Site Ripped

Ben

My site, Soul-Scape.com has been blatently ripped.
I found it through the referrer logs.

It's even got my picture on it still! http://dubey.info/v5/about/about.php

Has anyone got any advice on how to persuade them to stop?

Ben

Wanderer

Ben,
Threaten them with legal action. Put together a good legal-worded cease & desist email and send it to them.
They're only young and will probably quake in their boots.

Ben

I have to admit that I've already gone and yelled at them a little in their forum (Vanilla and Soul-Scape theme btw).
I did finish it off with a nice scarily legal "demand that you desist'' paragraph though.

Tex

There you got all the data of the domain holder: http://whois.info/cgi-bin/whois.cgi?yes_popup_flag=0&whois_query_field=domain+DUBEY.INFO Write them a letter and send it as a registered one with approvel of reveive (Know what I mean? You get back a signed formular which proves that the receipient has got the letter). Threaten them with legal action, as Wanderer already said. This often helps. If they don't react, you should think about a lawyer. I guess this is a routine which should not be too expensive. And: try to file the issue to have something at hand. Hope that helps a little.

Ben

Being a 17yr old student myself.. legal action does sound quite daunting, but unfortunately that's likely to be the only way to force them to relinquish it.
I'll wait a little to see what their response is, if any, before I try and draw up something legal.

Tex

I experienced, that waiting in such cases does not help. Consider at least writing that letter, maybe with the help of your parents. You could also write them an e-mail, but printed looks more official I think. A short statement would be enough, that is easy to do, eh? :)

ADM

It seems that the site is gone now.. so it looks like it worked out?

WallPhone

It may be a little late now, but if their ISP (knowable by doing a host lookup of their server IP) resides in the US, you can send a DMCA takedown notice. Plenty of real-life examples are listed at http://chillingeffects.org/

Thunder

Flat out ripping a site is total BS. As it appears was the case here. Bad juju. I will admit that from time to time I've made a local copy of a site, but only for learning purposes to see how something was done. Perhaps they found a way around a problem I'd been having, or whatever. But, I learn from it and go on to build my own. Much different thing there, than just swiping a site and changing some text. However, the more sites you do, it's bound to happen sometime. Best thing you can do is to notify them that they are in violation of your copyright, and take it from there. If that doesn't work, slashdot 'em. That works wonders. <G> While in a sense it is a little flattering that someone thought enough of your work, and likes it enough to want it, nothing good can come from it whatsoever. Not to mention your site is no longer your site. It's your site and some jackasses site.

Ben

I've just taken another look and found that the entire site has vanished, and the WHOIS now says it's owned by someone completely different. So I guess that's the problem solved. I'll be keeping a watch on the site they put in the footer to replace my copyright notice though.

Ben

Well if anyone's interested; checking my email at home, and I've got an interesting email.

From Rajarshi Dubey:

Hi there,

Well sorry Ben. My intention was not to steal your design I was just trying to see how its going to look on my forum. Let me tell you one thing my dear friend that if I want I can get your whole design in different format with my copyright and you will not be able to do any thing so fuck off. And this is the script which makes you trace me.


//<![CDATA[
document.write('<script'+' src="http://crazyegg.com/pages'+'/scripts/6288.js?'+(new Date()).getTime()+'" type="text/javascript">');
//]]>



Well I knew that but I didn’t know that you guys are so psycho to protect your shit designs. So I removed all the pages. And guess what I am going to design a new style for my forum. Better then Psycho Soul Scape just keep watching.

And I don't use shit php plain vanilla design for my things. Keep looking soon you will see my forum with new design. I was just testing with your pages I am not that stupid that I am going to use your design with that stat code. But one thing I like about you kiddos that you got really plain taste for design.

This is my email id : thedubeys@gmail.com

That stat code wouldn't be there if he hadn't copied and pasted the entire source onto his site.. and I found him because all the links on the copied pages still pointed back to my site and got flagged as referrers.

3stripe

Holy-moly, he sounds pretty angry!

Ben

I don't see why he'd try and steal it if it he didn't like it anyway.

3stripe

Heh yeah, some furious back-pedalling going on I reckon...

Tex

Ben, just forget about him. He is not worth one more word.

Minisweeper

Man ben you're such a psycho! You nearly killed the poor kid!! Put that axe down right this minute!

Thunder

Damn Ben... He got all pissed off at you for him stealing your stuff. Shame on you for being so arrogant and mean to care about your work! Sarcasm aside... FTFF Looks like it's done, and he's off to steal something better, from someone less aware.

giginger

Hahaha, what a moron that dude is.

Stash

HAhahahaahhaaa, that email is solid gold

Ben you Psycho :P

shatterglass

Keep looking soon you will see my forum with new design.

Cool! If it's even half as good as he says it's going to be, I'm stealing it for sure!