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Stolen Website


ssecor39

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@appolo1: Bear answered this already (and quite well as well) it works on either http or https as well

 

@Bear: Thanks for answering that - You beat me to it.

 

I hope that the redirect is of use to someone.

 

I get HV's site. old files still there. He has a maintenance page up and the client portal theme on WHMCS

Edited by sparky
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Dear All,

 

I need some help with .htaccess stuff. I have had a search of this forum and carnt seam to find a .htaccess code that works for me. I want to hide both images, css, and tpl files but i still want my server to be able to find them i just want to stop people from being able to accsess the files directly for example

 

http://www.domain.com/whmcs/templates/default/login.tpl

http://www.domain.com/whmcs/templates/default/images/logo.gif

 

NOTE: Im running a Apache Server on win32 platform.

 

Warmest Regards:)

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Well it looks like Host Vetern is still offline (good) and the other place (Host Brella) now has a generic looking template with "Consetetur sadi pscing elitr" text and no links on the site working. Why would someone put a site to the public with no links and no content working? Isn't that what folder protection and offline development is for? :)

 

Starting a hosting company is NOT just a matter of a nice design, and a STOLEN design is even worse! In the design world, we all "sample" parts, but to do a RIP is something else!

 

We've used copyscape way too many times to find stolen content from our site. Things like "operating since 1994, before most hosting companies were in busienss" was for some reason showing up on 7 other sites along with other content directly lifted from our site. It wasn't design aspects (other than our logos being modified on some sites, and the same name), but text lifting is a violation also.

 

DMCA is the way to go, MOST people will comply with that quickly, and if not, the hosting company (or data center) facilitating the piracy will take the site down.

 

Good luck to you! Hopefully the repeated incidents are few and far between!

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Hi handsonwebhosting,

 

Thank you very much for your valued feedback and comments. You are dead on when it comes to starting a Hosting Company. Not only does it take a good design, but it also takes unique "original" content to really facilitate traffic and build a following. It is a shame that companies like HV and HB get their traffic by ripping others hard work only to "call it their own". We trust that they are now working on legitimizing their operations and joining the ranks of honest and hard working business owners like ourselves.

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What happens if the person who stole your site is living/hosting it in another country? Is the DMCA a United States law only? What if I am in Canada, and some guy in France or even the United States copies my site? same question for US residents filing against non-US violators.

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DMCA is a US law. If the site isn't hosted in the US don't expect sending a notice will get anything done. That's why piratebay.org laughs at DMCA removal requests.

 

And I forgot to quote, or who said it, but there is no duplicate content penalty. Google knows who published content first and their version is what gets indexed. Duplicate content it much less likely to get indexed, but it will not affect the original content in any way. If it did all you would have to do is create a clone of wikipedia to get it out of all Google listings.

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Hi Apollo1,

 

The following is a direct quote from this site:

 

http://depts.washington.edu/uwcopy/Copyright_Law/International_Copyright_Law/

 

No international copyright law exists that will protect a work in every country of the world. However, several key international treaties that the US has signed protects works from and within member nations.

 

One can hope that as the awareness gets out there regarding this, more countries will jump on the bandwagon and start cracking down on this activity.

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Hi Sparky,

 

May I add your input to my new site No More Rip? I wanted to add it to Design Techniques so that business owners will learn stratagies to protect their work.

 

Just in case someone has missed or doesn't know about the .htaccess to protect files.

This is what I use in the public_html directory

Protects configuration.php, all .txt (lang files) and all .tpl

as well as turning off directory browsing

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Hi Sparky,

 

May I add your input to my new site No More Rip? I wanted to add it to Design Techniques so that business owners will learn stratagies to protect their work.

No Problem Scott just change the domain name from tshosting.com.au to something like yourdamain.com

 

Also I hope everybody that is now using it has changed the domain to their own domain name.

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Two other laws that can be used with regards to the copyrights are the Berne Convention and the UCC (universal copyright convention).

 

We had used the Berne Convention on a number of sites prior to the DMCA being developed. It has helped with not only published works but also with web sites.

 

According to the Berne Convention, once somethign is put to paper the work becomes an intellectual copyright. So a drawing or lyrics to a song, or content of a webpage, are automatically granted intellectual copyright once you write it and put a date on it.

 

The old copyright system was the "poor man" copyright in which people would write material, and then send themeslves content inside an envelope that would not be opened until needed in court. The postmark served as the copyright date.

 

Now that DMCA is in full swing in the states it does take care of much of the copyright issues for the web, but for those living outside of the US, and within countries that adhere to the Berne Convention, you may be able to use that treaty in your legal battles. Some countries thought the Berne treaty was too strict and later signed the UCC, so there's two to help out our world brothers ;)

 

I am not a lawyer, but I have spent a TON of time reading on copyrights form when I first started marking and design and then later web design & internet ecommerce. At all times legal advise should be saught through legal departments. The above information is from my own personal experiences dealing with international parties and web sites.

 

EDIT: there's also a European Version of the DMCA, but I don't remember the name off hand.

Edited by handsonwebhosting
Note about Europe's DMCA
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  • 2 weeks later...

Its been a few weeks now and things have died down and we are proud to say that we have curb at least a few attempts of stealing of our work. Thanks for all your support and efforts to weigh in on this growing problem. We sure have brought light to this subject.

 

We are getting a redirect from www.hostveteran.com every time we access it from our isp which is Road Runner in NY USA. It lands on our site when going to HV. It does go to the updating our website when we access their site from another isp. In any case, we have definately put a damper on the activity!

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  • 2 weeks later...

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