Somebody stole my website! What is the best thing to do?

[virtualreality]

I have the following problem:

I found out someone had stolen my site - their URL is privately registered (so no email to contact) and when I open their URL i see my text and my design but the design looks very screwed - with no any images.

I contacted the email on the whois (which is their register) and also i found the website of the domain register and contacted 2 other emails there. No response!

The register is foreign, just like the site that stole my content.

What should I do?

Any help is appreciated!

[thecoalman]

Bookmark it: [webmasterworld.com...]

[virtualreality]

A foreign site stole my website and they displayed their URL with my content and my images. I contacted their host providers and they took his site down. Next day the site was up! I could not believe it! I checked the IP and I figured out he is using a different host provider. I also contacted them too.

What is the next to do? hire a lawyer from that foreign country? I read through all the helpful tips on [webmasterworld.com...] but still I am not sure what should be the next thing to do. I dont want to play cat and mouse game and every time this nasty guy to put his URL with my content on different hosts.

Any thoughts are appreciated!

[Status_203]

How are they monetizing the site? Can you go after that?

[jecasc]

What is the next to do? hire a lawyer from that foreign country?

If you know the name and address of who did this, this might be the right thing to do. Hire a lawyer from that country to send a cease and decist letter. Shouldn't be too expensive.

If you don't know, it's probably playing cat and mouse until he gets tired and gives up.

[piatkow]

A lot depends on the country. You don't say where you are or where the offending site is located. For example it would be a lot easier for an English webmaster to get an offending site in the US or Canada taken down than one in Russia or China.

[virtualreality]

Site is located in Russia. The bad guy took the site down again after I contacted his host. However his host denied to take the site down. They said "We understand your wish, but we can not cancel services for this site neither under the contract with the customer, nor by Law of Russian Federation." What the heck?!
For three days he changed his hosting provider three times. Now he moved the domain name somewhere else and I am waiting to see if he will put the site up again. His info is private and I dont know who he is for sure (even though i have a guess).
He did not profit from my site right now but I believe he intended to. The site looked very screwed on his domain name (obviously he did not fix some things yet) but he made sure to put the copyright mark from mydomain.com to mydomain.ru! What a a*s***e! I found out who owns mydomain.ru and contacted that guy but he did not reply... Even though I cant be 100% sure that the owner of mydomain.ru is the same bad guy who owns this domain name where my site was posted (which is different than mydomain.ru).

[piatkow]

If its a .ru I would suggest pouring yourself a stiff drink and relaxing for an hour or two and then forget all about it.

[virtualreality]

"If its a .ru I would suggest pouring yourself a stiff drink and relaxing for an hour or two and then forget all about it. " kind of a Russian advise..

I have a better idea what to do and already did!