Our rights concerning a competitor that has stolen our content

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newguywithquery

New Member
Hi,
I think I know the answer to this from doing a bit of reading up on the subject but basically what are the rights of the original content creator in Ireland (ROI) regarding a competitor completely ripping off and stealing all our content?

This guy has not only stolent all our content but also replicated it across two of his websites. He also uses it in his multiple accounts on ebay auctions too.

I know 'in theory' google should be punishing him for this but it doesn't appear so, since the scale of his theft is outrageous, his websites should be de-listed in our opinion.

From the bit of research I have done, I find that even though he has at least two .ie domain names that rip us off, he has the servers actually based in Lithuania, I know that's probably not a great idea anyway from an SEO standpoint but makes our issue especially tricky across internation borders.

I know someone is going to say, send the hosting company a mail but in all seriousness, do you really think that is going to have any impact at all?

What I really need to know is our rights in Ireland/EU. Do we have any at all? It doesn't seem that google would be overly approachable as their DMCA process insists that you file a report on each offenging page individually, which would mean around 600 pages each on both of his websites. I can't say I fancy that to be honest. Seems like it's not really designed for wholesale theft of content. Is there a way to report to google an entire website in one go?

I don't want to name the offending sites here as legal proceeding may follow in the future.

I just basically want to know, is there anything realistic we can do or do I really have to just put this one down to experience and just let this thief off the hook?

Thanks in advance (fingers crossed)
 

mneylon

Administrator
Staff member
What kind of content are we talking about?
Text?
Graphics?
What?
 

newguywithquery

New Member
Hi,
thanks for replying. It started with just the pictures we noticed ages ago but in all fairness a lot of what we sell on our website is general stuff that the images can be picked up on google images at any time so we didn't worry too much about that.

We then noticed him copying some of our content (text) into his first website but only on a small scale, so didn't worry about too much either.

All of a sudden then, a lot of his first site's products were clones of ours, then shortly after that out of the blue a new (additional) website appeared which pretty much word for word (product wise) copies ours. After further investigation of the issue we find that he also runs several ebay accounts selling his products but using our content.

I know it's difficult to have unique content regarding the same products, you know for exapmple a ream of paper is just a ream of paper (not what we do) but our content is completely unique as regards our industry from any site we have seen in the world. The information we provide on our products, both in quantity and quality is what makes us unique and this is what has been ripped off.

I'm sure he would have 'knocked off' more only once we saw him stealing our images, we started watermarking every image and document we could think of on the site.

As I say, I suspect that we'll just have to grin a bear this and hope karma gets him in the end. It just seems extremely unfair that someone not just us could spend over 3 years developing a site to the level we are at now and then someone could just come along and basically nick what they want from it without consequences especially a direct competitor in the same country. What's right and what's law doesn't always line up though unfortunately:)

Hopefully someone can tell me my lack of faith here is mis-placed!!

Thanks.
 

mneylon

Administrator
Staff member
If the images are yours then it doesn't matter that they've in Google images or not. That's irrelevant.
The text content is also your copyright (unless you've released it under a CC license)
 

newguywithquery

New Member
what would you suggest that we can do that is actually likely to see some results. Call me a pessimist but I can't see emailing the hosting company in Lithuania doing much good.

I was hoping that there was something we could go with google on a wholesale/blanket report rather than do it page by page. Does such a process exist at all? Do they even pay much attention to reports in the EU at all? From my reading up on this, if we were in the States, I think we would have more joy.
 

newguywithquery

New Member
Hi,
not yet, we are just getting all the evidence together and have talked to a couple of folks in the know. He will be getting a letter in the very near future. Those we showed it to, said it is completely outrageous . Whether any good will come of it, we'll have to see but we will be taking action very soon.

Cheers.
 

paul

Ninja
DMCA is only for the US. So the hosting company won't have to comply per se, but most good ones else where will still take it seriously.
 
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