Website Ripoff?

[Mack Justice]

Beckers website
http://www.angelfire.com/wa2/platinum1/Plan.html

Baby Safes wesite
http://www.babysafecc.com/sample.htm

 

[Bruce Humphrey]

Yepper those pages do look the same. But I could not get to either page from their main pages.

How did you find them?

 

[Guest]

So which came first?
aND

ARe the people from BABYSAFE gonna start posting pics of their vacation and their fishing trips, cos if they are you can kIll me now!

 

[steve frasier]

if you start really looking around you would probably be surprised at what you find

 

[Becker]

LOL, The top one is mine.

Wow, that little sample page was so good that someone wanted to steal it?

I wonder if they will pay my bill when sent to them.

I'm gunna go out on a limb and say they took it from me.

Registrant:
PLATINUM PROFESSIONAL CARPET CLEANING
7932 150th ST SE
Snohomish, Washington 98296
United States

Registered through: GoDaddy.com, Inc. (http://www.godaddy.com)
Domain Name: CALLPLATINUM.COM
Created on: 27-Jan-00
Expires on: 27-Jan-11
Last Updated on: 27-Oct-07

Administrative Contact:
BECKER, DONALD platinum99207@yahoo.com
PLATINUM PROFESSIONAL CARPET CLEANING
7932 150th ST SE
Snohomish, Washington 98296
United States
4253374045 Fax --

Technical Contact:
BECKER, DONALD platinum99207@yahoo.com
PLATINUM PROFESSIONAL CARPET CLEANING
7932 150th ST SE
Snohomish, Washington 98296
United States
4253374045 Fax --


-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Domain servers in listed order:
NS25.DOMAINCONTROL.COM
NS26.DOMAINCONTROL.COM

Registrant:
Baby Safe Carpet Cleaning
2350 N Terry St #77
Eugene, OR 97402
US

Registrar: DOTSTER
Domain Name: BABYSAFECC.COM
Created on: 27-JUL-06
Expires on: 27-JUL-08
Last Updated on: 07-JUL-07

Administrative, Technical Contact:
Reno, Mike sales@duckccc.com
Baby Safe Carpet Cleaning
2350 N Terry St #77
Eugene, OR 97402
US
541-461-7210


Domain servers in listed order:
NS79.WEBSITEWELCOME.COM
NS80.WEBSITEWELCOME.COM

 

[Becker]

Just goes to show ya the only one that looks at Carpet Cleaning web sites are other carpet cleaners.

Ha Ha.



I've had a couple of people ask me to use the format before, but never Reno.

I really need to pull the trigger and have our Web site building buddy redo mine!

 

[The Great Oz]

Don, Did you pay to have the drawing done exclusively for you or do it yourself? If not, the owner can sell it as many times as they want.

Otherwise, the similarity of the web pages is pretty obvious.

 

[Blue Monarch]

I always liked that page on Beckers site. Gives a pretty clear picture of what to expect.

 

[Becker]

:shock:


Dirk is the only one that ever asked for permission to use it.

I think I sold him the rights for the 1/2 drank glass of coors light in his hand.


I built the site and page myself.
I must admit, I took a lot of it apart to rebuild and have yet to do it.. to busy. I need to hire someone.

But clearly Reno liked what he saw and took it word for word.

Even the same measurements.

 

[Guest]

I remember seeing that quite a while ago.

I thought about using it but couldn't remember who it was that had it.

 

[Kelly]

Ive seen intellectual property stolen so many times in this industry in just the last couple of years, that Im beginning to think that the prerequisite for becoming involved in the carpet cleaning industry is to be a thief of some sort.

 

[The Great Oz]

That answers the copyright question.

I'd think it would be embarrassing when you get caught, but there have been a few cleaners that were angry when told that they couldn't steal ad work and use it for free. They seem to think that if they are in a different market and don't directly compete it doesn't matter.




PS: Many years ago a local competitor told the YP salesman that he wanted to use our ad, just change the name and phone number. It wouldn't have been funny if they'd printed it.

 

[Greg Loe]

I use that on my site too

 

[randy]

copy cats, LOL

That doesn't meet the requirements for intellectual property or even a copyright case (if the web page was even copyrighted). There only has to be a little bit of difference to " rip off" someone else's work. It's conceptual in nature and that makes it pretty tough to argue. One of my residential sales letters has been cut and pasted so many times by a local competitor that it is historical. He only uses bits and pieces, so it's legal, the funny thing is we don't even use the letter anymore so he could have had it for the price of a courtesy phone call.

Some of these copy cats end up copying promotions that failed, and other outdated work.

 

[Becker]

LOL, know much about copyright law or what it takes to copyright something Randy?

Any original work, with some sort of history as to when it was put in to use qualifies it as copy written. Proof of creation.

You don't need to register it, dang imagine if you did.

Reno clearly took the copy from my site word for word and the photo and placed it on his site.

Further more, Reno is using my product to create income.

It is up to the owner of the copywritten goods to enforce their copyright.

Now, are the Copyright police gunna chase him down? NO
Am I going to lose any sleep over it or enforce my copyright? NO, could I and win... Clearly YES! Am I going to no.

Of course the professional thing for Reno to do was to ask 1st. As a few have now.

I think it is kinds shady to do what he did, but oh Fing well.
What he should have done was to create a floor plan himself, and use my format as a reference to create his own.