Sean Kennedy
May 28th 2007 @ 3:07 pm #
From a legal standpoint, you do actually have a leg to stand on. However, since the site is based in polish you'd have to go to the European courts which although would be very, VERY expensive and take probably 5 years, you would actually win.
If you're so inclined I would recommend hiring a barrister or a solicitor to write a few "persuasive" letters to the site's owners and initiate bluff game. If successful the offending parties will be scared and remove the site.
If you go for this option you need to make sure that that the solicitor you choose is one that deals mainly with intellectual rights. Many will say they do and then bang on with lots of terminology you don't understand and then charge you a fortune for nothing.
Unfortunately, our Polish brothers aren't too concerned with copyright infringement so it may just be a lost cause. You could try contacting them but you'll need to drop the 'Elliot-nice-guy" attitude and adopt a more stern approach.
The other thing you may try is the "dirty" approach. You've already stated (and I'm not going to argue) that since designing this site you've received a lot of attention from the web standards world and people seem to respect your work - resulting in your site receiving shit loads of traffic - which is great! Therefore you could use your influence to essentially point out what a bunch of thieves they are. Make this blog post a sticky and add the offenders site's name - along with the words "pirates" "thieves" and "tactless, chutney-bottomed sausage jockeys" - in your meta tags.
There is one more thing to point out. Their site doesn't really seem to be about anything in particular, hardly in competition with you from a content perspective and there isn't really any "business" type potential risk. Sure this site is part of your portfolio but you seem to be doing alright. Hell, if Andy Clarke notices you then you're reputation as a good designer/coder is hardly at risk so you could just do nothing. Having said that, if it where me I'd certainly want to do something. I noticed that they're advertising a Half-Life 2 cyber-cafe and I'll bet my left bollock that it ain't legitimate so perhaps you could try grassing them up to the nice chaps at Valve Software. Obviously you'd have to covertly acquire some evidence of this. A thorough investigation into what they actually do could prove useful in finding every conceivable way of pissing them off before resorting to the "proper" legal solutions that I previously mentioned.
In any case, I wish you all the best and I hope you get the bastards. As always I offer any assistance you may require.
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