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Both the ripp off's have been indexed in Google and I'm petrified that they will ban my url. I'm going to fax them
on Monday.
My question is this, I think the rip off sites are owned by someone who runs other similar sites. If the smpt ip address for their email is the same for all the sites, does that mean all the mail will be going to the same person?
Thanks,
Headster
Andreas
Andreas
Thanks for your help, I'm not really up on the tech aspects.
Regards,
Headster
i cant believe there are people who did something like this to you.
after finishing off this case, if i were you, i will make the site more defensive for those thiefs.
this is a mere suggestion:
you can block text-selection to prevent people from copy-and-paste.
you will also need to encript your source code, otherwise people can also copy the text from there.
now someone will argue they can decript the encryption, yeah, we can't help the existance of geniuses out there. but i guess at least 8 out 10 of random people are not able to decript. for those people who are smart enough, i dont think they will be interested in stealing just some contents from a website.
I'd guess if the copycats have lower pagerank than you you have little to worry about.
Edited for spelling
[edited by: SlyOldDog at 11:54 pm (utc) on Feb. 1, 2003]
1. They'll see no need to protection themselves.
2. If they actually start making headway, they will have forgotten you.
3. Start looking at preempted action... when there is actually something to gain from a law suite, and you are on the right side of the law, lawyers cost little, and court even less.
4. If they don't get anywhere: what did you lose.
The two worse things you can do is move forward without legal advice (professional advice), and
Limiting your costumers ability to visit, preview, purchase, return, and trust you... and this happens by believing you actually need more protection than a copyright statement.
If a copyright statement doesn't work... there is nothing else you can do to stop unethical people from being unethical without reducing your effectiveness to retain a loyal growing market.
As far as tracking the person down, your first stop should be the WHOIS database that contains details of who controls the domains you are talking about. You used to be able to get it all in one place (i.e. Network Solutions), but sometimes now you will have to figure out which company was used to register the domain, and then do a WHOIS search on that company's website.
fathom's comments slipped in and I don't really agree with them. There IS something you can do: document your case, find out who you are dealing with, and tell them to stop. If they don't, talk to the ISP hosting their website. It may help to threaten legal action, but don't do that without talking to a lawyer first.
jomaxx I believe we are on the same thread here, you did explain some things that I didn't... but before doing anything external - get legal advice.
Tell them to stop - (all good intensions) - but if they now seek legal advice (guilty people do - do this) if they decide they don't want this hanging over their heads... your re-course is hiring a lawyer, to protect yourself.
Contacting the host, the host shuts them down, they now have a law suite (or counter-suite of their own) - "lost business".
No matter what you do the situation is completely unpredictable - therefore unless your intent on going all the way do nothing but seek legal advice.
The law isn't about who is right or wrong, it's about proof - and only a fool believes they know the law better than a lawyer.
<added>What's the first thing a lawyer will say to you - "say nothing"</added>
[edited by: fathom at 12:38 am (utc) on Feb. 2, 2003]
People who wanted to hide from us have used tactics like the anonymous subdomians or Godaddy who offer to hide the registrant.
We caught one S.O.B. employee using our office server to host his own site which he's set up in competition to us. How about that for cheek? He was hidden on Whois, but we caught him through the site IP.
It's a dirty world we live in.
Not necessarily, not if the other page has a higher PR than yours.
A friend of mine had a profitable mini-site get copied, and the copy ranked higher than the original in Google because the copier used a previously-owned domain that had some existing link popularity. The copied content was a total mismatch for the previous site, though.
After getting nowhere with the guy's ISP, she began contacting sites that linked to the domain and pointed out that its content had changed. She didn't mention the copying, just alerted them that they had an off-topic link. Every site she wrote to removed the link, and some sent grateful replies. A few weeks later the copier's page could not be found in the SERPs and the original was back in the top ten. She had legitimate link popularity; he didn't.
Anyway, the point of this story is that one way to protect yourself from copiers is working to strengthen your own link popularity. Even if someone swiped your source code it's unlikely they could replicate the off-page factors that support your rankings.
