Forum Moderators: mack
I would like to ask you how to write a proper e-mail of request to an owner or webmaster of a weblog or web page on the Internet. For I found a strange weblog (web page), which contains my copyrighted text as if he/she wrote and information on my academic background as if he/she had.
I have written an e-mails of request as follows, and I would like to know whether my e-mail of request is proper or not.
----- e-mail
Dear Sirs of #*$!xx,
Please do not use my copyrighted text without my permission and please do not contain information on my academic background unless you too earned an MA from #*$!xx University in Tokyo, Japan, on the 15th of March, 1997 as you explicitly stated in your "#*$!xx's Blog" - His/her weblog's URL
I sincerely ask you to remove any extract from my copyrighted text and my academic background from your "xxxxx's Blog."
Thank you very much.
My web site name
My full name
My web site's e-mail address
----- end e-mail
Your kind advice and instruction will be greatly appreciated.
Thank you very much.
Hito
P.S. Please excuse me if my English is strange.
I'm sorry to hear about this other site using your intellectual material, the email you have written seams to be very well worded and I certainly hope it works.
If you do not hear back from then within a week or two I would suggest sending them a C+D This means "cease and desist". Send this to the website that have used your material and also their web hosting company. This will usually be enough to have the offending articles/text work removed from their website.
Good luck.
Mack.
Thank you very much for answering to my question.
I am most grateful to you for your kind advice.
Hito
In my experience, it is generally best to use an impersonal, even third-party, tone in communications of this type. And it is generally more productive to contact the host, rather than the infringer. (Contacting the infringer directly is, in effect, asking the bad guy to please be nice. How likely is that to be effective?)
So find the host, find the most appropriate contact address ("legal", if possible) and reference any appropriate policy page ("Regarding copyright claims", etc, would be ideal), and send something like this:
Dear [hosting contact],
It has come to our attention that copyright content, originally created by [author name] for [site name], has been posted to your servers. In particular, this page:
[infringing URL]
...is an unauthorized and unlicensed copy of this original page:
[original URL]
If you need further information, please provide detailed instructions. Thank you for your assistance in this matter.
Sincerely,
Of course, if the host is American, you can file the DMCA info, and the infringing copy should come right down.
I hope that helps a bit.
Eliz.
Unfortunately, the person who did this almost certainly had ill intent. It wasn't an "accident", and this isn't a person who respects laws.
You could send the same, impersonal, factual letter to the owner of the site, rather than the host. I would add that you will contact the host if the material is not removed. You probably have a decent chance that he WILL take it down, as long as you add the threat of contacting the host.
But this is just facilitating their illegal activity. You are giving them an opportunity to "dodge the bullet" this time, and be more careful not to get caught next time. In particular, you will simply teach them a (no cost) lesson to remove or forge the names of authors of the material that they copy.
Thank you so much for giving me your kind advices, and that with example sentences.
I am most grateful to you for your practical and helpful advices from your experience.
If I should have a further question, I will post it in the "Copyright" category.
Thank you very much for everything.
Hito
I have gone through this thread and really feel sorry for the kind of problem that hito is facing. Just wanted to know if there are any international cyber laws or any W3C ruling which puts a check on this kind of unethical acts by some people.
Going straight to the host is the best route, they are getting ever more cautious about these issues.
The end result will be dependant on the territory that the host is in. If you don't get anywhere initially I would consider engaging a lawyer to scare them into action, again depending on whether there is much chance of them taking heed.
You claim that you have a copyright.
You did put a copyright notice on your web page.
You now have to prove that it is orginal. They just have to create "reasonable doubt".
Legal costs to force someone to do it will run ~$10,000 US. And then they just move the site off shore. You won't win this.
The best approach is to go to the hosting company with a polite request that has all the details layed out for them to present to the site owner.
If you get back the "Sorry, we are only the hosting company", then send them back a polite letter stating that if they do not comply, the next round of letters with go the their Advertisers, the State Attorney General's Office (AG) and local news papers.
They now have a decision. Do I collect $150 web hosting fee and risk a $50,000 law suit that has documented bad faith. Or drop them.
You should keep the letters in Word, because when the site is moved the new hosting company will need to be informed again.
If the site is moved across state lines, inform both your state's AG, their state's AG and the Hosting Company's state's AG.
And finally, send a copy to Google, Yahoo, and MSN stating your position. There is a duplicate content penalty issue that will impact you. Even though you created the content first, had it indexed first, the SE appear to base their decision on the "last modified file date" and the "Copier" usually wins.
Who knows, maybe the SEs will push it down so far that it no longer matters.
Jim Catanich
Mr. ---
I note that the content located at the URL ____ on your website is substantially the same as that located on my site at ____. This is clearly an infringement on my intellectual property rights, and is in violation of the DMCA (insert link for reference).
The material in question has been on my site since ____. As one example of the proof I am ready to provide should I need to take further action see (insert internet archive URL or other evidence).
If the material in question is not removed from your site within 72 hours I will contact (insert host name) and request that they remove the material. You should be advised that in many cases the host will shut down the entire site rather than remove the offending material.
As you can tell, I take my intellectual property rights very seriously and am prepared to take whatever action is necessary to protect them.
Your earliest attention to this matter will be greatly appreciated.
Sig line here
----
That one is often ignored, but 72 hours later when it is attached to the email sent to the host, and cc'd to the site owner, the material is almost always removed. Only twice have I had to lean on the host to shut down the site.
One of those two times the site owner emailed me a real whine of a message, asking why I did that. It is like some people just don't get it.
WBF
