Mirror + Google results

[Dr Unne]

If you search google for "ff1 nes" or something similar, one of the top results you'll get is

www.vbfx.com + /mirrors/www.planetnintendo.com/ff1/wscmusic.shtml

(I don't want to make that a link so as not to further increase that page's google rank; combine the parts yourself.)

This is a crappy full-site mirror of my FF1 site http://ffclassic.net (hosted by EoFF now).

I don't really mind being mirrored, but 1) That mirror looks like crap, the layout is broken. 2) The info on there is way out of date compared with what I have now, and it's never updated. 3) I used to be hosted by PlanetNintendo at Gamespy; when I moved my site off of their servers, I dropped off the face of the earth, more or less. I'm afraid people googling are going to mistake that mirror for my real site. 4) It has my name on it. 5) I think that site is taking away some traffic that may otherwise be coming to me, and thus taking away EoFF's traffic.

I don't have anything against people mirroring me. From my site's FAQ:

Q: Can I use information from your site on my site / project?

A: This applies only to this FF1 site, and not to Eyes on Final Fantasy in general! I (Brian) do not own Eyes on Final Fantasy!

The answer is yes. Graphics, charts, whatever, use it all in whatever way you want. It's not like I own any of that stuff anyways, it all belongs to Squaresoft. And spreading information about FF1 is the important thing to me, not hoarding information myself.

I do ask a couple things of you though. Firstly, please don't rip off my entire layout for your own site. I'd rather not have tons of clones of my site all over the internet. Be creative. And secondly, please don't direct-link to images and files on my site. There's no need to leech my bandwidth for your own gain. If you want to use my graphics or something, upload them to your own server. And thirdly, it'd be really nice of you to put a link to my site somewhere to give me credit for making all this junk. Other than that, take it all. No need to email me for permission, just consider this permission right here.

I don't know if that statement invalidates any claims I might have to stop people from mirroring me.

I emailed what I think is the owner of that mirror, with no response. Do you think I'm justified in contacting Google and asking them to remove this mirror from their listings? Does anyone know anything about how to do it?

[Endless]

I don't know if that statement invalidates any claims I might have to stop people from mirroring me.


The data is factual and therefore not copyrightable, but the layout and overall design of your site is. As far as I see it, it's straight copyright infringement, nowhere close to fair use. Contact the webmaster/host (the guy in the whois) and provider (Mountain Cablevision) with a C&D letter (a real letter, not an email). You can try contacting Cablevision by mail (abuse@mountaincable.net) first to see if they can take action first (offender's ip: 24.215.2.186) before resorting to letters.



I emailed what I think is the owner of that mirror, with no response. Do you think I'm justified in contacting Google and asking them to remove this mirror from their listings? Does anyone know anything about how to do it?

<a href="http://www.google.com/support/bin/request.py?form_type=user&stage=fm&user_type=user&contact_type=alert_legal&continue=Continue">Clicky</a>.

[ValiantKnight]

It's likely they have merely forgot the site existed on their server? Though if he's not answering email that becomes a problem.

It does present a problem for advertising your site though. I would follow the above poster's advice.

[Dr Unne]

My assumption is that he forgot about it, yeah. I don't think this was done maliciously.

I'm not sure if I want to actually start sending people letters. I wouldn't know how to write a C&D letter. I'm not willing to actually take legal action anyways. I'll settle with having it removed from Google. I will try that link.

[Endless]

You can send them a regular letter asking if they can take down your site without making it a C&D, stating you tried the email contact but got no answer. Or use the phone contact. The whois info is for Mountain Cablevision, it seems, so maybe they operate it.

[rubah]

Write to google then?

[crono_logical]

I'm not sure Google will do anything, seeing as they don't manipulate results as a result of googlebombing either :p Also, see http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2005/09/googlebombing-failure.html :p