It is true that GearHost has indeed stolen most of the copy from Media Temple. Our entire support section, FAQ, Getting Started, Product Descriptions, and they are even listing partnerships with one of our partners, DMS, that they have never even spoken with. DMS is a company based in Ventura County, CA and GearHost is in Colorado. Contact DMS and ask them if they have ever heard of GearHost. I contacted Ryan personally and made him aware of the infringement, which he acknowledged that his "team" (aka Ryan because there is not team) used our text as a placeholder and that he would replace it. He did not take it down.

If everything on GearHosts website is stolen and a lie, then can you really consider them for hosting your website?

Media Temple's design and all material contained within is copyrighted material. Various aspects of the site have been stolen numerous times now. We are not tolerating this activity any further. Our attorneys are now contacting and shutting down anyone using our design, code, or copy.

It has been through the vigilance of those of you that frequent this bulletin board that many of the infringers have been found out and we appreciate your efforts.

February 5, 2002


VIA CERTIFIED U.S. MAIL

GearHost, Inc.
Corporate Headquarters
4164 Austin Bluffs Parkway, Suite 315
Colorado Springs, CO 80918


Re: Your Infringement of Our Client's Proprietary Rights


Our firm represents Media Temple, Inc. ("Media Temple") of Los Angeles, California which owns the mediatemple.com website. Our client is a full service Internet presence provider, specializing in high-quality website design and development, hosting, database management, and a multitude of related goods and services. Media Temple showcases its unique design and development skills through its mediatemple.com website. The original "look and feel" of Media Temple's design is also evident on Media Temple's mediatemple.net and mediatemple.org websites. The mediatemple.com website encompasses and is protected by a variety of intellectual property rights including copyright and trade dress (the "Media Temple Proprietary Rights").

It has recently come to our client's attention that you are the owner and operator of the website, gearhost.com, and that the website you have launched at that URL is incorporates substantial parts, if not all, of the Media Temple Proprietary Rights. Based on our initial investigation, it appears that you copied the mediatemple.com website in its entirety and used it as the base for your gearhost.com website. Indeed, in a recent conversation with our client you admitted as much. Moreover, a simple comparison of the site pages reveals the extent of your website's copying of Media Temple's Proprietary Rights. Your copying and unlawful use of the Media Temple Proprietary Rights is particularly egregious and likely to cause consumer confusion because you are using these rights to compete in the same industry, i.e., web design and hosting. Such activities, in our view, constitute copyright and trade dress infringement, false designation of origin and unfair competition under both federal and state law, as well as various other violations of federal and state law, all of which subjects you and your company to liability for this conduct. Obviously, Media Temple cannot permit such wrongful actions to continue unabated.

It is, of course, detrimental to both companies, as well as to the public and the trade, for this type of unlawful activity to occur. The applicable federal and state statutes provide our client with the legal remedies, including injunctive relief and monetary or restitutionary damages, necessary to compel you to cease and desist from any continued unlawful activities of the nature identified herein. We sincerely hope, however, that litigation will not be necessary to protect our client's rights and that an amicable resolution can be reached. In order to reach such an amicable resolution, you must immediately cease and desist from your unlawful activities and comply with the following demands:

1. Execute a declaration under penalty of perjury in which you represent that it will immediately take down the existing gearhost.com website and that you will cease and desist from any further use of the Media Temple Proprietary Rights (and all colorable imitations thereof) as part of your, or any other, website design, and further providing for the entry of immediate injunctive relief against you and your company in the event that any of the representations contained in the declaration are breached;

2. To the extent you utilized the services of third party vendors to design or program the gearhost.com website, you must identify those third parties, providing their names, addresses, and telephone numbers, and describe in detail the services the third parties provided in the declaration referenced above.

