Website Theft

[Ian]

Recently, I've been trying to clamp down on bandwidth theft on A1, many people seem to enjoy hotlinking to files without any guilt feeling. In the last few weeks I've managed to save around 100+Mb per day by going through server logs and other stats checking for sites linking in some way back to A1.
Jason and myself have been sending emails to hosts telling them of site committing violations, and they have been pretty prompt on getting on top and deleting the users accounts. (Nice work hosting companies, keep it up).

I thought I was getting on top of it when today I found these sites.
http://www.geocities.com/hasstyles/contact.html
and
http://www.my110.com/my110/
as you can see, these people are pretty clear on what they're up to.
NOTE: The last site the guy has gone to the trouble of downloading all the files to his own server.!!
So once again, we're sending more emails....

So, what do you think should be done about people who do this, is deleting their account severe enough to stop them, is it trivial and not worth taking any action over?
Have you had your own problem with pirates, what did you do about it?

[creative666]

I done some searching on my own site and found that one file (an image) being linked to and getting around 8 hits a day to it. I decided to make a gif that would tell what I thought of them in no uncertain terms and then give it the same file name. Checked the stats and still had the hits coming in for around a week then nothing.

I found out the site sold stationary bulk orders of pens, paper etc etc. Teach them in future :D

[Horus_Kol]

I would nuke 'em

It's not just eating up bandwidth - they are violating the copyright that is inherent in creating those images/layouts.

Theft is so very wrong, and they should be dealt with.

[Michael]

wow, this site http://www.my110.com/my110/ just copy http://www.a1javascripts.com completely

we should bring this to the court!!!

[fredricknish]

Originally posted by Ian

http://www.my110.com/my110/


Hey Ian you can use that site as a mirror site for a1javascripts :D

[kevin]

wow! that really goes beyond the pale. I would talk to a lawyer if I were you Ian. Might be just some dufus playing around with your code but that is one of the worst cases of stealing a website that I have ever seen. They even altered the copyright notice at the bottom of the page..... time to speak with a lawyer I would think.

[Mark]

Wow, sue them!

You could also try getting bandwidth protecor scripts. some avaiable for free. Check them out:

¤ http://www.davelozinski.com/scripts/bwp/
¤ http://www.custom-cgi.com/free/bandwidth_protector/
¤ http://cgi.resourceindex.com/Programs_and_Scripts/Perl/File_Management/Link_Protection/

Most usually displays another fake image if linked form outside site.

[Jason]

There were at least 2 other copies of the site within the past month as well. One of the thieves was brash enough to post the stolen site on another forum for a review (where one of the members recognized it)! I have found many other Big Resources sites copied and stolen in the past as well. We've even had some users allow themselves to take content, with letters such as "I want to distribute your javascripts and if I don't hear back to you from tomorrow I'm putting them up on my site". As far as lawyers go, it is a difficult thing. Many of the thieves are overseas (the most recent full copy is in China). A lawsuit would be difficult and expensive, if not impossible. The best we could hope for is a cooperative host that deletes the account.

The most difficult host to get to cooperate so far was verisign. The first person I spoke with there didn't seem to think they had a TOS, and didn't want to put me in touch with a supervisor at first. Long story short, I had to finally quote to them line by line a paragraph from their own terms of service to finally have the site removed. At any rate, a big hats off to Ian for consistently finding these sites so we can shut them down :thumbup:

[kevin]

Yes, a lawsuit would probably be very difficult, but talking to a lawyer would not. Have you talked to a lawyer at all?

[Ian]

As for as A1 is concerned, we have been sucessful with the co-operation of the offenders hosts. I do seem to remember someone trying to rip off 123webmaster a few years back. They created a similar domain name, called themselves 123webmaster, and used the content from 123web on their site in which I'm sure there was lawyer involvement. I think after a few letters from the lawyer the guy realised what he was doing and shut up shop.

lol@fred, yeah, there is large text on A1 saying "build your A1 mirror site today, its free like the scripts, dont download it, just link to it" :P NOT.
Well I guess its producing baneer impressions...lol

As Jason mentioned, earlier in the month I found a replica of A1 (just changed the title and copyright info text) and posted it on a forum for review. It was a domain hosted by freeservers and took two letters to freeservers before the account got deleted.

If lawyers became involved, I dont think trying to sue the webmaster would gain much, sueing the hosting company is the way to get them as they let it continue and is against their own TOS.

creative..hehe, thought of something like that also, I'll try it on the geocities pirate if its not gone in a few days:thumbup:

Will look at those scripts Mark, but from what I have seen in the past, they require your link to go through the cgi in order for them to work, if you link to the image direct, they dont.:(

So whats the answer? apart from build an ugly site that no one would want to steal :)

[kevin]

Couldn't you use htacess to stop hotlinking to your image files at least?

Suing the "webmaster" will most likely get you no where, especially if the pirate is a minor or in a country that doesn't respect copyright law very much. You have to go after the hosting service providor, or take matters into your own hands..... at least a DNS attack :D

[Ian]

I tried using htacess a few years ago, but it was doing some funny stuff and preventing script downlaods for some people for some reason (yes, it was set up right, it was just on a few systems per week that were having problems). So abandoned that idea, I may try it again if things get bad enough.

