One Way to Deal with Internet Thieves

http://pzxc.com/internet-is-still-wild-west

by pzxc • 15 years ago

193 69 15 years ago

pzxc.com

RossDM3• 15 years ago

Speaking of Internet thieves - check this out:

GearSpoke.com Derekfrye.com Badrobots.org

Why would anyone copy a website consisting of a single picture? Automated bot scraper?

datasink3• 15 years ago

GearSpoke.com - 173.203.91.173

derekfrye.com - 173.203.91.173

badrobots.org - 173.203.91.173

And 173.203.91.173 is a Slicehost IP. Looks like someone just neglected to update their DNS settings.

RossDM3• 15 years ago

Ah hah! Nice catch, didn't think of that.

techsupporter• 15 years ago

Was leaving the domain name that easily identifies the person whose name and other details were censored done intentionally?

throwa_way• 15 years ago

"I don’t make idle threats. I have all kinds of information about this person, and I’m going to be keeping an eye on him, this particular domain, and any other domains run by him or his host that access my servers."

^ Still the wild west indeed.

guylhem• 15 years ago

So what's your proposal to deal with such a problematic behaviour?

The guy is quite nice - he only made the thieve risk his reputation by the consequences of his own action. He didn't involve anything like law enforcement, the hosting company or the banners network - which would have cost them time thus money.

All he did is take some of his own time so that the scraper would get the "accusing" version of the website next time. He fixed that at his own expenses.

I believe many of us wouldn't have been that nice. And yes I believe he should keep an eye on this thief, because from what he said (the games didn't play) the guy didn't spend a lot of time on that borked job.

For all we know, this might be his full time job - copying websites, replacing copyright notices and authors, making money out of it with banners. All he needs is a process that scales well financially to be a "scamtreupreneur" (Couldn't find a word so I made up one. Do I get karma claims on that word?? :-))

With bots, selecting target websites etc. it might be possible to make a living out of it while true entrepreuneurs are starving in bootstrapped companies :-/

RossDM3• 15 years ago

I don't know if the poster was criticizing the owner's response; I read it as just an observation about the state of things. Also, you're right - the thief got off easy.

rick8883• 15 years ago

This is interesting, because it works on the same principal as software piracy: The original isn't "stolen" it's merely copied. The original is still intact.

I'm wondering if the same people that are so zealous and pro-piracy would be fine with someone taking their site and duplicating it.

wulczer• 15 years ago

Very interesting comment. For me the line is profiting from the copied content/software. I am opposed to people selling pirated movies on the streets and not so to people downloading and watching them in their homes.

rick8883• 15 years ago

So, if I copied your startup (website, graphics, and name), and didn't make a profit on it (even if you were charging), it's okay?

larrik• 15 years ago

IS IT the same principle? Usually pirated software distributors don't claim original authorship.

I'm not saying that the "merely copied" argument is correct, I'm just saying that I think the situations are different.

rick8883• 15 years ago

The main argument for 'piracy is not stealing' is that there is still an original copy.

Just like with the OP's site.

kapitalx• 15 years ago

one sneaky thing you could have done is to modify your site very slightly so that his site would load your ads instead of his. He wouldn't have noticed ;)

aquark• 15 years ago

Just adding some javascript that just made sure the right ads are showing would have been a much more subtle response.

I wonder if there is a possibility of a JS library that could detect this type of scraping and reserving automatically. Would probably leads to an interesting arms race with the scrapers.

russellperry• 15 years ago

You'd also think a cisco engineer up to such shenanigans would know enough to use an anonymous/proxy whois registration.

dwwoelfel• 15 years ago

Or use someone else's name, which may be what the owner of the site actually did. How can we know that the whois information is valid?

rhizome• 15 years ago

I wouldn't be surprised if the advertising provider requires and checks for real whois info. If not, there's probably a business model in there somewhere.

boctor• 15 years ago

It'd be interesting to hear the technical details of how the switcheroo was accomplished

zecho• 15 years ago

Agreed. The vigilante content of the switcheroo is whatever. I want to know how he actually pulled it off. The not-so-over-the-top-vigilante-ish alternatives are pretty endless.

biot2• 15 years ago

Check web logs for regular visits from a specific IP address. Setup alternate site (eg: on a different port) and use firewall rules to direct http traffic from that IP to that port. Make a small change to the site and verify that the copied site is altered. Then have fun.

datasink3• 15 years ago

It would be simpler to handle it in the application.

if ($ip == 'XXX.XXX.XXX.XXX') { require 'poison.html'; exit; }

dctoedt2• 15 years ago

If the OP's planted information identified the wrong guy, then that guy, who was wrongly accused of being a willful copyright infringer, might be able to sue successfully for libel.

