We take action when our copyrights are violated

[Tech Manager]

We recently launched the paid version of our country specific Access Control Lists. Today I started doing some follow up and research on how we were doing. After doing a search on a major search engine I noticed that a company we had not authorized to use our logos or data from the countryipblocks.net website was showing up on the first page of the search results.

After clicking the link I then noticed they were importing the entire countryipblocks.net website (at least the portions that they could get to) into their website without our permission. We consider this a personal affront to the hard work we put in to the development of Country IP BLocks over the past few years.

We checked our server logs and sure enough, when their page is visited they retrieve content from our website. Per our logs:

[15/Apr/2012:13:28:31 -0400] "GET / HTTP/1.1" 302 216 "http://genesissystem.com/cm/index.php?option=com_wrapper&view=wrapper&Itemid=118" "Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; WOW64; rv:11.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/11.0"

The copyrights are clearly visible on our website, and having our website, data, shopping cart, etc., appear in another website is more than disconcerting. So we took some action.

You can see the evidence, including screencaps here https://www.countryipblocks.net/alle...ight-violation
(not to admins, if you prefer that I don't link to the page with the data and images, please let me know if I can post it all here. We think it will be a help to to others.)

Frankly, we believe that the import and embedding of copyrighted content into any website, without permission AND proper attribution is a violation of copyright laws. We plan on pursuing the matter. Is there anyone here who has experienced blatant copyright violations? How did you proceed? We have contacted Google, and will file the info with the FBI tomorrow and then consider an attorney.

Any other recommendations?

[Tech Manager]

Update: Reports have been filed with the FBI, Internet Crime Complaint Center, local law enforcement, Google...and since the website in question wants to take our copyrighted content and display it for their own purposes...we are feeding them different content: now they are displaying "Country IP Blocks alleges a COPYRIGHT INFRINGMENT by the website currently displaying this data" as well as the data associated with the copyright violation.

Incidentally, this website is allegedly based in Florida. Am I the only one to notice the large number of Florida based websites that are merely proxies for offshore shenanigans?

[SteveGerencser]

Block them in htaccess or at the router.

RewriteEngine on
# Options +FollowSymlinks
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} badsite\.com [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} anotherbadsite\.com
RewriteRule .* - [F]

or by ip address. Stopping scrapers is like trying to bail out the Titanic with a Dixie cup. But at least this method will stop them from returning live pages for a little while. Good luck.

[Tech Manager]

We considered doing that but we decided to send special content to their website until law enforcement finished their investigation.

[clumberman]

Update: Reports have been filed with the FBI, Internet Crime Complaint Center, local law enforcement, Google...and since the website in question wants to take our copyrighted content and display it for their own purposes...we are feeding them different content: now they are displaying "Country IP Blocks alleges a COPYRIGHT INFRINGMENT by the website currently displaying this data" as well as the data associated with the copyright violation.

Incidentally, this website is allegedly based in Florida. Am I the only one to notice the large number of Florida based websites that are merely proxies for offshore shenanigans?

I =like= that idea! Be interesting to see how long it stays that way. Keep us posted.

[Doc]

Just a quick comment here... in the replacement you're now serving to this idiot, you make this statement: "Copyright © 2007 - 2012 Country IP BLocks. All Rights Reserved. Data may be reproduced without the express written permission of the copyright holder. Any use of our logos, content or other data, including the importation of our content in whole or in part into another website is illegal." I didn't check to see if that's a unique typo, or if you did a copy & paste of your original copyright statement. But since it says "Data MAY BE REPRODUCED without..." you might want to correct it.

[coa]

Most of their "help" section seems to be set up so that the external sites linked to there are actually being displayed within IFRAMES.

As such, the content of the framed sites is NOT being "technically" scraped... rather your actual page is being displayed within the iframe. So in essence, they are linking to your site, and if visitors take some sort of action within the iframe, they are taking that action on your site.

The "problem" however is still that they are creating confusion here, and could be accused of passing off your content as their own - as it is wrapped inside their site theme/structure.

Your simplest solution is to put a javascript redirect at the top of your home page which will force any "framed" versions of it to open in a new window... something I used to do years ago with one of my sites.

Google "javascript frame buster" for ideas.

Hope that helps.

Cheers
Stephen Spry

[weegillis]

@Tech Manager, I'll save you the trouble. This script will force any page to break out of frames:

<script type="text/javascript"><!--
// force target location out of frames
    if(top.frames.length>0){
        var ver = parseInt(navigator.appVersion, 10);
        if ( ((navigator.appName == 'Netscape') && (ver >= 3)) || ((navigator.appName == 'Microsoft Internet Explorer') && (ver >= 4)) ){
            top.location.replace(self.location);
        } else {
            top.location = self.location;
        }
    }
  // -->
</script>

This one is real old, though. I had to use it on one site back in 2006 when another 'sister' site was being webmastered by a retired teacher who didn't think it mattered that my AAA accessibility site was being broken by their framed site. Same person figured that his no experience was just a valid as mine. I told him that by his reasoning, I should be able to walk into a classroom and teach, no real training required. Still didn't phase him, so in went the script.

[Manpasand]

Update: Reports have been filed with the FBI, Internet Crime Complaint Center, local law enforcement, Google..

Let us update on this issue.

You should also send site removal request to Google.