Site being copied

[WealthyAmbitions]

I think you're going to be fighting an uphill battle with this one in regards to copyright. First, I'd imagine you know the difference between a trademark and copyright. Trademark is much easier to identify ownership and prove when someone has ripped you off. Unfortunately, unless you've registered your content, you're going to have difficulty proving that you wrote it (as opposed to possibly ripping it off yourself from a brochure or something...). Above all of that, finding a copyright attorney who is willing to take action on this sort of thing is in itself going to be challenging, let alone expensive and time consuming.

Your best course of action is as you've mentioned. Go after them if their license is suspicious or if you can get them in trouble by any other means. But unfortunately, you're not likely going to get any copyright relief. I had a business outright steal my content, verbatim, and even some of my images. But I couldn't afford an attorney to chase them down and their domain registrar (one of the largest and most widely known) didn't want to do anything about it unless I could prove that I wrote the content and created the images.

[snakeman]

Wealthy ambitions is close to the mark re copyright stuff.
That is one of the reasons my business has spent a lot of time registering "good" trademarks. Yes there is a strong difference between good, valuable trademarks and worthless ones and that's worthy of a forum in itself.
In terms of copyright stuff, I have published many hundreds of major scientific papers on snakes and reptiles across three decades. The list of my papers is here: http://www.smuggled.com/pap1.htm and you can see from the content that it is many years hard slog and research.
This has not stopped numerous people ripping off the content, often verbatim and in a very unethical way, failing to cite my work. Worse still I've had so-called competitors ripping off my work as their own a few years later and at the same time publishing hatred of myself veiled as criticism of stuff I have never actually written (in the form of false quotes and/or out of context stuff).
But short of stealing my images, lawyers have repeatedly told me mounting a successful legal case for copyright is near impossible.
As a result, I have never sued these people.
In terms of naming species, there are other rules and protocols, most significantly the rule of priority with the ICZN which is somewhat easier to force in terms of IP.
Now there's no money in this for me, but reputation is one of your major assets and it is this that is the battle ground here.
Now turning back to the copyright issue, I have twice successfully sued a major media outlet for blatently ripping off my photos and using them without attribution.
The outlet was only sued because they simultaneously published false and defamatory material about me and my lawyers decided the copyright actions would be easier to mount.
And yes, compared to other legal cases I've been involved in, they were among the easiest to win.
All the best
Snakeman

[chrisJumbo]

Thank you for everyone's responses. For the moment, I will see where the SEC complaint goes.

[HighFalutin]

Chris,

The most efficient way I've found to deal with issues like this is to go directly to the web host. Under their TOS- terms of service, they prohibit use of copywritten material with out consent of the owner. Show proof the material is yours by referencing your website, a cashed version if possible, the waybackmachine, which is a data base of cached websites and present your case. You should be able to get the offending website pulled within 24 hours. It's a lot quicker than appealing to the search engines. Once the site is killed at the source, it will eventually be dropped by the other SE's.

[deepsand]

The most efficient way I've found to deal with issues like this is to go directly to the web host. Under their TOS- terms of service, they prohibit use of copywritten material ...

Per the OP, and the content cited by him, no Copyright infringement is here involved.

[noel_x99]

It's worth contacting the webmaster; send a polite but firm email. It's unlikely, but they might be shamed into changing it. Definitely worth a shot IMO.

I agree with PoisonJam. I've had a similar situation with a client website and we sent a firmly worded letter. The owner of the company was completely unaware that his IT person/webmaster copied almost everything from another site. The site was changed within days and the culprit fired.

[snakeman]

High falutin and Noel-X99 you have had more luck with hosts than I.
Rarely have I had joy when going to hosts with complaints about content from their customers.
They usually call your bluff and do nothing.
But, there is a saying "nothing ventured, nothing gained"
All the best