Greg K — Wed, 08 Feb 2006 00:39:55 +0000

Contact whoever is hosting the other guy's site. Let them know.

I checked out your site, like the idea, very different. (actual look of the site could use some work though).

I'd get rid of the picture of you holding up the certificates you mail out to people, will just make it easier for him to copy those as well.

-Greg

Frenchiexno1 — Tue, 07 Feb 2006 19:00:36 +0000

It happened to me 2 weeks ago within one week of me setting up my site some guy copied and pasted it and put it on a similar web address to mine - I was infuriated. He then started posting in Forums 'what do you think of my new idea' I couldnt believe it. Then to make matters worse he emailed me to apologise but said it was because he admired me and did not plan to change it! Anyway i am not going to post his url because I dont want the looser to get anymore attention than he deserves.

When you spend hours finding content, design, and imagination - someone who just comes along and copies that is the lowest of the low

Roo — Mon, 06 Feb 2006 19:34:53 +0000

I've had this happen several time. I don't even get smart thiefs..every time they have left my hit counter, meta tags, and other things.

James — Mon, 06 Feb 2006 19:13:42 +0000

Yes cached was, before.

To give you an idea, it was exactly the same index page, but with green instead of blue, and in Spanish language, not English. Apart from those two, identical.

In the beginning, it was so identical that we kept getting linked from that domain..

Always use your screenshot utility, I didn't.

Greg K — Mon, 06 Feb 2006 17:52:35 +0000

It is only as current as last march.

Were you searching using google? bring it up on the search results and hit the link for cached at the end of their listing.

Well I take that back, I just tried it, and it looks like the cached one was from before they put yours up.

-Greg

robfenn — Mon, 06 Feb 2006 17:43:50 +0000

You could use the Waybackmachine to look at cached versions...?

timjpriebe — Mon, 06 Feb 2006 13:48:58 +0000

Do you happen to have a screenshot of the website when it looked like yours? If so, you could always send them that. And I would be interested in seeing it as well.

Busy — Sun, 05 Feb 2006 21:40:08 +0000

Sadly this happens all the time, an e-com site I made from ground up was stolen but the guy forgot to change the web name I used all over the code, they changed the logo but left the alt and title descriptions.
I emailed their host and got it removed after second email threatening legal action against them.
There is another stolen copy out there, change colours and logo but all links return back to my site (my old site) andhadn't been touched for awhile (they just downloaded all the html files, even though it was a database driven site), I didn't worry about it, figured this was more links to me

James — Sun, 05 Feb 2006 16:47:36 +0000

Thanks.

My guess is that my formal email to them gave a little scare and the owner decided to load one of his previous websites.

I had also written a formal complaint to their server provider (who is also one of my providers - hence writing to your own abuse dep.) But them taking 3 hours to respond, they were too late to see the ridicule going on, they only got to it after the website was replaced.

I quote the abuse department - "There are no likenesses what-so-ever therefore no copyright infringement." Never occured to them that they might have replaced it by now. I wonder what would have happened if I had just contacted the abuse department, not the owners themselves.

I suspect their invision board is also "nulled". I'm waiting on confirmation of this from Invision Power Services.

teammatt3 — Sun, 05 Feb 2006 16:29:58 +0000

Glad to see you got that resolved James. I have never had a site ripped before but I would be pretty mad if it ever happen. That's why you always design crappy looking websites so people don't steal them