3. That you immediately return to Media Temple for destruction all materials of any nature whatsoever, including but not limited to, your website development materials such as source code, object code, design diagrams, CD-ROMs, or other backup media that refer, relate to, or reveal the Media Temple Proprietary Rights, as well as any advertisements, products and/or solicitation materials having, utilizing or incorporating any depiction of the Media Temple Proprietary Rights (or any substantially similar or colorable imitation thereof), including any such materials in the possession of any third party vendors whose services you engaged to design or program the gearhost.com website;

4. Provide a statement identifying in detail all uses to date of the Media Temple Proprietary Rights by you and/or your company (including all other materials containing the same or substantially the same copyrights and/or trade dress), together with an accounting of all sales made or customers obtained by you since the launch of your gearhost.com website so that an evaluation can be made as to the damages resulting from your conduct;

5. That Media Temple be notified and allowed to review any replacement gearhost.com website before it is launched; and

6. That payment be made to our client in an amount to be mutually agreed upon.

Should you fail to respond to these demands voluntarily on or before February 12, 2002, Media Temple will have no alternative but to take such further action as may be appropriate under the circumstances. We look forward to a prompt response to this letter from you or your attorneys, and trust that you will join us in an amicable resolution of this matter.

Very truly yours,



Tracy R. Roman
for Riordan & McKinzie


TXR.cas

cc: Media Temple, Inc.

well im new to this forum and sorry to say that i have seen this same post 4 times, i guess the 5 one is the same too :( I see gearhost have some issues now. By all means express yourself but i find this a little unfair

Beamer :D

This is the only surviving post, the others have been removed. Once is enough, and the other threads it was posted in were unrelated to the matter above.

Not that it's my place but just to express our dealings yes we did use some of MT's text. Our design, code, etc. is all ours but the content is and was copied in some areas which was used for a place holder until additional more complete content was added. These changes will be seen in this weekends code update to both iControl and our website.

While I understand MT's position, being upset that we used some of their text (I would if I were them) I don't agree with bring this matter to WHT the way you did, posting over and over again and making attacks about myself and GearHost as a company. While I don't agree I see your point and yes it is being handled, this just seemed a little childish, if you will. I'm sure the users/clients of GearHost on WHT will back GearHost up in regards to our services, I just don't see how your posts bring credit to your company the way you made them sound. Anyway, for whatever it's worth my applogies that we barrowed some of your ideas (text) and it is being fix and updated shortly.

Mission Spec, you are obviously very upset but I don't see what's the use of posting about this a couple of times and even putting your entire legal letter in your post... is it valuable to me or others in here to know how and under which terms you want to deal with GearHost?

I have been with GH for about a month and through numerous phone calls I know there is a team (unless Ryan does one hell of a female voice and a couple of different male ones....) They have always been very polite and helpfull and my sites are running greatly. For me as a hosting customer I care more about performance, support and value for money than the fact that some of their texts are copied.....

O yes, before I get accused of actually being Ryan :) : my name is Philip Kooijman and I am the webmaster of the glorious Lord of the Rings Fanatics Network: www.lordotrings.com, www.lordoftheringsshop.com and www.lotrplaza.com, I live in Holland and would be more than happy to drink a beer and discuss my true identity in any of Holland's finest bars.....:D

We've all make mistakes. At least he did not denied what he did. He said sorry already, give the guy a break.

ops did i open a can of worms here lol Nice reply chicken and i must say Ryan you also handled this very well :D

All the best

Beamer :D

GearHost seems to be like championhost ! ! ! !

:D

The main difference between the sites seems to be that Gearhost actually works.

I agree with Abby. But this is off-topic. This post clearly states its topic. GearHost has copied text etc. from Medi Temple. GearHost has admitted it. I don't see what more there is to say other than a passing comment on the way the matter was handled. -Ves

Vestirse

Is your site hosted with gearhost or are you in anyother way affiliated with them

Thanks
:)

Nope Bahres, but two of my good friends are and I have been thinking about switching my hosting there. I am hosted by hosting4less.com . -Ves

I do think it is admirable that Gearhost has admitted what they did. However, when confronted, they should have immediately removed it. Whether that would have precluded any further posting or action by Media Temple I don't know. Ryan, if you haven't removed it you should now...not soon, not tomorrow, not in an hour...now even if you have to replace it temporarily with a text page.

