I received an anonymous note yesterday from a site visitor informing me that there was a copycat site of AndrewJensen.net at the domain RBConsultingFirm.com. I’d like to express my gratitude to the visitor who brought that to my attention. Who knows how long it would have been before I would have stumbled across it. I’m usually too busy with clients to get distracted by personal issues; however, this one is quite extreme, and I figured we could all benefit from it. After all, in today’s Wild West of the Web, it’s just too easy for someone to instantly replicate what you’ve invested thousands of dollars and hundreds of hours of time into. So what can you do? What can be done when someone else copies your website and claims to be the author and even have copyright ownership of all of your articles and content?
In my perusal of the RBConsultingFirm.com website, based on the underlying HTML code, it appears that someone used Teleport Pro (a website spider that can download all the HTML, CSS, JavaScript, Images from an existing website in order to build a copycat website) to “rip” AndrewJensen.net. The date that AndrewJensen.net was copied appears to be on Jan 28th, 2013 between 8:37 pm UTC and 9:37 pm UTC (based on the cache date listed in the HTML). Ironically, Teleport Pro was not successful importing all of the article posts into the RBConsultingFirm.com website as I came across many links that were not working.
The guilty party then substituted my name for the name “Robert Blankenship” and swapped out my company name, phone numbers and geographic information for Blankenship’s corresponding information (RB Consulting Firm, 870.514.2217, and Castle Rock/Denver, Colorado).
When I first saw the website (after a Sunday dinner), admittedly, I was quite ticked off. The fact that the guilty party had even taken my banner and erased my name off the graphic, substituting in “Robert Blankenship, Business Efficiency Consultant” made matters even worse. Humorously, my original banner file name was andrew-jensen-logo5.jpg, and the guilty party renamed it robert-jensen-logo5.jpg.
I could go on and on about “relics” still left on the RBConsultingFirm.com website which blatantly reveal it’s a copy of AndrewJensen.net (e.g. it still has tracking code on it that was copied from AndrewJensen.net, it replicates all of my clients’ testimonials/reviews, it illegally copies all of my licensed stock photography, etc), but the truth of the “copysite” is really a no brainer.
So, what did I initially do?
First, I tried to contact Robert Blankenship through his online contact form. The only problem is that I received the email that I had sent! The guilty party had copied the javascript for my 3rd party powered online contact form, so it was actually my website’s contact form that was appearing on the RBConsultingFirm.com website.
Secondly, I tried calling the phone number listed on the site (870.514.2217). However, I merely received a message stating that that number was no longer active.
I tried submitting a comment through the comment form underneath each of his articles. The problem here is that his site isn’t powered by a content management system, like mine. Instead, the guilty party had merely copied all of the HTML and image files, creating a static copy of AndrewJensen.net, so that it appeared there was a comment form underneath each of his articles, but those comment forms don’t work (and neither does the search button).
I checked the WHOIS for the rbconsultingfirm.com domain and discovered that the domain owner has privacy set for the domain. (Even still, today, I sent by email a Cease & Desist letter to the privacy email). While checking the WHOIS, I jotted down the web host (Arvixe LLC), and sent them an email through their abuse support. On a side note, the RBConsultingFirm.com domain was initially registered on January 31, 2013.
I then did a variety of Google searches and … Bingo! I located Robert Blankenship’s LinkedIn profile (http://www.linkedin.com/pub/robert-blankenship/2b/356/453) which led me to his Twitter account. Interestingly enough, his LinkedIn profile mentions he serves those in Memphis, TN (in contrast with the new RBConsultingFirm.com website which lists Castle Rock/Denver, CO). His LinkedIn profile links out to his company website, though the URL has a typo in it and is listed as rbconslutingfirm.com. I sent a public tweet to his Twitter account (https://twitter.com/Robert54923202), but I haven’t heard back.
Today, I sent the following Cease & Desist letter by email to the privacy email address connected with his domain registration:
Dear Robert Blankenship,
It has come to my attention that you have made an unauthorized use of my copyrighted work entitled AndrewJensen.net (the “Work”) in the preparation of a work derived therefrom. I have reserved all rights in the Website, which was first published in 2009 through 2013 on https://www.andrewjensen.net.
Your work entitled RBConsultingFirm.com and which appears on your web site at http://rbconsultingfirm.com, is essentially identical to the Work and clearly used the Work as its basis. As example comparisons, see http://rbconsultingfirm.com/index-26.htm and https://www.andrewjensen.net/tips-for-overcoming-winter-blues-at-work/; also, see http://rbconsultingfirm.com/index-33.htm and https://www.andrewjensen.net/combating-midafternoon-productivity-lull-in-the-office/.
You neither asked for nor received permission to use the Work as the basis for rbconsultingfirm.com nor to make or distribute copies of it. Therefore, I believe you have willfully infringed my rights under 17 USC Section 101, et seq. and could be liable for statutory damages as high as $100,000.
I demand that you immediately cease the use and distribution of all infringing works derived from the Work, and all copies of it, and that you deliver to me all unused, undistributed copies of it, or destroy such copies immediately, and that you desist from this or any other infringement of my rights in the future. If I have not received an affirmative response from you by March 31, 2013 indicating that you have fully complied with these requirements, I shall consider taking the full legal remedies available to rectify this situation.
Sincerely,
Andrew P. Jensen
Sozo Firm Inc.
