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  1. #1
    Join Date
    May 2003
    Location
    Cheshire UK
    Posts
    104

    * Website Plagiarism

    Has anybody any advice on how to counteract Website Plagiarism?

    I run a small business in the UK, and recently I have come across another person who has copied the entire FAQ page from my website. I have had this happen before, but only the odd sentence or paragraph here and there and for such small issues I never really bothered. However this is virtually an entire page.

    I emailed the webmaster with a cease and desist, who basically replied and denied that he had copied it, even though it was a verbatim cut and paste from my page. He has since changed the odd word here and there, but it is still obvious that it is a direct copy.

    Obviously I am concerned that a client may wrongly believe that the sites and businesses may be linked or affiliated or that a duplicate content ban may affect my google ranking so I would like to get the page removed or changed to make it original and avoid the risk.

    I also emailed the abuse dept of the webhost (Liquidweb) with the links, but they have so far done nothing to address the problem or even reply to the email.

    Using both domain reg data and also snapshots from archive.org I can prove that my site was the original and that my page was up before this guy's website, so what else if anything can I do?.

    Thanks in advance for any advice & Happy New Year!
    Last edited by Chris1973; 12-31-2006 at 01:40 PM.

  2. #2
    Join Date
    May 2004
    Location
    Pflugerville, TX
    Posts
    11,231
    If he's changed it enough ("enough" is a very arbitrary word, I'm sorry to say), then LiquidWeb will say he's responded to your notice and there ar eno grounds to act.

    But if the changes are not sufficient and you can show it, you can always write LiquidWeb a DMCA notification. They'll most likely pay attention to it sooner or later, and every time I've submitted one of these to an upstream provider, they've acted on my behalf.

    Here's a good sample letter you can use to craft your correspondence.
    Studio1337___̴ı̴̴̡̡̡ ̡͌l̡̡̡ ̡͌l̡*̡̡ ̴̡ı̴̴̡ ̡̡͡|̲̲̲͡͡͡ ̲▫̲͡ ̲̲̲͡͡π̲̲͡͡ ̲̲͡▫̲̲͡͡ ̲|̡̡̡ ̡ ̴̡ı̴̡̡ ̡͌l̡̡̡̡.__Web Design

  3. #3
    Join Date
    Jun 2006
    Location
    Lansing, Michigan
    Posts
    649

  4. #4
    scare them. have your lawyer write up a letter. That shouldn't cost much and an official letter to stop from a lawyer would make me make some fast changes so no one could say I copied it even if I had.

  5. #5
    Join Date
    Jul 2003
    Location
    Milwaukee, WI
    Posts
    13
    I ran into these folks awhile back: http://www.copyscape.com/
    I have never used them nor do I know of anybody that uses them, this is just a fyi.

  6. #6
    That happened to me once & I contacted the webmaster directly. She took it down.

  7. #7
    Myeah, this is an anoying problem.
    Theres alot of people who have people ripping their content, but 90% of them don't have the knowledge or funds to fight the problem.

    Anyway, I wish you the best in this case.
    Hope they shut him down!

  8. #8
    This is an absolute minefield. If you get lawyers involved it can end up costing a forture, taking forever, and getting you absolutely nowhere!

  9. #9
    If possible, I'd like you to follow up with a private message if this gets solved for you. I'd be eager to see the outcome of something, as I've had to deal with plagiarism when it comes to sites I design for web design clients. It's very frustrating and disabling the right click rarely works.
    .: Poster powered by DataBeyond.com:.
    .: Web Design & Development | Identity & Print | Multimedia :.

  10. #10
    Quote Originally Posted by vkess
    This is an absolute minefield. If you get lawyers involved it can end up costing a forture, taking forever, and getting you absolutely nowhere!
    I'm second to support that, even if changes are very small, it makes their FAQs different from the one copyrighted by you.

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