http://www.mchosted.com/
http://updates.kualo.com/

Not even text or colors were changed, just the logo and the URLs. :(

Go figure

Did you try contacting them?

Kiwi welcome back.. it was said that you were overseas in Europe.

Not good if you just got back and have this to play with :)

Good luck all the same.

Kind regards
Phillip

Originally posted by ajarvey
Did you try contacting them?

Yeah, no reply.

Looks like they took down the page?

Heh... they JUST took it down.. I was able to see the link right after this message was posted, now it's suspended.. sweeeet..

Wow. Never would think it will come from them, would be nice to hear their story.

That's sad to see. Glad they've taken it down, but I do hope they respond with some sort of explanation.

They're still clients of yours aren't they Marc?

Originally posted by Aussie Bob
They're still clients of yours aren't they Marc?

Have been long time ago.

Originally posted by Kiwi
Have been long time ago.
So are they still a client now? I don't understand your answer.

Hope your trip back to Europe was good.

Originally posted by Aussie Bob


Hope your trip back to Europe was good.


Ahaaaaaaaa, trying to hijack the thread, aren't we. How typical :D

:confused: :confused: :confused: :dunce:

Ill respond shortly

Marc, if you're going scream everytime someone steals your HTML, then encrypt or something. I'm not saying it's right; I just get tired of the "MCHost's site was ripped" threads. :yawn:

Now, if they stole your ASP or Perl, that'd be a different tune. :)

Originally posted by chrisb
Marc, if you're going scream everytime someone steals your HTML, then encrypt or something. I'm not saying it's right; I just get tired of the "MCHost's site was ripped" threads. :yawn:

Unfortunately HTML cannot be encrypted, only obfuscated which can usually easily be decoded. Maybe i'm just getting tired of having custom code/graphics stolen.

Originally posted by Aussie Bob

So are they still a client now? I don't understand your answer.

Hope your trip back to Europe was good.

Not a client anymore, no ...but a competitor. Trip was fine, thanks ;)

I don't know if you will find this usefull, but take a look to http://www.tagslock.com or http://www.protecthtml.com

Marc,

Yes, I did receive your email - at midnight on a sunday night, giving us a generous one hour to take it down before you posted on a public forum. If your 'deadline' had been a little longer we may have been able to explain that the updates facility has not actually even been launched. We haven't announced it nor would we intend to until we created our own format - we have no intention of ripping anyone off here.

For those who don't know, the script is a free to download script called MyMail. It comes with an absolutely terrible interface that is virtually unusable, but having seen how well MCHost have implemented it, a member of our team temporarily borrowed the design so that we could get it running in order to see if it is a script we want to use. Having evaluated its use we have started building our own frontend to integrate every element of support, from helpdesk, to status to announcements, which is expected to be released over this month.

We're not in this business to rip people off. We have not released the design and had no intention of doing so. The only purpose of that site is to test the script, period. Nobody has even been notified about its existance until now.

This could have quite easily been dealt with by email so that we could explain, but as usual WHT is used as a great medium in which to bash hosts for self-gain.

Incidentally Aussie, we are still a paying customer of MCHost and have been happy to recommend them to anyone who has asked. I had a lot of respect for that company, but to be perfectly honest I don't feel that this was handled very professionally.

Jo

In addition, I'd also like to add that Marc's email was received at 3:36AM my time, looking at the suspension time recorded in WHM, it was taken down by someone on my team who was on the other end of that email address at 3:46AM.

Marc, in your email at 3:36AM you stated:

If the following rip is not taken down within the next hour, i will post this on a public forum:

http://updates.kualo.com/

Marc Wyss
marc@mchost.com

What I don't get is how you can say we didn't react to this. From what I can see, we took it down in ten minutes of being notified. What was the real reason for this post?

Originally posted by jstonehouse
This could have quite easily been dealt with by email so that we could explain, but as usual WHT is used as a great medium in which to bash hosts for self-gain.
I thought it was indeed strange behaviour from Marc. :eek:

Folks are too quick to come and post at WHT with their complaints. It seems to be a type of sport these days. So much for gentlemen like professionalism. :rolleyes:

Bob sucks!

Milkshakes!

Originally posted by jstonehouse
We haven't announced it nor would we intend to until we created our own format - we have no intention of ripping anyone off here.

It appears that it was visited quite often, as we have log files showing 248 hits onto a mchost.com page from it.

Originally posted by jstonehouse
For those who don't know, the script is a free to download script called MyMail.

That's correct. However, the form/text/interface is 100% custom and not included with MyMail.

Originally posted by jstonehouse
We're not in this business to rip people off. We have not released the design and had no intention of doing so. The only purpose of that site is to test the script, period.

It looked (and still looks) like a rip to me, because both the main page, text, dropdowns and tables have been copied, not modified except the logo. Additionally, the sub-page tables have been 100% copied as well.

