Hijacked Web Site

webpros · Jan 7, 2003

Hello - A member of my hosting providers forums has recommend that I post this here for possible advise. Thank you in advance for any information.

Hi - This "genius" of a guy has hijacked my website. After asking him to remove the site, he did so but then began building a new one (obviously from someone else's site). He is starting to use my images and text again. The first time he stole it he used my testimonials page as his own. Now he is using my mission statement and other company type documents on his site.

I've been working with the company he goes through, but they claim they won't do anything because he resells their VISP services.

I'm getting tired of playing this game and just want to smack this guy with something that will make him think twice about doing it again.

1 - Has anyone had to deal with a situation like this before and how did it get resolved?

2 - Is there a good Web site out there with information related?

3 - Any feedback is appreciated.

Here is a list of events and times for reference:
Link

TopNames.com · Jan 7, 2003

when you say "hijacked", do you mean he gained control of your site...or he's using your graphics on his own site?

Well, "lifting" graphics is common. Unless you have a copyright on the "look and feel", I don't think there is much you can do.

Hopefully someone can offer better input...

webpros · Jan 7, 2003

Hello - sorry the title is a little misleading. He is/has taken graphics and the actual text from my site. He just added a little to the text and changed my domain name to his.

TopNames.com · Jan 7, 2003

yea...it happens often. I would not even bother to respond via email. Have your attorney send a letter and hope it scares him.

jberryhill · Jan 7, 2003

Send a DMCA notification to his hosting provider.

webpros · Jan 7, 2003

what's a DMCA?

CoolHost.com · Jan 7, 2003

From the trusty www:

"DMCA (Digital Millennium Copyright Act)" ... "If you believe that a site is linking to work that has been copied in a way that constitutes copyright infringement, or if you believe that this site contains work that has been copied in a way that constitutes copyright infringement", contact an attorney.

PS. I ain't no lawyer.

namedropper · Jan 8, 2003

For your complaint to be valid under the DMCA, your complaint must contain all of the following information:

* a physical or electronic signature of a person authorized to act on behalf of the copyright owner;

* identification of the copyrighted work claimed to have been infringed;

* identification of the material that is claimed to be infringing or to be the subject of the infringing activity and that you wish to be removed or access to which you wish to be disabled as well as information reasonably sufficient to permit the host to locate the material;

* information reasonably sufficient to permit the host to contact the complaining party, such as an address, telephone number, and, if available, an electronic mail address;

* a statement that the complaining party has a good faith belief that use of the material in the manner complained of is not authorized by the copyright owner, its agent, or law;

* a statement that the information in the notification is accurate, and under penalty of perjury, that the complaining party is authorized to act on behalf of the owner of an exclusive right that is allegedly infringed.

Once the webhost has that they have 24 hours to take the site down or else their upstream provider can yank them.

A friend of mine who does hosting already had to deal with one of these... and it's fast -- you get the complaint and the site goes down, or seriously bad mojo happens.

--
Dan Norder - Savanna.com, FineGold.com, etc.
High profile and niche domain names for sale

GeorgeK · Jan 8, 2003

You can copy one of the DMCA notices from:

http://www.chillingeffects.org/copyright/

The hosting company risks liability if they don't take it seriously.

timechange.com · Jan 8, 2003

The copy is apparently plagiarized.

Gail · Jan 8, 2003

I looked at your site at www.webprosnetwork.com .
I looked at their site www.straight2you.net .

I don't see any similarities.

Guess you needed to look faster...!

If you check out the link webpros provided in his first post you can see that the obvious "full-page" copy at www.straight2you.net/about.htm has disappeared.

webpros · Jan 8, 2003

Thanks all for your comments and information DMCA.

The guy that stole my site sent me an e-mail last night (see it here ). In it he claims that all my work has been removed from his site (which it has not). His main argument is that he did nothing wrong as he claims that he got my Web site from a "Web template site". This simply isn't true for the following reasons:

1) The screenshot I took of his site. It clearly shows that it had all my information including the links on the gray band and the links on the right. If he truly got it from a template site, don't you think the links would have said "link 1 goes here", etc.. and not have my exact links?

2) The reason that I knew had stolen my site (and so quickly) is because of a chat software I use. Not only does it allow me to chat with site visitors in real-time, but it also allows me to see who's (by IP address) on what page and for how long. I noticed on 1/4/2003 that someone was at my access numbers page (base_cartit_add.htm), but the domain wasn't mine. Under "location" it read http://www.straight2you.net/base_cartit_add.htm, and this was because he stole my page without removing the java script that acts as a page tracker.

