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I’m Tired Of Companies Ripping off our site, So I’m Calling Them Out

andresmax.com

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Re: I’m Tired Of Companies Ripping off our site, So I’m Calling Them Out

#94
I've had this happen to a number of clients; for the most part we were able to get the sites changed/taken down through DMCA submissions (copyrighted materials, art).

I don't know if this avenue is available to you but you might want to look into it.

Re: I’m Tired Of Companies Ripping off our site, So I’m Calling Them Out

#95
post #4

Make a premium WordPress theme based on this design, slap a price on it, and distribute through WordPress theme sites thereby creating an additional income stream for your company. I'm in Miami and I'd be happy to help.

I might actually do this, we were just discussing this at the office!

I probably won't be interested in a Wordpress theme, but if you make a Bootstrap theme quite like this layout I'd definitely buy it.

Re: I’m Tired Of Companies Ripping off our site, So I’m Calling Them Out

#96
I've seen my site copied verbatim several times. Clearly some bot just scraped the entire site and posted it somewhere else. At first it upset me but after a few minutes of righteous indignation I assumed it wasn't worth the time to worry about it. The copies aren't getting much traffic AFAICT and I'm assuming one way or another they'll eventually lead people back the original so I just stopped looking.

Re: I’m Tired Of Companies Ripping off our site, So I’m Calling Them Out

#98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I completely agree to this method. Break their site with your js.

Assuming that the people who are copying this code are able to code themselves, wouldn't it be easy to find the problem and fix it? Unless there was some incredible code obfuscation.

"Assuming that the people who are copying this code are able to code themselves"

Probably a generous assumption.

Re: I’m Tired Of Companies Ripping off our site, So I’m Calling Them Out

#99
I think you might just be taking the wrong approach. Shaming them is a bad idea, at least as a first move.

Seek-out and contact the owners of these businesses. Point out what you have discovered. There's an outside possibility that they have no clue that their web designers have done this. They might actually feel rather embarrassed to learn so. If I couldn't code my own sites and had to rely on designers who took this approach I certainly would feel pretty bad upon learning about it.

What to do then? Tell them that you'll gladly allow them to use the design for a small fee. Or, perhaps better yet, if they actually hired an outside firm to build their site, propose that you take over their site design and that you'll fix what they got wrong.

If the deed was done in-house or you are up against a coder-designer-founder that just go lazy, figure out a win-win. Out of respect they ought to at least pay you something. You could even lobby for a link in the footer with "Site design based on ...". I wouldn't opt for "Site designed by" because if they screw it up it could look bad for you.

Aikido vs. Karate. It can work wonders.

Oh, yes, I also concur with those who proposed that you might want to consider productizing your design. As a minimum-viable-product you now know that there are people willing to steal it. With the right approach you might be able to find people willing to buy it.

You could even consider expanding upon this and creating a few more designs. Post them openly on your site with an invitation to use them and the condition that you are to receive payment after a thirty day trial period. Just a thought.

Re: I’m Tired Of Companies Ripping off our site, So I’m Calling Them Out

#100

Interesting, given the copying of the js directly, you could use that to your advantage. Have it behave one way if the page is served up from an IP address you own, and slightly differently served from a foreign address. Could be sublime, like adds a menu item/link to their pages that has "Web Design Services" that points back to you, to the silly "Get free copyrighted material here" and a link to some dubious conten…

Does this mean copyrights aren't worth anything these days?

No, it just means they're difficult to enforce, and most law enforcement agencies won't act unless the dollar loss is above a fixed minimum (which differs from place to place).
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