A new business idea: take someone’s website for your own then ask them for the image files!!!

Many of you may have read about how we came across a website that was basically a cut and paste from our website of all our imagery and web copy. Rather than take the website down, they have asked me to send me our original image files so that they do what they want – although they apparently ‘paid some Indian guy’ $500 for the website! The email was so funny that I thought I should post it here (I’ve taken out the email addresses and personal details though). Just in case you forgot, here’s a side by side of the real one (on the left) and the fake one (on the right).

 

  

 

If someone had sold me a fake website image for USD 500, I would have been fairly unimpressed and would have outed them, so I wonder if a new industry will get established for doing a “save website as” service – clearly quite lucrative as one of my guys said!

Anyway, sit back and enjoy the following for your reading pleasure!

 

Last Email From Them

On 24 January 2012 16:30, Websequel wrote:

Hello James,

The treating email that we are getting from you seems totally unreasonable. We are not okay providing the confidential detail about our company account to anyone outsiders. Please have a word with your employee who happened to sell us a copy of the website. Or if you can send us the full file we are ready to change the website banner (I’ve highlighted this as this is almost my favourite line). We contacted our lawyer with all the detail information we have done no wrong and we were not aware of the fact that it was your website copy, but still as a cooperation we did make few changes on the site, but you happened to misjudge the cooperation and you kept on threatening us in this regard.

If we have the complete file we will definitely change the website banner but since no PSD files were provided to us we cannot work on it. And we cannot pull the website down either as we paid $500 for this website.

We are willing to cooperate but we cannot as there is no detail information we can get for you.

I hope you would understand.

Regards,

Sukhjinder

 

From Me

Sent: Monday, January 23, 2012 6:53 PM

Subject: Re: Airport Super Shuttle Buffalo Contact Form Submission

Hello Sukhjinder and Dave,

As you will be aware from previous emails, I have asked for you to rectify this situation by this date of using intellectual property which is essentially stolen. I presume by your lack of response that you are not planning to co-operate. I would ask that you reconsider this position as I really don’t think that it is either of our best interests for this situation to not be properly resolved. Please respond to this email by 25 Jan US time, or else I will need to look at what action I need to take to deal with this matter.

Thank you for your co-operation with this matter.

Sincerely,

James

 

From Me

On 18 January 2012 01:40, James Swanston wrote:

 

Hello Sukhjinder and Dave,

I must say that I am slightly disappointed by your response. There are actually a few things you can do as follows:

1. Please forward email correspondence with the person whom you USD 500 for the template and details of what freelancing website you purchased it from. I am sure that given that USD 500 is quite a bit to pay for a template, you will be able to easily find the records, and also, am sure that you would hate for other people to be defrauded in this manner. Given that I am sure that you are as unhappy with them as I am given that they have basically sold you something that was stolen, I hope you will be very supportive of this. In your first email, you said that you would deal with them, so this shouldn’t be a massive request from you.

2. Additionally, you could very easily take down the website or replace it with something that has other images. You may be particularly concerned with local taxi law compliance in Toronto/ Niagara Falls/ Buffalo as there is no such thing as the Public Carriage Office in the United States or ‘Transport for Buffalo, Niagara Falls and Toronto which you allude to in your FAQ – which is again almost directly copied from our website – and which again highlights that you can change the text. For your information, the Public Carriage Office is part of Transport for London and based in the United Kingdom.

I am sure as a reputable business, and Dave with a LinkedIn profile which you visited me from, you surely don’t want to be involved in such a blatant copying of someone else’s hard work. With that in mind, I would again ask you to reconsider and address this matter in an appropriate fashion.

Many thanks in advance.

Sincerely,

James

 

From Them

On 17 January 2012 19:07, web Sequel  wrote:

Sorry James but there is nothing there we can do as of now. Please investigate within the designer team who designed and sold the theme.

 

From Me

Sent: Monday, January 16, 2012 8:56 AM 

Subject: Re: Airport Super Shuttle Buffalo Contact Form Submission

 

Hi Sukhjinder,

Thanks for your email. In the same way that Dave put images over the Heathrow Express and Gatwick Express logos, you can do the same for the main image files. We have invested a lot of time and effort in develop and building our brand profile and have trade mark protection in place.

It is not acceptable at all for our trademarked imagery and copyrighted materials to be blatantly used without our permission.

I would again ask that you look to immediately replace the imagery and other materials taken from our website, which surely you can do as a web design company, and have this achieved by 23 January.

Sincerely,

James

 

From them (I like how they ask for feedback on what they did)

On 16 January 2012 13:38, Web Sequel wrote:

 

hello james,

I was informed by my partner dave about the conversation you had with him regarding website. we bought this site from one of the freelancer in some freelancing website i don’t remember which one. he sold us the website in $500. while we bought the website we were told that he was from United Kingdom. There is nothing that we know more than that about the person. Regarding website we were not provided complete files of the website where we can make more changes.

we did not know that the website was copied, if we knew that the website was copied we would not have bought the website already. I am so sorry that we are not in a position to make changes on the website as we don’t have files. By the way out of curiosity did you do the website like we did?

Thanks,

Sukhjinder

 

From Me

On Mon, Jan 16, 2012 at 6:14 PM, James Swanston wrote:

Dear Sukhjinder,

From Whois, I was able to get your email address as the registrant of aaashuttleny.com and also buffalosupershuttle.com. I am not certain whether you have seen the email chain below, however as you will not, these two websites are almost direct copies of our website, its imagery and web copy. As per my email below, I would ask that you immediately change the images and web copy that has been taken from our site, as well as provide the details of whomever provided you with this template.

Thank you for your assistance with this matter.

Sincerely,

James

From Me

Date: 9 January 2012 11:21

Dear Dave,

Thanks for your email

While I see that you have changed over the logos for Heathrow and Gatwick Express, the remaining imagery, which is trademarked is still there. Unfortunately we do have clients in North America and also do airport shuttles so it could easily be mistaken for us. In addition, as you can see from (I’ve taken out the two websites for client sites that I put in the original email), we built sites for our partners for which they pay us a considerable amount of money, so having something that fundamentally looks like our website is not appropriate. It is easy to change over graphics and the web copy that has been taken from our site, so I would ask that you do this immediately.

If you are willing, can you also provide the contact details of the person in the UK that you purchased the template from as we will need to find out what other sites this has been put up on.

Thank you for your co-operation with this.

Sincerely,

James

Response From Them

On 21 December 2011 13:43, web Sequel wrote:

Dear James,

This was a template we bought from a Indian guy in UK. We were charged $500 for this template. I can see website is same but since this is the template we cannot make further changes in it. Moreover the area we serve and you do is different in fact totally different country. As in regards to the logo I’ll make sure logo are changed by today. Thank you so much for informing us about the issue. We will deal with the Template provider.

Warm Regards,

Dave

 
Original Email From Me

 Sent: Wednesday, December 21, 2011 6:30 AM

Subject: Airport Super Shuttle Buffalo Contact Form Submission

A request form has been submitted on the website on 12/20/2011 18:45:20, following is the result of the submission.”

First Name:	James Swanston
Comments	Hello, I was recently directed to this website from Google Analytics. I am not sure if you are aware, however the majority of the graphics, a lot of the web copy and the logos are a direct copy of ours (please see www.carbonvoyage.com). Additionally, there are two logos on your front page for Heathrow and Gatwick Express. Am not completely certain whether you have developed this inhouse or used a third party contractor to develop this, however a number of these things are either trademarked or copyrighted. Sincerely, James