Otherwise, though, one legal irony about this posting sort of tickles me:

* Suppose that the (human) scraper were to sue the OP for libel. And leave aside for now the fact that (at least in the U.S.) truth is usually an absolute defense to a defamation action (although that's not the case in false-light or invasion-of-privacy cases).

* The OP should win, it seems to me, if for no other reason than that it was the scraper, not the OP, who published the putatively-libelous information about himself. Presumably, if the scraper himself had not copied and published (what he thought was) the OP's site, then the supposedly-libelous information would have stayed hidden in the OP's server, never seeing the light of day.

Of course, I could imagine some judges thinking that the case was like the spring-gun cases you read about in first-year torts class: If you booby-trap your vacant house with a shotgun to protect against burglars, you can be liable to a burglar who gets shot, even though he's breaking the law by breaking in.

jedsmith7• 15 years ago

Okay, I'll take the alternative view: this is embarrassing for the OP.

What worries me is that the OP found the name Bart Burns on the WHOIS for the domain, and assumed (a) that's who registered the domain, and (b) that the information he found via a quick Google is actually Bart Burns. I can change the information on my domain to be whoever I want, particularly if I'm a scammer. Whatever I put in NameCheap's panel shows up minutes later. If someone doesn't believe me, I'll alter the registration on one of my domains. Just ask.

More interesting than that, however, is that the OP is completely aware that there are avenues of recourse for this and that he is technically able to determine who hosts the scraped domain. Rather than pursue those avenues of recourse, however -- said facilities have been keeping the Internet from devolving into a "wild West," at least in ARIN and RIPE regions -- this guy had to take a play from 4chan's book and attack possibly the wrong guy. If everybody did what the OP does, you're absolutely right: the Internet would be a wild West.

As an administrator at a very large ISP, I am completely aware that some people lose faith in abuse desk contacts. At my employer, we receive countless abuse complaints and we handle every single one. This is a pattern you will observe in ARIN and RIPE regions, but less so for APNIC and other parts of the world (with exceptions). Particularly for someone hosted with JustHost, a DMCA complaint gets the job done in hours. If it doesn't you can go after the ISP. I was never a fan of the DMCA, but this is a prime example of a use case for it.

Above everything else, though, even if the OP is right about the identity of the scammer, calling out the scammer's employment means the OP could be attacking his family. If I were the aforementioned company I'd cut my losses and terminate the employee for bad PR. Now the OP has potentially hurt the suspected perpetrator's family based on actions his family is probably not even familiar with. Because he copied the HTML for a site I've never even heard of. That's icing on the cake, to me, because I protect my family. With teeth.

In short, I am totally unimpressed by the OP's vigilantism and I am equally disappointed that it is so popular in this forum. Demonstrating this sort of arrogance to Hacker News is probably a good way to burn your bridges at the innumerable employers and business contacts that frequent the site.

function_seven2• 15 years ago

EDIT: See my response to jedsmith below. I didn't look at the altered site when I posted the following:

Well, it doesn't look like the OP has actually done any vigilantism (at least not yet):

I simply altered the code of my site so that the next time his scraper tried to access its content, it wouldn’t get what it expected. Within an hour, the homepage and every page of his site looked like this (redacted to protect the guilty)

What he did can only target the guilty party, as all he did was change his own site's content.

jedsmith7• 15 years ago

Intentionally altering your site so that the automated scraper pastes personal identity all over the target site is an act of vigilantism, and feeds the wild West that the author laments. Hell, digging up identity and then using it against a person is vigilante in itself -- the content of the site modification is extremely passive aggressive. 4chan calls this "dropping dox".

shareme• 15 years ago

There also a legal ramification:

-If OP altered his/her own site to list such things as personal address of target, phone, etc of the target before he scrape and if that altered data appeared on the non target's site with WWW access than target would have a case of misdemeanor B class suit in any state in the US.

The OP needs stop doing his own lawyering..

dctoedt2• 15 years ago

> ... than [sic] target would have a case of misdemeanor B class suit in any state in the US.

