Someone is using code from my website, what should I do?

[AustinKnight]

As the title of this post states, someone is using code from my website austinknight.net. Has anyone had any experience with people stealing code? They still have some of my original links in the code they used; I found the problem through an external link listing in my analytics today. They have used a lot of the same HTML/CSS code for the slider, navigation, and have also used the JS link to my Typekit fonts.

The website http://alvarogranobles.com/ is the one in question.

Any help would be appreciated!

-Austin

[chrisburton]

I could see the issue with Typekit. As for the slider, did you create that yourself?

Not sure you can “copyright” code as you didn’t create it.

[AustinKnight]

I didn’t create the slider, I know I can’t copyright that kind of stuff. I was talking more about how things look exactly like mine (the styling). Everything about the way the slider and navigation looks was of what I have done already.

[TheDoc]

It depends – looking at the stylesheets shows how suspicious it is (they are very similar, the navigation section is nearly identical). Did you get that from anywhere or did you write it COMPLETELY from scratch?

[chrisburton]

Ah so the design. I would ask him to remove what he infringed upon from your website.

Edit: Apparently source code is automatically copyrighted to you once created.

[AustinKnight]

Doc – No, I coded the styling from scratch.

Christopher – Yes, more so the design. It’s all coded so I can’t just prevent hot-linked images because there are none except for the buttons which are image sprites I made. They downloaded the buttons and copied them onto their site. All of the other effects are CSS code.

*Even button 4 on their site’s slider still links to a page on my website

[chrisburton]

I may have read some bad text. Read up on this: http://news.deviantart.com/article/25664/

Wait, they have your images on their server?

[noahgelman]

You can email him asking to take down the website. Looking at how badly he hacked up your design I doubt he’s familiar with copyright laws related to websites.

Another things you can do is lulz and personal satisfaction is to change the web page he’s linking to. Redirect it to gay porn or whatever. If you don’t want to go that route, make a quick “This is guy is ripping off my site, don’t hire him” page where he’s linking to.

On an unrelated note, if you change the line-height on your nav to 26px, you can vertically align the text in the center. I don’t know if you want them aligned along the bottom or not.

[chrisburton]

@noahgelman – Another things you can do is lulz and personal satisfaction is to change the web page he’s linking to. Redirect it to gay porn or whatever.

– Really? I think that is quite unprofessional and unnecessary.

If that person has images on his server in which you can link to on his domain, I would contact their hosting provider for copyright infringement. Who knows, they might even shut his site down.

[AustinKnight]

@ChristopherBurton – You might be right about CSS copyrights, it’s unfortunate but obviously there is some copying going on here. I sent the guy an email, if he doesn’t cooperate with me I will probably go the route you suggested.

@noahgelman – Thanks for the tip on the nav :) I probably wont redirect him to something like that lol, but thanks for the suggestion anyways.

[chrisburton]

Elliot Jay Stocks did this. I remember reading an article where someone showed him a site that was ripping off his logo. He contacted their hosting provider which shut him down immediately. Personally, that is the route I would go for the fact that people should learn not to rip off others without giving credit or even asking.

[noahgelman]

@ChristopherBurton, is it really unprofessional? Yeah, of course it is.

If someone steals a some of my stuff, I probably wouldn’t care all that much, but if you do it as shotty as this guy did, where he doesn’t even change some of the links going to my site (now that I think about it, @AustinKnight, why did you use external links as opposed to local ones?), I personally don’t mind punishing him a little, even at the cost of a little unprofessionalism. I don’t feel the need to be professional to lazy thieves.

I suppose it’s a “sinking to their level” kind of thing.

I guess I’m more offended at the bad attempt of stealing his code than the actual stealing of his code. To take someones code and present it in a terrible way- I feel like it undermines my job or something.

And now I’m just ranting.

[stevendeeds]

http://www.productovirtual.com/ might be the people to contact. It looks like this is the site ‘author’ or pseudo-author in this case. It might not be this guys fault at all. Probably his ‘developer’.

[AustinKnight]

@noahgelman – I feel the same way, but I would like to keep my reputation in tact by handling it the right way :)

@stevendeeds – Thanks, I actually emailed them along with the person the website advertises.

UPDATE: I got a reply from Producto Virtual who appears to be the site’s author. They said they would remove everything; hopefully they go through with it or I will find another route to get it removed.

Thanks for the help everyone.

[noahgelman]

Shucks, you’re right. Likely the developer. I’d go with contacting him.

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