Forum Moderators: LifeinAsia
I have found a site today that has copied my website and I want them to take it down. They have copied most of it word for word.
Beware of rushing into litigation. You may spend thousands on an attorney and get them to close it down. But they might just get another domain and put it back up days later. Then you have to start all over again.
Only the attorney wins in the end.
This website has copied all my content including page titles, meta tags, etc...
My greatest fear is that I will be penalized for duplicate content with search engines.
Hosting companies will often remove any content from their servers if they belive it is in breach of copyright law.
Mack.
2. If so, you need to contact the offending party and let them know :
a. They are infringing on your copyrighted materials.
b. You will vigorously defend your rights in those materials
c. Please discontinue using your copyrighted materials (specify exactly which pages). Give them 10 days or so (you specify exactly) to remove them.
That ought to do the trick.
The funny thing is they even copied the copyright at the bottom of my page but they just changed my company name to theirs :(
I am not to worried about this because they aren't much of a threat to me... oh well
This is absolutely Not my particular brain trust area, but I am not persuaded it is necessary to have taged every page as copyright [year] for copyright to exist.
If you do a site search here (or search via an SE for terms such as copyright protection, defending copyright etc., you'll probably land enough reading material to point you in a good direction.
It's been suggested that attorneys, like missles, are best reserved for engagement after diplomacy doesn't produce a reasonable result.
1. Have you indicated that your pages are copyrighted? If not, forget it.
This is actually incorrect. Anything you write is copyrighted, regardless of whether you actually have a copyright notice on it or not. It is more a deterent than anything when you put it on the bottom of your webpage.
There are a few things you can do when someone copies your site, that are much more inexpensive than hiring a lawyer (I would be broke if I had to do that everytime someone infringed on my copyright)
First off, send a legal cease & desist letter (C&D) to the infringer. You can find sample C&D letters online. It includes the date you expect the stolen content to be removed by. It also includes all the legalese about how copyright infringement is punishable and he/she could be held liable for financial damages etc etc. Do a whois search to get the contact info and send it via email to the email address listed, as well as any addresses listed on the site. If you prefer to send it via snail mail, send it registered, so you have proof of receipt.
If the infringer doesn't respond, try contacting the host next (again, you can find this out by checking the DNS records in the whois of the domain). Many hosts won't tolerate any cases of copyright infringement on their servers, as they don't want to be held liable in the event it does go to court.
Does the site appear in Google? If so, you can file a DMCA notice of infringement at [google.com...]
