techcircle Posted November 7, 2003 Posted November 7, 2003 I took lot of pains to put together a nice website for my company. I was aghast to find my site copied by somebody I know. It is copied word to word, pic to pic. Just the company name is changed. My url is www.techcircle.com and the copy cat is www.microfocusinfotech.com. I am working on going after them legally. But meanwhile I would like to know if there is any way I can avoid this kind of thing from happenning in the future. I am sure whatever changes I make this person will copy it without hesitation. Appreciate the useful comments. Mad!!! Quote
Deverill Posted November 7, 2003 Posted November 7, 2003 techcircle, Here is a thread where this was discussed recently: http://www.totalchoicehosting.com/forums/i...hl=copy+protect Basically if a viewer can see your site they can steal your site. You can make it harder but never stop it. Quote
TCH-Andy Posted November 7, 2003 Posted November 7, 2003 Hi, Those 2 sites are amazingly similar - I can understand the Mad!!! I use a bit of PHP code, there is a copy on this stop spiders stealing thread This would probably not work for your site as people could manually copy and save each page - the script in the above thread simply prevents them from accessing more than about 6 pages within a few seonds of each other - very useful for preventing someone copying a large site. Andy Quote
TCH-Dick Posted November 7, 2003 Posted November 7, 2003 First contact the WebMaster.If he refuses then please send email to abuse@ehostpros.com with all details Quote
Deverill Posted November 7, 2003 Posted November 7, 2003 I just had a chance to look at the two sites. Boy, this guy is totally without scruples! They are identical! Sheesh, guys like this give us all a bad reputation. If you need help establishing that the design is yours for a lawyer use the Internet Archive at web.archive.org which takes snapshots of "all the 'net". You can see that you had that design up on Sept 23, 2002 and the "loser's domain" was only created on Aug 5, 2003 according to the whois at netsol.com so it's clear who was first. It's a real shame because that's a great site design! Quote
criosa Posted November 11, 2003 Posted November 11, 2003 you might also want to submit the sites to http://www.pirated-sites.com/ - they show comparisons of sites that are blatant copies of each other. Quote
surefire Posted November 11, 2003 Posted November 11, 2003 Or you could send them a bill for your web design. I think the legal approach is the only one that is going to get any results. Quote
Madmanmcp Posted November 11, 2003 Posted November 11, 2003 I had a friend just a couple weeks ago show us how his web site was stolen the same way. Now his is a "help" site that offers help and instructions for the Service we work for SBC!Yahoo (formerly Prodigy) and general computer related problems. There was not much he could do and he decided to not put the effort into having it resolved. Now here is a suggestion. Since you are so close to this "thief", both of you are in PA, why not pay a visit to the "Registered Office" that is listed on the other web site. Print out both sites and print out the proof of dates the sites went live. Go to the president or COO or whoever is in charge and demand the site be pulled or legal action be taken. It could be a simple matter of this second company hiring a young kid (or a relative of an employee) to do the web pages for them. The kid did the quick and easy route by using your design and changing company names to make it work... for a quick paycheck. The other company may not even know that you had the design first! Good luck and thats is a nice looking site. Quote
techcircle Posted November 12, 2003 Author Posted November 12, 2003 Thanks to all of you for your comments. I found some really useful ones. The sad part of all this is I know the guy who did this. He has not changed it even after my calling him. He had the audacity to call me and tell me to lookup his site! We are pursuing this legally. If any of you get into a situation like this the following link might be useful. http://autoweblaw.com/ Again thanks to all the good folks at TCH. Rock Sign Quote
Lianna Posted November 13, 2003 Posted November 13, 2003 Sorry for the late reply on this, but here's another alternative for preserving the ownership of your site. Not completely fool-proof, as nothing really is, but it will certain stop the majority of theives: http://htmlscrambler.com This is a free service. Quote
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