3) I created the site and haven't given anyone permission to use it. When asked what "Web template site" he got mine from, his answer leads to a Web site that doesn't exist.

In regards to the DMCA, I'll have to do further research from the information and Web sites posted by GeorgeK, namedropper, CoolHost and jberryhill.

As of now he still has the following text and images stolen from my site on his:

a- His information page contains my "Mission Statement", "Advantage Statement" and "How We Started Statement" with text change to match his site. There is also another paragraph on this page taken directly from mine. Notice that he claims the his site as been in business scene 1993. A simple search on google.com reveals that his site has never been indexed or cashed to google.com's servers. Don't you think that a site that has been on the Internet for 10 years would show up?

b- His dialup pages contains text and images from my dialup page. Quite honestly, this doesn't bother me as much as (a).

c- In a hidden directory on his server my Web site logo still remains (example: http://www.straight2you.net/_borders/webpros.gif)

Let me read up on the DMCA and decide how I want to pursue this further. Thanks again for the advise and I welcome anymore comments and or questions that anyone may have or want to share.

Thanks!

namedropper · Jan 8, 2003

You have a clear cut case. This guy is an idiot. Especially this line in his email: "In the event that you have not copyrighted any and all materials on your site, I am free to use anything I please, as well as counter-sue you for harassment and slander." That is so wrong on so many different levels it's amazing.

Just file a DMCA as soon as you can and get him shut down. People like him deserve to be crushed like the bugs they are.

--
Dan Norder - Savanna.com, FineGold.com, etc.
High profile and niche domain names for sale

webpros · Jan 8, 2003

DMCA is the trick!!!

His hosting providers response before DMCA:

This customer is a VISP customer, we honestly have no control over what he
does with his site. He has contract with us to provide dialup access, email
services and web hosting to his end users. Under contract, we do not have
ability to control the content of a VISP, unless adult material is involved.

His hosting providers response after DMCA:

I am in receipt of your DMCA notification. All articles of notification seem to be in proper order. We are in process of notifying the owner with a demand to remove all items listed in your DMCA notice within 24 hours or we will terminate the site. We apologize for the issues with this customer. We did try to get this customer to comply with your demands and a peaceful solution to this situation.

Thanks for all the help everyone!

namedropper · Jan 8, 2003

Cool. I love it when laws actually help people. This is a whole lot better than the previous alternative, which was to have to threaten to take the people who steal things to court. Now file a DMCA and they play nice or get shut down.

--
Dan Norder - Savanna.com, FineGold.com, etc.
High profile and niche domain names for sale

pam · Jan 8, 2003

Photos are regularly stolen from my website. I used to send a nicely-worded letter asking for payment, etc, and basically got back lots of 'f*** you* responses.

Now I simply file a DMCA with their host AND their uplink provider. It's amazing how quickly my property is removed

If the site uses an AVS, I also send a DMCA letter to them as well. In one instance, their attornies claimed that the customer did not have my property on his site, even though I provided a direct link to my property which had my watermark on it. He did remove it a week later, however

PACKERGARE · Jan 9, 2003

very interesting

jberryhill · Jan 9, 2003

There are, of course, some other provisions of the DMCA which are not hugely popular, but some aspects of this section are worth explaining in a bit more detail.

The essential problem is this: How can you run a hosting business if copyright owners are going to hang you out to dry for your customers' copyright violations. It is unrealistic to expect hosts to police their customers' content.

So the balance in this part of the copyright law is this: Web hosting companies and ISPs are immune to liability for copyright infringement if:

(a) they designate someone who is responsible for receiving DMCA notices (the statute spells out what a copyright owner has to put in the notice)

(b) they disable the site if their customer does not dispute the notice (again, in a way prescribed by the statute) within a given amount of time

(c) if their customer disputes the notice, then the web host is allowed to do nothing, allow the site to operate, and their customer and the copyright owner can duke it out in court and leave the host out of it

What this system does is to relieve the web host from having to be policeman, judge, and jury when a copyright dispute arises. It is not an all-purpose automatic "take-down" provision, since the customer can simply send a denial of the complaint to the web host. But, the notice and the denial form the early part of a paper trail to which both parties have sworn - hence, if one of them is lying that can easily be sorted out in court.

Now, with a determined infringer, you can end up simply playing "whack-a-mole" as she/he moves their infringing content from site to site (and eventually finds a non-US hosting company which doesn't care). But it can put the fear of God into those who believe.

GeorgeK · Jan 9, 2003

webpros: can you post your DMCA notice that you sent to them? It might help others in the future, to see what 'template' you ended up using, in terms of style, etc.