I really hope you don't have the same problem.
It gets worse, they have a third site which has ripped a few main pages as well, worse than that the 2 complete copy sites have the same whois info as me!..same name, address etc.
I have documented all of this and will send to the legal department of the host on Monday. I'm also sending it to the domain registration companies that the url's were registered through.
Worst of all is we recently re-programmed the site into PHP and most of the product pages didn't get indexed due to the techs adding query strings, so these scum bags are picking up traffic on the keywords that we aren't on. Nice time for that to happen!
Guess you live and learn.
Why do you think that they jacked your content?
1. They place it on a domain that already has backlinks and hope it scores higher than the original.
2. They place it on a new domain - go out and submit it to directories, link exchanges, etc. and hope it scores higher than the original.
3. Combination of 1 and 2.
I am not sure, if this also applies to your case, but it could help you.
Takagi.
There are many flat rate trademark lawyers online who will conduct both the necessary national and common law trademark search before applying. That's about $300 of the $500. Then there's the actual application fee of around $175.
[bitlaw.com...]
[google.com...]
Trademark your business name - you were using it first. Then you can enforce a cease and desist against them.
Exactly! Nell's thinking logically. You really can't protect yourself unless you actually start protecting yourself.
So I'll be the devils advocate - the amount of re-purpose information this company seems to have stolen suggests (maybe) a little planning might have been behind it. A person/visitor going to your site may grab an image, a page of text, but generally not everything, and generally not repurposed multiple times over.
What if they have already applied for trademarks?
What if they have already have legal council?
Registered as an international company, patent designs, and so on.
Since they stole it originally - they'd be fools not to.
As long as you appear not to notice the thief - their happy.
The moment a threat heads their way - their plan goes into action...
and you are no longer the victim, in the eyes of the law these will be the deciding features which determine who is in the right and who is in the wrong, even if you were the originating creator the proof is in how the originating author protected themselves.
Without legal council anything action you take can be misconstrued as vigilantism.
The thread here on "Company suing e-comm businesses for patent infringement [webmasterworld.com] " is eye opening... legit companies having no choice but to settle out of course because it costs too much money to go to court, to prove they're in the right.
Here is what worked for me... Contact EVERYBODY!
If the person is promoting a product for XXXX company... contact XXX company, BE FRIENDLY, and let them know that the site has stolen content. Contact CJ again and point them to their Terms of Service. Contact the host again. You may choose to cc the bad guys on the email you send. If these contacts do not work, you should email/mail/fax the next line of contacts... XXXX company's pr department/president and the web host's president. You may choose to cc some media contacts in your email.
Eventually, somebody will listen to you.
Read this thread... I have found it has helped me a lot in preventing site theft.
[webmasterworld.com...]
Here's the funny part. The head of this company teaches at a local university and he teaches BUSINESS AND ETHICS. Yeah, right.
Anyway, I called the guy on the phone and he was pretty embarrassed. He said that he had liked my site and had used it as a template long ago to create a first rev his site but didn't think that rev of the site was still up.
In the end, he agreed to take it down and it was down within an hour. Hopefully, it will stay down.
Lots of slime out there.
Another time I just kept calling people at the company and asking general questions until I figured out why my site had been copied. Turns out they had been subcontracted to build a portal for a third party. I had a couple of talks with the VP(!) and we agreed that they would take another approach and I wouldn't have to talk with the end customer.
As I said earler, don't make legal threats without getting professional advice first. But if someone steals from you, THEY are in the wrong and you should make noise about it.
...and we agreed that they would take another approach and I wouldn't have to talk with the end customer.
My first reaction... is "my pain and suffering" which is no less important than that -- end customer, knowing the ethics involved.
I would rate that "pain and suffering" at the same amount their clients paid for the site... so the company makes no return on it, and still needs to remove it.
But legal advice usually wins out. It's bad business making decisions when you're "RED HOT MAD!"