When someone posts a copy of your copyrighted work online, thankfully, there is a way to submit an appeal to the search engines. Otherwise, the copycat website may be able to hurt your website’s ranking and ability to draw in traffic (and valuable leads/customers). You can inform Google of copyright violation through the following avenues:
- Removing Content from Google (easy to fill out tool/form that narrows down what you need to do to file a removal request)
- DMCA Request for Google (you provide offending URLs and original URLs and wait to hear back from Google regarding their decision)
The DMCA Request appears to require entering a long series of URLs from the offending site in conjunction with the corresponding URLs from your own website. I’ve submitted a basic DMCA Request and have my fingers crossed, hoping I won’t have to thoroughly go through each and every page and post on RBConsultingFirm.com, compiling a huge list of URLs to submit to Google. Time will tell.
So far, I have been unsuccessful in reaching out and making contact with Robert Blankenship or RBConsultingFirm.com in order to come to a resolution with the company’s copying of my website layout, graphic design, and content. It would be nice if they would just remove the site completely, make a formal apology, and begin work on creating their own website that accurately reflects their own consultant’s identity.
If you’ve experienced the thrills of having someone else violate your copyright online, I’d love to hear what you did to counter that. Did you go the formal route with attorneys handling all of the communication, or did you try the “soft” route by initially reaching out to the offender and attempting to make resolution before the situation escalated?
Credits: Bottom photo © dragon_fang / Fotolia.
Here’s a great step-by-step resource for countering online plagiarism/copyright infringement: http://www.timeforblogging.com/2006/12/10/how-to-protect-your-websites-copyright-when-someone-steals-your-content/
Here’s another great How To by Attorney Zak Muscovitch: http://blog.flippa.com/the-dn-attorney-help-someone-has-copied-my-website-content/
I just received an email from the Abuse Dept Manager at Arvixe (web host for the copycat site) which states the following: “Thank you for bringing this to our attention. We have contacted the site’s owner and will update you shortly with the resolution.”
Update (3/6/13): I received an email from Arvixe which states, “The site has been entirely disabled.”
Update (3/17/13) Robert Blankenship tweets to me “no that is not a real company, it was just going to be used for a school project”
Hopefully his school doesn’t penalize for plagiarism …
Thanks for this useful article Andrew. Currently the posts on my blog: http://dailytipsndtricks.blogspot.com is getting copied by http://info.pz10(dot)com whenever i publish a new article 🙁 Unfortunately he did not respond to my comment on his blog and i cannot find his email address or any other info. related to him. So i made a DMCA Complaint to one of my article that he copied. But there are more than 50 articles he copied from my blog, So what do i do now. A small help from your side will be much appreciated 🙂
Based on whois data for the pz10(dot)com domain, it appears that site is hosted through Google Sites. I would try reporting the copyright abuse directly through this form. Select “see more products” and then “Sites”
http://support.google.com/bin/static.py?hl=en-gb&ts=1114905&page=ts.cs&&rd=1
Hey Andrew, pop in to your page when i look for solution for copycat of website contents.
My website itgifts.com.my is 90% getting copied by the meo-electronics(dot)com. I tried to contact their email and they did not respond. Can you provide me suggestion based on this domain? This is very appreciated.
I made this webpage (jswd.us) for my gfathers business and used godaddy.com to host it. It was very simple and quickly put together because they wanted to keep it as simple and cheap as possible. Today, after asking if they ever look at the website I was told that they had another one made so I was interested in seeing what was different between the two. After looking over their page all of the content was the same from pictures to paragraphs, although they did add just a little information. The main difference between the two pages was mine was done completely from scratch through coding and the other site was done through a layout. I am not sure what I can do about this if anything. After spending 25-30 hours on a website writing it from scratch and then seeing a company copy all of my work and working maybe an hour on the site altogether really ticked me off! Any tips would be greatly appreciated. The other site is jacksonstormwindowanddoor.com
Thanks
Dylan, Was any contract signed with you for creating their website? Was any payment made at any time? If the other company “owned” the site you created for them, then they would probably assume they also owned the content and could create a new site using that same content. If the company owned the pictures they provided you with for making the first site, then they would have the right to be able to use their pictures in making a new site. On the site you made, I’m only finding just the single paragraph of text on the about page which was mildly edited and copied over to the new site. I’m not an attorney, but I would suspect there are not enough legal grounds for any formal complaint.
I put up this forum, took me a long time to get everybody to sign up, did the design, paid for the hosting and domain, the whole bit. I had no copyright on it. I trusted this kid from europe to do the maintenance. Some dude came out of nowhere, and I don’t know how, he convinced the kid to copy all my content to his website. They even deleted the content off my server too, but I can still pull it with waybackmachine. They went as far as getting a very similar domain. The guy made himself an admin and demoted my account too.
I have the phone number, address, and all the information about this person. My original content is still on it, but I have no copyright, and no lawyer. I don’t know what to do. I thought about sending a DMCA notice but all that’ll do is force them to move to an offshore server that wouldn’t hold themselves accountable. Any ideas?
Been happening to me for two years! Someone has copied my website on a Google Blogspot. The worst part about it, they have my same name and they steal my content everyday. They have hurt me so badly, I have a Google Thin Content Penalty. Google thinks I am the content scraper, not the person stealing my work! So they are in the search results, stealing my traffic, while I am nowhere to be seen. I had to pay $200 to get them DMCA’d. Google will not even take them down, I have to prove it. Which means I have to list all of their links of stolen content, where the links originated from, plus the first 20 words of content. Ridiculous! They should just be shut down.