Forums and copyrights (forums like this!) and more Qs!

[HerculesMO]

What is the name of your state? NJ

Hi folks,

I run a forum much like this one... it's a car-related forum where people come and share information on how to fix their cars. There's another site now, with similar layout, logo, design, etc... and is *literally* stealing the content from my site and reposting it onto his own.

My site is MazdaWorld.org... I banned a member from it because he was acting like an idiot, so he went ahead and started his own website. Now, he's telling me all kinds of crap like "You are going to be in legal trouble after I'm done!". He put up a legal notice on his new site, "MazdaWorld.net" (which you can read for yourselves) that says something like "any site with the same name of MazdaWorld regardless of conception date" and some other horrible legalese. He didn't even spell anything properly. On the "Terms and Conditions" of my site, I included a little line that says "All forum postings become the property of MazdaWorld.org" before they can register on the site... Not sure if that matters or not....

My site is a hobby... I have Google Ads on it but make very little money, far less than it takes to cover the costs of the site. So I never registered it as a business, because it was just for fun and that was that. While I am not worried about his 'legal' claims... should I be? Is there any loophole he's found (though I don't think him that bright but either way) that could put me in a sticky situation?

And as far as him copying information from my forums and reposting it on his... what can be done about that? Check the Millenia Technical Guides to be specific... there are other instances on the site as well.

Any help is appreciated. I am using this more as a preemptive measure because I don't really want to hurt this kid, but he's posting all kinds of crap about how he's going to end my life and yada yada... so I would rather be prepared to give him a hard time if he tries anything stupid.

Thanks!

 

[BizMan]

I don't really want to hurt this kid...

If you know for sure it is a kid then you can try calling his parents and tell on him. Seriously, I did this one time when I was being harrassed by a 16 year old and it worked.

As far as him copying your content, you can:

1. Contact his hosting company and they might shut his site down. Of course he can always keep getting a new host but most hosts will not refund you when you break their terms and conditions so he might just give up after a couple times. Plus it is a pain in the drain to keep transferring files to a new server.

2. Contact all the search engines his site is in and tell them about his plagiarism and try to get his site banned from their search results (if his site is listed in them yet). The search engines take copyright infringement very seriously.

It looks like your site is pretty well archived over archive.org, you can use this as proof that your site and content existed first.

http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://www.mazdaworld.org

 

[HerculesMO]

Contacted his host, they said I have to contact a lawyer to get it all resolved before they remove any of his content.

 

[seniorjudge]

Contacted his host, they said I have to contact a lawyer to get it all resolved before they remove any of his content.

That is a very good idea.

 

[HerculesMO]

That is a very good idea.

Question is now, how much will this cost me and is it worth the effort?

 

[BizMan]

Question is now, how much will this cost me and is it worth the effort?

That is for you to decide how much your site and efforts you put into is worth.

 

[HerculesMO]

That is for you to decide how much your site and efforts you put into is worth.

I don't make anything off of it... but I don't want him to make stuff of his.

Ah well, I'll sit on it... if it comes down to it I'll have to see what happens.

 

[divgradcurl]

Contacted his host, they said I have to contact a lawyer to get it all resolved before they remove any of his content.

That's BS. Look up 17 U.S.C. 512(c), you can look up copyright statutes at www.copyright.gov. If you read that (very long and complicated) section carefully, you will see that if you send a letter (not a phone call or email) written in a certain way with specific information, they will most likely remove the offending website. Of course, it won't stay down if the other guy decides to fight, but it might send a message.