I own a website www.ugandatravelguide.com which I started in August 2006 and some internet thief registered a domain dearlead.com in August 2008 and hijacked my design and content. Can somebody help me?

Here is the registration information for the domain "dearlead.com":

Registrant:
Eddy Mueller
21 Da Rosa Avenue
Debary, Florida 32713
United States

Registered through: Mad Dog
Domain Name: DEARLEAD.COM
Created on: 11-Aug-08
Expires on: 11-Aug-09
Last Updated on: 04-Sep-08

Administrative Contact:
Mueller, Eddy admin@dearlead.com
21 Da Rosa Avenue
Debary, Florida 32713
United States
3862591198

Technical Contact:
Mueller, Eddy admin@dearlead.com
21 Da Rosa Avenue
Debary, Florida 32713
United States
3862591198

Domain servers in listed order:
NS1.DNSBOX25.COM
NS2.DNSBOX25.COM


I don't know what you can do about your hijacked content. I doubt that not having a copyright notice on your site would have any bearing, but maybe you could contact the host www.maddogdomains.com and see if there is anything they can do to help you out.

Good luck

Thanks so much for your kind advise. I did write to the owner of dearlead.com and he has not responded.Now that you have given me the details of his host,Am going to write to them right away.Thanks for your help again.

Simply out of curiosity, how did you find out the guy copied your content?

I was checking for my back links to my other site abacus Vacations and was getting some few from Uganda travel Guide site.I was openning each link that was in coming and opened dearlead.com to where its linking my site from only to see my stuff.

Thats briefly how I came to know this internet thief.

Hi Robert, thanks to this thread, I also have been helped with another case of the same I am handling for a website owner.

In my travels I detected that a website that I know of has fallen prey to plagiarism.

It's a thorough job that has been done with obvious care and attention to
detail. It is pure plagiarism and it happens often.

My theory is that it looks like some domainier has ripped the content to
populate a domain - probably with the intention of getting search engine
ranking and then switching the content out later with some fiendishly
exploitative money making machine. This is called "bait & switch".

Here is a copy of my summary to them, it may help you as well.

General advice - extract from article at:
strategicsourceror.com by William Dorn

Responding to Website Plagiarism:

1. Know your rights: Read the Digital Millennium Copyright Act of 1998 (DMCA)
2. Learn about the Internet Corporation for Assigning Names and Numbers (ICANN), in extreme cases, ICANN can help you revoke a website that infringes on your brand name or trademarks. These guys literally run the web. They control and have ultimate authority on domain names and public ip addresses.
3. File DMCA Complaints Immediately. Do this before you take any other steps. As soon as you find duplicate content or stolen content from your site, immediately file complaints with the leading search engines. Although the search engine companies may take a long time to respond (if at all) they have the ability to remove the offending sites from their search engine results. (Google DMCA Complaint, Example DMCA Complaint Letter, List of Multiple DMCA Complaint Addresses)
4. Go after the hosting company (the provider that actually hosts the website). Use a Whois tool to identify where the website is hosted and contact the host (typically an abuse@xxxxxx.com email address). Typically, most companies use a third-party to host their website rather than hosting it themselves. Hosting companies are usually the quickest to respond to complaints because they do not want to be responsible for monetary damages in a lawsuit.
5. Lastly, contact the company itself. I say do this last, because in many cases they already know they stole the content, and in many cases they will not respond anyhow.

Specific Advice:

Host: Tracing the host is a little tricky and sus to say the least.
registrar on record is reported as maddogdomains - be very careful here as
it looks extremely suspicious.

More luck may be had by tracing the DNS and IP upstream.
DNS (host) ns1.dnsbox25.com IP: 72.9.148.20

Information for this is here:
http://www.robtex.com/dns/dearlead.com.html

From there, ALL upstream providers should be contacted about this abuse
using the AbuseEmail information as available.
eg RAbuseEmail: joseq @tailoredservers.com and abuse @tailoredservers.com
etc.