Now, as to the other party to the war. Threatening lawyer letters don't belong in a public forum-plain, simple, don't belong. Furthermore, multiple posts on the same issue are inappropriate. If you want to appear professional, you should simply state the facts...i.e, has stolen site, admitted it, not removed it. Nothing more was necessary. Trust the readers to react appropriately.

Now, as a result, both of you have managed to make yourselves look bad. What you need to do is work this out in private. And, if you can't then let the lawyers deal with it. If you want to state simple facts....like has been removed or has not been removed....have remedied the situation, etc. then that would be fine here. But neither of you can benefit from a continuation in the tone of the posts made to date.

Originally posted by bahres
Vestirse

Is your site hosted with gearhost or are you in anyother way affiliated with them

Thanks
:)

http://www.webhostingtalk.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=34678

... I still think you should find a new hobby.

I don't agree with the way he's going about it though, but I do understand why he'd be suspicious. There is a lot of praise on this board for Gearhost and a lot of the praise comes from newbies, but then there are a lot of GearHost issues as well that seem to be shrugged off by the fact that every time someone posts a complaint one of the regular pro-gearhost folks refutes it and then newbies suddenly start posting how they want to sign up so badly. And so the Gearhost hype continues. While I don't know anything about the multiple sign-up thing (nor do I care to) bahres does know about it and so he's rightfully suspicious. But reposting these suspicions over and over are only causing the cassandra affect, so even if bahres has some legitimate arguments, everyone's turning deaf ears because he keeps howling and wailing about them. *sorry bahres, just my opinion, and your an avid supporter of those right, ^_~*

Now with this whole template stealing thing, I totally agree with Incognito about taking the offending infringement down asap. People will understand whitespace or non-text as it's already all over their site. The false affliation copied from this Media Temple site and listed on GearHost's page is cause enough for professional webhosts and resellers to worry about, and one would think that it would be removed just for legal reasons (is it legal to post that you're affiliated with a business when you aren't? I don't think so, but I'm no lawyer ^_^;) I think the fact that a bunch of people read this thread and didn't reply was why Mission Spec started spamming the board. Or it could just be that MSpec got a little green-eyed after seeing all this GearHost praise while seeing his own work pilfered and shining on their site. There's really no excuse, but Chicken deleted all of the messages, so that was resolved. After reading MSpec's initial message (the legal letter was not worth reading) I think it's justified for him to be angry. GearHost is very popular on this board, and GearHost stole his content. It's like having someone copy a few of your answers on a test and then receive a better score than you... would you be angry, yeah. a little jealous too, yeah. I think that Ryan's *board* response was appropriate, but the proof should be on the webpage tomorrow first thing, dontcha think?

Bahres:

I am *not* affliated with any webhosting companies, and I am honest to the point of emotional about my webhosting experiences whether it be sucking up or flaming.

I am a GearHost customer, and EcomDiscov customer, an CQHost customer, and an ADDR customer. I moved to GearHost to finally consolidate *all* of my domains (excepting my new adult site) instead of hosting on multiple sites. Here is my experience:

1) Initial call after reading a GearHost post on this board, woman answered the phone and then forwarded me to Ryan for sales. I didn't ask if she was a secretary or support or his kid sister who was visiting for lunch, personally I don't care... still, she's answered the phone for me more than once (and not during lunch hours either ^_^) so there is more than one person working for this company. While I was on the phone my account was set up and ready.

