Unethical Site Duplication Options

[mwsc11050]

Hi folks would appreciate some advice.

I was just cruising round some sites and came across one which has effectively stolen a number of pages from one of my sites and duplicated them exactly on their site. These are business sites and quite frankly I am really angry about this. Couple of questions:-

1. Is there anything I can do about this?

2. Will Google penalise us for spamming?

Margaret

[Jill]

You can email or call them and ask them to take it down. You can also email their host to have their site taken down, and you can file a DMCA violation and submit it to Google which will get it removed from G.

[mwsc11050]

Thanks for the advice Jill.

I have emailed but no response so far. Will escalate actions if no-one gets back to me.

Margaret

[BBCoach]

It's time for a lawyer. I've had a site scrape everything from one of my sites and emails were ignored. However, a lawyer's notice to cease and desist got their attention. However, they didn't remove the copied info so we sued. Now they're site is down for maintenance and they're on the run from the court. You've got to get serious with thieves. Of course it'll cost you a bit to defend your info. Most don't go that extra step of suing the offender.

[Gerry White]

Seen a lot of this happen, if you can do a whois and figure out who the host is, I would be tempted to drop them an email ... recently discovered one site was COMPLETELY ripping off several of our sites with literally no changes to the copy and a minor change to the graphics, they were even scraping 'on the fly' new content, of course this meant we could serve them something different to what we served everyone else ... ;D

1. Tell them your aware (I have often had apoligies and friendly messages back to this!)
2. Tell the host of your intended legal action (cease and desist)
3. DMCA (digital millenium copyright act) to Google etc..

that is usually enough ...!

[doogie88]

It's time for a lawyer. I've had a site scrape everything from one of my sites and emails were ignored. However, a lawyer's notice to cease and desist got their attention. However, they didn't remove the copied info so we sued. Now they're site is down for maintenance and they're on the run from the court. You've got to get serious with thieves. Of course it'll cost you a bit to defend your info. Most don't go that extra step of suing the offender.

I'm having to do that too. Really f*cking annoying having to spend money on a lawyer just because the idiot host won't remove content until an actual lawyer sends it. host should have to cover the lawyer costs!

[Randy]

You can always follow up with a small claims suit against all of 'em for the costs incurred. You'll get a judgement because they won't show up to defend anything in your local jurisdiction. The problem being that you'll likely never get the judgement actually paid, meaning you've just spent more money on court filings.

[Chewla]

Hi all, first post here... I'm just wondering if you could get a template for a nice "cease and desist" letter, print it out on fancy letterhead, and priority mail it to get a signature confirming it was received? Maybe that would be enough to scare them into compliance, without necessarily involving lawyers (this from a girl who's hoping to go to law school next year....lol).

(IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)
Chewla

[Michael Martinez]

You can always follow up with a small claims suit against all of 'em for the costs incurred. You'll get a judgement because they won't show up to defend anything in your local jurisdiction. The problem being that you'll likely never get the judgement actually paid, meaning you've just spent more money on court filings.

If you're suggesting that hosting services can be sued for legal costs for following the DMCA conventions, I don't think that is plausible. It would be interesting to see what Ian McAnerin thinks.

[Randy]

Depends upon if they take action on the DMCA complaint in a timely manner or not. If they don't they're just as liable as the original thief once they've been put on notice.

You do of course have to document real damages, because without those there would be no attorney's fees to begin with. But if you get all of your ducks in a row, yes you can. And the suit by itself will get the stolen content ripped down pronto by the host 99 times out of 100. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/giggle.gif) At least that's been my experience.

Oddly, filing a small claims case is cheaper for me than having my attorney write a stinking C&D letter! Maybe I should start doing the suit instead of lawyer'd C&D, naming the hosting company as a defendant, since that seems to work every time.

[mwsc11050]

Thanks, this seems to be quite a common problem so I am feeling less picked on.

I got a reply from the web master as follows:-

'Hello, I have removed the pages at the minute while we re-write them.'

No apology, no explanation and...... they are still there! At least I can still see them but they may just be cached somewhere. How can I check if they are actually gone? As you will have realised I am not an expert at all this!

Margaret (IMG:style_emoticons/default/girl_cray2.gif)

[Jill]

It's likely they removed links to them from their site, but not the actual information off the server. You'll probably need to tell them that they have to do that as well.