HELP! Can we prevent stealing our content?

[Tinker]

I run a site for divorce and custody issues (www.deltabravo.net/custody/).

Another site, "bigate.com" is stealing our content. Not just a few pages, but our entire site.

For example, one of our ("real") pages is here:

http://www.deltabravo.net/custody/books.htm

For an example of their theft, look here:

http://bigate.com/dfzx.com.cn/bigate/b/k/k/[email protected]/custody/books.htm

This is our page, but funneled through their server. We're losing what little ad revenue we get when they do this. We're a non-profit site, so every little bit hurts us greatly.

Is there a way we can deny these people from hiijacking our site content?

I'm open to nearly any possibility or mod required to stop them.

Any ideas??

[jkd]

If they are hotlinking your content, you can use .htaccess files to prevent that.

But if they are copying your source, and saving it on their own server, there is no way to prevent that, no matter how hard you try. For further discussion on that lack of a possibility, search the forums for protecting source.

Ultimately, get in touch with some legal counsel. I'd email the owners of the site in question, stating that if *your* content isn't removed, suit can be brought against them. You have intellectual copyright on anything you produce, as long as you can prove you created it. (I think? This is why you need some legal advice).

Anyway, good luck.

[boxer_1]

Pretty much echoing Jkd's reply...I would seek legal advice with this issue. Additionally, you may want to contact the the administator of the other site and confront them with this issue with the hope that it will spook them into ceasing their illegal and / or unethical activity. Be sure to mention that you plan to seek legal advice when you contact them to hopefully add a little fear factor to the contact .

You should definitely have some recourse available to you here.

[firepages]

... & in the short term just rename your page to books1.htm & change the content of books.htm to a "please visit us here at.... etc"

[boxer_1]

Originally posted by firepages
... & in the short term just rename your page to books1.htm & change the content of books.htm to a "please visit us here at.... etc"

Good suggestion, you might even want to change the content of 'books.htm' to something like:

The page that should be here has been replaced by its copyright owner. Please inform the webmaster of this site that this activity has not gone unnoticed.

You even take it a step further, but that's up to you . Additonally, here's a couple of somewhat relevant links on the subject that might be of interest to you and / or others who have who may have questions or experienced similar content theft issues

http://www.eff.org/IP/

http://www.templetons.com/brad/copymyths.html

[boxer_1]

Hmm...after a looking into this a bit further, I'm not so sure they are stealing the content. You might have just stumbled accross the results of someone who used bigate.com to convert your site for temporary viewing. See http://www.bigate.com to see what I'm talking about. You get the same result as you posted for any URL you enter for encoding. For example:

Google: http://www.bigate.com/dfzx.com.cn/bi...ww.google.com/

Better alert google...lol (j/k).

How did you happen to come accross the URL you posted?

[oracleguy]

Not sure they are stealing your content. If you notice of the different site, the email link is an address on your server. Either they aren't stealing your content, or they are but doing a very bad job of it.

[Tinker]

Yes, they're stealing it, not reproducing it.

They're pulling our content through their server, but they haven't actually copied the site and placed it on their server.

I'm wondering if I can use the REFERRER property in Javascript to look at the URL and if it contains "bigate.com", redirect it or disallow the page or something.

You can go to any URL for my site through the bigate.com "gateway" and it pulls up my site's content....

Any suggestions?

[jkd]

http://www.javascriptkit.com/howto/htaccess10.shtml

Maybe that can get you started.

[boxer_1]

Re: Yes, they're stealing it, not reproducing it.

Originally posted by Tinker
You can go to any URL for my site through the bigate.com "gateway" and it pulls up my site's content....

Any suggestions?

Yes, but http://www.bigate.com/ is something like a conversion site where you enter any URL and it will display it just as with the link you posted. Another example, here's what you get when you enter http://www.w3.org at bigate.com:

http://www.bigate.com/dfzx.com.cn/bigate/b/x/g/[email protected]/

Go to http://www.bigate.com and enter any url, your always going to see the page displayed with the end of the url in this format:

[email protected]www.whateverSite.com/

If you put the URL of any site in the address bar of your browser in the above format it will display the site and show the URL in the following format:

http://[email protected]/

Try putting [email protected]www.yahoo.com/ in your address bar. You'll be taken to the site and the URL will look like thid in your address bar:


http://[email protected]/

I don't know how to explain it exactly, but I don't believe they're stealing the content of your site .

[Philip M]

At the bottom of the page it says:


Copyright SPARC 2000. All Rights Reserved.
May be freely copied and used provided the SPARC attribution line is kept intact and the SPARC link is included.


I am not sure what you are complaining about, but why not contact the webmaster at biggate.com and ask for it to be removed?

[firepages]

Hi, I think Boxer_1 is right !- I am not sure what bigate actually does (apart from have a suspect name ) but appears to be some form of server-software which I assume ISP's or whatever use but I assume its making your pages visible to those who for some reason or other can not access your site by normal methods !

Spot on Boxer (good job we did not advise some of the seedier methods of getting rid of tea-leaves )

[Jeepers]

If you go to the www.bigate.com you'll see that it's to do with translating and access for chinese peiople or sites or something like that. The way I understand it you are getting more coverage and so therefore more revenue. Can't be bad eh!

[tommysphone]

The answer

On your page
Copyright SPARC 2000. All Rights Reserved.
May be freely copied and used provided the SPARC attribution line is kept intact and the SPARC link is included.
Page Location: http://www.deltabravo.net/custody/books.htm

On their page
Copyright SPARC 2000. All Rights Reserved.
May be freely copied and used provided the SPARC attribution line is kept intact and the SPARC link is included.
Page Location: http://bigate.com/dfzx.com.cn/bigate.../books.htm</a>

At least they left that there so to be honest they aren't doing anything wrong.

They are simply representing your site for another language.

[bcarl314]

Yep, that freely copied line will kill you in trying to enforce anything. You need to clearly identify what is your content and what is the SPARC content before you move ahead with any legal action.