I was reading the discussions and I am glad Kyle has our back.
Trevor

I was shown an email with the same software

That is not good. You are not only stealing someone's hard work (which is an act against the DMCA and they could send a takedown notice to you), there are so many things that will work adversely against a site getting ranked that tries this.

(1) It is unethical
(2) The person that you steal from could go after you for copyright, or at very least, get your site taken down within Google SERP's
(3) Google doesn't like duplicate content or a dupe code base

This tool sounds very dated, if they don't understand the very concept of duplicate content rules in Google.

Wow! In no way would I ever associate myself with a plugin like that. I can only hope that karma will have the final say for anyone who chooses to be so deceitful, but to be honest, search engines would possibly realize it was a shady redirect and they would never rank anyways.

Interesting concept. Personally I would write about it but certainly wouldn’t condone using it. To me it sounds like cheating & very unethical.

I am going to write the review along the lines of "it's unethical and I won't have anything to do with it".... but you are free to try anything you like.

I will basically outline why it is questionable and examine the moral issues here and the fact that there may be legal complication of a large company discovers you are using their content to monetize your "cloned" site.

I would say so. You can stay away or research more about it and some regulation, and write up the review as "unethical" and introduce WA to create the website in the right way.

I wouldn't even want to be associated with something like that. I see prison bars ahead if someone does start using it.

I don't know how this particular plugin works, but I have seen similar ones in the past. The ones that I have seen will place the authority website in an iFrame, which is a HTML construct that essentially displays the website as if it is on your website, even though it comes completely from the authority.

iFrame technology can usually skirt by the copyright issue because it is not actually copying code or information. It is using the host's code and displaying it as is. This is not an endorsement from me, however.

It should be noted people include YouTube videos on their website, which could be argued that it's similar to what your plugin is trying to do (assuming iFrame). Further, YouTube gives its blessing. However, this is not the same as what you are referring to, because the plugins is deliberately trying to deceive the viewer.

Whether the plugin you are reviewing is using iFrames or some other technology is, in my opinion, immaterial. Any means of deception should be looked upon as unethical and possibly illegal.

I believe you have reason to proceed with caution with this.

Best Regards,
Jim

It sure does! How scary is that! That they can just copy your whole site and spoof it. I have run into a couple of them. There will be something off with them. Whenever I get an email, I research for the real company and call them.