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Bringing Down A Copycat Site
Nigel Cross wrote in with an interesting story from the world of software fraud. Cross writes "I found a copycat site fraudulently selling my own software and kept a record of the steps it took to bring him down."
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I know that a lot of people are going to compare this with suprnova/etc to support their stance on copyright law. Rather than take a side right now I would just like to point out that this is not just simple copyright violation. The site in question was also committing fraud and trademark violation, both of which are separate issues in addition to the copyright violation.
One of the issues that concerned the poster was that the copycat site might show up (early) on search engine results. The probability of this would greatly increase if links were posted to it by people trying to bring the site down. As such, a /.ing might have wound up increasing the damage caused by the copycat site.
Doesn't anyone get the feeling that MaillistKing is used by spammers? Thats why it was on a site advertising other spam software and email lists with 1mil names... and thats why the guy was hosting in Pakistan and probably knew the spam business well. Probably why he had such blatant disregard for the law and any acted like a prick?
I don't know if I want to feel sorry for a guy that sells and develops spam software. I guess there are legitimate uses for Mailing Lists, but just because there are a few people using it legitimitely (sp?)... doesn't mean it's not used to increase spam.
Other than that, this is nothing new. Have a problem, contact the ISP... wow... what a revelation.
Awesome! Great work on taking the copycat's site down. There are way too many punks on the internet these days that will stoop to massive lows just to make a buck or two, it's pure garbage. I have many ideas always in the mix and I dare tell a couple people about them before the official release date - I've been ripped off by people before like this.
sadly, you know as well as I, it won't be long before your copycat starts up on a new hosting server and does the exact thing again.
Valkyrie is about to die! Wizard needs food -- badly!
Do you have any idea how much time and money it costs to sue? Sure, legal action would've fixed this mess in a jiffy, but then he'd be out thousands of dollars and hundreds of hours of wasted time before it was over.
To bad the hosting provider didn't take his complaint seriously. This guy can just pick the next company and start all over again.
I've heard here that people trying to protect their IP should just give up on their quaint old ways of doing business.
Totally dude. I mean, I can't believe Majordomo and Mailman are still being peddled. They should be the subject of much vitriol.
You should NOT have stopped at the pulling of your gear.
Send all the emails to the admin at the host.
Do not give this bastard an even break. He obviously will not give others a break.
"Consider how lucky you are that life has been good to you so far. Alternatively, if life hasn't been good to you so far
I'm curious, he sent some mails and ended up with a smartass reply from the copycat who promised to remove the software.
...
A few days later the software is up on the site again
How is that "Bringing down a copycat site" ????
Wheres the screenshots of a hacked and defaced Copycat website?
Wheres the sentence from the judge putting Mr Copycat behind bars?
Wheres the info about the other 5 sites that went down at the same time?
Nobody has brought down anything yet, except maybe some laughter that can be heard all the way from Pakistan.
Bullshit or not he is getting a free ad and I'd bet that that fact did not go unnoticed by him before he decided to post it. A pretty damm good free ad to if you consider the hits/clickthroughs I'm sure it will get. There's gotta be a least a few people who still RTFA.
Leaving aside the question of whether or not MK itself is a spamtool, was it really smart to post the steps that led to resolution? Nothing really forced this person to stop his actions; it was just threats with no guaranteed teeth, as the posting now explains to him. So why wouldn't he now just put the site back up, knowing that the threat was potentially empty?
Maybe the Pak site would have objected to his forged email, but maybe they don't care a bit - the article certainly makes it sound like Nigel was about to give up in frustration. Now the copycat site knows that..
-- Tony Lawrence
Forward a pointer to the bogus site to Microsoft's legal department. Notice the name? Notice the font used? Doesn't it look like it's designed to resemble Microsoft's logo? This is precisely the type of thing Microsoft Legal prosecutes with a vengeance.
Hey, just because you hate Microsoft doesn't mean you can't use them to your advantage occasionally...
Maybe its in house beta (or final whatever) test copy?
Generate random mail addresses and test extreme conditions? Also if it works, use that screenshot to show how powerful it is.
I am not developers friend or something but I can sure imagine why since I have a coder friend coding opt-in maillist software for huge online store, tested EXACT SAME WAY.
Somehow, on this story, I felt like I am at download.com comment trollheaven.
He didn't get damages or an injunction (or the equivalent in Pakistan). If we had better international and national laws for this kind of thing he would have been compensated by the crook for the time he put in dealing with this not to mention get an injunction against this behavior if the obviously immature crook decided to change his mind.
There is in mailman too... is that suppposed to be spam software?
Sometimes mailing lists need to be anonymous.
Have you considered changing its name? If for most people a name like "MailList King" sounds like an evil spammer's tool (it does for me, that was my first impression) maybe it's time to change that name. You know, if you want your product to be successful, you should pay attention to marketing issues.
Fh
Dude .. this guy lives in Afghanistan.
:-)
RTFA
If you think the Police in Afghanistan has nothing better than chaing online fraud scammers, selling software for $1.2, you are gravely misstaken.
Probable impossibilities are to be preferred to improbable possibilities.
Aristotele
Today we have this story where someone was selling pirated software taking credit from the creator, but because this wasn't some giant software company overwhelming there are modded responses about "way to go", "stick it to 'em", etc. etc.
My questions is what is the difference between yesterday and today? Both folks committed copyright, trademark, and fraud, but because its the work of some smaller outfit it is more of an evil than the same thing happening to "Evil giant corperations"?
Piracy is theft. Fraud is Fraud. Infrigement is Infrigement. End of story. It doesn't matter if its small guy or giant huge megacorp.
I hope that the creator(s) of this program nail this guy and take 'em to the cleaners. Its times like these that lawyers are not an evil word and lawsuits in federal court aren't either.
"The problem with socialism is eventually you run out of other people's money" - Thatcher.