Stolen design and content, what to do?
 

Someone has stolen all of my design work including the content.

I contacted their host but they refuse to remove the offending material. They gave me this bull shit run around about how this asshole is a long standing customer and they are waiting to contact him. It has been 3 days and I dont know what to do exactly.

Any suggestions would be helpful.

Name some names and post some urls.

get a lawyer (www.xxxlaw.net) to draw up a cease and desist for your design and DMCA letter for your content and email the host and the offender.

The host is legally responsible if they refuse to remove the content under the DMCA act so you can take them to court.

Send a DMCA letter with a copy to your attorney. If the content is registered you might own them if they do not comply.

I'm not going to post names and urls here. I think this is just some small time asshole with an asshole host.

O.k. contact his sponsors as well if he's using any.

I've done that too...but the funny thing is, on the galleries, hes so stupid that he didn't even bother to change the affiliate ID! I found out cuz I was checking sales records and found his URLs in my sales and then saw he stole all my shit. But before you go saying thats a good thing keep in mind that this kind of shit can get me banned at TGPs cuz it looks like I'm just submitting under another name.

Forget a cease and desist letter, that couls take a while and cost money . Is it a paysite? If so, Contact the processor and let them know the thieves are stealing design and content .Usually once the processor contacts them they will stop or lose their money. Hope this helps.

if the host doesn't do something within 24 hours, you send a C & D also to the upstream provider of this host.

Ask somebody here or on Oprano or any other board to mail you a good strongly worded C & D letter. If you have a lawyer, get his name in that letter. Let them know you are serious.

Hosting companies are definitely on the hook here liability wise as are credit card processors. They have no choice but to take somebody down unless they want to risk being sued too.

Copyright lawsuits are very simple, when somebody has just stolen something that you can prove its yours, open and shut. Which is why most are settled out of court, because the infringer's lawyer knows he's going to lose.

We've found some of our webmasters stealing galleries and the like, and found it really funny when they didn't bother to change out the ID in the code........ Hey, if anyone wants to steal my galleries and use my ID that works fine for me.

"I'm not going to post names and urls here. I think this is just some small time asshole with an asshole host."

... good, for a moment I thought you were talking about me ... tsssss !!