What to do?

[jesus]

This is actually "Internet Ethics".
There is another sword swallower that has lifted text almost directly from my site.
First, about two years ago it was my FAQ's. I found out about it after someone made a post on the guestbook that i had at the time stating what an unoriginal person I was to have copied my FAQ's from this other persons site!
I wrote an email to this person expressing my displeasure and never received anything back, however he did add mention of me as a contributor!
Now his "hire" page contains text right from my "booking info"!
What can I do? Anything?
Its pissing me off!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[Frisbee]

If you can prove that it was content from your site and it is copywritten material that you wrote and he will not remove this text from his site, than I would talk to a lawyer and let him know that you are talking to a lawyer.

[jesus]

proving dates

The only way I have to prove the dates of my material is the incoding date on word documents, think that would be enough?

[Frisbee]

maybe, I am not familiar with internet law...perhaps your server/hosting company has backups or logs of your files and can show the date you uploaded those files to their server ontop of your originals this may be enough. Best to consult with a professional lawyer in this matter though.
I would still, if I were you, let this person know that you are going this route and see if it scares them into responding to you.

You may also look up their DNS server host and contact their web hosting company to let them know that they are running copyright infringed pages. I do not think a web hosting company would like that much.

[martin ewen]

The least you can do is name names

Heres some info

http://www.templetons.com/brad/copymyths.html

also you can quite often verify dates of website content via

http://www.archive.org/

[jesus]

Oh how I love Martin!!!

That archive site ROCKS!
I believe that armed the the information garnered there I shell write a terse email to my fellow sword swallower.

[Jim]

I have stuff stolen from me all the time. It hurts. Usually I can shrug it off if it's something minor, but there have been half a dozen pretty egregious thefts over the last few years that I've confronted with multiple emails.

You really don't want to get lawyers involved unless you have a lot of free time and wads of cash. The best thing is to apply pressure with emails and demand that they change their site. If it doesn't work and you need something more official, then you can try to get a simple cease and desist letter drafted, but that may open a can of worms.

There's also public shaming. I don't really recommend it, but you could always get every performer you know to email the guy and tell him to remove your content. Or maybe just a select few that are close to him... and hopefully someone respected in his field.

The thing is, these people KNOW what they're doing is wrong. It's plagiarism. But legal threats may not be as effective as simply pointing out that you know they stole your stuff and other people know it and it's really unprofessional. And word gets around in our small community and it will come back to haunt them someday.

Also, here is a fun tool:

http://www.copyscape.com/

Enter in the URL of one of your web pages and it will find other pages on the web it suspects may be plagiarising you.