Hope that helps - good luck!

Yes, to emphasize something in excell's list, I'd first read his webhost's Terms&Conditions, see if there is an outright violation in him doing that. And even if not, a complete plagiarized website of that nature, you might get them to remove it anyway, I doubt they want anything to do with hosting something as blatantly illegal as that, even if your ability to enforce your rights has difficulties and possible costs. That is something that can remove his current web presence very quickly, and he will at least know you are onto him, will likely pick on someone else's work.

The simple fact is if the hosting company doesn't respond and you don't get legally threatening there's not much you can do (within the law :P). If you have the resources to sue and it's worth it financially go for it. But unless you have the ability to go that far try your best and hope someone somewhere in control gives a ****. Sorry this happened though man. It always pisses me off when someone rips content you spent months, sometimes years working on.

Yah! - just reporting in that my client sent off the email to the top server company reporting the IP and DNS domain with the details of their website AND the ugandan one.

Both of the plagiarised websites have been completely removed!!!!

Thanks to all here for participating and the forum for making this information available for me to find.

It certainly helped.

Kudos to tailoredservers.com for their prompt and immediate action in upholding their Terms of Usage.

Originally Posted by JustAGuy

I don't know what you can do about your hijacked content. I doubt that not having a copyright notice on your site would have any bearing, but maybe you could contact the host www.maddogdomains.com and see if there is anything they can do to help you out.

In almost all countries in the world, if you made it, and weren't being paid by somebody else to make it, you own it. Displaying a shiny copyright symbol only helps you collect more when you sue people.

http://www.plagiarismtoday.com/stock-letters/

DMCA Notice to Search Engine (Download RTF File)
To Whom It May Concern,
I am writing to you to avail myself of my rights under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). This letter is a Notice of Infringement as authorized in § 512(c) of the U.S. Copyright Law. I wish to report an instance of what I feel in good faith is an instance or Copyright Infringement. The infringing material appears on the Service for which you are the designated agent.
You are registered with the U.S. Copyright Office as the Designated Service Provider Agent to receive notifications of alleged Copyright infringement with respect to users of the Service for which you are the Designated Agent.
1. The material which I contend belongs to me, and appears illegally on the Service is the following:
<<TITLES OF WORK>>
2. The material appears at the website addresses:
<<ADDRESS OF INFRINGING WORK>>
3. The material appears on my Web site at these addresses:
<<ADDRESS OF ORIGINAL WORK>>
4. The infringing material is available through the following search results and links
<<SEARCH TERMS AND LINKS TO SERPS>>
5. My contact information is as follows:
<<NAME, ADDRESS, PHONE NUMBER AND EMAIL>>
6. I have a good faith belief that the use of the material that appears on the service is not authorized by the copyright owner, its agent, or by operation of law.
7. The information in this notice is accurate, and I am either the copyright owner or I am authorized to act on behalf of the copyright owner.
I declare under the perjury laws of the United States of America that this notification is true and correct.
Signed: <<YOUR NAME>>

Google will remove the offending site from their index.

PS: Just for your information - my previous theory proved incorrect. It appears that the domains and ripped content were set up so that the owner could apply for affiliate programs with the view of making money from affiliate advertising.

Absolute Scumbags - all I can say. - And yes the content was lovingly hand crafted and extremely well optimised and positioned for many many years by the original authors.

One of the affilate managers contacted my client to ask them if the fake website was associated with them or not. Kudos to honest and professional affiliate programs as well!

Note for admin - I have a double post that I don't seem to be able to delete or edit, could you delete for me please. Thanks

yea I got this for a lot of images getting backlinked form places in Russia. wtf?

I suggest naming and shaming him to Google and clicking fraud and emailing them the content is not original. Isn;t that what Google considers fraud?

Show your original work and version upload.

It looks like dearlead.com is back to just a site index page at this time.