How A Site Got shut down After We Took Some Actions

Hubbers United succeed in shutting down Bigezine (May 2012)
---The BigE story until now---

It is not the first time that any hubber's content is stolen, nor would it be the last time. As the old saying goes, if you are good there would be people who would want to copy you. Wait a minute they never copied me..? Do I really suck? I was ready to fill my DMCA complain... oh my!

A week and a half ago, many Hubbers (HubPages writers) got the shock of their lives when they found that their content was scraped by a crappy content directory. Most of the affected Hubbers were those who participated in a Challenge to write 30 hubs in 30 days ( like ourselves).

There were some Hubbers who wrote the hubs while they were sick and 2 Hubbers with their hand injuries made sure they didn't fail in the challenge. When the news spread through the HubPages Community; even hubbers who were not affected by the site came forward to support the affected hubbers. Many of them wrote hubs on the content theft to spread awareness on the situation. We were in schock!! We couldn't sleep. We had to go to the bathroom four times a day..huh? You could understand the FRUSTRATION.

The BigE site also made a mockery of some Hubbers by publishing their personal hubs with photographs. One of the hubs which made it to the first page of that website, was a hub written on the mass content theft by BigE.

Contrary to the popular belief that one has to write good content to get their work stolen, almost every newly published hub was getting stolen by the site which confirmed the fact that the site used some scraping html. The site was stealing our articles without looking into the gender of the hubber or the topic of hub.

A close look at the authors displayed in the site also revealed that none of the authors actually exist and the culprit was the webmaster of the site.

The affected hubbers used the contact form and pulled out details from who is and other sources available on the Internet to get the contact details of the site owner to mail him. Some people even called on the phone numbers and found that they were wrong numbers. When the mails yielded no results the hubbers took the next step of contacting the hosting company. But that did not yield any results. It looked as though the hosting company had some vested interests in the stolen content website. Check our other hubs about this mess and you will see that we pointed out greediness and ravaging hatred.

Following the numerous comments and mails to the BigE site, the webmaster disabled the contact form. A we expected, because we do Sites, they also masked the website details using Protected Domain Services. The site continued displaying the hubs as if challenging the hubbers, ‘you are all fools… you cannot do anything to us’. With all ways of contact blocked the Hubbers took the next step to get their hubs de-indexed by search engines. Some hubber fellows even approached their lawyers to take action against the site and their press release partners.

Many also send notifications to this name.com and started digging further for information. The Hubbers found many mentions of a Guy with initials TM in association with the site (he said he was framed!). Further digging only proved the involvement of this guy with the BigE site. It is then when this author decided to play dirty by writing a Hub on this Guy so that he will be compelled to shut down the Site. And as expected, the site is down now.

The united efforts of Hubbers have yielded results. The next time when someone thinks of stealing the works of people belonging to HubPages community they would think twice. One hub or multiple hubs, the HubPages community stands united against content theft. There is no way we will tolerate content stealing.

After the publication of the Hub, TM made a comment on the hub telling that his email inbox got flooded with mails from hubbers relating to some site he has no connection with. According to him, he was framed by the content thief who has some enmity towards him by putting his details in the who-is information of the site. He demanded to remove the hub with his picture as it is affecting his business. He even demanded an apology. However, I refused to do so as I have proofs about his association with the Big E site. He then tried to prove his point that anyone can put his details of contact by putting my name on the site details of his domain. Just check the screenshot of our name... involved with his shutdown site. We were in rage and we let him know..!!

• Are you saying that the BigE site was made with the intention of framing you? Are you telling us that the site deliberately stole the content from others to put you in big time trouble? If so, why don’t you take action against the site? An enemy who has done this is definitely capable of doing more damage to your business and reputation which I am sure you do not want.
• If you have no association with the BigE site, how come there are using the name servers PPANDA.NET owned by you?

Here is a deal. If you are innocent, prove to us by helping to nab the culprit who ‘really’ stole our content. We would want to see his face and also take action against him. We will malign him by all means that he will think twice before stealing anyone’s content. If you expose him, you will get an apology from us and you will be our hero. We will give you loads of positive publicity. Are you in the game... to find the Thieves??.