The Copycat Syndrome - When it Happens to You
If you have a good website for your product and you are clearly successful in your realm, people who want to experience the same success are going to copy you.
Knowing where and how to draw the line is the key and how you draw that line will make you admirers or enemies.
When you find a competitor is using your ideas on their WebPages, that's probably in the realm of fair use. If they are using verbiage directly from your website, then you have cause to ask them to change it. There are a couple of reasons for doing this, first of all, it ruins the uniqueness of your website content. Second of all, your website will be penalized and appear lower in search engine rankings for having duplicate content as another site.
Write them a letter and include a screen shot of your site to end all arguments. You can do this easily by pulling up any WebPages you like and holding the Alt+Print Screen keys at the same time and then pasting the image into any graphics program you like such as Adobe Photoshop or Paint Shop Pro to name two.
That is normally more than enough to compel someone to change their content. If they still won't a phone call will normally do the trick. Speaking one on one to someone will show him or her you don't take being copied lightly. You can find contact information by looking up the WHOIS of the domain name and getting in touch with the website owner.
Most ISPs will deal with copyright infringement issues by simply removing the account of the person who is doing the infringing. If the other person simply won't change their site you can always report them to the legal department of their ISP.
No matter which course you take for contacting the person. No matter how upset or angry you are, hold your temper and be above any pettiness. If you're in the same industry, you're bound to run into this person again and you don't want a tense situation. Be professional and you will find these simple annoyances can be resolved on a whole other level.
Knowing where and how to draw the line is the key and how you draw that line will make you admirers or enemies.
When you find a competitor is using your ideas on their WebPages, that's probably in the realm of fair use. If they are using verbiage directly from your website, then you have cause to ask them to change it. There are a couple of reasons for doing this, first of all, it ruins the uniqueness of your website content. Second of all, your website will be penalized and appear lower in search engine rankings for having duplicate content as another site.
Write them a letter and include a screen shot of your site to end all arguments. You can do this easily by pulling up any WebPages you like and holding the Alt+Print Screen keys at the same time and then pasting the image into any graphics program you like such as Adobe Photoshop or Paint Shop Pro to name two.
That is normally more than enough to compel someone to change their content. If they still won't a phone call will normally do the trick. Speaking one on one to someone will show him or her you don't take being copied lightly. You can find contact information by looking up the WHOIS of the domain name and getting in touch with the website owner.
Most ISPs will deal with copyright infringement issues by simply removing the account of the person who is doing the infringing. If the other person simply won't change their site you can always report them to the legal department of their ISP.
No matter which course you take for contacting the person. No matter how upset or angry you are, hold your temper and be above any pettiness. If you're in the same industry, you're bound to run into this person again and you don't want a tense situation. Be professional and you will find these simple annoyances can be resolved on a whole other level.







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