Can Anything Be Done About Website Hijacking?
Fred Olden
contains a large amount of copyrighted material, has been entirely
copied onto another domain: http://mathlectures.net/ The only
thing different about the copied version is the logo on the top page.
On the "About" page, someone named Ruslan Mirsky claims to have
created the lectures.
I have emailed them, requesting that they take down the infringing
material, but have gotten no reply.
Is there any remedy for something like this?
Jesse
wrote:
Gee, a tough problem. First, BTW, I do not see any contact info on
your website for you. Of course, you don't want spam, but what if
(unlikely) the other guys had wanted to contact you to ask permission?
Also, on your pages I note that there is no indication of who authored
your pages - and, there's no copyright statement, "(c) 2007", for
example. This info may not be required, but it would put people on
notice, at a minimum. Considering how rampant IP theft is on the
Internet in od material that is marked as copyrighted, a lack of a
copyright notice is akin to an invitation to do what one will.
OK, they're in Russia and you are in the US. The short answer is I
don't know. My longer answer includes the following:
(1) You could contact an intellectual property lawyer. Likely (too)
expensive.
(2) You could contact the "registrar" of .net domains, Verisign
(contact info):
http://www.iana.org/root-whois/net.htm
The goal would be to have them cancel the registration for
mathlectures.net, BUT I have no idea if they would even consider that
unless they rec'd a court order. (See answer #1.)
It is possible that if you explain the situation to Verisign and ask
if there is even a mechanism in place to deal with this situation --
assuming for the moment that you could prove to them that, indeed, it
was your material - Verisign might give you some idea about the
possibilities.
Even if this other site's owners were in the US, they could ignore you
and it would be costly to MAKE them stop. Since they're in Russia,
making them do anything is effectively impossible.
One more idea: Google and the other search engines may have a process
whereby you can ask them to not index a site that has ripped off your
copyrighted material. At least that way the other site would be
harder to find. But again, the fact that your pages do not have any
claim of ownership or a notice of prohibition against copying makes it
more difficult, as a practical matter, to get others to take action
w/o a court order. Good luck. -- Jesse
Robert Heller
Nothing technical. One can use 'whois' to find out who owns the domain
(mathlectures.net), and then you can have your lawyer send the owner of
the domain and/or the ISP/web host that is hosting it a cease and
desist letter (possibly backed up by a court order). It is likely that
any legit ISP/web hosting company will take the site down, even if the
domain owner refuses to. You need to be sure to contact the ISP and/or
web hosting company as well as the domain owner. And you might have to
go 'up the chain' -- contact the next tier up ISP if the immediate ISP
fails to respond. And the contact probably needs to be more 'formal'
than a mere E-Mail from you -- you probably need to talk to a lawyer
and start the *formal* legal process going. Basicly the same sort of
recourse one would have if something along these lines happened in the
print media business.
Oh, let the search engines know as well (Google, Yahoo, etc.). If the
infringing domain gets 'blacklisted' by the search engines, then they could
find themselves 'dead in the water' for all practical purposes.
>
--
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Fred Olden
>Nothing technical. One can use 'whois' to find out who owns the domain
>(mathlectures.net), and then you can have your lawyer send the owner of
>the domain and/or the ISP/web host that is hosting it a cease and
>desist letter (possibly backed up by a court order). It is likely that
>any legit ISP/web hosting company will take the site down, even if the
>domain owner refuses to.
Thanks. Unfortunately, the ISP chosen by Ruslan Mirsky to host his
plagiarism is a notorious company called Intercage, which is currently
blacklisted for chronic violations of net rules and regulations. They
are known to host numerous spamming and phishing concerns. When I
contacted them with an official DMCA complaint, they basically flipped
me the finger.
>Oh, let the search engines know as well (Google, Yahoo, etc.). If the
>infringing domain gets 'blacklisted' by the search engines, then they could
>find themselves 'dead in the water' for all practical purposes.
Thanks again. Unfortunately when I carefully prepared a written DMCA
complaint, per the guidelines outlined on Google's site, and faxed it
to them, per their instructions, they just ignored it.
The plagiarized site at mathlectures.net is still running, and in
fact they are now sending out advertisements and starting to build up
reciprocal links. The plagiarist and fraud who calls himself "Ruslan
Mirsky" and claims to be the author of all my articles apparently
wants to make a name for himself in the worst way.
I guess the short answer to the Subject question is: No.
Barrie Wilson
this is not a domain name issue; it's pure copyright infringement ... with
this guy being in Russia somewhere, I think your chances of hauling him into
a court anywhere lie somewhere between zero and none. Beyond that, if you
could get him into a court, it's not clear to me what kind of damages you
can claim.
I don't think any registrar or ISP wants to get in the middle of a copyright
battle of this sort; you may know you're the author of the work but how
would they know?
I'd forget about it, personally ... just compete with him, whatever it is
you might be competing for ... for the future, I'd recommend that you do a
little "branding" of your site; the way it is now, it just kind of looks
ilke public domain material ... there are no indications of ownership
"Fred Olden" <fol...@spamlesss.com> wrote in message
news:46a83142....@news.gte.net...
Tim Tyler
> for the future, I'd recommend that you do a
> little "branding" of your site; the way it
> is now, it just kind of looks ilke public
> domain material ... there are no indications
> of ownership
Public domain material is burdened by requiring
an explicit disclaimer. Copyright is by default:
``Under the Berne Convention, copyrights for creative works do not have
to be asserted or declared, as they are automatically in force at
creation: an author need not "register" or "apply for" a copyright
in countries adhering to the Berne Convention. As soon as a work is
"fixed", that is, written or recorded on some physical medium, its
author is automatically entitled to all copyrights in the work,
and to any derivative works unless and until the author explicitly
disclaims them, or until the copyright expires.''
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berne_Convention_for_the_Protection_of_Literary_and_Artistic_Works
--
__________
|im |yler http://timtyler.org/ t...@tt1lock.org Remove lock to reply.
Barrie Wilson
"Tim Tyler" <seem...@cyberspace.org> wrote in message
news:8KCqi.30656$2U6....@fe1.news.blueyonder.co.uk...
> Barrie Wilson wrote:
>
>> for the future, I'd recommend that you do a little "branding" of your
>> site; the way it
>> is now, it just kind of looks ilke public
>> domain material ... there are no indications
> > of ownership
>
> Public domain material is burdened by requiring
> an explicit disclaimer. Copyright is by default:
I didn't tell him to put it in the PD .. and I know how copyright arises;
the idea was to emblazon the site with some indicia of ownership .. which
might -- and might not -- serve to discourage some who would infringe ...
yes, it's a very imperfect plan but the alternative in this case seems to be
to do nothing at all ... no way in hell is the OP going to be able to get
this guy into a court of law
Tim Tyler
"Please don't steal this Web content"
http://news.com.com/Please+dont+steal+this+Web+content/2100-1024_3-6200283.html?tag=nefd.lede