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View Full Version : Other websites using your images, and wording etc.



DK Karaoke
14-11-2009, 06:49 PM
Hi all,

I just noticed that two other sites are using my images and wording on their websites and obviously claiming its theirs.:mad: :mad:

They also appear to be using my site to show the images etc., by linking directly to my site.:mad:

Have any of you experienced this before, and if so what can you do about it?

Your opinions would be greatly welcomed.

Martyn

DJWilson
14-11-2009, 06:54 PM
Change the image there using like "Image stolen from www.yoursite.com" and if they dont check there site they wont notice ;)

And also put the image there use a different name and update ya site :)

DK Karaoke
14-11-2009, 07:12 PM
Change the image there using like "Image stolen from www.yoursite.com" and if they dont check there site they wont notice ;)

And also put the image there use a different name and update ya site :)

Hey thats really good, unfortunately I have already contacted both site owners.

Cheers:beer1:

rob1963
15-11-2009, 10:56 AM
This is really annoying.

As far as I know I've never had any of my photos stolen (probably because there are better ones on other sites!), but I HAVE had a number of people use my FAQs, contact page and especially my terms & conditions.

I don't mind if they ask me first (which some have) and then change the order and the wording a bit, but when it's a straight cut & paste, that really annoys me.

I spent about 24 hours working on my terms & conditions. I looked at dozens of disco sites, made notes of the things I wanted to include & then came up with the wording, so when someone comes along & spends 30 seconds doing a straight cut & paste, it's very annoying.

I guess that on the plus side, it shows that your own site is good, though. I'm quite flattered that having first asked me, there are a number of people using the same format as my contact page as well as having their FAQs and/or terms & conditions based on my own.

yourdj
15-11-2009, 01:19 PM
just contact them by phone and challenge them as to the source. politely ask them to change it. if they dont then send them a court action email threat. i bet they change it then.

If not back that up with letters and then follow through on your threat.

Shaun
15-11-2009, 01:30 PM
I've had images and content stolen from my site a few times. Once the WHOLE site was ripped off, they just changed any reference to my business name to theirs.

I usually send an email first, if I have no luck I then contact their host explaining the copyright infringement. This has worked pretty well for me so far, things are usually sorted out pretty quickly when thier host contacts them.

DK Karaoke
15-11-2009, 02:13 PM
You know you spend ages setting up your site, photos, wording etc. getting it all right and then these lazy people steal your hard work and then call it their own. Very annoying.

Its also annoying when you are listed at the top of Google - UK wide for Karaoke & disco (below paid for ads of course, when there are any).

Marc the computer whiz sorted one solution for the moment and we are working on a better solution.

We have blocked other sites from using our photos, that is hotlinking to my site for pictures, but one of the offenders has already copied one photo and put it back up on their site. I had just deleted it this morning, but they must have been up earlier than me and copied it before I deleted it.

The other offender not only hotlinked to my site for picutes, but also copied my entire page, exact coding and all. Just changed the header and footer.

Shame I didnt take that very good advice from DJ Wilson and act straight away:cry:

DK Karaoke
15-11-2009, 02:19 PM
I've had images and content stolen from my site a few times. Once the WHOLE site was ripped off, they just changed any reference to my business name to theirs.

I usually send an email first, if I have no luck I then contact their host explaining the copyright infringement. This has worked pretty well for me so far, things are usually sorted out pretty quickly when thier host contacts them.


What do you do if the host is one of those providers who sell websites that you can do yourself. I wouldn't mind but the one who copied the photo, is just one page site and not good at all. Its at
http://www.uniquemusic.webs.com/

Marc J
15-11-2009, 03:05 PM
What do you do if the host is one of those providers who sell websites that you can do yourself. I wouldn't mind but the one who copied the photo, is just one page site and not good at all. Its at
http://www.uniquemusic.webs.com/

Start with a whois search on the domain. The domain to search for is the last bit before any .com / .net / .co.uk etc., so in this case is just webs.com, as technically the uniquemusic is a subdomain of webs.com.

http://whois.domaintools.com/webs.com

This will let you know where it's hosted and who to email. Also look at the namserver settings, if they differ from the domain you just looked up, look them up too. This will give you the upstream provider if it is different to the one you're looking up. Keep doing that until the nameservers match the domain you're looking up.

You should also click on the "Server Status" tab of that page, then click on "Whois" for the IP address. This will give you an abuse email address to try as well.

Also go to the site in question - http://www.webs.com/pages/abuse/#copyright has some handy info on it, as well as a link to http://www.webs.com/pages/report_copyright/.

Given enough evidence, any host (or upstream provider) should take action. You should normally get an email address, too, if you can't find one then use abuse@ is this will normally go the to correct place.

Regarding what you can do to stop it - at the end of the day (as you've already found out) doing technical stuff behind the scenes to stop people hotlinking directly to your images won't stop them stealing them, they just need to visit your site, save your image and upload it to their server. Hotlinking is more of solution to the bandwidth theft issue than the copyright issue.

No amount of hotlink protection, no right click code or any other method is going to stop someone intent on stealing your images from doing so. To be absolutely sure no-one can use them you should watermark them. Which is fine for "content" images, but not practical for actual design images...