They copied my site, now what's up?
November 2, 2009 4:34 PM Subscribe
You are not my lawyer. My website has been copied. What should I do?
I run a website that is aimed at a certain demographic. While my content is not created by me (it is linked outward), the way it is displayed is pretty unique to me in this niche.
My site has been live for about 3 years now. Today, I was looking through my log files and came across a referral from this site, let's call it "Banana." Upon visiting the website I immediately noticed that they had copied the feel and function of my website to a dot. Curious as to why I had received a referral from them, I checked their source code and noticed that my URL was in there (they had copied my code and neglected to remove my URL).
I looked through their website and noticed that they were run by a parent-site, who is a semi-big player in the demographic my site is aimed at. I also noticed that the company is located in the same city as me (my site was featured in the media awhile back, so I'm guessing that's how they came across it).
Upon further investigation, I found that Banana (their site) was launched about a year ago and has been used as a medium to generate income for the parent company.
I have had other websites copy my site before and I've dealt with it by emailing them and asking to take it down and they have complied. However, this case feels different as they used my idea and took my code and are profiting off of it.
What should I do (I will eventually speak to a lawyer) but what should I expect to happen? What should my request be? Any general information will be much appreciated.
I run a website that is aimed at a certain demographic. While my content is not created by me (it is linked outward), the way it is displayed is pretty unique to me in this niche.
My site has been live for about 3 years now. Today, I was looking through my log files and came across a referral from this site, let's call it "Banana." Upon visiting the website I immediately noticed that they had copied the feel and function of my website to a dot. Curious as to why I had received a referral from them, I checked their source code and noticed that my URL was in there (they had copied my code and neglected to remove my URL).
I looked through their website and noticed that they were run by a parent-site, who is a semi-big player in the demographic my site is aimed at. I also noticed that the company is located in the same city as me (my site was featured in the media awhile back, so I'm guessing that's how they came across it).
Upon further investigation, I found that Banana (their site) was launched about a year ago and has been used as a medium to generate income for the parent company.
I have had other websites copy my site before and I've dealt with it by emailing them and asking to take it down and they have complied. However, this case feels different as they used my idea and took my code and are profiting off of it.
What should I do (I will eventually speak to a lawyer) but what should I expect to happen? What should my request be? Any general information will be much appreciated.
This post was deleted for the following reason: poster's request -- jessamyn
You may or may not be familiar with YTWWN, they deal with this stuff all the time. Going off of that as a reference, a lot of people either email with a cease and desist coupled with a post or document any/all negative feedback they receive in the process and then post it for everyone to see.
See if any of the cases there are similar to what you're dealing with and if there was a follow-up in the comments from the author and/or an update to the original post. Good luck.
posted by june made him a gemini at 4:47 PM on November 2, 2009 [2 favorites]
See if any of the cases there are similar to what you're dealing with and if there was a follow-up in the comments from the author and/or an update to the original post. Good luck.
posted by june made him a gemini at 4:47 PM on November 2, 2009 [2 favorites]
If you're going to see a lawyer (which I advise) do it now. If this is a big company (i.e. one you have a snowball's chance of collecting from) it may be worthwhile considering statutory damages, but these are not available unless certain (time sensitive) conditions are met.
posted by lex mercatoria at 4:53 PM on November 2, 2009
posted by lex mercatoria at 4:53 PM on November 2, 2009
If your copyright is being infringed, report it to Google: Infringement Notification for Web Search. They may choose to remove the infringing site from their search results.
posted by Ery at 5:00 PM on November 2, 2009
posted by Ery at 5:00 PM on November 2, 2009
Of course, see a lawyer. But how on earth did they get hold of your code!? Something is fishy here - either you have someone leaking your IP, or they broke into your host, or you're not telling us something. One cannot generally just download the source code of a website.
