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One Way to Deal with Internet Thieves
- RossDM 16y agoSpeaking of Internet thieves - check this out: GearSpoke.com Derekfrye.com Badrobots.org Why would anyone copy a website consisting of a single picture? Automated bot scraper?
- techsupporter 16y agoWas leaving the domain name that easily identifies the person whose name and other details were censored done intentionally?
- throwa_way 16y ago"I don’t make idle threats. I have all kinds of information about this person, and I’m going to be keeping an eye on him, this particular domain, and any other domains run by him or his host that access my servers." ^ Still the wild west indeed.
- guylhem 16y ago?? So what's your proposal to deal with such a problematic behaviour? The guy is quite nice - he only made the thieve risk his reputation by the consequences of his own action. He didn't involve anything like law enforcement, the hosting company or the banners network - which would have cost them time thus money. All he did is take some of his own time so that the scraper would get the "accusing" version of the website next time. He fixed that at his own expenses. I believe many of us wouldn't have been that nice. And yes I believe he should keep an eye on this thief, because from what he said (the games didn't play) the guy didn't spend a lot of time on that borked job. For all we know, this might be his full time job - copying websites, replacing copyright notices and authors, making money out of it with banners. All he needs is a process that scales well financially to be a "scamtreupreneur" (Couldn't find a word so I made up one. Do I get karma claims on that word?? :-)) With bots, selecting target websites etc. it might be possible to make a living out of it while true entrepreuneurs are starving in bootstrapped companies :-/
- RossDM 16y agoI don't know if the poster was criticizing the owner's response; I read it as just an observation about the state of things. Also, you're right - the thief got off easy.
- rick888 16y agoThis is interesting, because it works on the same principal as software piracy: The original isn't "stolen" it's merely copied. The original is still intact. I'm wondering if the same people that are so zealous and pro-piracy would be fine with someone taking their site and duplicating it.
- wulczer 16y agoVery interesting comment. For me the line is profiting from the copied content/software. I am opposed to people selling pirated movies on the streets and not so to people downloading and watching them in their homes.
- rick888 16y agoSo, if I copied your startup (website, graphics, and name), and didn't make a profit on it (even if you were charging), it's okay?
- pyre 16y agoThe name would be covered under trademark law, and the website/graphics copying could be considered plagiarism if you are attempting to pass them off as your own. On the other hand, someone that copies a movie is neither: 1) Claiming to be the movie studio that produced and/or distributed the movie. 2) Claiming that they were the producer/creator of the movie. Comparing the two situations doesn't work because the only common factors are that copying happened and that they're both related to the nebulous term 'IP.'
- larrik 16y agoIS IT the same principle? Usually pirated software distributors don't claim original authorship. I'm not saying that the "merely copied" argument is correct, I'm just saying that I think the situations are different.
- rick888 16y agoThe main argument for 'piracy is not stealing' is that there is still an original copy. Just like with the OP's site.
- kapitalx 16y agoone sneaky thing you could have done is to modify your site very slightly so that his site would load your ads instead of his. He wouldn't have noticed ;)
- aquark 16y agoJust adding some javascript that just made sure the right ads are showing would have been a much more subtle response. I wonder if there is a possibility of a JS library that could detect this type of scraping and reserving automatically. Would probably leads to an interesting arms race with the scrapers.
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- russellperry 16y agoYou'd also think a cisco engineer up to such shenanigans would know enough to use an anonymous/proxy whois registration.
- dwwoelfel 16y agoOr use someone else's name, which may be what the owner of the site actually did. How can we know that the whois information is valid?
- rhizome 16y agoI wouldn't be surprised if the advertising provider requires and checks for real whois info. If not, there's probably a business model in there somewhere.
- datasink 16y agoSmall advertising networks are notoriously lax. The ad network in the screenshot, pogads.com, has this testimonial on their front page: "I've been banned from adsense for advertising online with companies offering popups, I registered with pogads as an adsense alternative and I see the real money potential in my service Roger, IL" It's positioned as the first testimonial of several.
- boctor 16y agoIt'd be interesting to hear the technical details of how the switcheroo was accomplished
- zecho 16y agoAgreed. The vigilante content of the switcheroo is whatever. I want to know how he actually pulled it off. The not-so-over-the-top-vigilante-ish alternatives are pretty endless.
- biot 16y agoCheck web logs for regular visits from a specific IP address. Setup alternate site (eg: on a different port) and use firewall rules to direct http traffic from that IP to that port. Make a small change to the site and verify that the copied site is altered. Then have fun.
