internet stalking?

[jessie182]

I don't know if my situation counts as a "stalking", but it wouldn't hurt to find out. Two years ago, a 15-year-old girl began instant messaging me. The conversations were completely innocent; she usually wanted to talk about colleges and applications and whatnot. I had created a personal webpage, and she wanted to see it so I gave her the URL. Not long afterwards, a vigilant web surfer notified me of another webpage that looked EXACTLY like mine (he had taken a look at the source code for both pages). The girl had taken my source code and published it as hers! Fortunately for me, she had been a little naive and had posted her home phone number on her page. I called and talked to her parents about what she had done, and they immediately had the page removed. However, the same vigilant surfer contacted me again about another page--it was substantially different but contained large chunks of my source code. I contacted the girl's parents again, but that time they did nothing. After that, the girl began instant messaging me again but using multiple screen names. She even had her friends IM me to harrass me. I was unable to get a response from AOL (I contacted them since she was using their IM service) or from her ISP (who said they could do nothing since I had no proof of harrassment). She continued to harrass me for a year and a half until she stopped on her own. Luckily, she didn't have caller ID and never harrassed me on the phone. I've been told I probably can't do anything about this because all I know about her is her first and middle names and her home phone number. Is there anything I can do?

 

[Michael Wechsler]

It does not seem as though you were stalking at all. You might want to notify her parents as her guardian about the situation. If you have the phone number, obtaining name and address should be simple. You will want to send a cease and desist letter to both her, her parents, and her ISP. We have a sample letter available within the forums and you can search to find it. See rules under the Digital Millenium Copyright Act (DMCA). We will have a full forms section shortly.

While that could be the process, be very aware that simply copying some code does not mean that, the act itself, constitutes copyright infringement. Your code must be relatively unique. Most believe that simply copying a table structure constitutes copyright infringement -- it may but the sliding scale rule works best. The more unique the code, the more possible the charge of copright infringement.