my site was fully copied, what can i do?

[Lorelei]

as unbelievable as it sounds, its true. My website, www.loreleiweb.com which i built over a year ago, worked hard on and really dedicated a lot of time on designing and filling with content, now was cloned and always arrears fully copied here http://www.5239.net.cn/

the tiny differences that you see are only because I have updated my website last week, and I assume it was stolen about 2 months ago, was one of the sponsored links i see there was added very recently.

i asked myself, whats' the idea behind it? the adsense that is displayed there is MINE, judging my the client ID. some links point back to my domain. I can't seem to find to find a good enough reason for this shameless rip off, however, what pisses me off the most is... they changed my copyright meta tag into theirs, and this is really beyond any limit!

<META content="Copyright © 2006 - 5239.net.cn web All Rights Reserved" 
name=copyright>
<META 
content="5239.net.cn web offers msn messenger free smileys, virus scans, webmasters tools, desktop items, skins and more" 
name=Description>

My Q is, what can I do? i got their whois http://img182.imageshack.us/img182/7097/lhlhzz4.gif
but its a free server, not sure they give a damn whats hosted there. I want to lead to this account's termination, but the contact email they offer on the site is my own. whatta surprise...

[vistadivine.com]

First of all write them a polite email warning them about the legal actions you can take and then wait for their reply to see that if they rectify this big mistake or not.

[Yuripro84]

The thing I find funny is that all of the links go back to your website, and the email for contact is still your email, as well as the advertisements still have your ref ID. If he doesn't reply though, take action. Imageshack does care about copyright material I thinkm wouldn't hurt to try, would it? You can also try to find his hosting company and contact them about this fraud. Good luck with everything.

[IslaScotts]

I am so sorry that this happened to you! I feel so bad. You CAN contact the free web hosting. I went to their website and this is in their terms of service:

Your Web Pages may not contain, nor contain links to, any of the following:
Child pornography, obscene material, bestiality and pictures that you don't have the right to publish
Hate propaganda
IRC in any form
Bit Torrent
Gambling
Anything illegal including, but not limited to, illegal software, warez or hacked software, serial numbers, mail fraud, or pyramid schemes
Material insulting, or that could be considered defamatory or libelous, to other persons, institutions or companies
Material that exploits children
Material which attempts to collect personal information about users
Materials infringing the intellectual property rights of third parties (including, but not limited to, trademarks, domain names, personality rights, names of individuals, publicity rights, logos, graphics, designs, films, and music), those which allow the circumvention of revenue rightfully due to a manufacturer for the sale of a product or the disabling of installed copy protected devices, and all other forms of cracker utilities, are strictly forbidden
Proxy script(s)

Furthermore they state:

HostFreeWeb.com reserves the right to block or delete any site due to inappropriate behavior by the webmaster towards HostFreeWeb.com, its staff or its users, which has been validated on public or private forums
You may not copy or reproduce any page, image or other content without the express prior consent of the original copyright owner of that content

It says to go here: http://www.hostfreeweb.com/contact.php to report abuse. I would also request (though legally I don't believe that HAVE to disclose it) that they turn over any contact information for this particular client, especially since they may be involved in a legal dispute over copyright infringment.

Most free webhosters get nervous when lawsuits are mentioned, they will more than likely do exactly what you want. Hope this helps!

[littleFella]

Your site says:

Site Design byLorelei Web Design

The stolen site says:

Site Design byLiza Kliko

What gives?

[suzjor]

Have you noticed this part:

STEALING BANDWITH (HOT-LINKING TO OUR IMAGES AND DOWNLOADS) IS STRICTLY PROHIBITED. IF YOU DO, THE LINK WILL SHORTLY BE REPLACED WITH ANOTHER IMAGE AND YOUR IP WILL BE BANNED FROM ACCESSING OUR SITE IN THE FUTURE. SHOULD YOU HAVE ANY QUESTIONS, PLEASE CLICK HERE CONTACT THE SITE's OWNER. YOUR IP ADDRESS IS (HAS BEEN LOGGED):
[Powered by IPChecker]

The IP is obviously the image she/he copied and it is 202.107.209.94 which is probably their own IP.

I would definitely contact the host.

[wulf2001]

wow looks like I was too late. The thief has already been shut down.

[Cricket]

Yup! Looks like their account was suspended.

[WillL]

how did you know he ripped yours?

[DaveyBoy]

He was probably hot-linking her images, that is using the same code so the images are loaded from her server when his site is visited. It's easy to find out.

[bestneo]

Domain Name: 5239.net.cn
ROID: 20060607s10021s06424945-cn
Domain Status: ok
Registrant Organization: �波图兴电脑商行
Registrant Name: 胡家存
Administrative Email:
Sponsoring Registrar: 北京新网数ç �ä¿¡æ�¯æŠ€æœ¯æœ‰é™å…¬å�¸
Name Server:ns.xinnetdns.com
Name Server:ns.xinnet.cn
Registration Date: 2006-06-07 14:40
Expiration Date: 2007-06-07 14:40

[Jamie-Lowert]

Use the DMCA they're extremely helpful and usually get it done with, if not contact your lawyer and take legal action but make sure you take the following steps.

• You have sufficient proof, in which you created the website
• You have tried contacting their webhost
• You have tried any other plausible action to get their site down.

If their site is still down then you don't have too much to worry about, but if they set it up again still copying yours then hopefully this will help.

[sim]

if there using your adsense code who cares. there making you money =)

[webfinity]

Looks like whoever did it was not too smart. It's the smart ones that are dangerous.

[Lorelei]

Originally Posted by littleFella

Your site says:

Site Design byLorelei Web Design

The stolen site says:

Site Design byLiza Kliko

What gives?

well, since Liza Kliko is me it doesnt make much difference, only that they stole the none updated version where i still pointed the design credits to my art site and a few months after replaced the link with my web design company...

if there using your adsense code who cares. there making you money =)

well, i can get banned for fraud clicks, and god know what they do with the code there... i'd rather not risk it

anyway, thanks everybody for ur replies, the host who hosted them was very decent and suspended the account a few hours after i contacted them... i was a bt unsure if a free host based in china will be all that picky about their clients but to my surprise they were very professional there...

lets hope it wont get stolen again

IslaScotts, it did helped a lot, thanks!

[IslaScotts]

I'm very glad to hear that it got resolved!

[GrahamJames]

Glad to hear that you got it resloved.

I read about this happening to someone else before. In his case the guys who were ripping him off were so lazy that they copied his content and left all of the links to the pictures from his server.

what he did was simply use different named copies of the pictures on his websites, and switched the pictures found on the orriginal links to pictures of disgusting and explicit content.

Maybe not a tactic you would want to take, but I'm sure it would work to mess with the people who steal content and don't bother changing links.