Thread: Ripped Site
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Old 09-08-2008, 04:42 PM
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Dubbya Dubbya is offline
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Default Re: Ripped Site

Don't be too quick to threaten legal action unless you've no other recourse, as it may not be required and often comes off as too heavy handed.

Quite often, companies hire "budget web developers" who think nothing of plagiarism, do the site fast, get paid and hit the road running.

The site owner may be totally unaware that the content, layout and basic design has been "borrowed" from another site and most are quite accommodating when asked to remove it.

I'd say your first course of action would be to contact them via a friendly email, state your case and ask them to remove the copied content.

Make sure they're aware that you'll be filing a DMCA complaint within 48-72 hours. Once they're made aware that their site may be banned from the Search Engines, most site owners are happy to comply.

I've done this several times, even tried calling the company owner once. In most cases, they'd hired some fly by night outfit who'd scammed the company by copying another site. Once the owner was made aware of the situation, they complied immediately.

.02
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