Next time, please create your own designs and don't just borrow them from a competitor to modify them to fit your own design. It could have been easily built from scratch within a few minutes.

I don't think you would like it very much if one of my employees would go to your website, hit 'Save' in Internet Explorer, upload it to our server and 'evaluate' it to then build our own design. :rolleyes:

Originally posted by Aussie Bob
So much for gentlemen like professionalism. :rolleyes:

So much for professionally taking a competitor's design. To "test a script", you don't need a nice interface.

I reckon you shouldn't be dragging your own customers through the **** at WHT. How very childish and how very unprofessional. I bet your other reseller clients are just aglow with that warm, fuzzy feeling right now.

If it was a competitor that you didn't host, then that's a different story. But as usual, just use WHT as your personal emotional punchbag. ;)

Marc only listens to what he wants to, he won't respond to anything that directly affects his argument.

You're all wasting your breath, as he said, something that takes a few minutes to make is so important to ignore the comments by the acused.

Marc, I thought you left.

MyMail has a GNU licence isnt it?

So if you use it and alter the code your new code is GNU too?

And beside that(if i have misunderstood the www.gnu.org ),since when can you actually copyright forms & HTML code?

Marc doesn't even have a case.

The mchosted page doesn't have no copyrighted symbol to indicate that this design, code, is soly his. He just has it there right on the open.

The script could be easily thought of by anyone else, what to see who else brougth the same idea, look at hostrocket's status page.

Legaly there is nothing wrong, MCHost fault for not copyrighting it, what the world is own by MCHost?

How lame.

-Brandon
Eryxma Networks Support

Marc,

As you might know, testing the MyMail script is indeed difficult. As you might also know, getting it to display the subject on the subpages etc... requires modification to the MyMail backend. This is why we used the frontend from you, simply to test that it was showing correctly.

As Jo said, we are in the process of developing an integrated support system, which will combine all our support features 'under one roof'. The updates page will be included, but not using your template of course! Additionally, I think if you had explored the site a little further, you would have found that only one of the update pages for our servers existed, and it contained 'Testing 123' messages. I would have thought you might have managed to work out that we wouldn't give the address containing such content to our clients!

The page has only been accessed by ourselves, and a small number of external hits since we tested it a while ago. I have done a direct 'Internet Explorer Save' of the AWStats page so you can see. The _only_ thing I modified was the IPs, as some people are on static IPs.

http://statswht.kualo.com

I won't leave this up forever, but I have created it as I feel that you have been rather hasty in your posting on a public forum. As Jo mentioned, you gave us 1 hour to take the site down, and that was done in 10 minutes. WHT is a great place to find information, but it can also be abused by people too.

Best regards,

Craig.

Originally posted by HostInspect
Marc doesn't even have a case.

The mchosted page doesn't have no copyrighted symbol to indicate that this design, code, is soly his. He just has it there right on the open.

The script could be easily thought of by anyone else, what to see who else brougth the same idea, look at hostrocket's status page.

Legaly there is nothing wrong, MCHost fault for not copyrighting it, what the world is own by MCHost?

How lame.

-Brandon
Eryxma Networks Support

The page http://www.kualo.com/ doesn't have any sign of copyright either. I guess anyone can use or copy it? I am not talking about the script, i'm talking about the design, tables, etc. The description hasn't been modified by even one single word and again, you don't need a pretty design to test a script. Kualo said they were testing the script, not the design. :rolleyes:

My point is, don't take someone else's content if you don't want it to become public.

Tell us a little more about good PR Marc. This is very interesting.

Does look like a private reproduction to be used for private purposes. Ever made a mix tape/cd from your favourite albums? I'd think so long as it's for private use and not commercially or otherwise benefitting his business (or hindering yours) there's nothing wrong with it.

248 hits out of what I'm sure is thousands each week must be pretty hard to come by? Are those 248 unique users/IPs or one user downloading a bunch of images for the layout a couple times? Would be interesting to see.

Sincerely,

-Matt

Kiwi is right, I wonder why some of you are trying to find things to prove him wrong or don't know what.

Kualo shouldn't have taken the design for any reason (testing doesn't really make sense for the design part).

But I also liked the fact that Kualo has replied here and tried to clear the things, and that took the page down immediately.

Kiwi has made a favour to Kualo by sending an email even 10 minutes before posting here. I believe that in business, specially if 2 companies are competitors, don't make often favours of this type. Since I don't know both kiwi and jstonehouse and I never did business with them, I see it this way.

Regards

10 minutes - big favour. :rolleyes:

Originally posted by RackNine
Does look like a private reproduction to be used for private purposes. Ever made a mix tape/cd from your favourite albums? I'd think so long as it's for private use and not commercially or otherwise benefitting his business (or hindering yours) there's nothing wrong with it.

248 hits out of what I'm sure is thousands each week must be pretty hard to come by? Are those 248 unique users/IPs or one user downloading a bunch of images for the layout a couple times? Would be interesting to see.

