Hijacked material

[Liane]

One of my major competitors has hijacked several of my yacht layouts (which I drew) and photos (which I took) and used them on their own web site.

I have written them and asked them to remove these materials immediately but have had no response.

Has anyone here had a similar situation? If so what did you do and did you manage to get them to remove your stuff from their site?

[tigger]

If it was me I'd contact my solicitor and ask him to drop them a line telling then to remove them or you will take further action, this normally gets some results.

[FreeBee]

Liane - there's some worthwhile suggestions here [webmasterworld.com] from a few months back.

We had a fair amount of content pinched earlier this year, wrote to the offender and his hosting company and left it. The site has since been wiped clean and the domain is now on hold so they seem to have got the message.

Your problem sounds rough - speak to your attorney...

[TallTroll]

If you originated the work, and haven't assigned the IP rights elsewhere, then you have a good case to sue. They were probably playing the odds, that you either wouldn't see what they've done, or wouldn't do anything. A solicitors letter will probably solve the problem.

If not, sue 'em to win

[retro]

Liane

were these images taken directly from a visitor to your site, or did someone find the images by doing an image search, such as available via google?

All the images on my hobby sites are to be found within a google image search, so I suppose it'd be quite easy to go in there and lift out whatever looked of use .. regardless of whatever copyright etc text you have on the page itself. I wonder if the general public assume that images in there are therefore copyright free? I seem to remember reading threads about this a little while ago.

R

[Mike_Mackin]

Accordingly, if you would like to use any images you have found through our service, we advise you to contact the site owner to obtain the requisite permissions. [images.google.com]

[Invisible snowman]

Hey i would probly find my own way to move you stuff off their site. haha

[Liane]

Thanks for the info everyone. I liked the way Bolutomus dealt with it. He put a rogue's gallery on his site showing the offenders. Kind of like when grocery stores tack up bounnced cheques for the world to see.

So far, they still haven't replied to my e:mail.

I'll give them a little more time and then fire off another e:mail inviting them to see the page I am about to link to my site in which they are featured! I think the embarassment level will get their attention pretty quickly.

[tilt]

If you do put up a rogues' gallery, just include their name, so they're identified; don't include a link to their site or their web address. You don't want your clients jumping ship (so to speak) visiting the competitor's site, and staying there. ;)

[Liane]

Good advice tilt! I know exactly where I am going to put it for maximum effect. I just found two other competitors who have done the same thing and will join them! None have responded to my e:mail. I suppose I should be flattered but I'm not. I am just pissed!

For some reason, Google hasn't crawled my site yet this month??? I think I will put it on the page I have selected, wait until Google has crawled and then take it off again. I'll then send them an e:mail and tell them to look at the cache and explain that I don't mind putting it back and leaving it there if they wish.

[EliteWeb]

Hire a hacker to take care of it ;)

[Liane]

Thank you Bolutomus! I sent the following to one of the worst offenders today:

>To whom it may concern - Reminder

As you have not seen fit to reply to my original e:mail message dated November 3rd, 2001, nor have you removed my copyrighted materials from your web site, please be advised that within the next 30 days, your company name will be mentioned on my web site in a "Rogues Gallery" as having pirated my material and ignoring requests to remove my material.

I have put a lot of time and effort into my web site and all but 1% of the material on my site is original. The 1% which is not original was supplied to me with the owners consent. I do not appreciate having my materials stolen by a competitor. Should you not wish to be included in the Rogues Gallery, kindly remove my materials within the next 30 days.<

I got an immediate response with a promise to remove my stuff!

One down ... two more to go!

[tigger]

Liane

I understand what you are trying to do; a local company did something very similar on their shop window showing companies that owed them money :)

I'm sure you won't be placing a link, as you don't want to increase the link pop for the site :)

[Liane]

Uh ... no. I had no intention of linking to them. But I already had a pretty cool page designed which looked kinda neat. I had pictures of three different pirates (representing the three companies who have stolen my stuff) sitting at computers and picking off my photos with little captions which included their company names.

Since its a boating site ... the pirates fit in quite nicely with the theme.

Since my e:mail message seems to be working ... it doesn't look as though I will need to put the page up. Thanks again for the advice guys!