Copyright law - help!

[martin-s]

So a while ago a job was posted on Freelancer.com looking for someone to scrape our website. We went through their process and had the job taken down, but unfortunately not before it was completed.

As yet, Freelancer.com have refused to provide any details about the buyer or seller of that job and are non-responsive to correspondence.

A twist in the tale today, a site has gone live with some of the scraped content, including links which still contain our utm parameters and photos that include our logo watermark.

Does anyone have any advice about:

1. Getting our ducks in a row and collecting evidence
2. Our legal options and likely outcomes

The website stealing our content is a top 10,000 UK site on Alexa, established for nearly 20 years and with dozens of staff on LinkedIn. They should know better.

@Admin - any chance you could correct my copyright typo in the post title please?

 

[JMI]

You probably already have but start documenting the whole process thoroughly.

 

[anderow]

Contact Google and submit a copyright infringement claim, with your URLs and their URLs. I have had content removed from index for this. Also foilow this guide and submit a DCMA
https://www.businessknowhow.com/internet/copy.htm

 

[Admin]

Very simple. DMCA takedown via Google with have it gone by tomorrow. I wrote this some years ago but its probably still up to date/accurate

https://www.misterweb.co.uk/dmca-service/

 

[martin-s]

What if I wanted to go more legal than that? What other options are there?

 

[Adam H]

Give Adam Taylor a call at Adlex, Very knowledgable and helpful, sure he will have the correct answers to your questions.

 

[aZooZa]

I wouldn't suggest rushing to Adam Taylor quite just yet even though I can highly recommend him from personal experience. Initially, I'd take the DMCA advice that @Admin and @anderow have suggested. You must be absolutely furious - I would be too. Best of luck!

 

[anderow]

Good advice. But if a DCMA is submitted and a lawyers letter fired off, it can do wonders to prevent a reoccurance of such behaviour!

 

[donton]

Agree 100% with aZooZa.

Can voucher for Adlex myself, and in the past I would have had Adam on the case with little hesitation.

Having been round the block a few times now though, I am much more pragmatic about things. Essentially the internet is the Wild West, and things like this do happen, sadly.

The outcome you desire, I assume, is for said content to be removed and a shot across the offender’s bow.

You can do this with a DMCA takedown request to Google and a firm but polite email pointing out they’ve stolen your content, some it is watermarked etc.

It’s a much better idea to do this yourself than to pay a solicitor hundreds of pounds to do exactly the same thing.

If the company scrape your content again or refuse to comply and remove the offending content, that’s when you involve a solicitor.

As tempting as it is, DIY is the best approach unless you’re met with ignorance or belligerence. Otherwise costs mount up and it’s completely unnecessary.

 

[martin-s]

Useful feedback everyone, thanks. I've contacted the website with evidence and a takedown request this morning, followed by DMCA requests to Google and CloudFlare. I'll keep Adlex as a backup option for now.

 

[BREWSTERS]

What's the name of the website stealing your content? Can you post it without identifying it? Other users may have had / may have issues with them and it'll help all if there's a pattern.

Is there any firm offering no-win-no-fee for this sort of thing? It's sort of a slam-dunk when they're using watermarked material.