2) I had several domain problems but worked them through with GearHost, in my opinion as long as my issues are resolved in a timely manner, I don't need to post them on this board complaining (which I notice a *lot* of posters do... unfair, people)

3) I realized I needed a *nix server and called to cancel in January, I was told I'd be moved to a *nix platform server by the next week... it's been a few weeks and I'm still sitting on my W2K platform server. This honestly is my biggest frustration, there is never an ETD and whenever I call, I'm immediately basked in the light of a glowing *nix server with hallelujah music playing on loop in the background, which I'm certain to be on in the next few days... (it's a rush lemme tell ya) Then by the time the phone conversation is over, I'm back in my room on a W2K platform server... days, weeks, go by and it's the same thing. Nada. While I'm annoyed, Ryan has made a kind offer to allow me to keep my account to stay locked in at my price while not charging me until I can put my site and scripts up... however my account was billed and still isn't credited to this day. It's really up to me though, if I cancel before the 30 days are up, I can get my money back but if I don't I'm guessing so much for the non-usuage freebie. I didn't complain about this on the board because again, I feel this is a customer / GearHost issue, not a WHT issue. To be fair I have loaded 2 25MB files on their server and I've been able to test the speed of their servers.

4) Server speed: I'm getting terrible speeds from 950 bytes (while my other host for the same two files gives me 100K+) to max 30K. As I run one download intensive site and one multimedia intensive site, this is unacceptable. I'm not going to stream my friend's independent movies at 28K because I'm limited to that by bad speeds. That's silly. Supposedly this is due to cross-connects and it's being worked on, after tomorrow I'm assuming the issue will be resolved as it will be past the 48 hour ETD that I was given. If it's not I'll make a note of it. Again, I spoke to Ryan and got all of this information w/o posting it on the board. Then I come on the board and I see *notice the speeds etc...* I really wonder if folks post here just to use WHT as a Big Brother for GearHost ^_^; Why don't they just ask GearHost first?!

5) Lastly I don't care what anyone says... I *never* get my return calls from Gearhost. Not once. It.Hasn't.Happened. Granted, I don't really mind because when I call them up usually someone answers but I'm always told I'll get an email or a phone call and it doesn't happen. Ever.

I am trying to hold out and pray that I'll get this glowing wonder *nix server and the speeds will be perfect and I'll be happy like all of these other posters before I have to move to Japan and sign my soul over for another 3 months to CQHost for my main site and move all my other sites to them as well as now they allow me host multiple domains. If it doesn't happen that's what I'll have to do, and then I'm out 14.95, oh well, lesson learned.

I think all this GearHost hype is kinda silly. I personally I'm tired of hearing about GearHost issues that haven't even been addressed with GearHost first, and hearing about how all these newbies want to *take the plunge* GearHost has yet to become the perfect webhosting solution in my opinion, but Ryan is the perfect salesman.

So for all those Gearhost wannasignups... just sign up--kay? There is *no* need to tell us what you think you might do. Can't you see you're upsetting Bahres? You're going to give the man an irreversible eyelid twitch or something, geez! And for all you GearHost cynics or green-eyed webhosts... don't hate the player, it's the game.

And for MSpec, if GearHost hasn't removed your stuff like they said they would (which I'm pretty sure they'll do now that you've made such a stink about it... rightfully) instead of wasting your money on lawyer fees, just fly first class over to Denver and kick Ryan really hard in the kneecaps or pull his hair or something, I'm sure it will make you feel much better than wasting all your money and time on legal fees rather than using those resources to make your own company better. Honestly, as a webhosting client I could care less about your templates, I just want a working site, if you offer what GearHost offers at GearHost prices, give me a buzz. Otherwise, GearHost with their copycat partially plagarized site is not going to worry much about you flaming their business. Customers care about their own websites, not Gearhost's. Again, I understand your pain, but I think drawing a pic of Ryan with devil horns and a tail may ease it better than spamming WHT and spending huge legal fees. But then you're a business... so I guess you gotta do what you gotta do.

So umm... I think I've replied to all the posts related to this thread, and successfully procrastinated on my site update.