Sincerely,

-Matt

Maybe you are right, can't really say...but I have to note that the page was on a public Kualo server, so the page is public too. I don't think that a link makes a page public..but I believe that the page becomes public since is uploaded on a public server. Still..I'm not sure..maybe I'm wrong.

Originally posted by NexDog
10 minutes - big favour. :rolleyes:

Yes, your ironic phrase could be right if we were talking about a "10 minutes favour" between friends or neighbors or known people. Here we are talking about companies. I don't know if there is a friendship between McHost guy and the Kualo guy, but in any case they rappresent 2 companies. In the business world favours don't exist. So a "10 minutes favour" is much! :)

Marc,

We never said that the design wasn't one that you created, but we also said that the design hasn't been released nor was it ever to be released. Hence there was no point changing the text or layout - if we did want to "rip" you then don't you think we could have done a better job?

At the end of the day, this argument is futile. Kualo were never intending to use your design, its just a hell of a lot easier to do a quick script test with a decent interface (note Marc, that's a compliment) than spend hours designing one and then deciding you're not going to use it anyway as you don't like the script. I don't know whether you were personally responsible for the introduction of the script at McHost, but if you were you would also know how terrible the pre-packaged interface actually is.

At any rate, your HTML isn't and never was going to be used other than for internal testing purposes over a few minutes. I apologise that the site was not immediately taken down after this was done, but we didn't really think an unused mailing list interface would cause anyone any offence.

Jo

Mmmmmmm....... Karma. :homer:

Originally posted by MikeMc


Yes, your ironic phrase could be right if we were talking about a "10 minutes favour" between friends or neighbors or known people. Here we are talking about companies. I don't know if there is a friendship between McHost guy and the Kualo guy, but in any case they rappresent 2 companies. In the business world favours don't exist. So a "10 minutes favour" is much! :)

I don't know if that is the point if, in the email, he gave them 1 hour to take it down and reacted after only 10 minutes. If he's giving them an hour, surely 10 minutes is included in that hour "favour"?

Overall, I think they should've gave Mark prior notice and have had asked for permission. Mark did not know what their intentions were at first and obviously this would have come to a shock for him.

Originally posted by UmBillyCord
Mmmmmmm....... Karma. :homer:

Exactly. What goes around, comes around.

Marc is deceptive as usual. He was evasive in his answer to AussieBob, and led us to believe that this was an ex-customer. Now, we know this is a customer of his, and look how he acts, and treats his own customer.

From what I've seen posted here about MCHost, perhaps they would be better served addressing more important issues instead of wasting WHT bandwidth with crap like this.

I'm not really sure why anyone is jumping on Marc's case. I mean, sure MCHost doesn't have a Copyright symbol on their page, but does it still mean that it is alright for someone just to off and rip something from their site? I thought everyone here was against any type of site ripping, or does it change case by case? I mean, what if I went off and ripped your website design and said "Oh we were just testing it while we develop our own?" Is that alright too?

No one here is saying that copying sites is alright. The guy downloaded something to see how it was done, and he explained why. Perhaps, he made an honest mistake and should've asked first (though many resellers don't think they
need to do this from their host)... but Marc's reaction is far worse than what he did.

Oh for crying out loud! Is anyone tired of hearing that (second most used) "just barrowed it for testing" excuse that rippers come up with when busted?
What, no htaccess?

Of course I wouldn't bite the hand that feeds me, but I may growl if it tries to feed me crap.

No matter how harsh Marc was in giving Kualo an hour to remove it, it should be noted that he was not in the wrong in the first place by stealing the design. Any copying no matter for what purpose is wrong and negates the hard design work put into producing the site, and some of the excuses used for copying are laughable.

I feel Marc was justified in doing what he did, but I am glad to see this issue has been resolved to both parties satisfaction.

Originally posted by inogenius
I'm not really sure why anyone is jumping on Marc's case. I mean, sure MCHost doesn't have a Copyright symbol on their page, but does it still mean that it is alright for someone just to off and rip something from their site? I thought everyone here was against any type of site ripping, or does it change case by case? I mean, what if I went off and ripped your website design and said "Oh we were just testing it while we develop our own?" Is that alright too?

I'm not sure if Kualo is telling the truth about this. But... to answer your question, I would be alright with that. If someone put up my design... on a page with a URL that was NOT released to the public.. and which was almost entireley accessed by internal employees.

IF Kualo really was only using this for internal testing, WHAT IS THE BIG DEAL? I see no problem with this. And Marc, do you have nothing better to do than find every last site on the Internet using anything that may or may not have at some time been used by MCHost and then make some damning post on WHT?

Marc did you trademark 'Bulk Reseller' yet or Unlimited Domains j/k :D

Regards
Phillip

:bawling: :bawling:

Anyway issue solved, the rest can be handled privately.