My entire site scraped onto mydomain.net

I own mydomain.com

[Perfection]

I have a site on mydomain.com (it's a little over 1 year old). As of a week ago, someone bought mydomain.net and scraped my entire site (every page, every file, every word, every graphic, every everything) onto it.

It's a 100% duplication of my site, with the exception of a .net domain name, and a bunch of ads scattered across their version of my site.

The have a private domain registration, and no contact info on the site.

What can I do? Thanks.

[netchicken1]

Complain to google about the site, and get them to remove their google adverts from it.

That will cut out their primary reason for living....

[Marcia]

Complain to whoever the registrar is - and the host, if it's a 3rd party. DMCA

[Perfection]

Thanks for the replies. Here's an update. I contacted one of the affiliate programs this person was using to advertise on their version of my site, and they said they see exactly what's going on here, and promised to take some form of action. What action? I have no idea.

I then contacted the web host. They replied back with this person's email address and basically told me to deal with it myself.

So, now I guess I'm going to email this idiot. Any suggestions for what I should say?

Thanks again.

[ceestand]

You could e-mail them a cease & desist letter. I would suggest taking a more conciliatory approach at first, but if they've so blatantly stolen your content as you describe, the chances of them playing nice are remote.

[Perfection]

I think I'm going to send a combination of a friendly "Take down the site or else" email, and a more legal sounding cease and desist letter. The best of both worlds, I guess.

Of course, it may be a waste of time. Doing a search of this person's email address, all of the results are in Chinese. So, what are the odds this person will even be able to read my email?

[Perfection]

Quick update if anyone is interested.

I talked to someone else from the hosting company, and he immediately suspended this person's account. Nice.

Then I got a reply from the person himself, and he told me some kind of story (in barely understandable broken English) about how his friend gave him the site and he didn't know anything about it and other similar nonsense. Anyway, he sounded a bit freaked out that I contacted him, and he promised to comply with my requests.

So far, it appears to be a happy ending. =)

Thanks for the help, by the way.

[ronin]

all of the results are in Chinese

Oh dear. Not that this will help matters in the current or similar situations, but it's worth knowing a little about certain underlying principles in Confucian society.

Like: Being "original" is a bit cheap and nasty, whereas copying from a Master as closely and carefully as possible is the highest form of art.

Assuming that it was the guy's friend who copied your site, it's entirely possible (granted, it's not certain) that the friend hugely admires your site.

[syber]

Master!

[Lorel]

I never bother contacting scrapers to inform them they have scraped something. If they are that dumb they don't deserve to be on the interent. Send a DMCA to the host instead. Any host that allows this kind of activity can loose their license. Of course contacting Google or other ad providers is also important as it puts a black mark on the scrapers account.