Someone has *cloned* my forum ! What to do ?

[Trimos]

My forum is practicalmachinist.com and some strange person has created a near copy of mine, complete with same forums and even copy/pasting posts and whole threads from my forum to his ! I would provide you with a link to the copy site but a little reluctant to do so as that would increase his traffic. The basic look is different and he has no advertisers other than a Google ad sense thing, but otherwise everything there is nearly identical...except so far only perhaps 50 threads in the General Forum, where we have 31,000....apparently he is copy/pasting posts manually and only sometimes changing the names of the poster.

FWIW, my forum is eleven years old and this one started apparently just a few weeks ago.

Anyone know of any direct contact with Google about this sort of thing ? Seems like this would fall into "gaming the system" category and Google might black ball them, which would essentially kill it if they did.

Or, other ideas ?

[Sadie Frost]

Same thing happened to me, but there was nothing I could do about it. I hope you find a solution!

[souperman]

Best thing to do is to contact the hosting company where the site is hosted and file a DMCA complaint.

You can also contact google adsense to get their account terminated.
http://www.google.com/support/bin/st....cs&ts=1114905

[BirdOPrey5]

I think your best bet is to report the site to both Google and Google Adsense.

How to report to Adsense:

http://www.google.com/adsense/suppor...y?answer=18386

To try to get them removed from Goole altogether is a bit harder but starts here: http://www.google.com/support/bin/st....cs&ts=1114905

Choose "web search" and follow the instructions.

Good luck. :up:

[Frosty]

Unfortunately, you can't do anything about it except contacting the Webmaster of the board. Everyone else will just ignore your email, as they will think that the owner of the other board is your former partner, or an ex-Administrator. Your word against his... Good luck though.

[BSMedia]

Originally Posted by Frosty

Unfortunately, you can't do anything about it except contacting the Webmaster of the board. Everyone else will just ignore your email, as they will think that the owner of the other board is your former partner, or an ex-Administrator. Your word against his... Good luck though.

Thats pretty bad advice, and 100% false.

1. You can file a DMCA, its up to whoever gets the DMCA to either file a counter DMCA claim notifying their web hosting that they haven't ripped anything off.

2. Contact Google and provide them all the information you can: http://www.google.com/support/bin/st....cs&ts=1114905

3. Your site is pretty large, if they have a clone of it you might have some other issues such as a stolen database backup, or some other lapse in security.

[Rapscallion]

I had someone once clone my main forum - including skin and site rules. No posts, just forum structure, rules, and the works. Turns out he wanted to come to some sort of business arrangement.

After laughing at him, I did some research. He was in London, I was further north in Yorkshire.

I sent him a birthday card.

It had a badge from Scooby Doo saying that he was six.

Rapscallion

[usuyusu]

Information in the internet is susceptible of been copied anywhere, by anyone.

Except you have copyright rights of a book, a photo, or something like that, you can do NOTHING except the collegues told before: Complain about duplicity of the information to Google.

But think in the following: What is the "owner" of this information? You?

For example, when you post in a forum, nobody is the "owner" of this post.

You are the owner of a software license (because you have paid for it), the owner of a domain lease (because the same thing) or the owner of a hosting space in a server (the same reason) but you are not the owner of ANY information published in the internet, nor in a forum.

You are not the "owner" of your forum. A forum is a compilation of information published by hundreds, thousands users. Whitout these contributions, you had nothing.

So, if you see your forum is "cloned", please, think on what can be the reason of this "clonation", and try to do it better next time: Maybe you are not doing well with your staff, or even with your users.

Focus your mind in YOUR community, try to do it the best you can, and don't worry about others will do.

I'm sorry but it is my opinion.

[Ziki]

Originally Posted by BSMedia

Thats pretty bad advice, and 100% false.

1. You can file a DMCA, its up to whoever gets the DMCA to either file a counter DMCA claim notifying their web hosting that they haven't ripped anything off.

2. Contact Google and provide them all the information you can: http://www.google.com/support/bin/st....cs&ts=1114905

3. Your site is pretty large, if they have a clone of it you might have some other issues such as a stolen database backup, or some other lapse in security.

Good advice, I second this :up: