Working with a cutting-edge technology like hosted VoIP, it’s not hard to find inspiration. We’re constantly pushing the envelope to build a better, faster, and stronger technology for our customers, and we love to hear feedback on how we’re doing. But today I thought I’d share different source of inspiration – one of the more peculiar, mildly-aggravating, but mostly hilarious signs that you’re doing something right:
When “competitors” – and I use that term loosely – steal your entire copyrighted website.
This has happened twice in the past couple months. Twice. Two different websites, two distinct areas of our business, two different culprits, one of whom even had the nerve to advertise their cloned website in Google AdWords right next to ours. Is it becoming an increasingly-viable business practice to steal another company’s copyrighted material and pass it off as your own? To even wave it in their face, if so inclined? It’s as though these guys haven’t heard of the DMCA. Or lawsuits.
The copies aren’t even good copies. They’ve either purposefully, or for lack of skill, taken our self-built, relatively-polished webpages and beaten them with an ugly stick. It goes beyond general design and images – they’ve lifted copy and content directly from our website, then scrambled it to try and hide the deed. On some pages, they’ve even forgotten to take our trademarks and trademarked logos off the page. Any plausible defense they might’ve had does a swan-dive out the window at that point.
This might be something better left to our lawyers to sort out, but we simply couldn’t resist having some fun and sharing these two site-plunderers with you. We realize that in doing so we may triple the visitors to their respective websites, but that’s a risk we’re willing to take in the name of exposing their lack of integrity.
And without further ado, I present our newest friends. You can click on the text links above each screenshot below compare the sites in greater detail. The more you browse, the more obvious the theft becomes.
Exhibit A:
Our FreedomIQ Website
vs.
The Offending Website
UPDATE: This second case below appears to be using an optimization tool (e.g. Google Website Optimizer) to test variations of their stolen site. They removed the original case found, but I’ve updated the text link above the screenshot to a new variation they’re testing out that’s even closer to our original.
Exhibit B:
Our Toll Free Number Service Website
vs.
The Offending Website
Seems like a lot of trouble to go to just to out a couple shady little competitors, but you are right in that this kind of behavior should be stamped out wherever it pops up. I’ve never had this happen to me on a website, but I can relate to the frustration of having hard work ripped off.
It’s one thing to be “inspired” by the competition and to keep an eye on what they’re doing so you can learn from it. It’s entirely different to grab it, dump it on your own website, tweak it a little, and make money off of it. Fortunately for you, these are the backwards thinking jerks you are up against. Heh.
Great work!
A lot of companies don’t take website copyrights seriously, because they don’t think the people they’re copying are going to pursue it in court.
If you’re serious about suing, be sure to take a lot of hi-res screen captures (better than the ones posted here) and get your DMCA complaint in ASAP. I’ve seen cases like this go for whopping damages if acted on quickly, and for absolute zilch if the “offending parties” as you put it change the site / disappear before you can get any evidence in hand.
If you just want them to take down the websites, you should check out a company like http://www.dmca.com, they’re quick and they get the job done for a lot less than any lawyer.
@Tedd:
It’s not all that much trouble. We’ve now developed a SOP for dealing with this sort of thing, so it doesn’t really distract us from our primary goal of better serving our customers. We have had some customers see both sites in each instance, so this blog was partly to preempt future confusion and partly to let our more disreputable competitors know that we won’t tolerate this moving forward.
@Ron:
Thanks for the advice! We’ve got many, many hi-res screenshots and we’ve set the appropriate balls in motion for further action. I think you’re right — these companies just assume they can get away with it on a cost-benefit reasoning on our part. This sort of thing doesn’t happen to Fortune 500 companies for exactly the reason that teams of high-paid lawyers frothing at the mouth would mobilize the moment it did.
Ultimately, the DMCA is in place to protect copyright holders of any size from these kinds of practices. We’re doing what we feel is the right thing by reporting it, exposing it, and following through.
Update!
It appears the latter offender is actually doing site testing (e.g. Google Website Optimizer) and has taken down the site version that was originally cited in this post. I’ve updated the link to a new variation they have up that is far, far closer to our original.