I wrote a long blog post here regarding a low down dirty wannabe website company marketing to realtors calling themselves "The Pros Advantage" - and how they blatantly ripped off one of our LEC designs (no not tried to copy it, literrally ripped off the source code!) - They were so sloppy they even left our copyright notification in the source files.
Obviously we are going to go after this company legally (that process starts on Monday) - but also hopefully obvious is that fact that we are furious about this blatent intellectial property theft and want to make sure you (the Realtor community) know what kind of a firm "TheProsAdvantage" is.
Here are a few posts that have popped up within the last 24 hours regarding this incident
http://www.realestatewebmasters.com/blogs/morgan-carey/8665/show/ - My original blog post exposing these scumbags. (Also a forum thread here)
http://www.realestateindustrywatch.com/the-pros-advantage-warning-beware/ - The Real Estate Industry Watch did a nice post as well.
http://www.barkerhedges.com/blog/the-pros-advantage-is-taking-advantage-of-you.html - Matt Barker, our customer that actually had one of his sites (done through us) ripped off in HIS OWN MARKET!
http://www.findsouthwestfloridahomes.com/blog/intellectual-property-theft-and-real-estate-agents-do-not-be-stupid/ - A GREAT post by Benjammin Donna in Florida regarding agents and thier responsibility on the web.
I will post more updates as we come across them.
How is this still happening? I mean seriously - people just going out (so called professionals) and stealing other folks designs (images / source code / content) and throwing it up as their own - do they not think they are going to get caught?
We (Webmasters / The Realtor Community) - need to take a stand against intellectual property theft and expose companies like this - because they take advantage of unsuspecting Realtors and sell them sites the "think" are unique until the company that actually owns them sends a very nasty cease and dessist order (and likely a few PO'd emails) and the poor Realtor is left holding the bag (they pay for the site which they now must take down(and can't get their money back) OR WORSE! The Realtor ends up getting sued for their involvement *Note it's not always the case that the Realtor doesn't know the site is being stolen, sometimes they actually pay someone intentionally to steal which is the lowest kind of low)
Anyways - REW Fans or not, we would still appreciate your support on this issue - I imagine protecting your unique works (content etc) is high on the Active Rain priority list as well.
How can you help?
Feature this post - the more people educated the less this will happen (and with exposure less Realtors will fall victim to this particular firm)
Write your own blog post - about this particular incident or IP protection in online real estate in general - I would be happy to send you a link.
Email the purpetrators - in this case info@theprosadvantage.com
Link to this (or any other) posts containing exposing materials or education for Realtors regarding proper use of IP / copyright on the internet.
Reblog this post - again more eyes is what we are after here.
Leave a supporting comment
Whatever you can do to help is greatly appreciated - I know I am sick of people like this - and I imagine there are thousands of you out there who have fallen victim to IP / content theft of one kind or another - let's take a stand!
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