Forum Moderators: not2easy
So last night me and my buddies are playing texas holdem at my house when one of my friends says oh come on go all in i know you make good money of your a.com website...then he goes you too GREG, your site b.com is making money now too.
First I was like huh...GREG has a website? since when..so i ask and he was all quiet and mumbled oh my friend does. (we're talking about pretty much the same website as mine) So I rememberd the domain he said and this morning decided to visit it and check it out.
After visiting it i was shocked. My whole website was completly jacked. I mean the whole layout was the same, colors, categories, links..freaken everything. He even uses the same affiliates as me. Even the freaken adsense color theme is the same. I couldnt believe it. I checked who the website is registered to and found out its in his name. I got so pissed that my own friend got so greedy that he would do something like this. All the content, photos are stolen from my site. All the photos are public domain so its not like they're copyrighted by me but still. I know there is going to be competition and i know other will open sites like mine but when you see your own friend totally coping your site it just makes you sick in your stomach. When i called him he ends up saying its his friends site and his friend was banned from adsense so he opened an account for him...blah blah blah.
How messed up is that. One thing i've learned is dont share your sites with friends and NEVER tell anyone how much you make. I'm keeping my mouth shut now. Has anything like this ever happened to you guys? Is there anything i can do to get his site disabled?
Some Mate
Before proceeding to step 2, be sure your own site is free of any and all copyright violations, in other words:
All the photos are public domainbe sure that is legally-provable.
I am not a lawyer. Search the WebmasterWorld library for relevant archived threads from the Content, Writing and Copyright forum [webmasterworld.com].
Jim
If your site has any real value then how come you are not using your own content and pictures etc?
I would report this to Google and the website hoster, then ignore your 'friend', by the sound of it he's already feeling guilty about this.
[edited by: marcel at 9:06 pm (utc) on Feb. 17, 2006]
Told them how much money i make and its pretty much all from Adsense. BIG MISTAKE!
I agree with you on this one, let us know the outcome.
All the photos are public domain
Hopefully, you learn the lesson.
I had a friend who worked with me for years, next thing I know, he starts his own website and starts doing basically the same thing I was, even at some points, copying word for word text from some of my pages.
I didn't let him know I knew, and let him tag along with me. I would tell him all the success I was having with a certain part of my business. I talked it up so good, he went out and spent a lot of money to buy webservers and T3 lines because I told him web hosting was a gold mine heh.. Well, he learned his lesson. :)
Calmly explain how duplicate content will hurt both of you, and offer to help him if he pulls off your content and builds his own.
Get him started on his own, change your locks and never look back.
He can copy your content, but can he replicate your backlinks quickly? - No.
then it's hard to see what you can do about someone stealing from you
German is a special language with the possibilitie to combine words. You can create a nearly infinte number of nouns by combining them.
I use some of this words on my internet promotion seminars to show, that only I have them.
So it happened, that I was surprised about an other web site having this word. I was even more surprised, that this other web site had all the keywords of my internet promotion client copied on his web site.
I phoned the owner, and he was extrem unfriendly.
So I phoned my client, and informed him, that there is a web site with all her keywords. She engaged a lawyer.
The lawyer explained me that this is not a copyright issue, since this are all German words, nothing makes them special to be under copyright protection, but to copy 1729 keywords is a "direkte Leistungsübernahme" English "direct take over of work"
When it would have been 30 keywords, no chance, but in this case 1729 keywords copied.
It's the same like a database of addresses.
A database of addresses is no art and not under copyright protection, but if somebody copies it, he takes over the work involved for nothing.
the site was written in php...i bought the script! I then edited things, made my own template and uploaded photos send to me by vistors. I do not own the photos but i look out for copyrighted stuff and i remove them if they happen to be submitted to me. well i send a newsletter to close to 200,000 of my members telling them to boycut the site...over 100 of them already replied that they send him hate mail.
well i send a newsletter to close to 200,000 of my members telling them to boycut the site
Why give him free advertising?
