Someone has recreated (part) of my blog years after it closed. Same domain. Do I have any recourse? I used to have a travel blog - nothing fancy, but at https://www.marksmayo.com (please only visit with adblock to avoid giving them any ad revenue). I let it expire a couple of years ago, backed up everything and let it lapse. I'm sure they have every right to get the URL, that's fine, it's the copied content I have issues with. They've changed the theme and some of the content and names, but even include verbatim text from a couple of my old posts, and my photos, and have the audacity to say 'copyright' at the bottom too(!). I don't know who Mercedes is, but that's definitely one of my old photos and text. How do I go about getting this removed? Does one have any recourse? If it matters legally, I'm based in New Zealand.
The only real recourse you have is to contact the webhost and try to convince them your content is really yours and file a DMCA Takedown request. How you convince them might be an issue; do you have any old screenshots? Original photos? Any proof that the content and photos are yours? The webhost appears to be https://datacamp.co.uk/ , unless the DNS is being proxied, since DNS points to CloudDNS https://mxtoolbox.com/SuperTool.aspx?action=dns:marksmayo.com NZ and UK are members of the Berne Convention and the Universal Copyright Convention, so there don't appear to be any arguments about not applying copyright law. You willingly gave up the domain, so you have no recourse or valid reason to try and regain ownership of the domain. You could try and contact the new owner of the domain by filing a complaint via the abuse email listed by the domain registar at https://www.godaddy.com/whois/results.aspx?&amp;domain=marksmayo.com But they may not do anything, even if you can prove a copyright violation, since they only handle the domain registration and not the webhosting. How they got the content is another question: who was your webhost when you owned the site? Datacamp? Did they not delete it when you closed your account? How did the new owner come to get it?
Your question lacks some details. So you registered a domain name, and later find someone else used that domain name (in the past) for a hobby website? Then no, you don't need to worry about it. If that person has a current trademark on the name used in the domain name, and your website provides/sells products or services in the same area, then you could have a problem. But that doesn't sound like it's the issue.
You can report it to the publisher(s) Protection of copyright is a matter for the individual rights holder: some (I’m looking at you Disney) are vigilant, thorough and draconian in protecting their rights, others don’t care at all. Unless you are the rights holder it’s none of your business. In much the same way that the guy charging your neighbour for 4 hours gardening but being long gone in 2 isn’t. If you like your neighbour or feel duty bound to do something, you tell them and then leave it to them what they do with it. This is not a matter for the authorities as it doesn’t rise to the level of criminal copyright infringement. Just like the gardener above, this isn’t a crime.
There are three main aspects to this: Its their website, and their terms of service. They can enforce those terms, or change them (in some appropriate manner). You have no recourse if they remove you, block you, or delete your account, for example. That's the measure that you would probably have, virtually every time. To claim damages, or litigate beyond just website access control, requires a legal claim. But there's a catch there. To claim damages, they need to show actual damage, which they wish to be compensated for. If you misused their website but no actual harm can be shown, the total damage claimable is zero, whether or not you followed their rules. Merely entering dishonest information isn't by itself harm. So they would have to show they suffered damage/harm because of that, which is directly attributable to your behaviour, was foreseeably harmful etc, or similar. They also need to consider legal costs, and ability to enforce, especially if you are in a different country. If for some reason the computer use was also illegal, then a criminal act could be committed and they could notify law enforcement. For example suppose you did this in the little known country of Honestania, where the law says that to prevent trolling and online abuse, anything posted on social media under any but your own legal name is a crime. Or suppose you'd been banned from the system and ignoring/evading such a ban was criminal computer use or criminal trespass due to the forbidden/unauthorised access (which can happen in several places). But this is purely for completeness; I guess you'd know if you were taking it further, into criminal computer use.
Here's where you went wrong legally: Suppose I legally obtain some digital image created by somebody else (e.g., by downloading from a public website). That, right there, is copyright infringement- unless the copyright owner has granted permission or the image is public domain you cannot copy it - this breaches "the right to make reproductions". By posting it on the web (assuming that it isn't itself an infringing copy) they have given implied permission for you to look at it in a web browser but not to copy it into a presentation even if that presentation is never presented. If it is presented then that makes the infringement worse - it adds breaches of "the right to communicate to the public" and "the right to use the work as a basis for an audiovisual work". How is this different from the computer wallpaper? It isn't. If you are using the one of the defaults that shipped with the OS then the license gives you permission. If you are using someone else's copyright without permission then it's a breach. There are defenses to copyright infringement but these are quite nationally variable - search this or other sites for "fair dealing" and "fair use".
In the US, the author would be able to wind an infringement lawsuit against the re-publisher. Title 17, the US copyright law codified, grants the author the exclusive right to authorize republication, and does not require that a person use their real name. The argument "It was on the internet, it's in the public domain" is utterly without legal merit. The same goes for the assertion that a person loses his rights if he is uncontactable. The author has stated the terms of the license, so there isn't even a reasonable argument that the infringement is innocent (unknowing: "I thought it was with permission). There is no requirement that you have to allow a potential user to hassle you about the license terms. The one thing that is special regarding anonymous and pseudonymous works is that under 17 USC 302, "copyright endures for a term of 95 years from the year of its first publication, or a term of 120 years from the year of its creation, whichever expires first". For a work whose author is identified, copyright "endures for a term consisting of the life of the author and 70 years after the author’s death". This assumes that the host site has not preempted author's license: Stack Exchange, for example, preempts an author's exclusive right, so you can copy stuff from here accorting to the SE terms of usage.
There's a legal issue, and a practical issue. If you witness a crime, you can inform the police and something may happen. The FBI does actually investigate criminal copyright infringement, but they also don't respond to concerned-citizen complaints, only complaints of copyright holders (and not all of them). You cannot use DMCA takedown to get the service provider to remove the content (or shut down the site, or whatever would be necessary), since only the copyright holder can make the required sworn statements. So you have no legal recourse. A practical solution is to tell Google. This link could have been a way to inform them, but it seems to always resolve to identifying plausible DMCA takedown requests, and if you truthfully answer the &quot;are you the copyright holder&quot; question, you are told to go away. Even if you lie at the preliminary stage, the procedure ends with you making a sworn statement, and you can't lie on one of those. This information might allow you to send them a letter, which they might read. They might simply not consider it worth their time.
You can do whatever you like with posts made after you change the rules - you have to leave the previous stuff alone. The contributors' have accepted the terms of the licence: They own the copyright or have permission from the copyright holder to post it (the promise) They agree that it can be edited altered or removed CC-BY-SA allows people to copy the stuff off the website and republish it - this is way outside what the contributors agreed to. These people have given permission for their work to be altered but not copied.