I have a friend that writes php scripts that he distributes for free. We have found someone that has stolen one of these free copyrighted scripts and is selling it over the net. The company that is doing this is also a webhost (at least as best I can tell). This a german sight so I thought somebody here may be able to give me some information to help. The sight is

http://web-speicher.de/hauptseite/

You can see a demo of the script they are selling at

http://web-speicher.de/hauptseite/forum/demo/index.php

Compare that to the free script at

http://cgi-bin.spaceports.com/~typus/tforum/

It upsets me to see someones work stolen but by a webhost :(

They must have found out.......the demo is gone now.

Those links are totally screwed up.......i ended up in a chat room!!!!!


READ THIS FIRST!!!!!!!


When you click on that above link:

http://cgi-bin.spaceports.com/~typus/tforum/

a bunch of windows with no way to close them open up.....meaning all the buttons are missing, you need to ctrl+alt+delete them or something............VERY annoying!




[Edited by Greg on 11-29-2000 at 05:47 PM]

Yeah, me too, with about 4 different open windows.

Man oh man, I hate pinchers.

Marty, please tell Toan that I love tForum and I'd like to see him write a few 'legalese' letters to the German host warning them they can be sued if they try again because of copyright infringement.

If you'd like to read about copyright on the Net, check out http://www.patents.com

Sorry Guys and gals,

That sight worked fine just before I posted that. He must be having problems. Spaceports is free webspace provider with php and mysql support. Cannot expect totally reliability for free I guess.

The german website still has it up at

http://www.web-speicher.de/forum/

Since I cannot read german, I can't tell if they are still trying to sell it.

BC,

This has caused Toan to consider halting public development and using his script for himself only. The legalese letters were already suggested. We have contacted his webhost (actually one of the other tForum users that speaks german called them). They have emailed the owner of the site to take it down.

We'll see what happens. I was just curious if anybody knew who these low lifes are.

To translate that site, click here:


http://babel.altavista.com/

and choose "German to English"

It looks like they are trying to steal it to me.

An email to Verio might do the trick but I'm not sure how Verio deal with people doing illegal things on their servers.


I just found this on Verio.com in their AUP:

Intellectual Property Violations -- Engaging in any activity that infringes or misappropriates the intellectual property rights of others, including copyrights, trademarks, service marks, trade secrets, software piracy, and patents held by individuals, corporations, or other entities. Also, engaging in activity that violates privacy, publicity, or other personal rights of others. Verio is required by law to remove or block access to customer content upon receipt of a proper notice of copyright infringement. It is also Verio's policy to terminate the privileges of customers who commit repeat violations of copyright laws.



traceroute to web-speicher.de (161.58.211.195), 30 hops max, 38 byte packets
1 f0-0.core1.cftnnj.inet.vdi.net (216.74.64.1) 1.457 ms 219.891 ms 0.612 ms
2 serial3-0-4.hsa1.wee1.level3.net (63.211.88.5) 2.485 ms 3.994 ms 3.533 ms
3 lo0.mp1.Weehawken1.level3.net (209.247.8.253) 2.464 ms 2.821 ms 2.526 ms
4 so-0-0-0.mp1.Washington1.level3.net (209.247.8.45) 9.349 ms 9.191 ms 9.626 ms
5 pos8-0.core1.Washington1.level3.net (209.247.10.66) 10.819 ms 12.834 ms 8.761 ms
6 209.0.227.110 (209.0.227.110) 10.784 ms 8.371 ms 8.951 ms
7 vwh0.dca.verio.net (129.250.30.166) 8.991 ms 9.255 ms 9.740 ms
8 web-speicher.de (161.58.211.195) 9.997 ms 12.318 ms 9.473 ms

Marty,

I will be extremely disappointed if Toan takes tForum down - it's very comparable to vB (and free) and is compares quite favourably to pHorum and W-Agora IMHO. But at the same time I'd understand his decision.

Anybody wanna pop a quick e-mail to Verio if that German site puts it up again?

I'd certainly send one, in fact if they keep at it then I think we should each send one individually to Verio complaining about it.

[edit]
I just looked at the German site again and it appears they have being reading WHT as the copyright notice and powered by have appeared again at the bottom of the page with credit going to tForum.

[Edited by KDAWebServices on 11-30-2000 at 07:51 AM]

I had a problem similar to this a while back, but when I contacted the webhost to tell them about it, they blew me off and said basically. "show us proof of a copyright and we'll take action", huh, copyright, what? Look at my site, would you like emails from teh 3500 sites that use my script to prove who owns it? They replied of "show us proof of a copyright and we'll take action". I had my stepbrother call them, since he is an attorney, and he had the site closed down immediately, literally, the site was gone no longer than 10 minutes after getting off the phone with them.

But the story here is, if you say you have a copyright on something be able to back it up somehow. I've heard that if you write words on a page, and put a copyright sign disclaimer at the bottom of the page, then it is intellectual copywritten, well, prove it! Yes, prove it! Prove it to the webhost, prove it to the courts etc.
Im no laywer, im just joe shmoe, and know nothing about copyrights, so just look into it further and see what needs to be done to legalize a copyright.

Im certainly not implying that your friend hasn't gotten a copyright on his scripts, but if push comes to shove, you'll need someway to prove this to the host. I can understand their position, for all they know you are the thief and their client is the owner.

Oh well, time to start studying copyrights too now I guess.

Bbox

Proving a copyright is just like defending a patent. You should document your developments and ideas in a bound journal. Each page should be dated, signed, and witnessed. So when push comes to shove you have proof of when you developed it, what you developed, and a witness to prove. Send copies of the journal to the isp of the offending party, if this is not sufficient proof, then your only recourse is legal action.

The owner of that web site claims that the demo link for thier own discussion board was accidentally linked to the tForum board which they have used for support functions. He further claims that the reason the copyright information had been changed at the bottom of the board was because he was doing an include test. Sounds suspicious to me, but at least it appears that he is not selling tForum anymore.

Slightly OT, but how much server space would a tforum take up? I know that's a vague question. I'm working on setting up a poetry/design site. Yeah, I know, I'll be raking in the hits, but it'd be great if interested people would have a place to chat, discuss within my site. Is this rather out of the range of your average webmaster (i.e. should I take my sorry self to eGroups), or would this be a good use of my time?

druber,

It is actually pretty simple to set up and doesn't require alot of space at all. All of the messages are stored in a database. I am not sure how that effects space limitations. The biggest problem with forums is resource usage, but tForum is php/MySQL driven so is relatively easy on resources such as the cpu usage. A lot of traffic can drive the bandwidth up though. I don't think it is above the average webmaster.

So say I sign up with a host who offers php4/mysql support. Would setting up a tforum really even involve them? Also, I'm using a Mac would that make it harder, per se, to set up and administrate, or is there much maintenance in keeping it going? Yes, I can definitely imagine that this could eat bandwidth fast. Would be a cool addition, though..