Hi everyone,

I've been working on the common "rent a site" model for a while now and recently I discovered someone who has ripped off content and graphics from one of my sites to use on their own "rent a site" (along with ripping off other people for some of his other sites).

My question is, what can / should I do about it?

I did a whois and have their hosting information, phone number and address (they actually live just a couple hours away from me in a city I visit often).

call all his clients if he has any and explain them what's going on. They will be more than happy to jump on your board and get away from that scammer.

else ask them to just take off the content and graphics.

Have a paralegal write up a letter warning them to take their content down and hand it over to you or face charges...prob will scare them like most people.....you might bget a new website out of it as well ;-)

I'd start by writing to them and asking to immediately remove all the copyrighted material. If that doesn't work - contact their hosting, usually gets done very fast, just be prepared to show the proof. If all of it doesn't work - you have more options, like getting a lawyer righting a letter like somebody already suggested - will cost you around $100 (at least around here), check if they hotlink your images and do an image swap with some nasty picture, etc.

Contact them first and wait for a reply. If no reply, contact their hosting and have them shut down. Usually the first option does work.
Good luck

Depends on where it happens.

Get used to it. If you don't want it to happen, don't put your content on the internet. Is it really worth your time to pursue the removal of your content? Maybe if they are outranking you it is, but otherwise is it really hurting you that much?

I always contact the person and request they take down the content immediately or else action will be taken. It should scare the person to take your content off.

Though I understand you to some degree I really can't stand questions and threads like this on blackhat forum..

few days ago someone cried that his articles had been ripped... WTF

If nothing else works you can always DDOS him and take his site down