Preserved Topic: hello again (Page 1 of 1)

Hi asylumnites. I've been away for a while, but while prowling the referrer logs, I noticed a post by Wes (/me tips hat) linking my site. So it ocurred to me that you all may be the best group of people to help me out with a minor situation. It goes a little something like this:

I bought a piece of property recently, and as a bargaining chip I offered to build a website for the developer. I did so, he's happy, I bought the land at a great price, and all is well. While looking into referrer logs (why yes I do spend a lot of time there), I noticed a webdesign company (although not a very prominent or well-established one) including my site on their portfolio page. Along with numerous abominations, sites that would make you cry out in pain. Were they trying to claim credit for my site? Surely it was just a mistake, I thought (being the good natured person that I am). So I pointed out the error in a politely worded email addressed to webmater. I also told them I expected a correction within two days. After all, they are posing as professionals, I treated them as such.

Imagine my surprise when no correction appeared (hint: imagine small). Through the miracle of PHP, I am now sniffing the HTTP_REFERER variable, and sending visitors to a page that discloses the situation, and suggesting that they notify this company that they are wise to their tricks.

I am open to suggestions about what else could be done, Google scores the offending site's PageRank rather low, so I'd prefer not to link them, they would only benefit. Are there agencies that police this sort of thing? It's not really a rip per se, just someone claiming credit for my work.

For your perusal, a small selection of links:
My site
The offending portfolio page (click the other sites at your peril, click Sunflower Estates to see my special welcome page)
What I'm working on (not related to this issue)




[This message has been edited by linear (edited 08-06-2002).]

linear: Welcome home. Thats a sneaky one there I suppose ripping takes many forms and they are passing off your work as theirs presumably in an attempt to make money from it which is very naughty if it isn't illegal.

What to do?

1. Just by posting it here they will have seen a lot of hits from here which might be enough of a sign that you are taking this seriously.

2. Do some homework. The common factor on all the pages they link to is that none of them have a credit line at the bottom identifying who made it or much of a copyright notice and it is possible (in fact probable) that yours isn't the only site listed on that page to bulk out their portfolio and you could probably co-ordinate something with any other designers.

3. If you like we can drop them a line telling them (politely) that we don't think this is on.

It shouldn't be too difficult to fix and I doubt they really want to make much of a fuss about this.

___________________
Emps

FAQs: Emperor

Hey linear I don't see the "new" page when I go to that link.



.:[ Never resist a perfect moment ]:.

Hmm, following the link from the portfolio page should take you to dmc.php, which has a h1 saying "Developmental Media did not develop this site."

You're not getting there?

Emperor> 3. If you like we can drop them a line telling them (politely) that we don't think this is on.

I honestly think that it's a mistake. At least one other link in their 'portfolio' is 404. I'm just pissed at them for not replying to my email I suppose.

Emperor> 2. Do some homework.

Wow, good call. The first five sites on his portfolio all had meta tags indicating that www.thefidelisgroup.com did them (most were awful in some way, MIDI files and other crap). Sure enough, (http://www.fidelisgroup.com/interport.html). I'm struck by the similarity in the portfolio page name.

Both the whois records indicate Chicago area, but different names and numbers, name servers, the whole bit. Different web servers with different OSes. It appears that the Fidelis Group is getting what I'm getting, but in spades.

I guess I should notify them, they would seem to have something actually at stake whereas I don't. I can't fathom why you would claim credit for such godawful cheesey sites though. It's like a mystery, where's ScoobyDoo when we need him?

Unfortunately, Scooby's out promoting his new movie. Linear, nice to see you back, although under dubious circumstances. I'll see about shooting off an email to the domain owner.

I followed the first two links.
Your site: nice design.
The portfolio page, lots off ripped links, different styles html codes.
At two pages (hoekstra and css) i found an contact link. I mailed both companies the following text:

quote:

---

Dear sir or madam,

I found this site on an internet portfolio page, and i have reason to doubt that this company made your site.
The Portfolio is at: http://www.dmcmedia.com/html/index.html. The used name of the company is "developmental media". If this firm has made your side there will be no problem.
If they did not so you better take some action because this is very misleading and could harm your good name.

This is the contact adress from the firm:
Developmental Media Corp.
1326 Ogden Ave.
Downers Grove, IL 60515
630.390.1362
fax:1363


Greetings Tom Derks (from the netherlands)

---

I also found a lot of pages with the same kind of header from the fidelis group. Which by the way i could not find on fidelisgroup.com
DMC also claims a page from Balducci's Italian Dinner and this page is generated by frontpage. (How low can you go??? claiming a FP page you did not generate....)

