What to do if your site’s been ripped?
If you are in the web design business, a freelance designer, whatever, you have probably seen rips, been ripped or has ripped. I’m talking about the blatant copying of copyrighted materials, e.g. website graphics, logos, photographs, html code or even entire websites. If you are a victim of such irresponsible acts, here’s what you can do.
Contact the owners of the offending site and ask them nicely to take the site or materials down. You can usually find out the contacts of the site by doing a Whois. Tell them that if they do not comply then you will report them to their web host and have them take the site down. This will normally work.
If they don’t comply or if the site is hosted on free hosting servers, email their web host instead and tell them that you intend to take action if they don’t remove the site. Tell the web host that you will report them to their upstream provider as well if they ignore the case. This will usually get the offending site taken down.
If you then still get no action, send a Cease And Desist email to the web host. There are many templates for the wording of this to be found on the net. You can try this link for a sample template.
Good luck!
Credits
I got most of the information from this forum discussion in Stylegala. Credits goes to this helpful person.
Other Resources
Website Copyright Basics (PLAT4M.com)
Copycats FAQ (Ultrashock.com)
Copyright (Wikipedia)
Intellectual Property Office of Singapore (Singapore)
Posting comment, please wait…
Josh on Nov 18, 06 – 10:33 pm
This is very helpful! Although I’ve never been ripped and I think my designs aren’t good enough to be ripped… Nice site.
Ash Haque on Nov 19, 06 – 9:56 am
Fortunately for me, I’ve never been in a situation where the first tip did not work :)
Aen on Nov 19, 06 – 2:41 pm
Hey Ash, nice bball site you’ve got.
5 days after the debut — AEN DIRECT — Freelance Art Director on Nov 22, 06 – 4:41 am
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