- datasink 16y agoIt would be simpler to handle it in the application. if ($ip == 'XXX.XXX.XXX.XXX') { require 'poison.html'; exit; }
- biot 16y agoSetting up a new site is trivial to do and allows you to mess around with it without modifying your main site... which may not be so simple as your example if it's based on a CMS or other framework.
- dctoedt 16y agoIf the OP's planted information identified the wrong guy, then that guy, who was wrongly accused of being a willful copyright infringer, might be able to sue successfully for libel. Otherwise, though, one legal irony about this posting sort of tickles me: * Suppose that the (human) scraper were to sue the OP for libel. And leave aside for now the fact that (at least in the U.S.) truth is usually an absolute defense to a defamation action (although that's not the case in false-light or invasion-of-privacy cases). * The OP should win, it seems to me, if for no other reason than that it was the scraper, not the OP, who published the putatively-libelous information about himself. Presumably, if the scraper himself had not copied and published (what he thought was) the OP's site, then the supposedly-libelous information would have stayed hidden in the OP's server, never seeing the light of day. Of course, I could imagine some judges thinking that the case was like the spring-gun cases you read about in first-year torts class: If you booby-trap your vacant house with a shotgun to protect against burglars, you can be liable to a burglar who gets shot, even though he's breaking the law by breaking in.
- jedsmith 16y agoOkay, I'll take the alternative view: this is embarrassing for the OP. What worries me is that the OP found the name Bart Burns on the WHOIS for the domain, and assumed (a) that's who registered the domain, and (b) that the information he found via a quick Google is actually Bart Burns. I can change the information on my domain to be whoever I want, particularly if I'm a scammer. Whatever I put in NameCheap's panel shows up minutes later. If someone doesn't believe me, I'll alter the registration on one of my domains. Just ask. More interesting than that, however, is that the OP is completely aware that there are avenues of recourse for this and that he is technically able to determine who hosts the scraped domain. Rather than pursue those avenues of recourse, however -- said facilities have been keeping the Internet from devolving into a "wild West," at least in ARIN and RIPE regions -- this guy had to take a play from 4chan's book and attack possibly the wrong guy. If everybody did what the OP does, you're absolutely right: the Internet would be a wild West. As an administrator at a very large ISP, I am completely aware that some people lose faith in abuse desk contacts. At my employer, we receive countless abuse complaints and we handle every single one. This is a pattern you will observe in ARIN and RIPE regions, but less so for APNIC and other parts of the world (with exceptions). Particularly for someone hosted with JustHost, a DMCA complaint gets the job done in hours. If it doesn't you can go after the ISP. I was never a fan of the DMCA, but this is a prime example of a use case for it. Above everything else, though, even if the OP is right about the identity of the scammer, calling out the scammer's employment means the OP could be attacking his family. If I were the aforementioned company I'd cut my losses and terminate the employee for bad PR. Now the OP has potentially hurt the suspected perpetrator's family based on actions his family is probably not even familiar with. Because he copied the HTML for a site I've never even heard of. That's icing on the cake, to me, because I protect my family. With teeth. In short, I am totally unimpressed by the OP's vigilantism and I am equally disappointed that it is so popular in this forum. Demonstrating this sort of arrogance to Hacker News is probably a good way to burn your bridges at the innumerable employers and business contacts that frequent the site.
- function_seven 16y agoEDIT: See my response to jedsmith below. I didn't look at the altered site when I posted the following: Well, it doesn't look like the OP has actually done any vigilantism (at least not yet): I simply altered the code of my site so that the next time his scraper tried to access its content, it wouldn’t get what it expected. Within an hour, the homepage and every page of his site looked like this (redacted to protect the guilty) What he did can only target the guilty party, as all he did was change his own site's content.
- prs 16y agoupdating, come back later... The site in question has been updated quite quickly I suppose.
- dangrossman 16y agoI would've just sent the DMCA notice. It's not a "whole process", it's a couple lines of text you copy/paste, put in the URL of your site and the copy, change the date, and email to the host. It'll take you a few seconds to modify and send out. Most web hosts have a specific mailbox for DMCA notices on their contact page or in their AUP. Subject: DMCA Notice of Copyright Infringement The copyrighted work at issue is the text that appears on: [URL(s)] The URLs where our copyrighted material is located include: [URL(s)] You can reach me at [email] for further information or clarification. My phone number is [phone] and my mailing address is [physical address]. I have a good faith belief that use of the copyrighted materials described above as allegedly infringing is not authorized by the copyright owner, its agent, or the law. I swear, under penalty of perjury, that the information in the notification is accurate and that I am the copyright owner or am authorized to act on behalf of the owner of an exclusive right that is allegedly infringed. [your name] [today's date] Never once have I had a DMCA notice not result in the material taken down within 24 hours, even when the host was outside the US. None of them want to potentially be a party to a copyright infringement suit, however unlikely it may be that you'd take it to court and drag the host into it.