Life.Is.Good.

ochiba

In summation, I do not have anything personally against GearHost, nor do I know first hand about the quality of their product. I do not care if they are popular on this board and I am not jealous that webhostingtalk loves them better than us, we are doing just fine.

My issue is:

a) That no matter what you call it, whether it's "place-holder text" or "borrowing", it's really stealing. We invested allot of time and money writing that content and developing that support system to sell Media Temple's hosting service. Not GearHost's. We place certain keywords in our text which we periodically search Google for and almost everytime, we find yet another new host stealing our content. If it is indeed place-holder text, it should never go live. We used place-holder text while we were developing the (mt) site but it never went live. It is completely unethical and also against the law.

b) I called Ryan and confronted him and he admitted that they used our content. They used our content to sell his product. If you read a sales brochure on any product, doesn't matter what it is, then you purchase that product based on the sales material you just read, only to find out later that it was all stolen from a competitor, is that fair to you as a consumer? Ryan assured me he would take down the content. 5 days later, he hadn't removed it, so I contacted my attorney. 2 more days passed for that process and still he didn't remove it. Even after he posted to this board, it was still up. Was I angry? Yes. Why? Because he is costing me time and money and damaging my business. Did I go after him and put him in this situation? No, in fact it was the opposite, he put me in this situation.

c) He admitted stealing the content so he must be a nice guy. Is anyone watching the Enron debacle? Do you think anyone will care at the end of the day if these guys admitted what they did or not? I am not just trying to flame a nice guy or a good host. I am defending my rights as a company doing business and conducting myself in a professional manner. You will not make it for long in any industry being dishonest because sooner or later you will hang yourself or get hung.

d) The reason I visit webhostingtalk is because I am looking for a reliable source of information on the web hosting community. I have also found a few hosts doing just what Ryan did. I also see alot of uncertainty from posters regarding whether a design has truly been jacked or whether it was just influenced. I have found instances of both on this bb. If Ryan is posting to this board regularly, which it seems that he does, and if his sales pitch is all based on information taken from a competitor, am I getting reliable information?

Chicken--I apologize if you feel that I was out of line on this board. I honestly meant to only post once, on the topic which I found searching the term "mediatemple". But then, when I searched the term "gearhost" and saw all of the postings concerning his company, I was shocked because this company is earning business using our copyrighted material. If you think I came down to hard, imagine the response of a Microsoft or a Apple. I think Ryan would be living in a cardboard box by the time those guys got through with him. In the future, I will not "spam" my posts.

That's all I have to say for now.

Thank you for listening and reading (if you made it this far).

I realize, you just freaked out a bit, it was taken care of, no problem. Rocky start, but wb ;D

Originally posted by ryank
Our design, code, etc. is all ours but the content is and was copied in some areas which was used for a place holder until additional more complete content was added.
You wouldn't mind if I took your car to use as a place holder in my driveway until I get one of my own would you? :D

So long as I can borrow your girlfriend to park my...

Oh forget it, wasn't funny the first time :(

This board is amazing. Though some people do truly use it as a means of discussing the hosting community for the most part it's a way to hinder and scare growth of the competition. Subversive self-promotion, sensationalizing costs involved in the business, ragging on startups because they're using "Cogent" or "RackShack", viciously attacking the competition so that no-one - not even WHT's golden child GearHost - comes out looking good... It's a soap opera for hermit geeks.

Though in retrospect I think a better anology would be Lord of the Flies.

Hear hear.

:)

Originally posted by The Doc.
...viciously attacking the competition so that no-one - not even WHT's golden child GearHost - comes out looking good...
Let's be honest. It isn't the forum that that made gearhost look bad. They did that themselves. Responsiblily. Take it.

Responsibility. Take it.........

Agree, in this forum we cant find whos the best or the bigest. But we will find who take the responsibility.

Gearhost : I think you have to remove the style..., just change the design or composition not to change the content.
And I think if we discus about the similar product, we cant say that others is steal...

