they're selling my lessons in Javascript pop-ups

I banned 'em by referrer, and they've found a way around it

[stapel]

A certain site appears to sell online education, and, for their algebra lessons, is selling access to my (free) content. As discussed in this other thread [webmasterworld.com], I first banned them by referrer in my .htaccess file, so their customers got a 403 error. If they'd tried framing my lessons, they would have encountered my "breakout" script which would have popped their customers back to the front page of my site.

Instead, they've gone to displaying my lessons in Javascript pop-up boxes.

I can't seem to find any responsible party at the education "service" to contact regarding this issue, so I feel that the best method of solution would be to work from my end on messing up their pop-up boxes. Any ideas?

Thank you.

Eliz.

[benevolent001]

Hello
Yesterday i gave you whois information whereabouts of the epic...website.Did you checked out?

Just have chat with them over phone and say your feeling in some good handsome words....you know what i mean

if you didnt got....let me know i will ...send you the information...(have you got email address at your website...i checked but didnt found..

i cant give any links here

Website TOC doest allow this

With Regards

[stapel]

Yes, you mentioned where to find the WhoIs information. That is where I got the contact information that didn't work. Since, as mentioned previously, I cannot find any responsible party with whom to dialogue, I am hoping to find a solution from my end.

Thank you.

Eliz.

[AWildman]

I half wonder if this is legal. I mean, the link to your content is your site's name. The company seems to be making money off the fact that it has collected the list of links. This isn't to say that I don't think that what they are doing is wrong, it just may be that from a legal point of view, it may be like a paid search engine. EpicLearning went out and found free content then created a link to it. People pay to have someone else do the searching. So from a legal POV, you may run into a brick wall, even if you COULD contact someone at that company.

I did notice this link on their home page "E-Learning Delivers a 2284% ROI for IBM" Might you try contacting someone at IBM to get at EpicLearning from a different, and potentially more harmful, angle? I'm assuming that IBM is a pretty huge client. If you explain what they're doing to you, they may get unhappy and ask EL what the Hades they're doing by "selling" your content. At the vary least, you'll probably get a sympathetic ear that will give you a contact.

[AWildman]

Sorry for the double post but I found contact information for the CEO of EpicLearning, I think. Search google for Chenango "Chenango Valley Class of 1971 Alumni" epiclearning.

Hopefully that helps.

[stapel]

AWildman: Just out of curiousity, what "home page" are you looking at? When I try just the domain name, I get a "Directory Listing Not Allowed" error, and when I append the "/index.asp" to the domain name, I get a "go to this other site" message.

I checked out the reference you provided (thank you for doing the research) and compared it with the information provided by the registrar; it doesn't match. So maybe "Burr" was the CEO thirteen years ago, when that class-reunion list was created, but it doesn't look like he is now. He's since been with at least three or four other educational "institutions" since then.

Thank you.

Eliz.

P.S. The Terms of Use for my site are fairly clear: My lessons are not to be sold and are not to be incorporated into the products of others. I have, by the way, found another way to block the re-sellers, this time by banning their customers. We'll see how long that works.

[edited by: stapel at 7:04 pm (utc) on Dec. 28, 2004]

[jdMorgan]

> this time by banning their customers. We'll see how long that lasts.

If you can ban their customers, then you can also redirect them. Instead of blocking their access, how about redirecting them to a page that says, "The site you are visiting from may have charged you money to get here. You may visit my site directly, and free or charge at <direct link to your site>.

Please bookmark my pages (add them to your Favorites) to avoid being exploited further."

Then let the customer complaints to the linking site solve your problem for you.

Jim

[AWildman]

I'm not allowed to post the link, but if you just search Google for "epiclearning", its number one.

I assumed that your copyright did say that the information on your site isn't to be sold. I'm just thinking that they'll argue that they scoured the internet for materials suitable for their customers and are only providing links, not reselling content. Again, not that I agree, just playing devil's advocate.

I'm interested in how this turns out for you cause we have lessons as well, although one must pay a subscription to view it. After reading your post, I searched for "epiclearning" and my company name. I didn't find anything, but I'm ever so glad that you pointed these people out just in case. I wish you all the best in getting this resolved.

[stapel]

Ah, that link. Okay, I followed it, and found the headline you mentioned. But you'll note that the link-to is 404, and the headline doesn't mention the company in question, only "e-learning". It's promotion by association: "some other company helped IBM get a good return, so you should assume that we can do the same for you."

Eliz.

Edit for spelling.

[edited by: stapel at 8:02 pm (utc) on Dec. 28, 2004]

[AWildman]

Sorry, I didn't try the link. Just thought it might be an "in" for you. Oh well. Did you find the contact information using the other search suggestion?

[stapel]

I must be missing something (but then, I'm highly medicated at the moment, and probably shouldn't be operating heavy machinery, like keyboards....), but I only see the WhoIs suggestion for contact information, which didn't lead anywhere useful.

Eliz.

[AWildman]

Understandable. I suggested earlier in this thread that you search google for "Chenango Valley Class of 1971 Alumni" epiclearning to find contact information.

[stapel]

I replied to that in message 6 in this thread.

Thank you.

Eliz.

[Dynamoo]

A look at archive.org and the WHOIS history is interesting. The site from 2002 looks different from the site from 2004 - the older one looks more professional and has some real content. The new one takes some elements and graphics and then seems to add some external links.

Checking the current WHOIS information against the *old* contact list shows that the contact is listed as "Technical Help".

I wonder if the original firm went belly up and the domain has been re-used by a former employee?

[t_dog]

If you go to Creative Common Licence site
[creativecommons.org...] you will find copyright tools to help solve the legal issue you face. No matter how you dice or slice it unauthorized use of intellectual property is theft.

If the thief is based in Canada or US you have a good chance for an easy legal remedy.

Ken Davidson