OT. At it again

[The Medway Handyman]

Yet another word for word rip off, this time from the USA.

suppose I should be flattered......

Whatever happened to original creative thought?

[BRG]

Are you sure that *yours* is all *orignal_thought* with *absolutely _no* plagiarism at all?

But this is hardly likely to affect your business in this country is it?

Unless of course, paranoia is setting in and you are sitting at your computer for hours on end searching for every 'handyman' site on the world-wide-web just in case they are allegedly copying your model - now THAT will affect your business.

BRG

[Andy Burns]

"We soon are expanding to EUROPE" :-)

[Piers Finlayson]

If you really cared you could send their ISP a takedown notice under the Digital Millenium Copyright Act (DMCA).

AIUI (and it's a while since I read about this stuff) the ISP will then send this to the owners of the site. The owners of the site can then decide to pull the site or change the content, or risk being sued by you. If they don't respond to their ISP then the ISP will pull the site so they don't risk being sued by you. Alternatively, the ISP may say they're not going to change it, in which case they're calling your bluff...

Google "DMCA takedown" for more.

[Peter Parry]

Particularly as he includes "all rights reserved

.2008" :-)

I suppose you can now advertise yourself as "Medway Handyman International, branches in all the major metropolitan areas in USA and CANADA"

I notice he has also brought civilisation to the USA and re-introduced the Pound rather than that rather odd dollar thing they liked :- "those ?little jobs? that never seem to get done can cost you thousands and thousands of pounds"

[Peter Parry]

Wouldn't be too sure, Having taken over the USA and Canada Casa Bella is "coming soon to a Europe near you" so we could see a flood of ersatz Medway/Casa handypersons all speaking with an American accent but sucking their teeth Essex style as they mutter "Gawd - haven't seen one of those for years and which cowboy put the flotterscrong on the whistlegrabber using a 1/4 throgmorton instead of a half inch sprecklegrabber - going to cost youse this is..."

[R D S]

One of the first things people do when they thinking of putting a website together is have a look around the net for similar sites for ideas.

I imagine most of the sites on the web are built from readily available templates so if you imagine that you will never see a site looking like yours you will be dissapointed.

That said there are some glaringly obvious rip offs but if these guys are doing the same stuff as you there isn't a massive amount you can do about it I wouldn't have thought. For example nobody owns the term 'no job too big or too small' but it gets bandied about a lot.

[S Viemeister]

It's pretty obvious that they've stolen it - many of the terms used are more typically UK than US. In the US, if I wanted someone to paint my livingroom, I'd hire a painter, not a decorator - a decorator, in the US, is the guy who decides on the decor, not the one who applies the paint. Skirting boards - in the US are generally baseboards. US curtains are more often hung from rods, than rails. Timber cladding is wood siding. They mention door handles, not the more common (in the US) door knobs. The electrical section also sounds more UK than US. The outdoors section mentions laying turf - US more often says laying sod. They use 'timber' where the US more often uses 'wood' or 'wooden'. The mention outside taps - US usage is faucet. In the flat-pack section, they use the work 'makes', where US would say 'brands'. They recommend 'fixing' where US would say attaching or fastening. Although the word cupboard is used in the US, cabinet is more common (this appears on the page where they talk about thousands of pounds in costs, rather than dollars!). I'm sure I could find more, if I cared to spend the time.

Sheila, who has lived and d-i-y-ed in both the US and the UK.

[PeterMcC]

The Medway Handyman wrote in

It was automatically given the protection of copyright and there is more than enough similarity between your text and that of the offending site to claim breach of copyright. Whether you can be bothered is another matter.

's the copyright notice at the bottom that really annoys.

- PeterMcC If you feel that any of the above is incorrect, inappropriate or offensive in any way, please ignore it and accept my apologies.

[Peter Parry]

There is a difference between incorporating different ideas and copying wholesale.

It doesn't look at all like his - just copies most of the text verbatim - even to the extent of forgetting to alter the currency!

As in nearly all the text? The owner of Casa Bella also seems to offer website design tuition amongst their services so they can hardly claim to have done this plagiarism inadvertently.

[Peter Parry]

They appear to have nicked the grass bits from

The cleaning section is "borrowed" from

so at least they are consistent!!!

[The Medway Handyman]

Big difference between research & plaugarism.

Just checking my web stats & noticed several visits from them.

[mark]

Perhaps they could call themselves "The Medway Highwayman" to differentiate.

mark

[Stephen Howard]

I had similar advice from my host when I contacted them to ask about 'leeching'. In my experience I've found it's rarely worth contacting the site owner - after all, they pinched the stuff in the first place in spite of visibly obvious copyright notices.

Regards,