuse would be beter aimed at them... if they dont have any banners to show they dont have a company. another thing that confuses me about this scheme is that my page was listed in a google results page. now i understand that the pages are dynamicaly driven to therefore wouldent have amy links for the spider to follow... i wonder of they are posting url's to the major search engines to get their pages listed along with the real site. either way if this is so it may be classed as spamming and may result in us being penalised for similar content. maybee a mass complaint to google av go etc etc may be called for .

[john316]

So, what you are saying is that you could be a commision junction affiliate and at the same time have commision junction hijack your content? Sounds like a sleazy way to do business.

[mack]

i am not saying that commision junction has any part to do with this ..they just supply the banners that are displayed on all webwarper pages. so they have an acount with jc so show banners and cj pay them for clicks. this just highlights the fact that this is an amature operation willing to accept cj as their provider for revenue creation banners. i wonder what the cj terms of service would have to say about this.