Many moons ago, I decided to be a bit unique when I built the trek section of my website. I posted parts of my naming project, posted my models, posted my posited future history (which I need to revise slightly, I believe)...& posted a copy of Chris Gray's Starfleet General Orders that I had modified to suit myself. Even though they'd been modified, I still gave him the appropriate credit.
The unique element, though, was that I took the US Uniform Code of Military Justice & adapted it to fit Starfleet. It was difficult...required tiny edits in places, & it's HUGE. But it was unique.
I checked my site stats tonight & found an odd link to my site. The tracker tracked it as MY page coming from another site. I went & looked...& sure enough, the fuckers ganked my content completely! All they did was replace my lovely utilitarian Dave Schmidt-inspired logo with their shitty "Oh, I've got a bitchin' graphics program!" one & remove the quicklinks to the rest of my site that were at the bottom. NOTHING else has changed. The call out to MY tracker is still in the fucking source code AND the "origin" link still leads to my site!
A quick search of this shit-ass site (built by webmaster "Commander Rabb"--oh, how fucking original!) showed a bunch of other ganked "resources", including the General Orders from some shit-ass AOL sim group (including reference to no contact from some member of theirs).
This is my UCMJ page; this is theirs. Note the MASSIVE differnces.
My question to any of you who've had to deal with this is what the best approach to dealing with this asspipe is, & how to best insure it doesn't happen again (short of hauling it all off the web).
Posted by The_Tom (Member # 38) on :
I'm sure Goffy will arrive and post a link to the Starfleet Copywrite Protection Agency in short order.
What, he won't?
Posted by TSN (Member # 31) on :
Don't anyone tell Tom that this isn't 1998 anymore. It'll shatter him.
Shik: How to deal w/ it would most likely be to contact whoever provides their Web space. 8m.net redirects to freeservers.com. That site has a link that says "Report Abuse and Spam". Tell them what's up. One would hope they'd do something about it. If not, I'm not quite sure what to do. Someone else will have to come up w/ something.
Posted by PsyLiam (Member # 73) on :
I'm not sure where you stand from a legal viewpoint. Do you actually own anything you put up on the web, or does it become the property of your ISP or web-space provider?
Posted by Cartman (Member # 256) on :
There's really not much you can do without sliding dangerously far down the slippery slope of the Net's shadier, erh, aspects.
Anyway, be sure to give their webhost and/or ISP a heads-up.
Posted by PsyLiam (Member # 73) on :
Well, assuming you are talking about hacking his site/sending him a virus/shagging his mum, there are certainly things you can do before you get to the illegal areas. Contact his ISP and web-space provider would certainly be a start. Also, try e-mailing him and asking him to remove it, in polite language. If he swears at you, then enclose a copy of the two e-mails to the ones you send to the ISP/web-hosting provider.
Posted by Harry (Member # 265) on :
Tell the 'webmaster' (read: ripper) you found out, ask him to remove his stuff. And if he doesn't like that, mail his ISP and get the whole legal train running.
Quote something from the Starfleet Code of Copyright Justice. He'll probably believe you.
Posted by Harry (Member # 265) on :
I noticed he did link back to your site. I think this could be the kind of webmaster who thinks your stuff is public domain.
Posted by MinutiaeMan (Member # 444) on :
Hmm... this is tricky because the original code of military justice is not yours... so legally, I'm not sure if there's really something here.
I'm certainly not saying that you don't have a reason to be pissed... I would be too.
On the other hand, I believe that it's been decided that HTML coding can be copyrighted -- and since this guy basically copied your entire page, that's definitely theft there.
I'd suggest sending a letter to the webmaster first (assuming there's an e-mail link available) and firmly tell him to remove the offending material. I'd recommend not insulting the guy here, but just tell him that the stuff is yours and that he'd better remove it before you contact his service provider. (But maybe I'm just too nice of a guy.)
I took a quick look through your page to see if there was an explicit copyright statement. One of the things I did when I started my site was to put up a specific page that said, in effect: "Star Trek belongs to Paramount, but I created a lot of this stuff. Go ahead and borrow excerpts from the site, but give credit where it's due. Don't steal."
But then I noticed the little blurb that you put, which says the same thing: "Free to use by simmers, modelers, and other geeks...as long as I get due credit." Now, this guy did NOT give the credit, even though it's specifically mentioned! That certainly gives you some justification.
I'd never seen that particular page before, Shik. That's a very cool idea, adapting the Code of Military Justice to Trek. Though I'm more interested in international diplomacy, I did the same thing a couple of years ago: Efound here. I always thought that Franz Joseph's treaties were oversimplified and unintersting, so I wrote a new treaty to end the Earth-Romulan War based on the armistice agreement that ended the Korean War, along with some surrender documents from the Dominion War based on those from World War II.
