They literally copied my Entire website, every single word, and did not change nothing! I have been in business for over a year and #1 on google all this time! I did a who.is on the site and they are hosted by a company in croatia, my lawyer sent them a DMCA letter to the hosting company and they are claiming they can't suspend a user unless theres a court order which is bull! This bastard has even gone as far to put his site with google adwords so he gets views from keywords associated with my site! What should I do?
You can fire off a note to Google as well I suspect. They may can his adwords account. hope that helps, Nigel
You should be fine as long as your site published first. Google won't rank duplicate content well. I've had this happen to a site I was working on. You can also submit these types of sites to Google. You can block them from using your images by using the htaccess. Here's a link about how to do that: http://www.plagiarismtoday.com/2007/07/02/using-htaccess-to-stop-content-theft/
Well the host may or may not be the alleged infringer... and if they are are not protected under DMCA a DMCA takedown order isn't much help so you should get your attorney to seek a the assistance of a lawyer in Croatia. AdWords or AdSense? The domain owner has AdSense on the domain ... When a publisher signs up with Google to receive AdSense payments they agreed to only place ad on pages with the publishers permission. If you send a takedown order to Google AdSense - Google will force the owner to counterclaim automatically (because Google has a good faith belief the content is the account owners or the account holder has already obtained your permission to use)... this would escalate your claim to the courts. Fortunately, most infringers don't wish to hire an attorney and go to court so their only recourse is to abandon their account... in which case Google shuts down the account and sends you 3 months of payments from the publishers account as compensation for your grief as the likely copyright holder... as Google's proof they have acted in good faith. "IT IS A BLUFF" though... if Google receives the counterclaim from the publisher and forwards that's to you... you have 10-14 business days to show Google proof of court action... The form to send DMCA Complaint to Google AdSense https://www.google.com/adsense/support/bin/request.py?contact_type=dmca_complaint
no it is google adwords! he is advertising his site so he gets views. not adsense. i hve contacted google and google adwords - everyone knows how slow google will be. and theyre hosting says they can only suspend a user 'if court order is received'. he copied my entire website word for word, bastard did not even change 1 word
Yeah if the buy is on a place like that, look at everything on your site and like other poster said contact all the other 3rd parties and try to get them to recognize the situation so that guy can't gain or gain less. Legal notices to countries that don't have treaties or legal agreements is going to run up your legal costs and almost nothing will happen.
While I do understand your frustration you must understand the alleged infringer is an alleged infringer until the courts say otherwise and everyone else that is remotely involved did not commit any offense and is 100% innocent. DMCA only protects those 3rd parties that have voluntarily requested to be protected "from you... of all people, (in this case)" from your claims of infringements based on coercion or collusion... those that aren't protected - you may sue at your leisure. I've never reviewed Google AdWords policies on infringement before (rarely see this occurring) so start here: http://www.google.co.uk/adwords/learningcenter/19473.html (UK) http://www.google.com/adwords_dmca.html (US) Don't bother with normal Google channels... they are not setup to deal with DMCA issues... follow Google's instructions and fax claims. Be advised - If the alleged infringer counterclaims... your only recourse is court action. Since the guy is spending money on AdWords you can be reasonably certain "they don't care" if you have a claim... they "LIKELY" think you won't bother with costly international disputes. Course I'm a dumbass.