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."
http://www.carorcar.com
solo
another page
and another page
Or maybe just a thousand of us firing off wget -r in their direction. Redirect it to /dev/null...
Will this get me a "-1 Instigator" mod? ;)
Mom says my
1) Submit story to silicon.com /.ing.
2) Submit story to slashdot.org
3) Imagine what Car or Car's server looks like as it catches fire do to the
4) ....then, get back to work.
Left 4 Dead Gaming Group - http://www.l4dgg.com
I remember when I had my own website, and a young Cowboyneal asked to 'mirror' it for me...
I wrote a biography of a famous historic figure, and I placed it in my web site, devoted to this figure. I put a copyright on the site. Since then, I've seen it all over the place, including online encyclopedias. Don't know whether to be flattered or angry.
Post the URL here, and then Slashdot the buggers into oblivion! Make their bandwidth bill so high that they'll beg you to take it back!
Could someone post a mirror please?
this happened to a website i had, but the idiots that ripped the site forgot to copy the stylesheet and left it linked to ours, so the next day their site was pink and purple, and a home for gay pride
There are very few people in this world who would maliciously copy the Web site for the purpose of mirroring it out of their own pocket. More often than not, it's the pageviews and ad rotation that they're after.
Proliferation of Google Ads, and similar offerings from FindWhat and MarketBanker allowed a bunch of content-driven Web sites to exist and make money at the same time. At one of the sites I run the click-through ratio on Google Ads (the site's only means of survival) are at about 0.1-0.2% and thus more traffic and more content means more targetted visitors, more pageviews, and with 0.1-0.2% ratio being (you hope) constant, more money.
So hit them where it hurts. If they earn money through Google, Findwhat or MarketBanker, contact the ad engines. Most of the time it's abuse of the service agreement and abuse of their advertising system. They send the paychecks, and if they tell the guy to shape up or have the account suspended, actions will be taken.
Contact their ISP or hoster, regardless of the country. Unless both the hoster and site copier are the same people, you can find reasonable understanding there, with hoster giving then the warning to the copier about possible implications.
Contact his advertisers. If you see lots of Amazon referral links, contact Amazon Associates support with the problem description. I never heard Amazon actually doing something about it, but the pressure from several points on the copier might enhance your chances of him giving up.
There's a word for that: Macromediocrity
There are no karma whores, only moderation johns
Check this out. Go to Yardcare.com. If you read the text under how to restore your lawn you'll notice refrences to pictures and charts but you don't see any.
Now go to This Popular Mechanics Article and notice the text is verbatim, only this time with the proper pictures and charts.
Which one is the origional site? Hmm...not to hard too figure out. I wasn't sure if I should have emailed PM or not, either way I think its rather rude and unbecoming of the web.
Apple free since 1990!
There isn't a lot you can do to protect yourself when people operate from these safe havens. That's what's most frustrating. The spammers have been doing this for years and have got away with it. And now content stealers.
Will the bandits be able to steal a site like the newspaper here?. This site has only one page, and every other page is rendered dynamically. Maybe this is the solution.
Nothing to see here
www.srashdot.org
These people rip these sites, pass them off as their own - even put them on their CV, and get the jobs the true talent deserve. They need stringing up.
:-
For instance
www.nevermindus.com vs
www.digitalabstracts.com
There is a great selection of these on Pirated Sites
Umm... That post actually isn't off topic.
s ite.ht ml
Anyone still remember Mahirs 15 minutes of fame because of his crazy website? If I remember correctly someone pretty much stole all his content and hosted it for laughs...SO not offtopic, just not very well explained.
The original can be found here
http://www.ikissyou.org/famous_site/famous_
~Z
Theres a big difference between using IP from a source for your own benefit, but its another thing to use that IP to make money for yourself. Neither of which are particularly good.
If you listen music you downloaded from the internet for free, its not the same as copying a CD and selling it with a copied cover.
I'm not saying that copying music for your own use is a good thing to do, but its not nearly as bad as selling something that you've copied as your own.
http://github.com/gbook/nidb
Typical /. hypocrisy. When you misappropriate IP in the form of music, movies, and software, you say it's not "theft"
I do.
but when someone does the same to your website, you call them thieves, and get all up at arms about it...
I don't.
You seem to be under the impression that everybody who reads Slashdot thinks the same way, and that you are the lone voice of reason. That simply isn't true.
The reason this isn't hypocrisy is that the same people aren't alternating between the two viewpoints. Different people are responsible for the different viewpoints.
Someone did this to /.!
I hope Rob and Co. sue their pants off! Sheesh, what audacity!
That completely depends on the site and the ad program. Google AdWords for example are pay per click, but many (most?) banner ads are pay per impression, with CPM (cost/thousand impressions) being a key metric. We have banner ads on our site and they are *all* pay per impression.
I used to love seeing people do this with images on Ebay. One guy was selling some computer equipment and linked to a picture on another guy's site. When the site owner found out, he replaced the picture with one showing the equip all smashed and ruined. It was funny as hell.
"Typical /. hypocrisy. When you misappropriate IP in the form of music, movies, and software, you say it's not "theft" -- but when someone does the same to your website, you call them thieves, and get all up at arms about it..."