<edit-on>The link from them to yours saying: " Developmental Media did not develop this Site" is working fine.
I hope you don't hate me for sending the mail.
The mail to hoekstra just came back undeliverd.<edit-off>

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[This message has been edited by Rinswind 2th (edited 08-06-2002).]

[This message has been edited by Rinswind 2th (edited 08-06-2002).]

Just to ask a silly question:

Did you start this site from inception? Meaning, did you handle registering the name SunflowerEstates.com?

Did you client ever have anyone else design him a website at any point?

Just thinking that *maybe*, just *maybe*, that company designed a site for your client at one time and they are just not updating their portfolio page.

Just a thought, but anyway you slice it really, it stinks.

Later,
C:\


~Binary is best~

CPrompt is right that there could easily be a number of legitimate reasons for this (they could have registered sunflower-estates.com or sunflowerestates.net for example) so I would suggest people didn't go firing off emails to various people until linear has done some digging and let us know what the situation is. Also thefidelisgroup could just be an earlier incarnation of the current organisation so it might not be worth reading too much into that

However, it is also possible that their claiming linear's site for someone is a sign of a bigger problem (they wouldn't just claim one site - that would be odd).

Why would people stuff their portfolio page with other people's sites? So they can appear more professional and charge more for a website?

Anyway we'll see how this one goes - keep us informed of developments.

___________________
Emps

FAQs: Emperor

CPrompt> Did you start this site from inception? Meaning, did you handle registering the name SunflowerEstates.com?

Yes. I controlled the domain from the start. I figured they ran one of the variations, maybe sunflower-estates or something, and just messed up the link. But I notified them a week ago, and nothing has moved, so my patience with Developmental Media is exhausted.

The only real purpose for the site is to consolidate info and driving directions, so when the developer gets a phone inquiry he can direct peeps to the web site where most questions are answered. I'm honestly more offended that someone listed my XHTML/CSS compliant page alongside all that other dreck.

Rinswind 2th> Your site: nice design.

Thanks.

Rinswind 2th> DMC also claims a page from Balducci's Italian Dinner and this page is generated by frontpage. (How low can you go??? claiming a FP page you did not generate....)

It's almost funny.

Thanks inmates.

I just tried the link from dmc's portfolio page, and I got the original sunflower, not your new page. That link goes up and down like a yo-yo.

It's being done with a server-side redirect. If it doesn't work for you, I suspect you are using a user agent that doesn't send an HTTP_REFERER header.

When it works, the server log shows this:

quote:

---

65.89.229.254 - - [06/Aug/2002:09:48:43 -0600] "GET / HTTP/1.1" 302 5 "http://www.dmcmedia.com/html/interport.html" "Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.0)"
65.89.229.254 - - [06/Aug/2002:09:48:43 -0600] "GET /dmc.php HTTP/1.1" 200 3075 "http://www.dmcmedia.com/html/interport.html" "Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.0)"

---

And actually, in every single case where the referrer was dmcmedia, the log shows that, 302 followed by a 200 for /dmc.php. So I'm concluding that your user agent isn't sending that variable (it's not required to by HTTP). So the link isn't going up or down like anything, it just can only operate on environment variables it gets.

Emp. You are right about sending the mail.
I maybe better not did it. But i am pretty shure they did claim a false design, if someone claimed they made my side while they did not, i would want to know.
But i will wait in the future until there is more to go on.

Powered by Curiousity
~First Member From the RAT-DEFENSE team~

Fidelis Group replied to my mail. I think I'll leave it in their hands, as they've actually got something at stake in this (where I'm just meddling for my own amusement).

quote:

---

Rob,
Thank you very much for your concern and notifying us. We saw the site and are attempting to solve the problem.

Ed Corcoran
Fidelis Group, Inc.

---

I'm curious how they are going about trying to solve the problem, but since both parties involved are in Chicago, I can imagine some of the possibilities...

Rinswind: Its not too much of an issue but as it was linear's site then he should be the one to contact the people.

linear: Glad to see that problem getting resolved - it is amazing what people will do.

I suspect that this is a message to people that adding a credit for the designer at the bottom of the page isn't just vanity or free advertising but it stops people from claiming your work as their own. The only common factor I could see on those pages was none of them had a clear notice saying who the designer was.

___________________
Emps

FAQs: Emperor

Sorry...I was tlaking about the dmc media link. Sometimes the site would load, others it wouldn't.

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