Or I can say, if you said dont take any of your text, ...have you protect your text and how ???....because thats text is place in everywhere....

Erda,

I'm not sure if it was your intention to imply GearHost stole the design, or it is your grasp of the English language (no offense intended, I'm very blunt)... Regardless, GH did not steal the design, it was the text.

Regardless, GH did not steal the design, it was the text.

Theft is theft.

UBC,

Agreed. I wasn't implying otherwise.

I'm just making sure Erda realized it was the text in question, not the design as that is what he/she seemed to conclude. But as I mentioned, it may have just been me.

On a non-related note: I invited you to SOC along time ago, you ever going to show up? E-mail me if you need the intel again. Semper Fi

Gearhost did screw themselves over, I agree with that. But I also say that sometime ripping on one host can get to far. And many posts recently have been on gearhost and they are all about ripping ont hem so I think they should be stopped.

Lets go on a new topic like Chris Gentile haha jk

I don't think there has been a lot of ripping on GearHost at all, I think the problem is that clients are using WHT as a GearHost support or sales inquiry forum, that is why we are hearing so many problems. I personally would love to hear of another webhost besides GearHost.com.

ochiba

I've been following this post as I've been trying to assess whether GearHost will provide a good home for a few sites that I need to move from the (apparently) dead readyhosting.com.

I was attracted to GearHost by a lot of positive reviews that I've read here. But by continuing to search the site for GearHost references I've found a lot of people have problems with Gearhost speed and some ongoing platform issues.

And then I find this mediatemple rip-off issue. I think Mission Spec is fully justifed in venting his anger at the copying of his site. As a designer I've seen this happen with my own work and it's not pleasant. To people that don't know better it may appear that GearHost is affiliated or in partnership with mediatemple.

More importantly I think it says a lot about the integrity of the people who do the plagiaristaion. If they have no respect for other peoples work and property, will they have any respect for their customers? Yes, I realise they are running a much cheaper operation than mediatemple but this is not an excuse for outright theft.

There is far more integrity in having a crummy site design that is your own than stealing a good design and passing it off as your own. This is dishonest, and welcoming your prospective customers with what amounts to nothing but lies is not a good start to business relationship.

GearHost has the opportunity to redeem itself by removing the offending pages and images and admitting its bad judgement. But there are still remarkable similarities between the sites. I hope GearHost gets this sorted out because I would love to believe all the hype about them that appears on this forum.

My search continues... for a decent, honest, reasonably-priced web host. It shouldn't be this difficult!

You guys think this is the first time that this has ever happened? Do you think it will be the last? Come on..give it a rest..

I'm a designer and I KNOW that in some cases my work is going to get ripped. It happens, live with it and move on.

I have used MT as a design refrence because I liked some aspect of what I had seen there. If I build a design that in some way looks like it came from MT am I supposed to be scared? Naaaa, please..

Damn, spend a great deal and time pissing about what happens and it will blow back in your face.

If we understand as hosts, designers, coders ect. That in some way something that we have constructed is going to get snagged, live with it or get out of the industry. I am not calling it right or wrong. It just happens.

There are hundreds if not thousands of people in the world that are looking for hosting, code, graphics, design whatever. Did the whole thing really impact the bottom line? Did it really put MT in the red? Is the P&L report horrible?

I dont think so, so at this point WHO CARES...

Let it die...

Ok, I'm done..by the way..dont flame me either I am not intending to flame anyone here or their views.

Just a quick note to Tranz. And this will be my last word on the subject also.

Tranz, I think you missed my point or I phrased it badly, whatever.

I'm not really worried about MT, they will take whatever action on this that they find appropriate.

My point was that Gearhost had lost a lot of credibility and tarnished their professional image by doing what they did.

Its the same when you are evaluating any product or service, if you find out that somebody has clocked the speedo on the car you want or is using substandard parts on a repair job, you'll think twice about buying that product.

Buyer beware, as they say!