What makes you think so?

JoachimSchipper3• 15 years ago

"WHOIS may be wrong" is a very good point.

However, if he were actually certain to get the right guy, what's so bad about "attacking his family" as you define it? Putting a thief in jail does reduce the income of his/her family, but I wouldn't blame the victim for doing so!

You could argue that the punishment doesn't fit the crime, but that's a much more subtle argument than you appear to be making.

narrator• 15 years ago

FYI, the term for directing internet vigilantism at an innocent third party is known as a "Joe job"(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joe_job). It originated as a spammer's revenge tactic.

jedsmith7• 15 years ago

> However, if he were actually certain to get the right guy, what's so bad about "attacking his family" as you define it?

Spoken like a bachelor. Two things I firmly believe in, especially when it comes to Internet squabbles, disagreements and such:

- Don't mess with someone's livelihood.

- Don't mess with someone's family.

They're related. You're going to sit here and tell me that it's justifiable that the alleged guy lose his job over this, possibly taking food out of his kids' mouths? If I copied your Web site and someone pulled a stunt like that with my employer, I'd be out for blood. You hurt my family, I hurt you. You'll understand when you have one.

You can't parallel this to putting someone in jail, because there wasn't really a crime committed (I'd like to see a prosecution), and OP is not the law.

voyvf• 15 years ago

First of all, I both agree and disagree with you. :D

The OP's idea was sound - and not without precedence - but the execution was flawed. I say not without precedence, because people have been spitting in the eye of internet theft since the first person figured out how to configure their web server to behave differently based on the Referer header.

Many, many "hot-linkers" (including some fairly well known U.S. politicians...) have gotten an image that was unflattering, simply because they or their staff couldn't be bothered to download and host it themselves. (:

However, I do agree with you in that one cannot be certain about information lifted from WHOIS and Google. That brand of revenge is quite thoughtless, and could have severe repercussions on someone (and, as you pointed out, their family) who's completely innocent.

As such, while it may sound childish, replacing assets for scrapers to such an extent that they get something embarrassing is, IMHO, perfectly fine, so long as it's kept childish (e.g., they receive pages that state "I spent all that time on my scraper and all I got was this lousy GeoCities page", complete with ugly animated gifs), and not malicious, like posting someone's personal information.

prs• 15 years ago

  updating, come back later...

The site in question has been updated quite quickly I suppose.

dangrossman3• 15 years ago

I would've just sent the DMCA notice. It's not a "whole process", it's a couple lines of text you copy/paste, put in the URL of your site and the copy, change the date, and email to the host. It'll take you a few seconds to modify and send out. Most web hosts have a specific mailbox for DMCA notices on their contact page or in their AUP.

  Subject: DMCA Notice of Copyright Infringement

  The copyrighted work at issue is the text that appears on: [URL(s)]

  The URLs where our copyrighted material is located include: [URL(s)]

  You can reach me at [email] for further information or clarification. My phone number is [phone] and my mailing address is [physical address].

  I have a good faith belief that use of the copyrighted materials described above as allegedly infringing is not authorized by the copyright owner, its agent, or the law.

  I swear, under penalty of perjury, that the information in the notification is accurate and that I am the copyright owner or am authorized to act on behalf of the owner of an exclusive right that is allegedly infringed.

  [your name]
  [today's date]

Never once have I had a DMCA notice not result in the material taken down within 24 hours, even when the host was outside the US. None of them want to potentially be a party to a copyright infringement suit, however unlikely it may be that you'd take it to court and drag the host into it.

cstross2• 15 years ago

Never once have I had a DMCA notice not result in the material taken down within 24 hours

I have!

The culprit -- whose copyright agent [edit]appears not to[/edit] respond to DMCA takedown notices unless they come on law firm letterhead -- is none other than Amazon.com. (I've caught scumbags selling books of mine online as ebooks via the Kindle store. Amazon don't listen unless you carry a big stick. My solution was to grab the nearest big stick, in this case SFWA's Griefcom process, but something like that's not really an option for most self-published authors.)

(In contrast, Apple -- same situation, only in the iBook store -- were the very model of efficiency and helpfulness.)

jedsmith7• 15 years ago

> The culprit -- whose copyright agent doesn't respond to DMCA takedown notices unless they come on law firm letterhead -- is none other than Amazon.com.

