An old story in the area I work in, but here goes.

A very popular and busy site - Tradespot.net was setup some 5 years ago and was owned by a guy who's identity was called "Jekyll" (online ID, never knew his real name)

Anyways, the site is a dedicated, custom made TRADE site, where people post virtual goods for sale from the game - Ultima Online

Various volunteer staff signed up to help out and make money from the site which was owned solely by this Jekyll guy.

(Jekyll owned the site, all it's contents and paid the hosting bill, he didn't make any money from it)

After 5 years, the volunteer staff decided they wanted their own site which they could control and operate independently, so this is what they did.

They registered a domain by the name of - RPGTradespot.com, then proceeded to spam the forums at tradespot.net informing people that the site was moving (The owner had no idea this was happening btw)

Stuff like...

Please repost on www.rpgtradespot.com/uo - Tradespots New Home!
The folks at Tradespot are pleased to announce a new generation of Tradepost. All of us here are moving to a new permanent location at www.rpgtradespot.com

Here we can offer many new features. Among these are:
*Faster loading times and less downtimes.
*Advanced Search Features
*Quicker response to user problems
*UBB code

Users will have to register now! We encourage you to begin
your transition now.

And..

Please repost on www.rpgtradespot.com

So in a sense, trying to steal the traffic from the original site to goto their version.

Now, the owner banned all the members of staff who spammed it and ever since (some 12 months now) the original site has had no end of problems with old volunteer staff who did this, signing up and causing problems.

Is what they originally did, illegal?
And, is signing up over and over again to cause problems also illegal?

He need to pick his staff better next time and always keep an eye on the site daily (even if it is for like 5 minutes at a time 2-3 times a do).

im not sure what laws they violated or what agreements were made. That is a legal question, not a domain question.

Yea, I wasn't sure where to post it, I figured domain because they setup a similiar named one
Sorry if it's in the wrong section.
But basically they used the site to make money, while moderating it, so the only agreement(s) were to keep it moderated.

exactly the same thing happened with www.cdrom-guide.com the moderators picked up and moved and spamed the old forums they moved to www.dvdrom-guide.com this wasn't the first time it happened to cdrom-guide.com because even b4 this happned www.disqworld.com were moderators of cdrom-guide.com that decided to go thier own way.... www.cdrom-guide used to be an extreamly popular site and they used to trade private cdss/dvds/games/music phones and tones of computer help, this site barly gets any visits since mods keep moving the members and since the stoped the trading forums....

I highly doubt something like that would be illegal... In my opinion it was the owners fault for not choosing his staff better..

But I guess it could happen to anyone

Originally posted by Templatehead
In my opinion it was the owners fault for not choosing his staff better..


Yea, but as I said, they "worked" there for 4 years, so it was hardly his fault, as he didn't have any inclination that they were going to just up and abandon the site.

I highly doubt something like that would be illegal... In my opinion it was the owners fault for not choosing his staff better..

I really hope that IS illegal!
And I'm quite positive it is because it's got to be!

B*st*rds!

Well I am not a lawyer but the fact that they posted that the forum was moving and that posters should now post to the new forum therefore seeking financial gain would be very illegal, first of all you have fraud, they knew the forum wasn't closing and they posted fraudulent information for that financial gain. I could see the owner Jekyll winning a suit against the new forum if he persued it just based on the information you gave.

I know that there are laws governing what a business can and can't do inside of another physical business so I don't see how this would be much different.

Yea, I worked there for about 6 months as a volunteer and what makes matters worse is staff from the newly setup site are STILL signing up over and over to either spam or break rules.
It's unreal.

I don't think it is illegal, but it is damn shameful. Hopefully the original is still the bigger of the 2 sites, otherwise its twice of a blow to the owner :(.

Business is business. Unless there were any agreements in place (NDA, Non-compete, non-disclosure) then they are not doing anything wrong. There is such thing as Fiduciary responsibility but in a case like this it would be very hard to prove.

In Canada.

Criminal breach of trust. (CCC. S. 336)

336. Every one who, being a trustee of anything ... for a public or charitable purpose, converts, with intent to defraud ... to a use that is not authorized by the trust is guilty of an indictable offence and liable to imprisonment for a term not exceeding fourteen years.

Contact the other mods host and tell them about the spam and trouble. Get them shutdown.

yea something like what phil said, make a note on slashdot or some relative community and everyone will get the word out

or something
yea ( : )

Ohhh,

Ultima Online... This was cool :) Now all pvp is dead :(

Chesapeake is my home :>

Sorry for this stupid comment ;>

go uo go..

Hehe, Baja here.

I wish the original owner had've looked into taking legal action (if he could), the people who run the other site are *ahem*
yea... :P