CCIE University
Just a quick heads up for CCIE candidates: A reader contacted me today to point out yet another company who has ripped off my (free) content and repackaged it as their own. The offending company is a bootcamp named CCIE University, at ccieuniversity.com. They are offering my collection of free cheat sheets, stripped of attribution, to trick people into signing up for their email list. The collection being offered is the same as the cheat sheet ZIP archive (but with each file slightly corrupted due its manipulation).
The purpose of this post is not to rant about having my stuff plagiarized again (well, maybe a little), but to serve as a reminder to thoroughly investigate any training providers you're considering doing business with. There are plenty of reputable CCIE training companies to choose from providing quality materials and instruction worldwide. Don't cheat yourself by settling for regurgitated content.
I don't know if it's greed or just a complete lack of integrity which drives individuals to such tactics. I can only wonder from whom they stole the products they actually sell.
About the Author
Jeremy Stretch is a networking engineer and the maintainer of PacketLife.net. He currently lives in the Raleigh-Durham area of North Carolina. Although employed full-time out of necessity, his true passion lies in improving the field of network engineering around the world. You can contact him by email or follow him on Twitter.
Comments
I'm glad you posted this, as I wouldn't want to reward them for ripping off your content. The cheat sheets are awesome. They helped me finally wrap my head around ZBF. Thanks for YOUR hard work...maybe you should "inform" the Cisco legal team that these guys are violating copyright law by using CCIE in their business name..
hmm...
The domain is registered via whoisguard and the asian ip points towards a fishy texas company. This does not sound "legit" to me.
Furthermore "Subscribe To Free Download Our Perfect Study Guide !!!" is not even remotely correct English. And the logo style has been copied from Flickr.com
"%100 real labs questions and solutions" looks like pass4sure stuff.
Well I hope you do address this with them. This is very pathetic.....
Thanks for letting us know. And I second christillett praise, thank you for YOUR hard work. The cheat sheet have bailed me out several times. Cheers!
Thanks for both: you hard work and the warning. I understand you probably have better use of your time and resources than sueing this pseudocompany, but they surely deserve it.
Jeremy as you can check on visitors log....I discover packetlife.net well before i get into networking so i know one thing:
Jeremy Stretch = "Cheatsheets".
You's the ONE!(Shout out from AFRICA.)
What a bunch of clowns.
Hi Jeremy,
I think you are a globally known person with this website.
I always read your articles and you inspired me for creating my ownblog.
Thank you very much for your all efforts and in linkedin I will add you if you accept.
Regards,
Gokhan
Jeremy, I'm certainly not condoning their bad behavior, but at first glance, I didn't see any copyright (or related license) markings on any of your cheat sheets. And although you don't actually need the markings in order to own the copyright in the documents, it would help your case if you pursued infringement allegations against them. You would also need to register your documents with the US Copyright Office at the Library of Congress in order to move against them. That said, however, I sense that all you really want here is proper attribution, and if that's the case, then you should consider marking them with a Creative Commons license. Harvard Law School Professor Lawrence Lessig and Aaron Swartz made a really wonderful thing in Creative Commons and it seems like it's a license motif that would fit with your very generous sharing of these cheat sheets.
I am glad to have searched and found this page, before buying stuff from them.
I also realized that....really bad!
Just bumped into a guy in linkedin, called Mike Rade, who's been posting some basic GNS3 lab scenarios on the "CCNP, CCIP, CCIP & CCIE Group". Don't know if he's actually the owner of ccieuniversity.com but under his profile experience it says he's a "CCIE instructor" since june 2005...on ccieuniversity.com. I kindly asked if he's ever read this blogpost. Still waiting for an answer...
Wow... that really disgusting and pathetic...