Is this illegaling?

I created a site 5 years ago...now someone comes along and basically copies the site, changes the design, and makes a few changes here and there, and puts the site on a domain that is my domain with an "ing" at the end. Is this allowed? Anything I can do?

Thanks in advance for the help

 

send a verbal threat that you will send a DCMA complaint he may take it down

 

First, it depends on your exact domain name and whether or not you have acquired trademark rights. Second, if you have a case for infringement, are you prepared to spend a lot of money on a trademark infringement suit (maybe tens of thousands of dollars or more)? If they copied your sites content, then you could go after them for copyright infringement with a DMCA (costs nothing).

 

Listen to mjewel. DMCA them, get their host to suspend them, they'll take you seriously. If they haven't got the resources to even create their own site, they probably haven't got the resources to fight a legal battle.

 

It would be illegal. Send a DMCA complaint to their datacenter. Please note some datacenters might refuse to take the site down.

 

It is far better to contact the Hosting Legal Affairs section and state the complains about all this mystery created by their fellow....!

 

what do you mean by 'Hosting Legal Affairs'?

 

Hire an attorney, get a formal DMCA complaint, send it to their DC. If their DC doesn't comply, (unless a counter claim is filed) it turns into a Court order and local law enforcement can pull the plug for them. They usually don't like this, so they comply.

 

I would imagine there is a good track record in a site like archive.org as to who the owner is.

There are a lot of things you can do:

• You can deindex them from the Search Engines
  http://www.google.com/support/websearch/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=58
• You can get their AdSense banned (if they have one)
  https://www.google.com/adsense/support/bin/request.py?contact_type=dmca_complaint
• You can contact their hosting company's legal department
• You can put use CopyScape or similar to make sure your content is not being duplicated
  http://www.copyscape.com

 

There are many DMCA templates available, no need to hire a lawyer right away. Find their host by using http://www.whoishostingthis.com/. Once you find the host, send them the DMCA and they'll have to take the site down within 48 hours.

 

As above, Also have you got an example of this site so we can take a look?