This has nothing to do with 50 cycles. We have had a look at the site, it's a copy of our site from december last year, we have treid to call them, but there is no answer, we have e-mailed eZee to see if they know anything about it, but as it's about 1 in the morning over there I doubt we'll hear back from them till monday. At that price it looks a bit dodgy as they would be losing money. On that basis I would have to agree with some of the other posts on this subject that it may be a scam.

 

Jim Morris

Technical Manager

50 Cycles

A Torq for $1400

 

This has nothing to do with 50 cycles. We have had a look at the site, it's a copy of our site from december last year, we have treid to call them, but there is no answer, we have e-mailed eZee to see if they know anything about it, but as it's about 1 in the morning over there I doubt we'll hear back from them till monday. At that price it looks a bit dodgy as they would be losing money. On that basis I would have to agree with some of the other posts on this subject that it may be a scam.

 

Jim Morris

Technical Manager

50 Cycles

 

I am no expert but I cannot imagine how one would 'challenge' a website for infringements.

You are obviously aware that the whole of the content of the Spanish Site is an infringement of 50Cycles' copyright. What is more puzzling (unless it is a scam) is that they claim copyright of their site content.

There may be some action at law to be taken here.

Peter

I've received an email from Tim saying that action is being taken against this, and wondering what on earth they could be thinking in doing this.

 

Hopefully it will be taken down quickly.

.

The person/people behind it were obviously banking on several unsuspecting customers to wire transfer money across into an account. Once they withdraw the cash, they'll be long gone.

 

Using allwhois, the domain is registered with hostgator.com which appears to be a legit hosting company in the USA. No doubt fake details were used to buy the domain and hosting.

 

I've come across many sites like this in the past, usually using a dynamic dns host so that the site can be run from a PC/laptop well away from a data centre.

 

Basically never ever use a site that doesn't accept a credit card and go one better than that by checking with your card company that the merchant is legitimate especially if they are new to you.

I am no expert but I cannot imagine how one would 'challenge' a website for infringements.

 

Almost all website hosting companies have terms of service that specifically say that clients cannot use their websites to host illegal material, failing that the US government have introduced the Digital Millennium Copyright Act which can be used to take down websites hosted in the US that contain unauthorized copyrighted material, however as the website in question is hosted in the US and the content is copyrighted to a UK company I don't know how a takedown would work if the copyright owner isn't a US based company/individual.

But if the website is hosted in somewhere like Russia where the laws regarding copyright are pretty lax then you've got a slim to none chance of getting the site/content pulled.

 

In this current situation if I were in 50cycles shoes the first thing I'd do is to contact the website hosting company saying that a customer of theirs is violating their Terms of Service, specifically "Use of our services to infringe upon any copyright or trademark is prohibited.", which should go some way to getting the website offlined pretty quickly. Especially if you include some links to archive.org's past caches of the 50cycles pages they copied.

Copyright infringements on the internet

 

Almost all website hosting companies have terms of service that specifically say that clients cannot use their websites to host illegal material, failing that the US government have introduced the Digital Millennium Copyright Act

 

In this current situation if I were in 50cycles shoes the first thing I'd do is to contact the website hosting company saying that a customer of theirs is violating their Terms of Service, specifically "Use of our services to infringe upon any copyright or trademark is prohibited.", which should go some way to getting the website offlined pretty quickly. Especially if you include some links to archive.org's past caches of the 50cycles pages they copied.

 

Thank you Haku for your explanations.

It seems it may well be the usual scenario: Rights may be obtained at law: it is another matter to actually get them.

The perpetrators of this "scam" have the advantage of being 'nowhere in particular' (cyberspace comes to mind). Taking them at face value:they have American connections (a Director is a graduate of Harvard ?); they are 'located' in Spain; their business vehicle is a 'Limited' company (presumably purporting to be incorporated in Gt. Britain); they have a traceable website host. Getting the site 'pulled' may be the simplest and first step: bringing the perpetrators to account ?...........let us hope they can be quickly collared before they set up somewhere else.

I wondered how easy going Hostgator were in allowing this to be set up in their jurisdiction?

Peter

Everyone, stay clear of this site. Checked it out and the site trys to grab anything you have got stored in your clipboard.

 

Mabsey

I've had their ISP disable the site.

 

Thank you very much for bringing this impostor to our attention!!! Great work Pedelecs!

 

"Keep 'em peeled"

Edited July 23, 200718 yr by Tim