[LA.pm] Need some advice

[wrboss1 at aol.com]

 Hey, I'm no lawyer but as far as options go you might also consider contacting the Feds or police.  Representing yourself as someone else for financial gain sounds like fraud to me.  If this fellow has had no involvement in the project for the past few years (or ever) then clearly he's trading on your good name in order to make money.  Might try contacting the Post Office Postal Inspectors (using a fraudulent identity to make money) or the FBI. (https://postalinspectors.uspis.gov)



Likewise, contacting PayPal to report the website as fraudulent might be another recourse.


He might be able to keep the domain name if you aren't successful in a Domain Name Dispute Resolution but he can't represent himself as the real OpenWebMail to make money -- especially using copyright material. The actual project may not be copyrighted because of the GNU license *but* whoever originally created the website has a copyright on it and all content, he can't use that.  You might also try emailing the "badguy" a cease and desist letter for violating copyright (on the website) and if he refuses, email the server provider a copyright cease and desist letter demanding a takedown of the site.


A Trademark on OpenWebMail would probably make everything way easier -- so if you have that, happy days.


You should also consider (as suggested by another) posting 'what's happened' on your legitimate website so it's clear what's happened since I have no idea how long the Domain Name Dispute Resolution process takes.


I'm not familiar with the full details of your situation so these are just ideas and may not work at all -- I agree that a good lawyer would be really helpful but stealing someone's website is so egregious that you should be able to find someone who can help.  


Good luck.


Will


-----Original Message-----
From: Alex Teslik <alex at acatysmoof.com>
To: losangeles-pm at mail.pm.org
Sent: Sat, Oct 30, 2010 1:05 pm
Subject: [LA.pm] Need some advice

 
 
 
Hi LA.pm, 
 
   I am the lead developer of OpenWebMail (http://openwebmail.acatysmoof.com) 
and I need some advice. Our old homepage at openwebmail.org has been taken 
hostage by the guy who registered it. He is now link-farming the site and 
making quite a bit of money from the pagerank everyone's work has given his 
domain (over $2400 this month so far). He will not grant us any access to 
change the site and refuses to stop link-farming it. 
 
   I've wanted to bring it up at several of the last meetings, but I've missed 
them due to a new baby at home. I'd really appreciate your input as I'm not 
sure what to do. We've got a release coming up after two years of hard work 
and I'd really prefer not to fork the project. I've tried contacting google to 
make them aware of his abuse of the pagerank that was built up by open source 
contributors, to no avail. 
 
   Is anyone aware of an open source project's homepage being hijacked like 
this in the past? How did they handle it? 
 
Thanks, 
Alex 
 
P.S.- You can see how much money he's made here: 
http://www.openwebmail.org/donation 
"support payments" he says :( 
_______________________________________________ 
Losangeles-pm mailing list 
Losangeles-pm at pm.org 
http://mail.pm.org/mailman/listinfo/losangeles-pm 
 

  

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