How it started
Rewind back a few weeks. There I was, at home, waiting for my clothes to come out of the dryer. With twenty minutes to spare, I sat at my desk wearing my best laundry day attire: blue basketball shorts from the ninth grade, a significantly undersized t-shirt, and black socks. Had I showered yet? Perhaps.
To fill the time, I started to look through Schoolr’s referral logs. What are referral logs? Basically, they tell you where your site was visited from. For example, if you’re on Facebook and you visit Schoolr, the log would tell me that you were referred by Facebook. Pretty standard. As I’m going through the logs, one site catches my eye and I click onto it. It’s called SchoolWax and it was strikingly similar to Schoolr in both look and function (especially the previous version of Schoolr). The first thought I had was, “This sucks, they liked my site and copied it for themselves.” Thing is, design elements can’t be copyrighted and without having solid proof, I wasn’t able to prove anything. See the similarities here.
That is, until I viewed their source code. I saw that they had directly copied a part of my source code and put it on their site. This made it very clear that the existence of their site was based on Schoolr and took their site from “made something similar” to “copied code and function.” See copied code here.
I dug deeper and found out that SchoolWax is run by Etraffic Solutions, a large e-learning corporation based out of Victoria, British Columbia.
Feeling a bit cheated as SchoolWax had used my content to promote and sell Etraffic’s products, form partnerships with organizations, and as a means of publicity, I decided to consult a couple of lawyers. They were very helpful but also very expensive. Being a student, I don’t have a litigation budget, so I decided to deal with this on my own.
November 16, 2009:
I sent Etraffic Solutions a letter establishing that they were infringing on my copyright. It contained 3 requests:
- Immediately stop infringing on my copyright by removing Schoolr’s content from SchoolWax or provide adequate credit and enter into a licensing agreement with Schoolr.
- Provide me with a retribution (for the 15 months their site has been in operation).
- Immediately stop the claim that SchoolWax was “Canada’s first all-in-one homework portal.”
Read my letter to them here.
I also had their source code notarized, so that they couldn’t remove my code, or references to it, and claim it was never there.
Look at the notarized document here.
November 23, 2009
I received a response from Etraffic’s lawyers. The letter did not address my main complaint (that my source code on their website showed they copied Schoolr), rather, it focused on minute, general information, that I did not bring up. Here are some snippets from the letter and my responses to them.
From the letter: “While the reference to a public website, www.schoolr.com can only be seen when viewing the code behind Etraffic’s website, the reference to your website has now been removed by Etraffic.”
My response: So they’re saying that they did copy my code but that it’s not a big deal because it could ONLY be seen in the source code (and it’s not like the source code makes up the website…).
From the letter: “The reference to www.schoolr.com served no purpose within the Etraffic code and conveyed no advantage to Etraffic.”
My response: Of course the reference to Schoolr served them no purpose. It was foolish of them to replicate my site and even more foolish to copy and paste my code into theirs. I am not questioning the existence of this one line of code (that I originally had linked to Schoolr as a quick fix to a bug). I am questioning the fact that a) they based SchoolWax after Schoolr and b) they copied my code onto their site.
From the letter: “Both www.schoolr.com and www.schoolwax.com legaly access the citation functionality of the North Carolina State University website as do a number of other websites.”
My response: Of course they do. I never questioned this and this is not my complaint. North Carolina State University offers a fantastic citation resource and I encourage more research websites to utilize their brilliant tool.
From the letter: “Etraffic has not violated any copyright, nor made any revenue as a result of your website being referenced five times. Etraffic has removed any reference to your website and now considers the matter to be closed.”
My response: Once again, their wording is impeccable. According to this, they haven’t made any specific revenue from my code being “referenced” five times. How about the revenue that was generated as a result of SchoolWax copying Schoolr? That is where this code comes into play, as proof that they did more than “reference” my code but rather copied Schoolr and sloppily left a trail. And, as far as I’m concerned, this matter is not “closed.”
Read their letter here.
Some quick facts:
- SchoolWax was launched in September 2008. Schoolr was launched in December 2006.
- SchoolWax is a free website, like Schoolr, however it is used to promote and sell Etraffic’s products.
- SchoolWax partnered with LearnNowBC, which is funded by the Ministry of Education, to bring the site to BC students and educators.
- Schoolr thinks you’re cute.
- Read more about parterships that SchoolWax has formed on their website here.
Schoolr was first.
You all rock.
