Slashdot Mirror
Stop! Website Thief!
Rick Zeman writes "We've all heard of people grabbing an image from this web site, ideas from that web site, or some content from yet another web site. But what do you do when someone takes your entire web site and hosts it in a foreign country? Silicon.com has an article that tells the tale of two such web sites."
But what do you do when someone takes your entire web site and hosts it in a foreign country?
You post it on slashdot so we can overwhelm it with traffic and take it down immediately.
If the site is hijacking advertising revenue, won't slashdotting them simply increase that revenue?
Just a thought.
This seems to have happened to fark.com, unless there's another explaination for this.
Slashdot comments can be accurate, highly modded, or posted quickly. Pick two.
Web 'copycats' ripping off small businesses
March 09 2004
by Will Sturgeon
UK company first, followed by US company...
A serial website thief is ripping off content and other intellectual property wholesale - much to the annoyance of the companies and individuals whose businesses depend on the sites affected.
To date, silicon.com is aware of two companies that have suffered similar fates but the pattern and the ease with which these criminals can move on has raised concerns that many more companies could have fallen victim to this ploy - and that many others may do so in the future.
silicon.com was contacted by Shane O'Donoghue, who has been running a website called Car Enthusiast - dedicated to all things automotive - since 1999. It gets about four million impressions per month and O'Donoghue sells advertising on the site in order to pay the bills.
However, he recently noticed another site, called 'Car or Car', that had cropped up in the previous month or so and was ripping off his site design, content and even his copyright notice. It was then using his hard work to sell advertising of its own. The complete 'cut and paste' nature of the theft meant that O'Donoghue was even listed as Car or Car's editor - next to a picture of himself.
Understandably O'Donoghue was upset and tried to get in touch with the site's owners.
"We emailed them via the contact page, which was the same as our own, and heard nothing back," he said. "We then contacted the authority that controls the domain and heard nothing."
Part of the problem was that the site was being hosted outside EU jurisdiction, in Taiwan. This isn't altogether surprising - such a choice of location suggests that the site's owners were attempting to safeguard themselves from legal action.
While China, Taiwan and the Far East in general are not the lawless internet havens they once represented for the likes of spammers and fraudsters, they still present barriers when seeking legal recourse.
O'Donoghue said: "We're not a big company and we don't have the lawyers or the money to pursue legal action."
However, a twist in the tale came when silicon.com contacted Car or Car and informed them that their illegal business model had been rumbled. Although we received no reply the site vanished overnight, to reappear the next day in a new guise - this time a complete mirror image of another car enthusiast site - and this time one being run out of Rochester, New York, in the US.
Until its owners move on to their next victim, compare the genuine Sports Car Club of America website with the not-so-genuine Car or Car site. The only difference is the banner ad at the top left for a company called refinance-now.org, registered in Pennsylvania by an organisation called Webclients.
At the time of writing, Webclients had failed to respond to an email requesting it clarify its relationship with carorcar.com - which it may be sponsoring unaware of any crime being committed.
Michael Cover, a partner and intellectual property expert at law firm Faegre Benson Hobson Audley who also sits on WIPO (World Intellectual Property Organization) dispute panels, told silicon.com: "If you have this kind of problem in the UK, it is reasonably easy to resolve. But this can sometimes present very difficult problems, especially where a site is registered outside the EU."
But companies that think distance and national borders protect them may be disappointed to hear China is becoming increasingly open and Cover said: "Taiwan is a very developed jurisdiction and there should be no problems now pursuing cases such as this."
The copycat site certainly appears to be in breach of "copyright - such as design and literary content", he added and rectifying the situation may not be as problematic as first feared.
Lawyers agree that in the first instance the aggrieved companies should try "putting the frighteners" on the individuals behind these crimes, who doubtless know they are in breac
This guy is way out there
"Information wants to be free. Copying digital data doesn't take away anything from the original."
But the information was already freely available on the original site. The forged, plagerised site stole the presentation of the information to make themselves some advertising revenue.
If an artist doesn't want something to be copied, they shouldn't release it."
I can honestly say I've never heard this argument used.
Digital content should be done for the joy of creating
The original site creator did do that. he made it for his enthusiasm in all things car related. He then found out he could pay for the site with ad revenue, and maybe make some money for his hard work. The plagerists stole the presentation of this persons information solely to make money. they had no interest in using the information in an intellectual way.
It's my hope that the "abolish online copyrights" crowd will chime in on this case and explain better than I can why pirating MP3s and movies is okay, and this is not.
I'm not against "online copyrights" as you say. I am against the extension of copyrights for the purpose of greed, ie, Disney's fight to not let Mickey Mouse get released into the public domain. Abolishing copyrights is rediculous. Sensible copyright law is not. We don't really have sensible copyright law these days.
I'm not in favor of pirating mp3's or movies, yet I do see a great difference between this and that.
Hopefully, everyone noticed the subsequent posts on click-throughs and impressions, two things about which I know virtually nil. After reading them all, I'm still not sure I did such a good thing, intent or not.
Oh well. The nerd power is still very sweet/fuzzy/humorous. *chortle*
Mom says my