Today i noticed many hits coming of off one site, so i went to take a look. There i see my design, on another site My site is www.megafileupload.com and the guy who copied my site has it here: http://www.i-file.org Its obvois that its the EXACT same design. Google's cache proves that he just recently changed the skin for this site. I also have the PSD files to prove this is mine.. what can i do about this? please advise!
Send them an email asking them to change their template would be a good choice. Be nice about it. Did you purchase the design from someone else or was this coded/designed in-house? Seems like it would be hard to replicate the CSS of this design (with the gradients on the text fields, etc). If you did purchase the design from someone else, maybe you should email them asking if they sold it to anyone else. Maybe this should be moved to legal?
Check whois. Get an attorney involved. If you can't afford an attorney, there is a lot you can do. Get snapshots of everything as proof of copyright infringement. In the event that you need to suit for copyright infringement, you should submit copyright forms to the copyright office. Let them know you are on to them, and will not tolerate copyright infringement. Since they are hiding their contact information, ask their domain name registrar for their legal contact info, as there is a copyright infringement issue you need to contact them about. If they are not hosting their own site, find out who is and tell them to shut them down. If none of that works, push it to the nameserver company. Their use of the tld .org may also be a matter you can pursue. If you cannot afford to hire a lawyer to pursue this, assuming you are in the US and they are in the US, enforcement can be brought through the Attorney General for the state, the US Attorney General, and the US Dept of Commerce. I would be screaming bloody murder to anyone and everyone and have the proof to substantiate everything.
i would suggest 1st write to the owner of the website who has copied it, if he doesn't bother to reply then write the hosting company.
Wow, you were not kidding when you said EXACT. I have seen some pretty close rips in my days, but this one takes the cake. I would be pretty furious myself. The guy didn't even take the time to make even the slightest changes. First I would write him a letter, maybe it will scare him into taking it down. If not, bug the hosting company and there is a good chance they will either poke him with a big stick or suspend his account all together. Good luck. cheers
Write him a letter. Post the link to this topic. Let him see just how many people have your back and he will surely take it down.
To make things worse : It seems that my server was hacked. They Deleted all my sites, all domains, all users and all resellers from my server :-( ( fortunately i still have the site on my old server, so i could switch Nameservers and my sites are back up.) This was how the site was stolen. I was just in the process of moving my sites to a new server. this new server has VCSH control panel installed. I found this site where you can hack into VCSH with one mouseclick and a domain name! Any kid can do it! If you use VCSH control panel, make SURE you run all the latest patches available! If not, you will be hacked in no-time! I wont post the link here to the site where you can hack VCSH for obvois resons. Just make sure you run the latest patches for VCSH! thanks all for the friendly advise!
I remmber someone tripped my site and I threatened legal action, and would have pursued. I contacted their WH and it was shortly taken down.
Wow it is the exact same site. I would definitely ask him to change the design and for compensation. It is absolutely ridiculous how he copied the exact same thing and still kept a copyright notice. Definitely not to be tolerated. Good luck.
Thanks for all the replies folks! These have been some stressful days, with my server hacked, site stolen etc. Things are starting to look good though! I have been collecting a lot of evidence around this theft. I not only have the PSD files, Communication letters between the maker of the script and us regarding implementation of this design. I also have support by the maker of the script. He will help me track these guys down. I have lots of screenshots, and prove that they are hotlinking Next to that i managed to find the IP adress of the guy who hacked the site It will be a matter of days to track him down. Next to that they are stupid enough to leave my statscounter-code in their design, AND they are hotlinking to some of my images in the template. I collected screenshots etc, and have this very well documented. Trough a friend we found a very good attorney, who sais we not only have a very good case, but also a possibility to sew these guys for every day they use our design/copyrighted material, Plus the expenses to put the server in the condition to where it was, plus the loss in revenue for all my sites Things are starting to look positive again here We will press charges for Theft of copyrighted material and hacking, stealing bandwith, loss of revenue, and are looking into more possibilities to sew these guys.. According to our lawyer we have a very strong case, and its his experiance that the local authorities in their country will help us on this.. Hope this will work out! Thanks again for all the support guys, wish me luck! ;-)
good luck buddy. and have no mercy... they fuck you up.... so fuck them back! by the way... in what country they are??
Lemme transload a few hundred exe files to them... all 100% the same!!!.... This mass transload will cause the server to slow down and soon it will be clogged and full! Edit: What is 258390200 x 7? Rob