Someone stole my website

By November 17, 2013 Web 12 Comments

I was recently checking my Google Analytics and I noticed some traffic from an unexpected source. Naturally, I visited the website and I was surprised to find one very similar to my new portfolio. It didn’t fully hit me that it was a complete clone until the shuffle letters, the parallax balls and the navigation came up. Check it out for yourself:

Cloned – www.aranya13.com/aranya/

Original – www.mirohristov.com

So how did I get traffic to my website? Well it wasn’t really my website’s traffic. It was their traffic but since they didn’t even bother to remove my Google Analytics script, it appeared as a referral on my side.

If you check the source on ‘their website’ and search for miro you’ll find out that they also didn’t bother changing the filename of their own logo. (src=”img/mirohristov-logo.png“)

At first I thought “Well, at least they’ve got some 3d skills” That’s right up until I did a similar images google search of their background:

Strangely enough, I’m not completely outraged. Maybe because I’m not a total hypocrite (just a tiny one). 🙂 It’s not like I’ve never in my life ripped a site… so, to a certain extend, I can understand it. But it’s never been for the purpose of claiming it as mine. It’s always been about inspiration and learning from others. It would’ve been really nice if they, at least, asked me before using it or add some credits. Knowing me, they’d probably get away with it. It would’ve been even nicer (for them) if they removed any evidence or back-link to me. That way, I’d never find out about it.

So who’s they?

What to do?

My dilemma: Should I be a total dickhead and send a Cease and Desist letter to their hosting & domain company (GoDaddy.com)? Or should I just let it go?

I’ll probably ask them nicely to take it down first and then think of something else if that doesn’t work. After all I did spend quite a bit of sleepless nights on it. And it does clearly say “Miro Hristov – All Rights Reserved – Copyright © 2013” in the source code of my website (which was removed on theirs so they must have seen it).

Just felt like sharing this with you. Any thoughts are welcome.


(Update)

My Request

 

Their response

This is Mr. Mayank Jain – Overall Student Co-coordinator.

12 Comments

  • Aeip says:

    I think you should ask them first, and if they don’t reply or agree, you should send a cease and desist letter.

  • ZTT says:

    If you see their FAQ page here:
    http://aranya13.com/aranya/faq.html

    It says, it’s an website for some college event named “Aranya 2013” probably put up by student coordinators. Don’t worry about it much; that site would be forgotten in few days (if not already ;)).

  • Aeip says:

    They’re also making money from your with your design (with ads).

  • Wow. What a shame. Seems another webpage was totally ripped off. Here’s another example on the same website: Original: http://www.kiterungame.com/ Clone: http://www.aranya13.com/aranya/app/index.html

  • Michiel says:

    Well, you’re not going to be a total dickhead by asking them to remove the website.
    Hopefully, they are not going to be total dickheads either.

    If so, and they refuse to remove it you should send them a Cease and Desist letter.
    It’s your property and you should be proud of it.

    Don’t let others shamefully copy something you’ve spent a lot of time and effort on.

  • Ernie says:

    I would tell go daddy of their blatant ripe off of your site.

  • Urahra says:

    I think since they didn’t bother to give you credits they probably had no intentions to give it either ,else they would’ve done it long back.
    IMO send a notice to their official mail id , and you can ask for anything you want ,from front page credit to money.ANYTHING..!!!

  • Hi Miro,

    Please… First ask them nicely by mail. If you get no response, then send a cease and desist letter to GoDaddy. I appreciate your ideas about sharing and learning, but please please please don’t let them get away with it, in the name of all of us hard working web designers and developers!

    Kind regards,

    Anne Bovelett

  • myk oleary says:

    I’d ask nicely and then go past the cease and desist and send a note to the ethics department of their university alerting them to the plagiarism and theft. Universities don’t stand for theft of intellectual property and holding it as your own.

  • Sandeep says:

    Send them a cease and desist letter right away! Such people won’t bother to reply, will just remove references etc. They need to be taught a lesson.

  • Jeffrey says:

    hey that,s pretty good mate. lol
    personally your getting traffic directed to you, that’s a positive,
    they are a uni using your design, that’s cool.
    ask them for one thing, be positive, tell them to use it on condition your name as the designer is in credit. put somewhere on there website.
    this way you get traffic to you and your name will hit the search engines
    now that’s positive to both of you.

  • Sukhwinder says:

    Sir, first of all thanks for motivating and revealing the hidden talent within us. After seeing ur site first time, we were fascinated by the parallax and the jquery u applied.We never thought we could make such website by our own. So we thought of modifiying ur site according to our need and were going to put your name as the ‘site template by xxx’ on footer. But you raised such event and our team put some hours and created the new version of site from scratch. We made the website using parallax, jquery and javascript and now the whole team can easily work with it. Also the website loads much faster than before

    asi kujh kar hi nhi skde si tuc sanu website bnana sikhaya dil khush kita e raab tuhanu chaddi kla vich rakhe sanu ta html da tag nhi likhna aunda ci tuhadi site ne bhut kujh sikhaya vere m tuhada chela banna chahuna ijajat hai sir???

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