How to Copyright Your Web Site

Take Action — Nicely

OK, so it's a clear hijacking of your work. It is necessary to take action. First, try the "polite approach". Send a calm, reasonable e-mail to the webmaster, assuming the site has a "contact us" address. It could be something like this:

Dear (name if you can find it out or) sir or madam,

Concerning your site lloydsllamallore.com: you may not be aware that you have used material
from my copyrighted site "Llewellyn's Llamasery" (llewellynsllamasery.com). The copyrighted
material to be found at (describe here where it is on the offending site) and extends to
(describe where it ends). You must not use this material without my explicit consent, as
per the Copyright Act. Please be so kind as to remove it immediately and completely.

I will check your site again on such-and-such a date (i.e., a week or ten days), by which
time I expect that you will have removed my material. Thank you.

Now, you are being polite but there's no reason not to be sneaky. Under the circumstances you are justified in copying parts of the offending site: the home page for sure and at least the offending sub-pages. Print it off and get it date-stamped authoritatively. Similarly, print a copy of your letter. This is just-in-case CYA material. If you feel that you may be in for legal action you may want to get a notarized date on your printouts.

You are no doubt aware of the difficulty of enforcing laws of across the length and breadth of the Internet. If the server on which your pirated information is posted is not in the U.S. or a country that has reciprocity with us, you may be absolutely out of luck. In such a case, about all you can do is post a warning about the rogue site on your own and hope for the best.

Amazing! You've received an apologetic e-mail with a formal request to use your material. It was a mistake, then, and you can handle it as you wish.

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