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If you're going to steal a site, remove Google Analytics

12 points by toast76 ↗ HN
This happens all the time. And it really annoys me. This time it happened to us. The amusing part of this, is that we found out because the moron left our Google Analytics code in the pages. Meaning we were getting all sorts of bizarre traffic data to pages that don't exist.

The stolen site is http://organic-views.com/ and was stolen from our site http://sowhappy.com.au

The supposed copyright owner is one Jake Thompson http://jake-thompson.co.uk/ or at his twitter address @Jakexf

I'm curious to know what is the best course of action in this case? The site and developer are UK based. We're AU based. The client has been notified, but I do wonder whether they paid this creep to design their site for them, and how many other clients he has done the same thing to.

For a guy who claims to be "A young Entreprenuer", I can't help but feel that he's getting off on the wrong foot.

8 comments

[ 3.5 ms ] story [ 30.4 ms ] thread
kls
If it is any consolation I like his font selection for the logo over yours. In all seriousness though, wait to jump to conclusion, in many markets developers form eastern Europe and India where laws on IP are a little more laxed are ripping off site designs and then selling them as templates in bulk packages. He may have thought he was buying a legitimate template from a fly by night outfit. Or he may very well known that he himself was directly ripping you off. It seems to me, a person that had the chops to rip of a site design would readily notice the Google analytics code so I would lean more towards a hatched job by a bulk template outfit.

In either case he needs a cease and desist notice and the company need to be notified that they are in violation of your copyright. I am pretty sure the US, UK and AU all respect each other copyright to a certain extent at least for identity items but my word should not be a substitute for legal counsel.

toast76
I hadn't considered that actually. Thanks for that. I've contacted the guy, so I'll wait to see what he has to say. Cheers!
toast76
Nup. He has most definitely stolen our site.

I can tell this by checking google analytics. Before our analytics started getting junk traffic from the knock off site. We had a quite period of about 2 weeks. We generally only get AUS traffic, but there was a spike of traffic on the 10th of July.

The only NON-AUS visitors on that day were from the UK.

All of them were from Stockport UK. The home town of Mr Thompson.

jgoewert
For a laugh, his facebook page - http://uk.linkedin.com/in/jthompsons

He works for Microsoft. Oh, as a beta tester, you know, the one you just sign up for and get in.

Although, the thing that irks me is "The Dreams Foundation". It is all one big page to try to get you to "donate", but none of them give info about their certification. The videos are from someone not even related to the project and the MIS Orphanage fund is a GlobalGiving project, not a potofdreams or anything related to the guy that I can find. Even the Google Accredited donation uses the standard buy-it-now cart instead of the IRS Certified 501(c)3 Donate cart.

The whole thing just screams "scam". I guess many would consider ripping people off "entreprenurial", but not me.

ari_
Looks like it's down (or it's not organic-views.com), but for future content theft (IANAL etc): Any domain that is either hosted OR registered in the USA can be DMCA'ed, regardless of actual location of the owner or the entity whose content was stolen.
uncompetence
If it is any consolation, I'm pretty sure Mr. Thompson is a 14 year old kid.
corin_
About a year ago a friend of mine was creating a (very small) gaming website, and had created a fairly basic landing page until the site was finished being developed.

As they were between developers, I took their PSD, sliced it and coded it into a basic HTML site, with their analytics.

In the two months that followed, no less than four gaming communities out there stole it as their landing page, without removing analytics - and the best part of it is that it wasn't even a well-designed page, it was REALLY basic.