Sending some sort of attack script down the same path they are hotlinking to which deletes their site would be a good plan:D

[Michael]

and I am very amazed of some site stealer that how they steal a web site's all contents so easily?? like all graphics??

anyway, I think if you cloak your url it will be much harder to steal!!! I used that on my web site so no one can steal my web site:D

[Pegasus]

Pity we can't find them, puree them and pour them back into their own servers via a modem. I've got one that fits my Apple IIc if you want to borrow it.

I dunno about some people. Learning basic HTML isn't be all *that* hard if I can do it, and with all due respect to the webmasters here, I think I'd rather make my own mistakes, rather than copy yours verbatim.

*lol* Not that I'd recognize a web design mistake if it bit me.

Peg

[meggala]

my site is car related and I get a fair amount of traffic and gener~~~y dont mind if people grab the odd image but I had a guy use a direct link to my site in his sig on a forum he was in south america and from what I could gather was a post whore and I just changed the image for some very hard core porn with some writing telling him to stop being a theif and 4 hours later the pic was removed :D
your is an issue I dont have the knowledge and experiance to handle but I have similar issues with some one making a competitor site to mine. good luck with it.
meggala

[Paul]

Old topic but I'll comment on it anyway. The problem with these people is that they don't think they are doing anything wrong. They go to a site, like the design, hit save as and they think that this is OK. These people usually are people that are not familiar with the internet. I worked for a guy that had a business online, he was around 60 and didn't know he was doing something wrong. Worse part of it was the fact that he was a lawyer. Trying to take legal action against these people would be extremely hard and pretty much pointless, you would lose more then you would gain. Many people that steal designs are minors or people that live over seas. In China, for instance, they don't have copyright laws. So if they steal your design, they aren't breaking any laws in their country. Also, I think the host deleting their account is punishment enough. This is unexpected and there is a good chance they loose all of their files and have to start all over. Not to mention the fact that they have to find a new host, this will probably put their site down for weeks. Also Ian, I noticed that http://www.my110.com/my110/ was put down but geocities didn't take the other site down, might want to contact them again.
Good Luck,
Paul

[zenanthor]

If your host provides CPanel, loginto your account and account and check if Hotlink is installed. If it is, you can block any links to the files you choose coming from a remote domain. You can even allow certain files to be allowed, for instance your own banner or button.

[MikeXP]

Yeah that trick works a charm :)
What I did one day is I had my links to other sites using buttons and some idiot came and hotlinked them but he did not set a size restriction so I took a print preview of my desktop with notepad running and went into photoshop and did a big scribble in the white notepad box then some text saying HOTLINKER STOP HOTLINKS LAMER!!! and this graphic was 1024x768 pixels wide lol and I optimized the gif and uploaded it as the files he was hotlinking (I was not using thoes files) and I got an email back sayin what did you do I was only using your pictures?

Try It One Day They Sure Stop!!

[zenanthor]

:LOL:
good one Mike

[MikeXP]

Hehe yeah that dude still has stuff from my site on his tho :( But now its not hotlinked :)

[Ladyhawke]

Someone in Russia has taken it upon herself to copy word for word and design for design a website I am personally involved in.

Her ISP is in England and I have emailed them, plus emailed her as well. Lawyers are telling me that because she is in Russia, I am out of luck in trying to shut her down, unless I hop on a plane and fly over there to fight within their court system.

Here is our website:TCS (http://www.thecatsite.com/forums/index.php)

And here is the pirate's:Monkado (http://monkado.com/forum.php)

Any opinions out there on how to proceed?

[KWJams]

In this case, I would not be worried too much about it.

Looking at both sites and the activity of members, your site is hands down the big dog on the porch. :D

Just do what ever needs to be done to make sure that your site stays on top of search engines.

[jebster]

Originally posted by Ian
So whats the answer? apart from build an ugly site that no one would want to steal :)

Works for me LOL :D


BTW, I take it you didn't have much with http://www.geocities.com/hasstyles/contact.html seeing how it still has your look almost a year since this was posted!

[HinkWaS]

How can u tell if someone is hotlinking from u?

[MikeXP]

I use cpanel and just go into my stats and it tells me :)

[wnbafan100]

I had my domain stolen. Here's my sad story. My host co. Binaryblocks.com went loopy -- they stole from their customers and didn't pay server fees after a few years of being OK. So I had months left on my domain name so I just wanted to move it. It was a sports fan site with a small fan base. I couldn't change the DNS server as domainname got taken by crooks. (see for yourself -- click www.bikefem.com) It turned out that my bad host sold it to to TUCOWS who flipped it to these internet gambling people. I sent the reciept copy with true deadline of my domain name to TUCOWS and they stopped responding to complaints. I checked out that official body ICANN and they want $2000 fee and they only can check trademarked names. My site is too small for that. Trouble is ... I'm responsible for the domain name and suddenly its XXX ... so I have to contact all of my people linking to me to tell them the link is adult link now!

You are cooked if you get a bad host! I found. Plus - if host goes down you can't do DNS without replying to e-mail that gets lost when they steal your domain. They close your related e-mail account too!

Protections only work for those with thousands to spend protecting their material. Worth it if you're big company.