What would you do if someone copied your forum or blog?

[Cedric]

Copying someone’s forum or blog is more common than we might think, and it's a frustrating experience. Recently, something similar happened to vBulletin.org, with a site called vborg.vbsupport.ru popping up as a direct copy. If this happened to you, how would you handle it?

A few steps you could take:

1. Contact the site owner: The first step is to try to reach out to the person who copied your content. Sometimes it’s a misunderstanding, and they may take it down voluntarily. Not likely, but you never know.
2. Send a DMCA takedown notice: If the copied site is hosted in a region that respects copyright laws, sending a formal DMCA (Digital Millennium Copyright Act) notice can possibly prompt their hosting provider to take the site down.
3. Reach out to their hosting provider: If the site owner doesn’t respond, you can contact their hosting provider directly with evidence of the copied content.
4. Publicly call it out: Sometimes shining a light on the situation can help, especially within the community. People are generally supportive of creators dealing with plagiarism.
5. Consider legal action: As a last resort, you may want to consult a lawyer about pursuing legal action if the copied content is severely damaging to your brand or business. But know you'll need to have some sort of trademark present.

What would you do if you found yourself in this situation?

 

[Tyrsson]

Or, there are other means..... .. . Juussst saayyyin.. .

 

[Cedric]

Or, there are other means..... .. . Juussst saayyyin.. .

 

[Cory]

Reach out to their hosting provider

I would probably take this route since copyright violations are one of the options on the report form for the platform I use.

 

[Ravenfreak]

I would reach out to their hosting provider first thing, though this can be tricky at times especially if they used offshore hosting that ignores DMCA. If this is the case and the website still won't be removed from their host, then I would spread the word that they stole my website's design to other people. Though this could backfire too, and if you end up telling people and they harass the other site it could go south. Overall it's a tricky situation.

 

[Tyrsson]

What? I mean if they went through all the trouble to offshore to get around a DMCA etc etc and refuse to remove it.... (insert those other means here)

 

[Cedric]

What? I mean if they went through all the trouble to offshore to get around a DMCA etc etc and refuse to remove it.... (insert those other means here)

No that gif was so appropriate after what you said to me on Discord. But yeah, if you have the knowledge, why not?

 

[InMyOpinion]

So I've had this happen to me in the past. I trusted someone I shouldn't have and got really screwed over. The plan was that me and this other user were going to open up a new general forum. They were good at the coding and most of the behind the scenes things where I was more of the posting/threads and coming up with community ideas such as events, contests etc. Before the forum launched the other user asked me for all of my ideas and plans for the website to make sure that I was serious and wanted to open a general forum. After sending this user all of my plans and the details of everything they basically blocked me on everything (including the website) and proceeded to launch the forum without me. The worst part was that I didn't know a lot about forums back then and didn't really know what I could do so I didn't really do anything other than message people on other platforms/forums to let them know about what happened and that I will no longer be opening up the forum I had worked so hard on for the last half a year. It was definitely a punch to the face that's for sure. The worst part is that the user is still active on some other forums and I'm pretty sure he's done it to more people than just me. However, because this issue happened on my forum (or what was supposed to be my/our forum) he was never punished on other forums though I was certain he would do this to other people. He still roams on the forums to this day.

 

[Bawse]

I would lowkey plot on how to crush them.