Posted by Shik (Member # 343) on :
Hmm. So the general consensus is just ask. 'S what I thought, but I wanted t'make sure there wasn't another course of action.
MM: thanks on the idea kudos. I'm a fan of "JAG" & the idea in Starfleet has always intrigued me. It was the little things to change that were annoying: deletion of any mention of a Marine Corps, changing dates to stardates, removing mentions of a nation & adding "Federation Member World, Protectorate World, or Administrative Region" in its place, removing any form of sexism or racism from the punitive articles, & altering some of them. I removed one, replaced it with genetic engineering, & added a special codiscile to the "disobeying orders" article that deals with violating General Order 7. Articles 98 & 98a, respectively, I believe.
Posted by Shik (Member # 343) on :
Right. So I emailed him, & this is what I sent.
Dear Sir:
I am the webmaster and owner of SKYNJUN.COM, and the primary site contained within. Recently, it has come to my attention that you have taken from my site webcontent that does not in any part or parcel belong to you. I am, of course, referring to the full-out listing of a conjectural United Federation of Planets Uniform Code of Military Justice.
On my site, I have an established provision that the content is free to use by all provided there is ample and applicable credit for the modifications and work contained therein. However, not only has my perusal of your..."acquisition" shown no such notation of due credit, the very page has mere minimal and decidedly cosmetic changes from that of my original code. Indeed, the method in which I became aware of your "selection" of my work is that the piece of coding that allows my site statistics tracking program to see the page is still embedded in the code. Furthermore, the remaining link on the page still leads directly to my site.
Although I am honored and pleased that you or anyone else would think enough of my work to consider utilizing it as a referential work of any kind, I am also deeply concerned and mildly irritated at the lack of due credit as well as the blatant reuse of another's work, specifically my code. Therefore, I am under obligation to insist on one of the following courses of action:
---removal of the entire page, including all content therein, as it is not of your creation; OR
---removal of the entire page, including all content therein, and replacement with a direct link to the original document currently residing on my own site; OR
--modification of the content within to include design coding, proper expression of due credit for initial work, and a removal of the aforementioned tracked code.
Failure to comply with any of the above measures or failure to acknowledge receipt of this correspondence will necessitate actions being taken that require the intervention of your host ISP, Freeservers.com. I do not wish for that to pass, and am looking forward to an amicable resolution, easily hospitable to all parties involved.
I await your timely reply.
Sincerely,
Xxxxxxx Xxxxxxxxxxx Webmaster, SKYNJUN.COM
Posted by PsyLiam (Member # 73) on :
You have the worst name ever.
Posted by Topher (Member # 71) on :
You think that's bad, you should see his real name Posted by PsyLiam (Member # 73) on :
Edward Titcum?
Posted by Bernd (Member # 6) on :
Shik, that's exactly what I would have done too. But be advised, as Harry said, there are quite a few people who think that everything in the web is public domain or that everything in any way related to Star Trek is owned by Paramount.
Posted by Masao (Member # 232) on :
I've had to deal with this kind of thing a few times. In all cases, simply sending the webmaster of the offending site a firm yet friendly email has done the trick. Since I'm no lawyer, my emails don't sound as lawyerly as yours did, but maybe yours will be scarier. Make sure to check the site regularly to confirm they have made the requested changes or have not backslid.
PS: I actually the thief's logo better than yours. Yours looks like a pair of jet and ivory earings on a witches hat. Sorry
Posted by Shik (Member # 343) on :
Well, after modifying legal code, one learns bureaucratese. And I trying to find a usable picture of justics, but I settled on the scales. I always though logos should be simple.
Posted by PsyLiam (Member # 73) on :
quote:Originally posted by Bernd: ...or that everything in any way related to Star Trek is owned by Paramount.
Er, isn't it?
Posted by Bernd (Member # 6) on :
quote:quote: -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Originally posted by Bernd: ...or that everything in any way related to Star Trek is owned by Paramount. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Er, isn't it?
I would sue the hell out of them if they dared to use any of my own designs or suggestions - but wait, isn't that exactly what I always wanted? Posted by PsyLiam (Member # 73) on :
Er, in the same way that they sue you for messing around with all their copyrighted stuff?
Posted by Vogon Poet (Member # 393) on :
Three years ago a Geocities site came to light which had plagiarised material from myself, Bernd, and Chris Howell (The Great Link). I've been reviewing my email archives to see what happened, which was largely nothing. The guy concerned, one Jason Dawson, flatly refused to remove the material, citing some apparent threats and name-calling. Then someone sent him a letter from a fake attorney which he spotted, which totally weakened our case. The site isn't therre anymore.
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