Forum Moderators: not2easy
Recently I was concerned to notice that a site listed with a search engine had exact copies of photographs from our site and then noticed that the text was a direct copy straight from our page. –It’s very disconcerting to see this one is flattered naturally? Imitation is the sincerest form right? But joking aside it’s an infringement and it is grossly unfair for someone to pass off your work as his or her own without acknowledging it’s source, or asking your permission. Let alone to just blatantly copy with complete disregard to the original owner as in this instance. However remain cool and calm, a lot can be achieved with huge expense except in time. Far better to resolve the situation without threats and intimidation, just plain hard and direct copy!
Therefore with this in mind I wanted to share with you our experience and how we settled this dispute simply and quickly.
We obtained the details of the site owner and his hosting company. We copied the relevant offending portion of code and cited the URL of it and our own. We also found the listing in the search engine, which led us to the domain in question.
Next we constructed three letters one to the site owner one to the provider (ISP) and one to the search engine. We then copied our letter (to the site owner and the search engine) to the provider and copied the (site owners) letter to the search engine.
Now sit back relax calm down and wait.
First you should get automated responses from the search engine and hopefully the provider (ISP) these you keep to send to the site owner as proof you have been thorough in your approach.
Next you should receive a letter from the site owner telling you what you want to hear that they will do as you request. End of story.
If not wait 48hours and forward all three letters again to the site owner and ask him to respond (avoid again setting ultimatums such as in 12 hours etc he may be away on 14 days holiday -you must remain in control of what actions you will take as the situation unfolds)
Hopefully this will result in the following as in our case an email notifying us that they will do as requested complete with spelling errors. If not google sent us a list of things to do, which fortunately we didn’t have to. Incidentally forward the letter of satisfaction from your thief to google if it’s resolved so that they are aware the matter is settled.
“Dear yourdomain.com,
The pictures and text from widgets bar will be immediately removed. We are sorry for the inconveniance and this error will never be reproduced again in the future.
Sincerely, Thief.COM”
This took in total 4 days from noticing the infringement to having the material removed.
PLEASE! feel free to use the following emails as we sent them without restriction to use or modification.
Jules
------letter to site owner-------
THIS IS TO NOTIFY YOU OF A SERIOUS COPYWRITE INFRINGEMENT. ---title and message subject
Dear Thief –insert their name here,
As I understand the recipient detailed below is the owner of ‘thief’s domain’ as such we direct our breach of copy write notice to you.
Registrant:
Name
Domain Name: thief domain
Their address
Their email
Your site address [widget.com...] has listed a page widget.htm. The pictures for this are taken directly from our Site. [your...] domain/widgets.htm
The two pictures you used are our copy write. We have the original image files, can name persons in the photo directly and can substantiate our legitimacy as owners of the images. We can also prove the images were taken by us - with the owners of widget.htm. Furthermore your page description of widget.htm is a direct copy of our text which we also own copy write over.
Your source code for the offending article highlighted in blue; (this is the copy of code from the section of their website sporty our details)
<td align="center"><img src="widget/widget.jpg" alt="widget" width="139" height="60" border="0"></td>
</tr>
</table>
<span class="unnamed2"><br>
<b> </b></span>blah blah blah blah blah blah
<p></p>
<table width="100%" border="0" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0">
<tr>
<td align="center" class="more"><img src="images/hr-line.jpg" width="150" height="7"><br>
<td><img src="widget/widget2.jpg" width="150" height="114"></td>
We request that you immediately remove these images and text from your site, and sign an undertaking not to use these images/ text or any other material from our site in the future.
We have written to Google (or the search engine you saw it on) who have listed your page above and your ISP server provider confirming with them our complaint.
Please confirm to us in writing that you have removed the images from your site and no further action will be taken. Should you fail to comply with our notice of copy write infringement we will be left with no choice but to pursue this matter further. –(The point here is not to close your options with statements like we will take you to court , sue you, have my dad come over and beat you with mums rolling pin etc… It means you can continue to email them and explore other options before spending good money on lawyers who earn enough anyway!)
Sincerely,
Webmaster
www.yourdomain.com
---------------This is the letter we wrote to the search engine in this case Google. Google is great because they automate a response quickly to you which you can use to substantiate your threat that you will report them to the search engine for listing a site with material in breach of copy write. *AGAIN AVOID DEMANDS OR THREATS!---------
Dear Google,
Unfortunately one of the sites listed with you has infringed our copy write and as such we are notifying you of our complaint to the website involved. *We do not ask that you take any action other than to log our complaint to you at this stage.
We detail below our initial correspondence to the website involved and notify you that we have written a similar letter to the website's hosting company. *Should we not achieve the aims of our letter to them; namely the removal of material copied from our site we will be asking you to de-list your reference to this copy write infringed material.
Yours sincerely,
webmaster for www.yourdomain.com
The listing in google for the site in question is;
Advanced Search Preferences Language Tools Search Tips
Web Images Groups Directory News
Searched the web for bars kefalonia. Results 1 - 10 of about 4,010. Search took 0.16 seconds.
See your message here...
kefalonia bars
Your browser does not support script widget bars. Blah blah blah blah blah ...
www.widgets.com/page.htm - 12k - Cached - Similar pages
widget night life
... widget bars ¦ widget clubs The information may be disclosed to an organ procurement
blah blah blah blah ...
www.widgets.com/page.htm - 11k - Cached - Similar pages
[ More results from www.thiefs domain ]
A copy of our letter to the company in question is;
(ATTACH YOUR LETTER TO THE DOMAIN YOU COMPLAINED TO)
-------------ALSO send a copy of your complaint to the ISP of the domain name as below in our case.------------------
Dear sir,
We bring to your attention a complaint we have with the following company as listed below hosted we believe at ISP- enter their name here
Site owners name
Domain Name: thief domain
ADDRESS
Contact email:
Technical Contact:
Contact details of the domain server/ isp
Record expires on 23-Jan-2004.
Record created on 26-Nov-2001.
Database last updated on 22-Mar-2003 18:54:18 EST.
Domain servers in listed order:
Domain server 2--.1--.1--.2--
Domain server 1--.1--.2--.4
Our complaint is of copy write infringement namely pictures and text from our site, which we can substantiate and prove. We would request that you notify your client that you have received copy of our complaint with them. And should they not comply with our reasonable request we will be forced to take further action against them and you their ISP for breach of copy write. We attach our correspondence with Google- (the relevant search engine) who have listed this site and our letter to the website itself.
We thank you for your attention.
webmaster for
www.yourdomain.com
attach a COPY OF YOUR CORRESPONDENCE TO GOOGLE AND THE WEBSITE WE HAVE THE DISPUTE WITH.
-----------------------------------------------------------
Good luck and I sincerely hope you never need to go through this or worse, but if you do I hope that the above is of help and resolves everything quickly!
jules
THIS IS TO NOTIFY YOU OF A SERIOUS COPYWRITE INFRINGEMENT.
It'd be better to spell "copyright" correctly! :)
I do put a date I expect a response by - usually 48-72 hours if I send it via email, or 1 week if I send it via registered mail. It is not my fault they could be on a two week holiday - the longer it is up there, the more damage it could theoritically do.
I also don't specifically state what my next steps will be, other than further legal action will be taken if the demands in the C&D are not met (usually just removing the content).
Depending on how much content is stolen, I will also send a C&D to the host/ISP as well.
Using a C&D, I have had content removed in as quickly as under ten minutes from pushing the send button, to no more than a day.
