Best of the ISP-Lists

Site Theft

Members of the ISP Webhosting list discuss the simplest of cyber-crimes: Content theft. What can you do if someone mirrors your site and claims it as their own?

[August 24, 2000]

On the ISP-Web Hosting list in August, EO asked for help with a copyright problem:

"A one-man operation in New Zealand has recently decided to mirror our entire site, graphics and all, and ignores our requests to remove our work. We have sent letters both to his provider and to their parent company, and they are ignoring our requests. What actions can we take to remedy the situation?"

A number of respondents warned that EO faces an uphill battle:

[EL noted] "When you publish information on the Internet, you're basically saying to the world, go ahead and copy this, link to it, whatever. It's going to be pretty tough to pursue action on a widespread basis."

[LD added] "The problem is not the law — it's the cost of enforcing the law. Our legal system no longer offers justice to the average citizen; only to those who have $10,000 or more to start a suit."

BS suggested some solid preventative measures:

"You can pretty easily prevent this kind of thing from happening. It's now possible to obtain tools to create images that cannot be downloaded and/or viewed except on the originating server. Using dynamic pages helps too, particularly if you include some real-time functionality in each page, as this results in a broken site on the mirror. Another trick we've learned is to do some fancy rewriting in the configuration files. There's nothing to prevent you from using 'fajod' in place of 'html' and while this won't stop a knowledgeable user, it will confuse a whole lot of pirates enough to cause them to look for greener pastures. Make your important sites as difficult to steal as possible."

BK added a slightly more radical suggestion:

"What about temporarily putting a virus on your site, and letting them copy it over?"

But a couple of respondents noted some problems with that idea:

[LD warned] "You would probably be liable for damages."

[AMS recalled] "This is exactly how the first famous virus got started, the so-called 'Pakistani Brain' virus. The authors added it to their word processing software to prevent illegal copying. It didn't prevent the determined copyright breakers, it simply helped spread the virus instead."

Finally, a number of respondents noted that a well-targeted letter can do the trick:

[BN advised] "If the provider continues to ignore you, have a lawyer write a letter to the hosting company. Chances are the hosting company will talk with the site owner and have them remove it. The letter from your lawyer shouldn't cost more than $400."

[NU suggested] "First, do some research on international treaties concerning copyright and see if New Zealand is part of the copyright convention. If so, you can enforce your copyright in a New Zealand court, though you'd need to find a lawyer there to work the case. The alternative is to see if you can find a basis for U.S. jurisdiction. For instance, if you can tie a company with U.S. operations into the case, you could sue that company in U.S. federal court. Even if the suit didn't succeed, that would certainly get their notice. Complaining usually works, but if you just send it to some low level functionary, chances are it gets ignored. Do some research, and send faxes to their legal counsel, the CEO, etc. Or send them a letter by FedEx. People pay attention to those."

—End