One thing I want to know is whether i can protect my website. Say for example I am the creator of facebook and it is hosted in the US. Can I prevent another site stealing my idea and implementing it in another country? Or is it legal and I have to adapt? What should I do to face competition like this?
You can't protect an idea... you can patent a process but you need to initiate a patent before you start using the process in order grandfather that process.
If someone from a country that doesn't respect Copyright steals it, you are out of luck unless you want to travel to N. Korea (for instance) and take them to court,,you can even file suit in U.S. court and subpoena them but they won't show up, and no one has any jurisdiction to make them.
Without trying to echo what is said above as its correct, you would have to legally copyright your site as there are so many people out there who feel that placing the symbol onto a site means that they have legal rights....
what about the patent? can we get a patent for our product online? such as that example, facebook script, or software, anything. coz I see there are a lot of clone script for twitter, facebook, etc. how about that? need an opinion