Brad Dykens of Online World of Wrestling on issues with Obsessed WW

Reported by Adam Martin of WrestleView.com
On Saturday, December 8, 2007 at 7:37 PM EST

Our good friend Brad Dykens over at OnlineWorldofWrestling.com sent this in:

Link #1: click here

Link #2: click here

My name is Brad Dykens and I am the founder, creator, author, and up until this past May, the owner of the popular website known as Obsessed With Wrestling. Over the past six and a half years I worked on this website full-time building a large archive of information about the past, present, and future of professional wrestling. I have build a huge following and a nice list of contacts and contributors inside and out of the business.

The website grew to well over 600 MB and was hosted on a dedicated server in California by a company called Blackpants Inc. (Blackpants.net). The server was completely separate from the domain name (which was registered on GoDaddy.com by a “friend" roughly five years ago). Through my dedication and hard work, the Obsessed website became the number one resource on Google & Yahoo for Professional Wrestling – an achievement I am extremely proud of.

On May 5th of this year, my so-called “friend" named Tim Beilfuss of the Chicago area (aj_martin@comcast.net) executed his pre-determined plan to hijack the domain name for his own personal and financial gain, so I was forced to change the name of my website to ‘Online World of Wrestling’ and move it to a new location (OnlineWorldofWrestling.com). The host server in California never changed, we simply changed the DNS. Within days, Mr. Beilfuss had launched his own site on the Obsessed domain, having previously copied the entire contents of my website to his hard-drive and then uploaded it to a new web-host service and placed his own banners on the site after he made very minor cosmetic changes to the site. He also assumed my identity for the first two months, and passed the work off as his own. Eventually he would begin operating under the nickname “Hitman," but refused to post any contact information or email address on the site due to the obvious fear of the reader backlash.

We filed the appropriate DMCA complaints with both his host and Google Adsense, and had both services temporarily suspended. However, service was restored when he boldly denied the claims despite the insurmountable evidence against him. So it was our word against his and we were told the next step was to obtain a court order, which would cost more money than we had, but we are in the process of saving up to take the appropriate action. We have been assured that when the time comes to take action, Tim Beilfuss will be in a lot of hot water and will definitely regret doing what he did seven months ago. That day can’t come soon enough for me. He has since changed hosts at least twice that we know of, and is currently with the iPowerweb service.

GanstaGeek asked “Did we ever get to hear his side of the story?" – the answer is NO we have not – because as soon as he acknowledges the situation he is admitting that he stole work that was not his. Everybody knows that my name, Brad Dykens, has always been associated with OWW – nobody has ever heard of Tim Beilfuss (who goes by A.J. Martin on the internet).

Archduke Scrilla mentioned their Forum, which they call “OWW Genesis" and is pretty much the only original aspect of the site. They have blacklisted the words “Brad Dykens" and “Onlineworldofwrestling" because they are afraid of the truth getting out to the small legion of mindless idiots who still go to that site. I’m not sure if they just don’t know the truth or they’re just plain ignorant. How can they not see that the site is built on a mountain of lies and theft?

So for six months I have sat back and watched Beilfuss destroy a legacy I built and benefit financially from a lot of work that he was not responsible for. The mere fact that his bogus site still exists, is cutting into my business opportunities and preventing my OWW from generating the traffic that we should be. I believe Obsessed was close to death around June but when the BENOIT stuff went down, suddenly everybody was searching Google & Yahoo for wrestling stuff and naturally since I built such high search engine ratings, the site was brought back to life. Since then they have lived off of their Google rating – which I believe isn’t at all fair since they did not earn it. Within a few short months, the REAL OWW (OnlineWorldofWrestling.com) has reclaimed most of its search engine rating but still has a little ways to go. Every day we grow a little bit more while they die a little bit more.

He (his staff) hardly ever updates the thousands of information pages on his bogus website, and when he does he simply copy-and-pastes the updates from my website, the REAL OWW (OnlineWorldofWrestling.com). He does have one guy working on the profiles, but he just steals from my updates. I hate to see this young man get caught up in Tim’s criminal activity. For over six years, I have spent five-to-ten hours on a daily basis maintaining the site and continue to do so to this day.

It doesn’t take a brain surgeon to see what is happening here and who is really in the wrong. Any suggestions or advice are welcome, or if you can think of any ways to help.

Sincerely,
Brad Dykens (Editor-In-Chief) http://www.OnlineWorldofWrestling.com