Site Stealing - not once but twice

obuwebco · #1 (**permalink**) 07-20-2005, 08:46 PM

Okay, so you have slaved for years to build a successful web design and search engine optimization business. Blood, sweat, and tears pour into your baby. You achieve killer rankings (shameless plug =Search: professional web design). You got employees and overhead.

Then one day you look at your logs and see that some meathead does not just borrow pieces of your website, but attempts to take the whole tamale.

This guy is attempting to either reverse engineer our website, or just copy it whole.

I submit this to the court as evidence.
Our site: www.obuweb.com
Exhibit A: http://www.conectasystem.com/td/
Exhibit B: http://www.conecta.org/mas/12/12

and as addtional evidence looks like he has pirated a few more at:
http://www.conecta.org/mas/11/11
http://www.conecta.org/mas/10/10

Judges-What is your ruling?

**brian.mark** · #2 (**permalink**) 07-20-2005, 09:39 PM

DMCA them. They don't look smart enough to even know if you're bluffing or not, so you may not need a lawyer. The couple of times I've seen this, we didn't ever even need a lawyer.

Oh, and "Hang 'em" is the verdict from this jury member.

Brian.

ADAM Web Design · #3 (**permalink**) 07-20-2005, 11:43 PM

I find the defendant guilty on the first two charges, but not on the last two on the grounds of lack of evidence. The juror, however, would like to provide the plaintiff with the opportunity to submit evidence to prove his claim.

**brian.mark** · #4 (**permalink**) 07-20-2005, 11:51 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by ADAM Web Design

I find the defendant guilty on the first two charges, but not on the last two on the grounds of lack of evidence. The juror, however, would like to provide the plaintiff with the opportunity to submit evidence to prove his claim.

I searched for the names on the second two and found the originals pretty easily. Not stolen from the same site, but stolen anyway.

Hang 'em.

Brian.

**jawn_tech** · #5 (**permalink**) 07-21-2005, 12:09 AM

I'm not sure what he's trying to do. Is the contact information on his site the same as yours? If so, apparently he won't succeed at stealing many customers.

One one of the pages you mentioned, all the navigational links seem to point to pages on your domain.

While we're deliberating, I think the jury should try to figure out a motive, because it seems to be eluding me.

**brian.mark** · #6 (**permalink**) 07-21-2005, 12:44 AM

One person that did this to our site used our page for serving to bots, then showed a different page (basically changed the links to go to his actual site) when an actual visitor hit the page.

Maybe they're trying to build a portfolio of stolen works. Who knows.

Get a rope.

Brian.

nottheusual1 · #7 (**permalink**) 07-21-2005, 10:00 AM

Maybe he is doing something at some level, but when the sites are entered via the home pages, nothing you have mentioned shows up in normal navigation.

This "reverse engineering" stuff happens all the time. Normally, though, the person who is doing it has enough brains to not put it into an active directory and sand-box the links (even the graphic calls). You may be surprised to find out how many developers do it - and not surprised by how few admit it.

**Honestly** we've done it before, too, just to see how somebody pulls something off. However, we've never plagiarized content or stolen designs/graphics.

It's a great tool for noobs in our design area - pick out 10 sites you like and peel them apart to understand how they work. Then tell us how, and show how you could do better.

Their existing site is pretty tight - I'd rule out the overtly nefarious "why's". And you could always do what we do - Email and ask why........... You might just be flattered by the whole thing or really pissed off and call a lawyer.

The DMCA part will work since they are in SoCal, but the info they lifted from you isn't in a "public facing area", so all they'd have to do is lock the folders down and kill all the graphics http calls to avoid problems.

Do reach out, though - that might prompt them to be a bit more considerate the next time.

:not_the_usual1
[you decide]

greeneagle · #8 (**permalink**) 07-21-2005, 10:26 AM

I couldn't find anything anywhere to really worry about! Looks like the plagiarism filters are working fine!

Ken