Web Site Pirates ...

[amz]

Has anyone had problems with anyone illegally pirating the code and graphics from their web sites?

Some hosting company called "SuperShells.Net" at http://www.supershells.net illegally copied our copyrighted content at AMZ Web Hosting without permission.

Take a look at the following page at their site .....

http://www.supershells.net/index.php?content=services

It is a clone of one of our old original AMZ Web Hosting web sites from back in 1997 and in service through a number of revisions until early 2004 where it's recently been replaced with a totally new layout fortunately.

Now click on the "details" buttons and take a close look at the title bar of the popup windows .... The idiots were so lazy in the content theft that they screwed up and left our name on the popup pages !!!!!

Not only that, the popup "details" pages are 100% exact verbatim to the text we originally had in ours as well on most of the popups.

As they are most likely going to change the pages after seeing my post here, you can see a screen shot of their site as it is right now at:

http://www.clubhost.us/stolen.gif
LOOK VERY CLOSELY AT THE TITLE OF THE POPUP BOX!

( 56K modem users can see just a smaller clipped down image that shows only the popup box at http://www.clubhost.us/smallstolen.gif)

Now if you want a reference, the following is a screen shot from the same popup box on our old original web site at AMZ Web Hosting ....

http://www.clubhost.us/original.gif

Gee ... Look Familiar ???

These idiots not only copied our pages but they didn't even bother to take our name off the pages that they stole !!!!!

It's a lot more than just simply HTML code that was copied ....

We embed steganographic signatures in every single graphics file on our web site for security.

More than 50% of the graphics images on their web server still have our signature embedded in the files!

Most of the images are directly copied without any alteration whatsoever!

I don't know about you but I've really don't have a lot of confidence in any web hosting company that has to blindly steal the content of another hosting company to build it's own web site. Are they that inept at programming their site on their own? It kind of pisses me off because we work hard to develop the content for our own site and for our customers and that is sometimes 6 months or more of work!

SuperShells.Net stole our code and graphics .....
has anyone else had problems like this?

--
AMZ Web Hosting
http://www.amzweb.com

[MATRIX]

Have you contacted their Service Provider? :doh!:

[amz]

Originally posted by MATRIX
Have you contacted their Service Provider? :doh!:

Yeah, just did that a few minutes ago.

I traced their server to Everyone's Internet which ironically is located in the same city as us so I could actually go down to their office tomorrow too.

A couple of our members just reported that those guys are currently in the process this very minute updating all their pages and apparently trying to remove our name from their web site.

Several of the popup windows on their web site have already been updated in the last few minutes and I presume they'll get the rest updated shortly .... still doesn't change the fact they stole our code and our graphics!

Still got the screen shot, a complete backup of their site before they started changing the files, and the graphics files on their web server still have our steganographic signature.

--
AMZ Web Hosting
http://www.amzweb.com

[Mandrake]

I think I would've gotten ahold of their provider and gone and talked to them before I posted it here or otherwise made it known. Really catch them red-handed that way! :coolmusic

[Excelex.net]

lets start a mob... *grabs his pitchfork*

[Corazu]

Should I grab a bunch of angry people and start emailing them about it? Angry emails? :D

Regards,
Death Reaper

[phuckedup]

hmm.... http://megawebspace.co.uk has the same layout too..

[Trel]

Your right phuckedup, Megawebspace does have that same design..

Thats phuckedup... haha made a pun! :applaudin

[monsterhosting]

They all look like templates to me.

[amz]

Originally posted by phuckedup
hmm.... http://megawebspace.co.uk has the same layout too..
Oh this is funny. You're right. They've got the same layout as megawebspace.co.uk.

I wasn't referring to the layout on their site though. I'm referring to the actual content of the pages and the graphics between the template header and the footer sections. That is what they stole from us ..... the TOS policy is verbatim, the compare the plans page is directly taken from AMZ Web Hosting, and the popups on that same page all actually said "AMZ Web Hosting" up until they fixed that last night.

By the way, even though they deleted AMZ Web Hosting from the pages last night, they are still indexed with it in Google. Try searching for "AMZ Web Hosting supershells.net" and that will give you several stolen pages back.

Okay, so let me get this straight, they stole our content and our content graphics... even went so far as to "oops" leave our name on the title of the pages and a few places in the TOS but, at the same time also stole the layout style of megawebspace.co.uk and merged it with our content?

Did these guys actually code anything themselves? Apparently Not!

And here I was going to at least give them credit for at least adapting our content into a new developed layout.

Good Grief! How pathetic!

Incidentally, I've re-posted the original old AMZ Web Hosting site they stole to http://www.amzweb.net. It was originally on "amzweb.com" but that site has a new web site since then. I have no idea how long ago they stole our content.

The stolen page content was mainly taken from "tos.html" and "hosting.html".

Hey megaspace.co.uk, you want to jump in and complain to their ISP too? I'm sure they'll really love it they have two different providers reporting stolen content. I contacted them at abuse@ev1.net.

[Webdude]

Well, EV1 isnt too far from you. The 6000 block of Westheimer is just outside of 610....and EVI is right about that on I-59 south. It's a really ugly 4-5 story red brick building on the west side of the freeway..

[amz]

Originally posted by Webdude
Well, EV1 isnt too far from you. The 6000 block of Westheimer is just outside of 610....and EVI is right about that on I-59 south. It's a really ugly 4-5 story red brick building on the west side of the freeway..
Well our support office is actually about 60 miles further out than that. The Westheimer address is merely that of our mail handling service.

Nevertheless, I've got to go run some errands today during lunch around the Galleria area so maybe I'll swing over and stop by for a few minutes .... good excuse to take an extended lunch today. *EVIL*

[Webdude]

Did you get there today? Did it take you long to figure out the girl at the front desk is merely a road block? The one I spoke to seemed already lost as soon as I said "hello", as if I was the first visitor for several months. I seriously doubt she could have even told me what time it was. Then everyone at their desks were staring over at me. I swear I could almost hear them saying

"Who is that?"
"I dont know, but pretend you are actually doing something"
"How do you do that?"
"Stare at your screen every few seconds I guess"
"There's nothing on it"
"Well turn your computer on"
"No really, who is that?"
"I dont know, get off that site, and clean your monitor off for crying out loud"
"I dont have a rag"
"Here, borrow mine"
"Eww, it's sticky"
"Just spit on it"
"Ok, yep, that works. Smears a little."
"You think he's a boss?"
"I dont know, but he's handsome"
"I dont think he's your type, he doesnt look gay"
"He looks mean, like a boss"
"Get to work"
"Ok"

:applaudin :coolmusic :P :banana:

[amz]

*ROFL* Uhm, yeah something like that. :)