How do you deal with copycats?

Well its pretty sad, people cant come up with their own things so they feel the need to copy other peoples work, and either dont give them credit, or take credit for their work. So what would you do if someone copied you... how do you deal with copycats?

What I would do is give them a warning or tell them to link-back to my site for the stolen content.. and if they still dont listen I'd simply try to take them down by complaining to their host.

Copying can come in many forums, such as ripping art work, stealing content, etc.

 

Fortunately, copy-cat sites almost always fail, especially when members finally find out what the real deal is, so in some cases it's not even anything to worry about. I know I wouldn't get too worked up over it. If someone copied our site, I'd just let it go, because I and the other staff members know it'll only fail anyway. Of course if it was something like graphics, like I or someone else made, then I'd consider taking action. But as for the forum itself, I'd just let that go and continue on with my own one way or the other.

 

Seems like the reasonable thing to do.

 

Lol this reminds me of ...

gamingisland.net and .com - .com closed and is free to own

But In your case dont report them, just confront them, I know what your talking about though

 

This is just a normal discussion, the one your thinking of im not referring to that anymore. I have gotten past it. This is just for discussion.

 

I've been fallen victim to autoblogs a few times. If you send an email threatening a DMCA to the whois admin contact, they'll deal with it pretty quickly.

 

Yea, that works. luckily I haven't been copied...

 

I have had that happen to me, where it posted all my themes and mods autmatically, but I didnt bother as it was a warez blog.. but if it was onshore then I'd do that.

 

I deal with them as anyone else should. Ask them politely to stop. If they disagree I give them the boot. Meaning I deal with them the hard way. Or I do what Ashely said and do nothing as they are sure to fail. As long as I keep up my forum that is.

 

Yea they usually end up going nowhere, they might do good for awhile but they always end up failing.

 

When I saw a topic on another forum that would be interesting for my members I pm the admin first to ask if I could use the topic on my forum plus I did a link back to his forum where the topic came from
I think it ok to copy topics of another forums if you ask first and the get the ok for it

I have some of my poems copied from a admin of another forum when I asked the admin to remove them I got banned so I went to his host and they did nothing about it , he was with freeforums say no more about that

 

I guess there is nothing you can really do about it except beating him in the long run. Freeforums wont really do anything unless its something severe, or unless you really do sue them.

 

But zetaboard will because Alister by mistake copied so icons and i was told to remove them as i did not have the authors say so but freeforums don`t seem to care what its members do

 

Well thats why ZB is better

 

Yes that is why it is better like one of my themes states
Theme created by vcd of the ZetaBoards Theme Zone ▪ Outline because thats where I got it from

 

If they're stealing my topics, I make sure I add even more threads, and build links so they can't rank well in the search engines. Copycats never succeed on the web.

 

The search engines know which content is original and which one is copied so I usually wouldn't worry about copycats. I think it's best to concentrate on your own site and come up with ways to make it better instead of confronting the copycats site owners. However if someone is harassing you, you can send a DMCA letter or contact their webhost.

Bryce

 

Well i havent really gotten alot of my work out there so didnt have to deal with copycats alot.
But id usually send them an email or something very nicely, and request them tot ake it down or give credit where credit is due. If not well i guess id either forget it.. Or rage

 

There isn't much you can do, it's always going to happen unfortunately.

 

Well, the only thing you can really do is get more links, and more content up. Copycats usually never succeed that long.