Agreed. Typical arguments (which I've seen in just the past few days when discussing MP3/movie piracy here on /.) for abolishing copyrights in the digital domain include:
The important thing is that all of these arguments can be applied to the case of this Taiwanese site. As with MP3 piracy, some might argue that pirating a MP3 is really theft because it reduces the potential market for the material, and the same applies here -- this (if you will) pirated web site might collect ad revenue that the original site might have otherwise gotten. Many slashdotters would gladly tell the greedy artist "tough cookies" -- why no shame on the greedy web site creator who is clearly a luddite if they didn't see this coming?
The bottom line is that in both cases, somebody else is benefitting off the work of an artist without compensating the original artist, and without the artist's permission.
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.
Sitting in my day care, the art is decopainted.
I work for www.cloudspace.com and every once in a while we notice something odd in our server logs and find that some has ripped off our navigation and left some of our graphics in it, or used our stylesheet. We've messed a few people's site look up a little by changing our stylesheet and had fun with it. Recently we found this site from a french company: http://www.studio-lol.com/ It comes up as the 8th result in a google search of our company name "cloudspace". They left the word "cloudspace" as the alt tag to their logo when they ripped off our navigation. We don't really mind too much when people copy our designs around here. Too bad they choose our own website with a lot of outdated code. It is coded in tables, but with being so busy lately we havent had time to update it much in the last couple years. We do everything we can in divs with css now. We just kind take it as a compliment when someone copies our designs.
steal this sig
Flash .. is the same in all browsers....
Yea, in all my browsers it's a little icon that says "Click Here to Get the Plugin".
Alito: A vote for Alito is a punch in the eye to put that bitch back in her place!
The problem would be collecting on the judgment. Since the site has advertising, you might want to contact the advertisers.
Talk with a good IP/Internet lawsuit. If they don't know Rio v. Rio, then try another.
Fight Spammers!
It's amazing how many bottom feeders there are out there: http://www.pirated-sites.com/
His resume doesn't appear to be there anymore, though. At least, the link to it comes up not found.
;-)
Of course, how do we know you're the *original* Jason Slaughter? Maybe *you* copied the resume, and want to point the blame at someone else...
Don't you wish your girlfriend was a geek like me?
"There should be more legislation in place to protect copyright interests."
This is, without a doubt, the last thing I'd ever expect to read on Slashdot!
In all seriousness, sorry to hear your story. Copyright violation is all fun and good when it happens to somebody else, and we can often fool ourselves into thinking that we're actually doing somebody a favor by copying somebody else's work against their will (the "by ripping this CD and putting it in my share directory I am actually giving them free advertising and somebody might go to their concert as a result of downloading it from Kazaa in lieu of buying the CD" argument). But as you've shown, it can mightily suck when it happens to you.
Sitting in my day care, the art is decopainted.
This really burns me.
As a geek who is into manufacturing, I was listening to some of the international trade speechifying on CSPAN the other day, and heard the following particularly relevant tale from Rep DeFazio of Oregon. (Quote courtesy of a quick search of the congressional record)
For the full transcript, go here
- Dave
Should be installed under your apache bin directory as 'ab'. I recommend the following if you have a decent pipe:
> The important thing is that all of these arguments can be applied to the case of this Taiwanese site.
Not correct. None of the arguments apply to plagiarism, which is the claiming of someone else's ideas as your own. Duplicating an MP3 and claiming that you made it yourself would be a good comparison to this case. The problem is not that the Taiwanese site simply copied the data, but they are misrepresenting it on an ongoing basis as their own work. That dances dangerously close to identity theft, especially if the Taiwanese site is using the fraud to capture ad revenue or using your reputation to garner faith (like convincing someone to give them a credit card number because they think it's you). In the case of a stolen Metallica MP3, it's rather unlikely that someone stealing the MP3 will try to present themselves as Metallica.
Virg
Mirror site
Want to improve your Karma? Instead of "Post Anonymously", try the "Post Humously" option.
Hmmmmm.... They emailed themselves to complain about the copy, eh? And heard nothing back? Well now, that makes sense.
"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.
1) Set up slick website. /.'ers check your site out for the first time (many of which may like what you have and come back again in the future).
2) Set up a mirror of it in Taiwan.
3) Submit story to silicon.com and slashdot about how your website was "ripped off".
4) Watch the enormous number of hits rise as "outraged"
5) ????
6) Profit!!
-S
--- What parts of "shall make no law", "shall not be infringed", and "shall not be violated" don't you understand?
Over on Everything2, we recently had someone lift a lot of content and use it to populate a portal site intended to collect revenue by ads and amazon click-throughs.
When the E2 user population realised what had happened, there began a general forming of lynch mods and baying for blood, and the perpetrator ('Marty')'s personal site was flooded with incredibly nasty messages.
Marty claimed he'd assumed that the content was intended to be more or less freeware, and lifted it wholesale (without any attributions to original authors, of course). When he realised his mistake (at it was a very stupid mistake to make, but at least it seems to have been an honest mistake), Marty withdrew the content and started trying to apologise.
