Competitors Stealing Content

Have you ever had competitors of your forum steal content from your website or forum, perhaps on a regular basis?

If so, how did you react, and what has been the end result? Have you ever sought legal action?

 

Ideas were stolen. Not content.


Let say you thought of a really nice way to handle a problem that you did not ever see anywhere else. And you showed one particular person, then the idea showed up on a competing site. It is like that.

I was not too happy.

 

Most of my ideas and updates have been stolen or copied by my main competitor, but they get ridiculed because everyone knows where the ideas originate from.

 

I don't think I'd be annoyed all that much. You just have to do it better, and if someone can give me a truly unique, new idea, I'll give them 50p.

 

I've had several sites copy posts, word for word, to their site. I don't mind if it is a few sentences and they link back to us as the source. But a few I have sent DMCA notices since they just copied all, or a lot of content.

My members are always good about find out who did it.

 

I've had an unique competitor a few years ago...

They copied every file off our site, copied our staff (Accounts, profiles), and spent time filling out a bunch of threads with various posts, pretending to be us.

They were releasing our files with viruses attached to them, and were managing to get a large amount of the gaming community our site targets.

They did the same for two of our competitors as well.

 

The broke into the site and downloaded the files and database? Not good.

What happened to them?

 

No, they downloaded all the files (They're open to the public), and they went through and made accounts on another site trying to say they were us (My staff and I).

The most we were able to do was get them shut down by their host, and matters were mostly left to their host, which means nothing was done to them really.

 

At least they did not make a mess of your hosting account. That would be more disturbing to me.

 

no, that has never happened to me, although my competitors recently got in trouble for using graphics from someone elses website

 

My site is design for openly giving away my ideas... But since most of my ideas are home brew it tough to steal the ideas... But so far I've had several people give me kudo's and donations just for making the information public so they can use it.

Matter of fact I designed a mod for a diesel engine and now have people producing the mod for sale. The only thing I requested my ideas stay mine you can produce it but always give me (the site) the credit of figuring it out in the first place... Kind of like open source code... :devil:

 

If you mean "steal" as in copying your content word for word then the best way to deal with that is hit them where it hurts : GOOGLE

they will be blocked by google

 

off course that is a normal practice and I don't get annoyed. But that's a wonderful thing thing that if any of our users do the same thing with those who copy ours; they come up with a complaint and start arguing with member who has posted that content. Infect I am admin and they should send a request to me first if any don't make any decision then they should try to indulge in arguments with that member.

So, how I handled it?? I have made an anti Harassment Policy. My team and I constantly monitor the posts and if some try to harass our members I give the intruder a warning and if he/she continues I ban them or remove them from data base.

 

Of course notify your members that they are taking things and provide proof. (Make sure it's content, not ideas.)

The members will know which one is the better forum to join.

 

Off course did the same!

 

I would not mind a competitor using some of my posts as long as they cite them properly and provide a link to the original post where such was lifted from. It is a totally different story though if they claim that the content is of their own and their original work. Though it would be hard to apply for copyright rules over the internet, there are ways on how you can get back at them as plagiarism also applies to anything on the web.

 

The idea of my: Warboss instead of Admin has been stolen by a competitors forum.