Question Regarding Content Theft

[Nickie]

I have a question that perhaps you can help me with. Someone has been copying my blog posts, along with the pictures and has them set up on their blog. They are using their blog to host a number of G ads.

My webmistress and I have tried everything we can think of to contact them to get them to take the site down, but are unable to reach them. All contacts are dead ends.

I have resorted to posting a cease and desist letter on my blog in hopes that when they copy my most recent post it might have an effect, but my hopes are not high. They seem to be quite accomplished at their illegal activity.

Any ideas on how I might be able to get this resolved?

Thanks!!!

[Bob]

If the stolen content is indexed in Google, file a dmca complaint with them and then with the company that hosts his blog.

[GIWI]

As the webmistress Nickie mentioned, I'm really annoyed with this whole situation.

Take a look at this site: the red lion bozeat.com (without the spaces, of course). Then, compare it to GetStaged2sell.com/stageblog, starting with the second post on GetStaged. Oddly enough, they haven't posted the first message on GetStaged about web theft!

This domain name was purchased on April 24, 2007, and it's got a Google page rank of 4! And, it's all because of the fact that it's using Nickie's content.

We have tried:
-Contacting the site owner. On the Whois, they come up with PrivacyProtect.org as their contact, but according to PrivacyProtect.org, they're a public site.
-Contacting their Domain registrar, who told us to contact their web host.
-We sent a Cease and Desist to the web host email in the WHOIS, and the email came back undeliverable. The host is called maximus325.com, and it looks like a private server.
-They are hotlinking to Nickie's photos, so we put an image saying that the content was stolen and set up an .htaccess file to replace her photos with that image. That worked for about 2 hours, and now her photos are back, still hotlinked.
-We blocked the IP address at the server level.

This is just the most frustrating thing!! Does anyone know anything else we can do? I'll change the .htaccess to try to block the hotlinking rather than replace it with the nasty message.

I guess if they're doing a copy/paste on the site, there's nothing we can do if we can't reach them. They have updated their site with new posts from Nickie's blog as they are added (with the exception of the one on web theft), so we're thinking this site will be just a mirror of her site on an ongoing basis.

If anyone has any ideas, we'd be grateful to hear them. If you have an idea you'd rather not post, please feel free to PM Nickie or me.

Thanks,

Kathleen

PS - Bob, filing a DCMA (which I just looked up on Google) sounds like a great idea. We can't file it with their host, but maybe Google will at least take them out of the index! Thanks.

[knoll]

Wow, that really sucks. Wish I had an answer for you!

[Nickie]

It would be great if Google would get them out of the index, they are abusing the use of the Google ads.

It seems there should be a way to do something about it.

[Nickie]

Ok, I just faxed off the DMCA complaint, thanks for the tip Bob. I'll be sure to update everyone in caes this happens to anyone else.

If anyone else has a suggestion, I'd love the input.

Thanks!

[Nickie]

Well, it appears at least for now the site is down!

Thanks for all the support from all my friends these guys have taken it down.

I did discover last night that they were starting to add content from another blog. I managed to track down the original blog where the content was being taken from. The designer of the original is an online friend, so I contacted them late last night and gave them the heads up.

I’ve been gone all day, so I haven’t had a chance to find out if they were aware of this incident, but I am happy to see the offending site is down now.

Thanks again everyone!

[Max]

I'm gllad to hear that Nickie Let us know if you get anything from Google as well regarding your DMCA report.

[Nickie]

Actually, I'm not sure it's over yet. There seems to be more going on. I am out of town right now, but will be back tomorrow. The culprit has made a post on another site addressing this issue. I will pm you when I get back with more info. It seems they are following every post I make on the net.

It is amazing what people will do for a few bucks Max. I hope this culprit gets busted and everyone finds outs who is behind it. They are pretending as though they are from out of the country, but I am not buying it.

I will definitely keep everyone posted.

Thanks Max. I have always appreciated the support you give your forum members! I always come here when I have a question.