How do you handle a copycat board???

[Liz]

We have an active vBulletin board on Harry Potter with over 2,000 members and one of our newer members decided to start her own Harry Potter message board and went to phpBB - the problem we have with this is that she has copied and pasted all of our forums, descriptions and ideas and is claiming them as her own. This phpBB board looks soooo much like vBulletin it is very frustrating! We have sent her a PM about being such a copycat but do you have any suggestions on how to handle this situation?

We have no idea on what to do about this person. They ripped off EVERYTHING. We have screen caps of her board before our mods started PMing them...so they started to change some things, but they didn't change them enough...and they are still taking things from our board. Even though we've asked them repeatedly not to.

Also.....Have you seen phpBB.com? Are they copycats of vBulletin?? Can they copy all of our features so freely??

[Crimson Bandit]

Originally posted by Liz
We have an active vBulletin board on Harry Potter with over 2,000 members and one of our newer members decided to start her own Harry Potter message board and went to phpBB - the problem we have with this is that she has copied and pasted all of our forums, descriptions and ideas and is claiming them as her own. This phpBB board looks soooo much like vBulletin it is very frustrating! We have sent her a PM about being such a copycat but do you have any suggestions on how to handle this situation?

We have no idea on what to do about this person. They ripped off EVERYTHING. We have screen caps of her board before our mods started PMing them...so they started to change some things, but they didn't change them enough...and they are still taking things from our board. Even though we've asked them repeatedly not to.

Also.....Have you seen phpBB.com? Are they copycats of vBulletin?? Can they copy all of our features so freely??

Yes, PhpBB can. In fact they have a VB template for download. It will probably die out soon anyways since they are feeding off your board. Most members want an exsisting board where they can discuss things not a small board where no one posts. BTW, do you have a link to your board and this persons board? I want to see how smiliar they are.

[CeleronXT]

phpBB doesn't look that much like vB, unless they're using the vB template....

Anyway, handling a copycat can be very hard. I'd say report it to the host of their site.

[Liz]

That's terrible how phpBB just went and copied everything. If you register on a board made by them and click on profile...all the options are the same. A lot of things are basically the same, actually. Yikes....can't vB do something about it?


I have screen shots of what her board looked like when it just opened. Almost everything was the same. Since my mods were hounding her she started changing some things, but not a whole lot. She's still ripping us off.

Here's my board:
http://www.harrypotter-boards.com

Here is hers:
http://www.wronski-feint.com/fourm/

If you guys want to see the screen caps I made....I can post them.

[filburt1]

Originally posted by Liz
That's terrible how phpBB just went and copied everything. If you register on a board made by them and click on profile...all the options are the same. A lot of things are basically the same, actually. Yikes....can't vB do something about it?


I have screen shots of what her board looked like when it just opened. Almost everything was the same. Since my mods were hounding her she started changing some things, but not a whole lot. She's still ripping us off.

Here's my board:
http://www.harrypotter-boards.com

Here is hers:
http://www.wronski-feint.com/fourm/

If you guys want to see the screen caps I made....I can post them.

The girl's an idiot for having that many forums with so few members anyway. I'd suggest contacting the host (intellectual property copyright violation) and then adding the copycat's URL to the words to censor list at your forums.

[Crimson Bandit]

Originally posted by filburt1
The girl's an idiot for having that many forums with so few members anyway. I'd suggest contacting the host (intellectual property copyright violation) and then adding the copycat's URL to the words to censor list at your forums.

That would work. All i see on this board is a standard PhpBB subsilver template...It doesn't look all that active. I don't think you have much to worry about.

[ManagerJosh]

You could threaten a lawsuit (hollow threat) but it usually scares people.

[Liz]

Awesome suggestions! Thanks you guys. I banned her URL...whew, sheer brilliance.

We're not worried about her board taking off or anything, we're just seriously annoyed that she thinks she can just take things, copy and paste all of our ideas. We've been open for over a year and we've worked on everything nearly daily while she just waltzes on over, takes our blood and sweat and just pastes it all onto a freebie board in one day, thinking she could get away with it. Grrr...

What really pisses me off is that this isn't the first time. During the year we have been open we've had at least 17 copycats. Ugh, can't these people get a life? lol.

If you guys have any more suggestions I'm all ears!!!!!!

[Joe Page]

You can't say someone is a copycat just because some of the forum names are the same, it's a free country. I thoughtt you meant that the design was the same. I'm not being mean but I don't think there is enough copied to take legal action. If the girl copies your design, then take action. There are many boards with the same names of forums, e.g how much is "Welcome Room" used?

[Liz]

Hang on, how do we know who's hosting her?

[CeleronXT]

Hosted by www.cyberpixels.com.

[Joe Page]

Originally posted by Liz
Hang on, how do we know who's hosting her?

I think there is some sort of search that you can do, I'm not sure about the URL though.

[Liz]

Originally posted by Joe Page
You can't say someone is a copycat just because some of the forum names are the same, it's a free country. I thoughtt you meant that the design was the same. I'm not being mean but I don't think there is enough copied to take legal action. If the girl copies your design, then take action. There are many boards with the same names of forums, e.g how much is "Welcome Room" used?

That's not exactly what we meant. She's taking all of our ideas. For instance: the wand sorting...she took ALL of our wand types and descriptions, copied them EXACTLY and posted them on her board. Sure she gave us credit, but she never asked to use them. And she only credited us after my mods *****ed her out. She's ripping us off in so many ways.

And actually...that whole thing about the same forum names isn't exactly true in the Harry Potter world. There are actual books on all the people, places and things in HP...and she could come up with her own, with different topic heads and different sections. Rather than using the one we chose.

She claims that she had "no idea" that she ripped us off. If you want me to I can show you those screen caps I have been talking about and show you how much she took from us before we started complaining.

[Liz]

Wow, CeleronXT...magic fingers. How'd you find that out? lol and thanks!!

[CeleronXT]

Originally posted by Liz
Wow, CeleronXT...magic fingers. How'd you find that out? lol and thanks!!

domain: wronski-feint.com
status: production
origin-c: [email protected]#0
owner: Becca Sands
email: [email protected]#0
address: -
city: -
state: -
postal-code: -
country: US
admin-c: [email protected]#1
tech-c: [email protected]#0
billing-c: [email protected]#0
nserver: ns1.cyberpixels-12.com
nserver: ns2.cyberpixels-12.com
registrar: JORE-1
created: 2002-12-02 03:47:32 UTC JORE-1
modified: 2002-12-03 12:38:17 UTC JORE-1
expires: 2003-12-01 21:47:19 UTC
source: joker.com

cyberpixels-12.com is one of their servers, numbered, for the shared hosting, so I got rid of the -12 and voila. :P

EDIT: Oh, by the way, that's whois information, obtainable here, and no problem. ^_^