Copyright Violations

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By HHI Golf Guy | July 28, 2006

I really, really can’t stand people that copy our work and present it as their own. A few months ago I had someone plagiarize the ad copy from 5 or 6 pages of The Kosloff Group web site. 98% of it was word for word from our pages. Then a few weeks ago this guy had the audacity to post on a real estate forum about the importance of original ad copy on web sites!

About every 45 days or so I check the primary pages of our client sites on Copyscape, and then run a bunch of key paragraphs through Google search to see if I catch anything. I did this the other day and guess what? Some schmuck had copied almost all of the home page from www.hiltonheadarealuxuryhomes.com. The funny thing is that the agent is not in the Hilton Head area - they are in another state! To be fair, though, it’s not the agent’s fault. Their “web designer/SEO expert” is to blame.

But since the agent is responsible for the content on their web site I contacted the agent to let them know what had happened. The agent had their designer call me, and this loon basically told me to “prove it”. He finally backed down and offered to change the content, which he did within 24 hours.

Is this the end of the matter? I don’t know. My agent is out of the country for another 2 weeks, but I did inform her by email of the event. It’s up to her and her attorney if they want to pursue a legal remedy (I did save all of the proof and documentation per the DMCA).