Someone has recreated (part) of my blog years after it closed. Same domain. Do I have any recourse?

Question

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.

Answer 1

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?&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?