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October 25, 2004

Dealing with ripped website designs

I mentioned before about the issues of copyright regarding forum posts.

When it comes to website design, through, issues are usually a lot more straightforward.

In many instances, where there is a clear violation of copyright, then a polite e-mail to the site owner pointing out the problem goes a long way.

I've done this a couple of times where my site designs have been completely plagiarised - as per this thread: Site ripped - then link exchange request!.

If that doesn't work, then the webhost behind the site is liable for any DMCA violation (Digital Millenium Copyright Act) - so an e-mail to the webhost will, in most cases, end the matter completely.

The complicated part comes from persons who lease their servers directly from the datacenters. This is precisely the hosting situation I had for forum2 in the previous discussion regarding forum post copyrighting. And it may well require actual proof of a DMCA violation before a datacenter is willing to unplug paid for server.

If the admin owners of forum1 and forum2 in the prior example had not settled the matter between themsevlves, then with no upstream provider to pull the plug on the issue, we could may well have seen the issue fought out in the courts, and the necessary legal precedent established after a few years of lawyer pay enrichment.

All the more reason to be happy to see such issues resolved. :)

Luckily, website designs are much less a contentious issue - a website either runs a unique template, or a public purchased template. So there is far less ambiguity on such issues.

If you do find your website ripped, though, do keep calm about it. Take it first as a compliment, and then accept that there's a good chance you can resolve the issue either directly through the site admin, or else through the site webhosting company.

Keep e-mails polite and to the point - simply state your contention. Don't threaten legal action - simply state that you hope that the person(s) addressed with take responsible corrective action, so that you will not need to take the matter any further.

In most cases, you should see a satisfactory resolution relatively quickly. If not, simply keep the polite e-mails going until you are finally satisfied that copyrighted elements - graphics or text - have been removed. Do remember, though, that HTML is open source, so you cannot sue for a site having a similar style.

Posted by at October 25, 2004 03:50 PM

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