xx1tg.co.uk portal falsely accusing sites of content copying (remove the xx's)

[alexcruncha]

I want to warn all bingo affiliates that a person named Tom Eaves, owner of 1tg.co.uk, bingo-sites.co and suffolkpoker.co.uk is falsely accusing webmasters of copying content and asking them to remove content from their sites.

I received the following email which has proven to be completely unsubstantiated:

I'm the owner of http://bingo-sites.co and xxhttp://1tg.co.uk. Whether intentional or not, your site (http://fantasybingo.co.uk) has copied our content - both on site and off site. There are several very distinct phrases that were used in many of our site's pages with the most specific and identifiable phrases relating to xxxxx and xxxxx that were first used in our unique articles.

I ask that we move to resolve this matter quickly and without incident. To resolve this matter, we need for you to remove your offensive pages, as well as any other page that you or your writers may have copied from us, whether intentional or not, knowing or not. Additionally, we request that you do the same for any other site you own or have submitted content to. From an ethical standpoint, you may want to remove content that has done similar to other affiliate portals.

We need this done within five working days from today. In the event that the content is still "live" within this window of time (whether on site or off site, such as found here: http://xxxx authored under the name xxxxxxx), we are prepared to take action which may include (but is not limited to the following):

1. File a DCMA notice against your company and websites
2. File complaints with the appropriate governing bodies
3. File for legal remedies

Thank you in advance for your complete cooperation in this matter.

After investigating I found no duplicate content whatsoever, the article he claims has duplicate content has been proven to be unique (and it isnt even on my site) and there is no common articles or even sentences between his site and mine or the mentioned article. It appears he is accusing me of going after the same long tail keywords (4 words long and contained a well known trademark that neither of us have any claim to).

Further to this I have found that his domain was only registered 3 months ago in Feb 2012 and mine was registered in 2009 and my site was live months after its registration.

After accusing me he has not responded to my reply.

More information and the responses of other GPWA members can be found in my previous thread here:
https://www.gpwa.org/forum/falsely-a...nt-205123.html

This guy appears to own several other portals. It appears his intention was to have me remove content so his sites would prevail. I am writing to this warn other webmasters of this bad practice I have come across.

[suffolkpoker]

Alex,


In the interest of full disclosure, the offsite article cited that contained substantially duplicate content and phrases from my site is located here xxx.sooperarticles.com/gaming-articles/gambling-articles/leading-pack-virtue-fusion-bingo-sites-881781.html . I also stated in my email which pages I took issue with on your site. When I contacted you, I left the possibility open that you were not aware that you/a writer were copying my work. I did not say or imply that the entire site or entire article was copied from my website, as that would clearly not be the case (and thus a false claim that was not made). There were, however, very specific phrases that were copied from our site (a legitimate and accurate claim that was made). Ironically, these phrases (that we identified) are no longer present on your website from the best I can tell. The phrases were not merely a matter of long tail phrases from Adwords that we took issue with – it was the way your content was written and worded – entirely too similar in choice of words to be merely coincidental. In addition, do you really have such delusions of grandeur that you think your site is the only website standing in the way between long tail keywords and my site? Surely a bit of a stretch, don’t you think?



Had you addressed this matter in a different way, instead of editing your content and then opening a thread crying victim, I’d probably have provided you with very specific examples. I never said I’d respond. Instead, I said, “fix it or I will file legal actions”. For the record, you will find that whilst some webmasters may join you in your pity party, you will struggle to find any other webmaster that has received this cease letter. Therefore, your angle of hoping that we sent out emails to many different webmasters will end in disappointment. You were the only one who received this email and were the only webmaster that we have recently discovered in our most recent round of checking. I’d like to further point out that even though you’ve been “…an approved GPWA portal for around 2+ years and wouldn't dream of copying content and neither would anyone that I work with” does not mean that you would not dream of nor copy content. Claiming that you are an approved portal, thus are “holier than thou” is a bit of a stretch (no disrespect intended to GPWA in making this statement).


To make things clear, my intention was to bring to your attention that you or your writer/writers had copied content from my website and to have you remove the copied content. This may have taken place with or without your knowledge. Why did we not file a DCMA claim against you straight away, you may wonder. You put yourself out there as a GPWA member – sworn not to violate copyrights or do business with anyone doing such things. Thus, pointing such violations out to you would lead to you “doing the right thing” once it was pointed out to you. Going forward, there will be no future warning. Any future violation of our copyright (on site, off site, by Indian content/link building company that you have contracted, or otherwise) will promptly result in legal action.


We cited two url’s in our letter to you for a very specific reason. The content appearing on 1tg was redirected from our previous website and was published earlier than 1tg’s domain registration suggests. And we both know that just because your website was started in 2009 doesn’t mean that you started and quit writing on it in 2009. There are many new pages on your site that were written in March-April-May of 2012 – just saying.

[alexcruncha]

To keep it short, I have not amended any content on my site since you sent the first email because the lot was written in house and this should be clear by the quality of the content on my site.

The fact is simple you sent me this email (now explicit)

Hello Mr. Eliades,

I'm the owner of http://bingo-sites.co and http://1tg.co.uk. Whether intentional or not, your site (http://fantasybingo.co.uk) has copied our content - both on site and off site. There are several very distinct phrases that were used in many of our site's pages with the most specific and identifiable phrases relating to Dragonfish and Virtue Fusion that were first used in our unique articles.