That's illegal. There are well-defined bullet points that make a valid DMCA complaint that must be acted upon, and I doubt Amazon would open themselves up to liability based on "big sticks". They'd lose safe harbor for not complying, which is extremely bad news for EC2 and any Internet hosting provider.

DarkShikari2• 15 years ago

I deal with companies ripping off GPL software. Not a single company -- or the webhosts they use -- have ever responded to a DMCA request.

pingswept• 15 years ago

Do you mean that the infringers have ignored the takedown request, or do you mean they have all silently complied?

jbk2• 15 years ago

And I do have exactly the same experience.

In almost every language, a research for "vlc" gives you either adwords for scams, adware, software+toolbars, software+homepage-changer or websites in the first page of Google results (using rings to get higher).

Most of the time, they don't offer the source, modify something and do not offer the source, or abuse trademarks.

Since Google refuses to remove them from index, or from adwords, the only way is to DMCA them.

I have literally sent hundreds of DMCA. It almost never works.

slash7• 15 years ago

Great!

citricsquid• 15 years ago

This guys website is just others content, HE is taking flash games created by others and publishing them on his website FOR PROFIT. I spotted some friends games on there that they are unlikely to gave permission to put on there.

Also, he has taken a popular t-shirt design, copied it and then is selling it for profit here http://www.cafepress.co.uk/playitontheweb as advertised on his website.

If the guy who posted this is reading, where do you get the games from you're posting? Are you downloading them from other flash game sites and uploading them? Are you scraping those sites? I bet it's the latter. You're only slightly less shameful than this guy you're attacking.

irony eh.

pyre3• 15 years ago

Maybe this is why he didn't want to send a DMCA takedown notice? He didn't want to claim, under penalty of perjury, that he own the copyrights?

averageJoe4• 15 years ago

In addition, if you visit www.playitontheweb.com, you'll see in the right column he prominently features Mario and Sonic flash games, games that make unauthorized use of copyrighted and trademarked characters, as well as game art and sound effects.

This guy really has some nerve complaining about someone copying his crappy site design.

mattm• 15 years ago

Indeed. Perhaps this is more of a case of "what comes around, goes around."

alanh• 15 years ago

I keep trying to scroll up farther than the page allows

Quarrelsome• 15 years ago

I don't quite see the argument myself. As a former dancer in the breakdancing scene the premise of "biting" (stealing) moves comes up a lot. After a lot of consideration I came to the conclusion that if you perform something publicly its pretty much fair game for copying. I don't think there is a benefit in spending your time trying to hunt down these copycats. The time is much better spent creating new works. The Open Source world teaches us that product is not just the object the item being copied but the service, the knowledge, the understanding of the product and the ability to create more. For creatives and dancers it's the brand, and/or your name.

By all means if you think its worthwhile you can hunt down people ripping off your stuff but if you're becoming tempted to just sit on your prior work and prevent anyone else from touching it you're becoming stale. Case in point would be Cliff Richard who the RIAA like to roll out whenever they want to extend the terms of their copyright because apparently Cliff Richard relies on this royalties as his pension. I often wonder why he didn't/doesn't have to save for his retirement like everyone else.

m0dE• 15 years ago

Yo, where did you used to break?

DirtyAndy• 15 years ago

Disclaimer: Most of my knowledge of the Wild West comes from the movies.

In the WW they used to quite like public hangings, both legal and illegal. Why do you think they did this rather than just shoot people beside a grave and roll them in? As a deterrent to others is my guess.

I appreciate jedsmith and others views, and do somewhat support them, but lets say the OP had just issued a DMCA (and it was actioned). What has that achieved. The copier loses his site, so from the OP's perspective for this instance the problem is solved. Until next week the guy registers another domain, and another, and another. And his friends do it too.

I bet the guy doing the copying is going to think about it twice next time, and I bet one or two people will have read the blog post and rethought future plans.

Don't underestimate the amount of stress, time and legal costs that some people would spend trying to resolve a problem like this.

I know this Wild West killing is not the best approach but at this point in the history of the internet I am seeing few alternatives to prevent (ie not resolve post event) these things happening.

bmaeser• 15 years ago

well played, sir!

rorrr• 15 years ago

Other fun ideas:

1) Redirect all of his traffic to your site

2) Put an iframe with his site in it. His hosting company would probably shut him down very quickly.

3) Put goatse / tubgirl on all pages (for his scraper only).

One Way to Deal with Internet Thieves

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