The point I was alluding to is that the DMCA requires you to assert that you own the copyright and that the accused is infringing on it. If this is not strictly true then you'd better not make that claim. From Google's DMCA page:
Please note that you will be liable for damages (including costs and attorneys' fees) if you materially misrepresent that a product or activity is infringing your copyrights. Indeed, in a recent case... a company that sent an infringement notification seeking removal of online materials that were protected by the fair use doctrine was ordered to pay such costs and attorneys fees. The company agreed to pay over $100,000.
In this particular case it seems that users submit photos taken by either themselves or someone else. Either way, the copyright is most likely owned by someone other than StuntasticAudi, so he'd have to be very careful in his claim.
That's why you don't talk business with friends.
Hopefully, you learn the lesson.
I disagree totally. Talking business with 'friends' tells you who the real friends are.
My closest friends know all about my adsense site. They know how much I make roughly as well. And they will never click and they won't steal it. Just like they wont steal the $200 on the bannister when they leave.
Consider this an aweful way to prove something to you: that indeed this person was not a good friend at all.
I disagree totally. Talking business with 'friends' tells you who the real friends are.
I would rather take the test with the $200 as a one shot deal, then the $200 a day he could steal from my site.
That's a silly move. Why not follow the advice given in this thread...?
I will copy and paste that again as my own question:
Why not follow the advice given in this thread...?
You just advertised that new domain as Key_Master said.
How old are you StuntasticAudi?
The irony is that the thief that stole my content is ranked higher by google than I am.
1. Bragging about your earnings (especially since from other threads I think you're making at least $50,000 per year) is just asking for your friends to steal from you. But then again, it's kind of hard not to brag, I will admit myself. So what you need to do is to come up with a "shell website", at a different domain, that you can tell your friends about. It can be something simple like a blog with a few posts. Let them try and figure out how you make money with that. Do not reveal your business secrets and don't tell them about the real site! That's the only thing you have of value, especially if you don't own the copyright to your content.
2. If your site has user-submitted content (so does mine), you really can't do anything about the other guy taking it. The only things you can try are a spider trap to prevent him from using automated scraping tools, but he can still steal it if he really wants to. So the most important thing is prevention, which is why what I said above is important.
So know anybody says to me what do you do i say web designer - nice and easy no 100s of questions!
Why not follow the advice given in this thread?
Also about the copy of your site I dont think you can do anything there, you can not copyright text and if you have not yourself created pics or other unique stuff which can not be created on a website builder software you dont have any claim.
Secondly, I would not take that sort of bs from anyone let alone a so called friend. I would go after him and not in a court room. People that build websites usually need fingers don't they?
i'll stop at this point since we're rightly not allowed to disclose personal information. just want to add that it's no wonder when so-called friends do nonsense with you. since you reveal your complete personality for everyone on the net, i can imagine even more how much your mates must know about you..
It is amazing to the watch the evolution of a program like Adsense. Publishers are now turning to their own ranks to steal. They’re learning that’s an even quicker and safer way to make money. Steal from each other.
i'll stop at this point since we're rightly not allowed to disclose personal information. just want to add that it's no wonder when so-called friends do nonsense with you. since you reveal your complete personality for everyone on the net, i can imagine even more how much your mates must know about you..
Have to ask you moti.. What kind of friends do you have? The way you talk it seems like they don't even know where you work, your last name, the name of your girlfriend or wife, where you live, your phonenumber etc.. I don't know about you, but I do not call that friends. ...acquaintances maybe. But really, if you can't tell your friends what you do, ask them for support, have their opinions on different things; what the %#"¤#" are friends for? Just for playing cards?
What you are saying is that if you tell your 'friends' about your life, you are certain they will do BS to you! Why should friends want to stab you in the back if they see some of your personalia printed on the net?
And to you StuntasticAudi, I guess I would have done like many others here.. Turned my back to this friend of yours, never talked to him again, maybe sent him some ugly flowers or a cactus or something, with a small card, and really explained to him what kind of friendship he lost. Just to finish it all. I mean, if he wanted to steal someone elses idea, and means of livelihood, he could have found somebody else than his friend..
