They say imitation is the sincerest form of flattery but copying things such as my privacy policy, terms and conditions, etc., almost word for word that it has taken hours to set up, not to mention the time and cost involved for legal advice, is really annoying. Has anybody else had this happen to them?
No doubt you know who you are …
And you really should proof read what you are copying.
Hi Lynn,
I am not sure anyone copied your privacy policy. When I did my policy, I went to a site that constructed it from a boiler plate template. I think many are just copies of templates that people can use.
Just by searching the first line of your policy, you get sites that pretty much duplicates your policy. For example look at this one [URL=“http://www.clearvewe.com/pdf/Privacy-Policy.pdf”]http://www.clearvewe.com/pdf/Privacy-Policy.pdf[/URL]
I think you will see many of these policies that are the same. Except for a couple of contact changes on mine, there are many that are the probably duplicates of mine, since it is a template that is in general distribution…
Bob
[quote name=‘pbannette’]Hi Lynn,
I am not sure anyone copied your privacy policy[/QUOTE]
Thanks Bob. I realise the privacy policy is pretty standard and whether my solicitor found one online or whether it is a general privacy policy I am not sure. Needless to say, I paid for legal advice regarding my privacy policy and terms and conditions before going live with my website and my privacy policy does differ in certain respects from the link you have posted.
The person in question has copied it verbatim from my website.
The privacy policy is not the only thing that has been copied.
A lot of my ideas for my site have come from other sites, some in the same industry as me and some not. However, I have always tried to change or improve on these ideas, so honestly, I am flattered that somebody thinks my site is good enough to copy.
I dont see anything on your website that is earth shattering. Your privacy policy is very short, shorter than most i’ve read.
Guess you would have to be specific about what was copied for us to understand.
:?:
I agree - there is nothing on my website that is earth shattering, certainly not my privacy policy, but my privacy policy is not all that has been copied. There is no need to be specific - I was just wondering if this had happened to anybody else and basically wanted to vent.
And that’s the reazon why I have disabled the copy/paste for my shop, this way if they want to copy it will have to be letter per letter, phrase by phrase, no copy/paste allowed 
[quote name=‘E.Qi.Librium’]And that’s the reazon why I have disabled the copy/paste for my shop, this way if they want to copy it will have to be letter per letter, phrase by phrase, no copy/paste allowed ;)[/QUOTE]
It’s probably too late now but how did you manage to do that?
In the index.tpl file in your skin folder (skins/your skin/customer/index.tpl), just add this code after the tag and before the tag:
and that's it
Thank you. I wish I’d known that a long time ago.
I wonder how long it will be before the “culprit” reads this post and does the same to his site!
[quote name=‘E.Qi.Librium’]In the index.tpl file in your skin folder (skins/your skin/customer/index.tpl), just add this code after the tag and before the tag:
and that's it[/quote]
I do not recommend this. This approach causes a security pop-up message in IE that will most likely scare away customers.
[quote name=‘Lyn’]They say imitation is the sincerest form of flattery but copying things such as my privacy policy, terms and conditions, etc., almost word for word that it has taken hours to set up, not to mention the time and cost involved for legal advice, is really annoying. Has anybody else had this happen to them?
No doubt you know who you are …
And you really should proof read what you are copying.[/quote]
Whom has copied from your website? I’ve had a look at our competitors and can’t find anything really notable?
J.
Even if you disable copy/paste or right click on your site a person can just save the page to their computer and get the information that way.
You can make it harder for people, but you can’t stop it.
Brandon
[quote name=‘Triplets’]I do not recommend this. This approach causes a security pop-up message in IE that will most likely scare away customers.[/QUOTE]
Can you let me know what the message is? I have had a look in IE8 and didn’t get any security warning.
[QUOTE]Whom has copied from your website? I’ve had a look at our competitors and can’t find anything really notable?[/QUOTE]
I would rather not post the name of the site. It is a CS-Cart site in the process of being upgraded.
Put a copyright notice on all pages that are original work. You can then at least send them a threatening letter.
Have you looked at where the other site is hosted? Sometimes you can put in a complaint to the hosting company about copyright and the host will act on your behalf.
I do have the standard copyright notice at the bottom of all of my pages. It’s probably too late in this case to do anything about it but I will check on Monday what the position is - my “other” profession is in the legal field which comes in handy sometimes when you need advice!
[QUOTE]It’s probably too late in this case to do anything about it [/QUOTE]
Hi Lynn,
It is never too late as long as the site in question doesn’t remove the text or images, etc.
What I like to do in these situations is immediatly create & save images from their site and save to my local PC in case legal proof is needed. I do this before I ever let on that I have discovered them. You can also view & copy the “cached” version of the site in a Google search which will show the actual date the page was saved by Google.
Lynn, basically there is very little you can do to prevent these situations in advance, you can only deal with thieves legally after the fact. The longer you have been around & more successful you become, the more these people crawl out from under the rocks.
As you mentioned, you already do have copyright notices on all your pages, so just watermark your images for best protection if you have actually created them & keep a close eye on your competitors, then be ready to draft up & fire off a nice copyright infringement threat letter when necessary, that’s all you can do. And then be ready to back it up if necessary, most start up businesses shy away from legal costs, so it then just becomes a serious game!
[quote name=‘Lyn’]I would rather not post the name of the site. It is a CS-Cart site in the process of being upgraded.[/quote]
I presume that that was directed at me - I’ve upgrade SEA but I haven’t modified my topics/pages since 2006. Not sure what I’m missing here?
[quote name=‘Struck’]What I like to do in these situations is immediatly create & save images from their site and save to my local PC in case legal proof is needed. I do this before I ever let on that I have discovered them. You can also view & copy the “cached” version of the site in a Google search which will show the actual date the page was saved by Google.[/QUOTE]
Done. The last cached version of the site in question was the old site, so I would say the upgrade has only happened recently, but I have also saved the old cached pages as well to show how different they were.
[QUOTE]As you mentioned, you already do have copyright notices on all your pages, so just watermark your images for best protection if you have actually created them & keep a close eye on your competitors, then be ready to draft up & fire off a nice copyright infringement threat letter when necessary, that’s all you can do.[/QUOTE]
I’m not worried about the images being copied as they are readily available on the internet and they aren’t my images to watermark, although there are some I have had to work hard to find or create. Same with the product descriptions - they aren’t my descriptions and are readily available to the public.
The site physically doesn’t look at all like mine either - different template, etc., etc.
It’s mainly the fact that the other pages, such as the privacy policy and similar, have been copied that annoys me. With any website, I would have thought you should work hard to stand out from the rest, not copy - word for word - somebody else’s work.
And I will keep an eye on what happens with the site but will get some legal advice tomorrow.