silicon.com neuters web copycat

Earlier this week, silicon.com exposed a website, carorcar.com, that was ripping off the design, content and intellectual property of other websites in order to sell advertising.

We reported the frustrations of Shane O'Donoghue, who had seen his site mirrored by the website thieves and expressed anger at the fact that the rival site was using his hard work to earn money he could have been making from his own ad sales.

But no more. We contacted the owners of Webclients - which runs the website of Refinance-now.org, which was advertising on the offending site - and informed them of the illegality of the site on which they were advertising.

In response to that news, Webclients has agreed to withhold all payment from carorcar.com.

As the sole advertiser on the site, that retraction of funds will hopefully cut off these illegal activities at their source.

O'Donoghue told silicon.com: "I'm delighted progress has been made and it has been possible to stop the activities of this company."

"I think it's important that this issue has been brought to the attention of the IT community and hopefully anybody tempted to steal other people's websites will now know they are being watched," he added.