Copyright Infringment!

Holy crap! I cannot believe this. I've been kind of in pain today because of the arm. But I wanted to check my email and make sure there was nothing pressing that my vicodine drowsy mind had to deal with...and I find out someone is nicking my website!

For those of you who don't know, my company website is at www.comstar-media.com. We're a small publisher and we've just started to get some product info up. Well, our webmaster/disigner contacted us today and let us know that some idiot has put our site up on her server and is claiming it as her own!

First let me submit exhibit A: http://julies.net/comstar/index1.php. As you can see, our logo, our index header, my company email addy, and the company name is all over this. Plus, it says that it's copyrighted to us at the bottom of the page. The things changed include Liz's name as the author of In Shadowside, the header graphic that says King Solomon Books instead of ComStar Media. In the menu you can see where she started to change all occurances of ComStar Media to King Solomon Books, but didn't finish. None of the links work, so don't even try.

Exhibit B: http://julies.net/comstar/index.php. This is where it really gets bad. You can see how she's kept the same basic design of our site (right down to the way our links are underlined in dashes rather than straight lins) and started changing the text. This one claims that she's the copyright owner and that it's her design! The menu system is taken out of this one and very few links work. The only link that does work that I found is the one that leads to her email address of julie@julies.net.

So I wrote to her to tell her that we're going to take action and our webmaster is in communication with the server to get it torn down. But I am P-I-S-S-E-D! Grr!

I think I'm more made that someone took the time to put Ashley Leon in place of Elizabeth Ashe for the writer of In Shadowside than anything else. This looks soooo bad. I am so going to crusify this person!

Did you know that even if you make no money whatsoever from a copyright infringment that you can be forced to pay a fine of $25,000? That's if you've made absolutly no money at all. If you've made money than your entire profit can be forfeit and if you've made over $1,000 profit it's criminal rather than civil and you can be forced to pay 3x the amount you made. Now, I'm no lawyer, but this is what I've been told from research. $25,000 is a lot of money, especially if you're making diddly on your theft. I have no idea why someone would do that.

Now, if she takes it off her server and doesn't do it again, fine. We'll leave it alone. But if I get one nasty letter from her, I'm so taking it to our lawyer. As it is I'm going to contact the lawyer to let her know what's going on.

I've been telling lots of people about this. Pisses me off that this is Christian company is being linked to some very un-Christian actions. That's like the icing on the cake. I hope she gets inundated with emails about what a dirty thief she is. *fumes*

I'll get this taken care of Liz. I think it's only been up for a few days, but we'll make sure to get it taken down. I feel like this effects you more than the other customers because your name was the one changed. :(

Ok...I'm off to be pissed off by myself.

Jenn