Web Hosting Talk : Web Hosting Main Forums : Web Hosting : Content Rip, hawr.com

[the_pm]

If you're going to rip other site's content, at least take their name out of your TOS.

http://www.hawr.com/tos.htm - WHT member Satoshi:

3.) Zero Tolerance Spam Policy

We take a zero tolerance stance against sending of unsolicited e-mail, bulk emailing, and spam. "Safe lists" and "double optin" will be treated as spam. Any user who sends out spam will have their account terminated without notice.

We reserve the right to require changes or disable as necessary any web site, account, database, or other component that does not comply with this policy, at its sole discretion. We also reserves the right to make any such modifications in an emergency at our sole discretion.

We reserve the right to charge the holder of the account used to send any unsolicited e-mail a clean up fee. This cost of the clean up fee is left entirely to the discretion of HostGator.com. All rights reserved.

HostGator has is been notified.

Also, Google shows your "customer" Paul Riker thinks more than 130 hosts are the best, most honest he's ever encountered, yours included.

I think, by your own TOS, you are obligated to suspend your own site...

[Lubby]

Good investigative work.

[the_pm]

It's pretty easy when the member posts a thread offering 5 Tb. of bandwidth for $20/mo. This may or may not be legitimate (I think it's obvious where I'm leaning), but it sends up enough red flags to warrant a little extra digging. Someone else actually noticed this and pointed it out in a discussion on my boards. I'll leave it to that member to decide if he/she wants to take credit publicly for it or not ( (s)he's a member here as well).

[fusioncroc]

The whole design is a free template off hostgator .

[the_pm]

hawr.com is hosting at The Planet, same as HostGator. It's remotely possible there's some sort of arrangement whereby HG is providing them with oodles of bandwidth for next to nothing (that's their prerogative, though I find myself doubting it), and it's even possible HostGator has agreed to be the arbiter of their spam disputes, as the TOS implies.

There's no question about the bogus testimonials though. I don't care if they came with a template or not. If you post them in relation to your site, you're lying. It was that page that was the determining factor in posting this thread. Another small point about the copyright being 2003 and the domain name being registered in August 2004 is one that warrants a second look as well, but it's possible that could be explained, though the increasing number of suspicious items makes it look fishier by the minute...

Edit:
If I'm wrong about the TOS, and and those testimonials actually do belong to hawr.com and everyone else is guilty of ripping them from hawr, I'll eat crow the rest of the day and offer more apologies than you've ever seen a member make. I'm reasonably confident this won't be the case.

[IMeanWebHosting]

I've had a few people steal my webdesign (a template). The reason I know, is because they leave the mainpage text exactly the same. Some of them do horrible jobs, and even leave signup links as mine in some cases.

One example of someone taking things from my site is
http://www.gohost.co.nz

[BrentOfHG]

I have reported them to the planet. thanks!!!!! That is one of our copyrighted designs as well that we offer free to resellers. He is not a reseller of ours. good work!

[the_pm]

Something told me you weren't supplying the pipes for these type of resources: http://www.webhostingtalk.com/showth...hreadid=389210

Call it a hunch.

Otherwise, I would be on the horn with customer support right now trying to get that upgrade!

[fusioncroc]

It seems the owner is from hong kong according to the whois .

[serversphere]

Wow. I've seen that text in the "about us" section elsewhere. It says that they've been offering hosting since 1999, then says they weren't actually offering hosting but pointing people elsewhere, then says in '98 they started offering hosting (isn't that before '99? lol).

[RobLePom]

Here's another rip - also left the original companies name in the Ts&C's. But it amazes me how they've gone to the trouble of completely reproducing it in ASP

Original: http://www.directhosting.com.au/
Rip: http://www.madantz.com/

Written to fasthosts.co.uk as the hosts, so lets see how this one goes.

[SLH-Ken]

So many RIPs so little time

[serversphere]

Originally posted by RobLePom
Here's another rip - also left the original companies name in the Ts&C's. But it amazes me how they've gone to the trouble of completely reproducing it in ASP

Original: http://www.directhosting.com.au/
Rip: http://www.madantz.com/

Written to fasthosts.co.uk as the hosts, so lets see how this one goes.

Looks like they took it down. Nice design! Just curious, sorry for the mini thread highjack, why tables and not css with a design like that?

[RobLePom]

Yes, looks down. Thanks to fasthosts.co.uk (I presume)

Why tables - please don't ask. I have a partnership with another company; they do the web-design/layout and I just do the dynamic parts (PHP, Javascript etc). Unfortunately, being a design company they are brilliant in the artistic side (you should see some things they can do with flash!) but we do have "discussions" on the use of flash / tables etc. Tables are easier for them use design the site with and, put bluntly, I don't get paid to rejig the design to CSS - as much as I'd love to and know it is the right thing to do for accessibility etc, the browser testing and everything does take a while.

[serversphere]

For me, the right thing to do is what works for you! I still do table designs as well when I want something done quick. Wasn't a criticism at all - I rather like the look. And when splitting design between a few firms, tables probably works best.