Site Copying - What do you think?

davthp · 30-10-06

I run a site which is a directory in a niche area containing just under a 1000 entries. The site has been developed and improved over 5 years and has some good rankings with the search engines. The site does produce a small affiliate income which is steadily increasing but is only in the few hundred a month category. The site is one of several I operate in various niche categories.

The database on the site is not spiderable and therefore people using website copy programs cannot auto copy the data. Users have commented how user friendly and up to date the site is.

Last week I was approached by someone who was already listed thanking me for listing him on my new site. Obviously I thanked him and took a look. What they have done is used the search facility on my site to extract some 750 of the 1000 entries. They have then put them on this new site with a completely different look and feel using their images and text. The main difference is that they have made all the data spiderable so that the search engines can find the whole database and therefore made it available to all and sundry.

It was easy to find the owner and immediately issued a cease and desist email. When that was ignored I contacted the woman owner by telephone and she claimed she had paid for the information. I asked who these people were and she then claimed it was actualy her staff that searched yell, thomson and other databases. When I told her that this was illegal she backtracked and claimed she thought they had got the information in the library. She did agree to review my claims and get back to me.

Now I know 100% that it is a 100% rip off of my site's data and can prove it by the fact that they have copied the errors (the copy was done earlier this year) and they have even copied the 'fake' entries we had purposely inserted to identify this type of copying. They have even listed some entries that we know for a fact only appear in our directory and are listed nowhere else.

I received a reply to my email which basically said 'Up Yours'.

Now taking legal action can be expensive and with such a low income for the site more so I was stumped what to do. Legal action can also take a long time and the site is getting established in the search engines.

What I did was to use a website copy program which copied their entire website. I edited out all their user information and added some ficticious detals and replicated their site.

I changed all their images but the site including the url cannot be mistaken for other than a copy of their website. At the moment I have added no affiliate links but am considering it.

My questions to you - What do people think about what I have done - it was my database after all? I have made the site hard to establish who owns it. I have not put affiliate links on as I am worried about putting my accounts in danger - so should I put these links on?.

My stance if approached by them is to say that if they copy a site then what right have they to complain about their site being copied.

Thanks in anticipation for your thoughts.

Mogga · 30-10-06

You've researched some data.

Someone else appears with a set of data "750 of the 1000 entries. They have then put them on this new site with a completely different look and feel using their images and text."

Now you've ripped their site and want to do what with it?

Your data isn't unique. You found it somewhere. If they've not "ripped it" like you just have then you'd have to prove the data was only available through your site which it wasn't.

It sounds like they may have used your site as a reference but if they've not included all your entries then you have to question even this.

Brendon · 30-10-06

>> they have even copied the 'fake' entries we had purposely inserted to identify this type of copying.

That's the killer, quite literally. Tell 'em that if they don't get more reasonable, you will take appropriate measures to blast them off the WWW. It's perfectly possible to get them permanently banned from the major SEs.

It's also possible that you can get any OTHER sites they owned killed. The possibilities are endless, and not expensive. Drop me a PM

I like this kind of stuff.

mibut · 30-10-06

Easiest way is to detail some instances of copying in a cease and desist letter, stating that these are just examples, examples showing your web page, source etc and their web pages, source etc.
Send a copy to the offending websites owner and also their hosting company.
Normally if it is pretty clear cut, if the owner wont take it down the host will.
This has worked for me on a couple of occasions although the last one moved his hosting to Turkey. I managed to close that but now he's moved his hosting to Malaysia. Pain in the .............