I ask that we move to resolve this matter quickly and without incident. To resolve this matter, we need for you to remove your offensive pages, as well as any other page that you or your writers may have copied from us, whether intentional or not, knowing or not. Additionally, we request that you do the same for any other site you own or have submitted content to. From an ethical standpoint, you may want to remove content that has done similar to other affiliate portals.

We need this done within five working days from today. In the event that the content is still "live" within this window of time (whether on site or off site, such as found here: http://www.sooperarticles.com/gaming...es-881781.html authored under the name Sarah Taylor), we are prepared to take action which may include (but is not limited to the following):

1. File a DCMA notice against your company and websites
2. File complaints with the appropriate governing bodies
3. File for legal remedies

Thank you in advance for your complete cooperation in this matter.

which doesnt contain any reference to urls on my site or yours and I could not find any duplicate content (only the same long tail keywords), therefore I responded with this email:

Hello Tom,

It is impossible that duplicate content exists since all articles on my site have been uniquely written by us, not to mention that I would never scrape other sites, especially since it wouldn't rank in Google if I did. Furthermore, after investigating I cannot find any duplicate articles or even sentences that appears on both of our sites, either on my site or on sites that I have submitted to article directories.

I am open to removing duplicate content but I simply do not understand where any duplicate content could exist.

Can you be more specific and provide all of the pages on my site and yours where you believe duplicate content exists? Please also provide examples of the duplicate text/images on each of these pages.

Looking forward to resolving this issue.

Regards,
Alex

I waited and got no response from you.

I was so disappointed and confused that I received this threatening email from you I posted my initial thread on GPWA for advice. It is simple, I have done nothing wrong and I am still struggling to see where the "Leading The Pack Virtue Fusion Bingo Sites" article has taken content from your site, let alone any other page that is actually on my site. Why have you not provided any specific examples in any correspondence?

The only content on your site that I can find as of 21st May 2012 on 1tg.co.uk that has an article discussing Virtue Fusion is below and I am struggling to find any similarities between the offsite article we published here and this content here.

Please give me specific examples of duplicate content either on or off site as I am struggling to find any?

[suffolkpoker]

This matter is not one resolved in the 'court of public opinion.' If copying content is beneath you, can you help me understand why you've seemingly cut and paste an article from my website to this thread without authorization to republish? By comparison, you have linked to your article - why not do the same for both articles you're speaking of?

[iGamingWriter]

This matter is not one resolved in the 'court of public opinion.' If copying content is beneath you, can you help me understand why you've seemingly cut and paste an article from my website to this thread without authorization to republish? By comparison, you have linked to your article - why not do the same for both articles you're speaking of?

Actually suffolkpoker not looking to take sides here, but if there's a specific instant of content copying it should be easy enough for you to point this out and by doing that you'd not only support your case but point out someone using unethical practices so that the GPWA seal could be reviewed. Agree that both articles could have been linked to instead, but public opinion shouldn't need to come into it; there should either be obvious copied content or you should withdraw the claim as baseless. I've only had a quick scan through, but i'm not seeing the similarities myself - could you point out what you specifically object to?

[suffolkpoker]

Clearly in this thread, I'm objecting to my content being published on it.* I'm not interested in this forum judging whether the content is copied.* In this forum thread, I'm interested in having the copied content removed.* Bu copied content, I mean the article OF MINE that he has cut and pasted to the forum thread.* THAT SHOULD BE IMMEDIATELY REMOVED.*

As for the other stuff, I've sent notice that either Alex will/won't/has/hasn't complied with.* I'm not interested in flame wars or forum member opinions.* I was nice by contacting him first, not immediately filing dcma and not going to GPWA for him to be reviewed.* His "waiting" for a response was hardly that (he emailed at the end of business and published prior to the opening of business the next day).* It was (in my opinion) spin control and hope that I'd sent other people the same notice.

Again, not looking for a forum war or drama.* In this instance, I would like my content removed from this forum - period.

[iGamingWriter]

I agree your article should be removed from this thread and i've no interest in starting a 'flame war'. I'm not saying i know what's going on, but this refusal to state exactly what your inital problem was - including your initial email that does not clearly outline what the issues with the article in question is - certainly makes it difficult to see how you hope to win any form of copyright case. If you can't clearly outline the issues, how can you hope a court to uphold them? If a court won't uphold them and you still make the threat.....

[alexcruncha]

I have just edited the thread above and changed the text to a link to the xx1tg.co.uk site.

Anyway, I am not looking to make any enemies here and I am open to rectifying any issues that may exist provided they are genuine. There is not much more I can do or say about the matter any further.

Thepogg, thanks for your third party input.

[lowrisk]

Suffolkpoker, your site is not one to be taken seriously really. I suspect this is just an intimidation tactic, that has back fired

I have just done a full and thorough plaigarism check on the article in question, and all it brought up was 2 other article sites, and not any of your websites. Had there been more than a 20% duplication of sentences or phrases, this would of become clear. As your URL would of been displayed.

I think this whole issue is very childish really, and I am part of no "pity party" simply expressing my thoughts