posted by polyglot at 5:23 PM on November 2, 2009
posted by polyglot at 5:23 PM on November 2, 2009
(by source, I mean executable stuff, not HTML of course. I'm assuming your site's not static)
posted by polyglot at 5:24 PM on November 2, 2009
posted by polyglot at 5:24 PM on November 2, 2009
this is shockingly easy to deal with. i've dealt with this exact scenario multiple times.
read up on the DMCA (digital millenium copyright act) - google it. then, file a DMCA takedown notice with the ISP of the company hosting the fake site. it's not hard to find that out - ping the site, lookup the ISP hosting that address range - google that - and I can guarantee you that the ISP has a DMCA compliance policy... this will take a few days, you can write the takedown notice yourself, and, i'm not a lawyer, but you really don't need one to file a takedown notice.
every time this has happened to me it was resolved in under a week. in one case we had to update some copyright information on our site to satisfy the ISP, but often it's pretty easy to tell the fake because they get things wrong like leaving form POST urls the same (which is probably how you got your referrer). i had one site that duplicated our entire site's look and feel - thousands of pages, but kept the form urls the same so that any revenue generated by the site would ironically still post to us... it's almost hard to take a site like that down since they're kindof doing us a service, but i digress....
the DMCA, sure it also says you'll go to jail for reverse engineering your tivo, but in this case, it's your friend.
posted by carlodio at 6:18 PM on November 2, 2009 [2 favorites]
read up on the DMCA (digital millenium copyright act) - google it. then, file a DMCA takedown notice with the ISP of the company hosting the fake site. it's not hard to find that out - ping the site, lookup the ISP hosting that address range - google that - and I can guarantee you that the ISP has a DMCA compliance policy... this will take a few days, you can write the takedown notice yourself, and, i'm not a lawyer, but you really don't need one to file a takedown notice.
every time this has happened to me it was resolved in under a week. in one case we had to update some copyright information on our site to satisfy the ISP, but often it's pretty easy to tell the fake because they get things wrong like leaving form POST urls the same (which is probably how you got your referrer). i had one site that duplicated our entire site's look and feel - thousands of pages, but kept the form urls the same so that any revenue generated by the site would ironically still post to us... it's almost hard to take a site like that down since they're kindof doing us a service, but i digress....
the DMCA, sure it also says you'll go to jail for reverse engineering your tivo, but in this case, it's your friend.
posted by carlodio at 6:18 PM on November 2, 2009 [2 favorites]
Normally I would say file a DMCA take-down request with their provider (not them) but since the content is not yours, it's trickier. While you would very likely be in the legal right, the fact that we are dealing with code and not web copy or images makes it more complicated.
I'm a big fan of the DMCA and it works very effectively, exactly as intended (to help average people protect their copyright without the need for legal fees) but in this particular case: you need an IP lawyer, and very quickly. Do not tip your hand to Banana Co in any way, including via YTWWN or Google reporting, without legal council. While 99% of the time, simply making the stolen copy go away via DMCA is sufficient, in this particular case you should be looking at monetary compensation. See a lawyer.
posted by DarlingBri at 6:27 PM on November 2, 2009
I'm a big fan of the DMCA and it works very effectively, exactly as intended (to help average people protect their copyright without the need for legal fees) but in this particular case: you need an IP lawyer, and very quickly. Do not tip your hand to Banana Co in any way, including via YTWWN or Google reporting, without legal council. While 99% of the time, simply making the stolen copy go away via DMCA is sufficient, in this particular case you should be looking at monetary compensation. See a lawyer.
posted by DarlingBri at 6:27 PM on November 2, 2009
To clarify: it is trickier for their upstream provider to interpret code than textual or image content, which is what DMCA take downs are mostly used for. This is why you do not want to put them on notice by filing a DMCA on your own. Ergo: see a lawyer.
posted by DarlingBri at 6:30 PM on November 2, 2009
posted by DarlingBri at 6:30 PM on November 2, 2009
This thread is closed to new comments.
posted by aheckler at 4:43 PM on November 2, 2009