Many of the E2 noders wouldn't hear the apologies, however, and in the end neither camp could claim any sort of moral high ground over their behaviour. Important lessons learned:
Yeah, I learned that last one myself...
-- call
Typical Anonymous Coward trolling. Slashdot is neither a hive mind nor a borg. Believe it or not, the thousands of readers of Slashdot have diffent opinions. That you don't understand this marks you as an idiot or a troll.
But on a more specific level, why are these two things totally different? If someone took one of my web sites and copied it for personal use I would be fine with that (although I'd ask that they use a bit of tact in doing the site rip; no need to be rude and totally soak all of my bandwidth). I'd be grumpy if someone provided a free public mirror of my site without my permission (that is, sharing my work), I would try to get the site taken down, but I'm going to be mellow about it. However, if someone were to take my web site, represent it as their own work, then try to profit from it, I would very, very angry. Similarly with music, movies, or software. Copies for personal use are fine; non-commercial sharing with original authorship preserved is wrong but we can work it out, commercial copies with authorship removed is evil.
Search 2010 Gen Con events
Add -D carorcar.com to keep hits to the ad page from getting through.
pirated-sites
I mod down anyone who says "I will be modded down for this", regardless of the rest of their comment
Damn, the secret's out. Slashdot is really just one person, clacking madly away at the keyboard and pretending to be a vast community. Carpal Tunnel Syndrome will be the end of Slashdot, mark my words.
I don't mean to make fun of the victim here, but this quote is pretty funny:
"We emailed them via the contact page, which was the same as our own, and heard nothing back,"
-- Brian
The most rabid believers in American Exceptionalism are the exact same people whose policies are destroying it.
You may be in luck if the company uses a domain with a TLD mandated by ICANN (COM, NET, ORG, BIZ, INFO, etc.).
With the new WDRP (Whois Data Reminder Policy) from ICANN, domain registrars are obligated to make sure their customers provide valid whois data for their domains. If they don't the domain can be pulled.
As for carorcar.com, the whois data shows an owner in China, but with a US country code and zipcode (I think), and a phone number (+01.3212353319) in Brevard County, Florida. Heck, I can even see it's listed with a R. Young in Orlando.
If you can convince their registrar that this is bogus, he might get the domain shut down.
Tuus crepidae innexilis sunt.
The entire site had been copied and then some text added claiming that someone else was the author. I did some more Googling and found that the theif was a 15 year old in England and got his email address and the name of his school.
I emailed him and offered to tell the school's head master what was going on. The site was down in hours and he replied saying how sorry he was.
I explained that I didn't mind him offering a download of the game, but that I did mind him claiming credit for it.
Lasers Controlled Games!
They were serving at 85-333ms when I started, they are now at 1510-9925ms. Ouch.
(I am, of course, merely testing ab and my own pipe, not doing anything to their site in protest).
--
Evan
"$30 for the One True Ring. $10 each additional ring!" -- JRR "Bob" Tolkien
Quite often contacting their hosting provider and simply pointing out to them that they are hosting content violating your IP will be enough.
.ru site also as soon as it's live, with minimum work on their part.
That's what we told the people who stole our content, unfortunately they are a russian hosting company who stole all of our content, edited the company logo images (poorly) and didn't even change the layout! the phone numbers are in the same place, they even used the same "drowning dude help icon" thing.. In any case, as you can probably imagine, they were happy to hear from us until we told them it was OUR site they stole, then all of a sudden they lost their ability to speak english.. Ugh!
Also, we've been designing a new site for some time now, and it kills me to think of the time we've put into this, to know that it will probably end up on the
-matt
If carorcar is doing this to make money via adverts and the wronged site owners can not get satisfaction from carorcar, why not put pressure on the people paying or supporting carorcar (e.g. websponsors)?
More insidiously, I've had fanart (from the same site) of mine be copied and printed up on t-shirts sold on eBay - passing them off as official Futurama merchandise. Again, what can you do? Complaining to eBay is all very well, but the people doing it will just open new accounts under different names even if eBay closes them down...
You must think in Russian.
In 1995-6, I did support for Compaq at a Unisys facility. I wrote many solutions for our call center, including several guides for troubleshooting various issues. I distributed them on floppies to many of the phone support people, since we were not allowed to have our own resources. Many of them ended up on Compaq's website, attributed to someone else. Some of them ended up on Microsoft's website, attributed to another someone else.
[A manager received permission to put my help system on the network just before I transferred. I still have copies.]
Later, I described how you could not detach attachments in Lotus Notes if Windows95B had been patched with the "a" patch intended for the original Windows95. (The policy to immediately patch Windows95 after installation survived long after the standard install was Windows95B.) I added it to the internal Unisys online help system. A few months later, I found it on Microsoft's site with 3 words changed and attributed to someone else.
In every case, the words changed were prepositions. I thought my original choices were better than the new version (probably because they were MY choices), but the content was otherwise identical. I guess they liked my style, but I would have enjoyed searching for my name and having many results pointing to microsoft.com.
I spend my life entertaining my brain.
If the site is dynamic, is it possible to copy the site, including all directories and scripts without actually running the scripts? Or rip raw code like php?