- cstross 16y agoNever once have I had a DMCA notice not result in the material taken down within 24 hours I have! The culprit -- whose copyright agent [edit]appears not to[/edit] respond to DMCA takedown notices unless they come on law firm letterhead -- is none other than Amazon.com. (I've caught scumbags selling books of mine online as ebooks via the Kindle store. Amazon don't listen unless you carry a big stick. My solution was to grab the nearest big stick, in this case SFWA's Griefcom process, but something like that's not really an option for most self-published authors.) (In contrast, Apple -- same situation, only in the iBook store -- were the very model of efficiency and helpfulness.)
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- slash7 16y agoGreat!
- citricsquid 16y agoThis guys website is just others content, HE is taking flash games created by others and publishing them on his website FOR PROFIT. I spotted some friends games on there that they are unlikely to gave permission to put on there. Also, he has taken a popular t-shirt design, copied it and then is selling it for profit here http://www.cafepress.co.uk/playitontheweb http://www.cafepress.co.uk/playitontheweb as advertised on his website. If the guy who posted this is reading, where do you get the games from you're posting? Are you downloading them from other flash game sites and uploading them? Are you scraping those sites? I bet it's the latter. You're only slightly less shameful than this guy you're attacking. irony eh.
- pyre 16y agoMaybe this is why he didn't want to send a DMCA takedown notice? He didn't want to claim, under penalty of perjury, that he own the copyrights?
- averageJoe4 16y agoIn addition, if you visit www.playitontheweb.com, you'll see in the right column he prominently features Mario and Sonic flash games, games that make unauthorized use of copyrighted and trademarked characters, as well as game art and sound effects. This guy really has some nerve complaining about someone copying his crappy site design.
- mattm 16y agoIndeed. Perhaps this is more of a case of "what comes around, goes around."
- alanh 16y agoI keep trying to scroll up farther than the page allows
- Quarrelsome 16y agoI don't quite see the argument myself. As a former dancer in the breakdancing scene the premise of "biting" (stealing) moves comes up a lot. After a lot of consideration I came to the conclusion that if you perform something publicly its pretty much fair game for copying. I don't think there is a benefit in spending your time trying to hunt down these copycats. The time is much better spent creating new works. The Open Source world teaches us that product is not just the object the item being copied but the service, the knowledge, the understanding of the product and the ability to create more. For creatives and dancers it's the brand, and/or your name. By all means if you think its worthwhile you can hunt down people ripping off your stuff but if you're becoming tempted to just sit on your prior work and prevent anyone else from touching it you're becoming stale. Case in point would be Cliff Richard who the RIAA like to roll out whenever they want to extend the terms of their copyright because apparently Cliff Richard relies on this royalties as his pension. I often wonder why he didn't/doesn't have to save for his retirement like everyone else.
- m0dE 16y agoYo, where did you used to break?
- DirtyAndy 16y agoDisclaimer: Most of my knowledge of the Wild West comes from the movies. In the WW they used to quite like public hangings, both legal and illegal. Why do you think they did this rather than just shoot people beside a grave and roll them in? As a deterrent to others is my guess. I appreciate jedsmith and others views, and do somewhat support them, but lets say the OP had just issued a DMCA (and it was actioned). What has that achieved. The copier loses his site, so from the OP's perspective for this instance the problem is solved. Until next week the guy registers another domain, and another, and another. And his friends do it too. I bet the guy doing the copying is going to think about it twice next time, and I bet one or two people will have read the blog post and rethought future plans. Don't underestimate the amount of stress, time and legal costs that some people would spend trying to resolve a problem like this. I know this Wild West killing is not the best approach but at this point in the history of the internet I am seeing few alternatives to prevent (ie not resolve post event) these things happening.
- bmaeser 16y agowell played, sir!
- rorrr 16y agoOther fun ideas: 1) Redirect all of his traffic to your site 2) Put an iframe with his site in it. His hosting company would probably shut him down very quickly. 3) Put goatse / tubgirl on all pages (for his scraper only).