So, what do you do when people blatantly breach your licensing terms?

What I will suggest you if they don't have contact form on their site.

Go to Whois lookup and Domain name search and type the domain and see their details ( everything is their ) Try to contact them if they don't responce to you. Contact their hosting and tell them the situation. The hosting company will probablly close this site or at least reach the owner of it...

Happened to me just recently. Niche blog that I sell with NO resell rights was listed on Flippa. I issued a warning in the comments that anyone who purchases this site will just receive a DMCA notice, so best not to purchase from him. He removed the auction almost immediately. If he hadn't, Flippa seemed full prepared to act on the DMCA and his host certainly would have.

I just found someone doing that to me in the War Room.

Sheesh.

I contact them and generally they take the site down.

Sadly there isn't much you can do about people selling below your minimum price request, as it's illegal to set prices, especially for products with resale rights.

However, I have issued a few threats of DMCA in my time and most take notice of that.

Speak to their hosting, and they'll have the site taken down.

Well first of all your terms have to be legal and enforceable.

That is the number one problem with terms that those offering rights create for their resellers.

Some rights such as minimum pricing in some situations may not be legal for even your reseller to agree to.

If you don't want this problem... don't sell rights.

Instead run an affiliate program.

If someone is selling/distributing content outside the scope of an agreement then the DMCA may come into play as unlicensed publication can certainly be copyright infringement.

Note - IANAL, but a knowledgeable person on copyrights.

As Josh pointed out - since they had some sort of rights - this is no longer a straight copyright issue but a contract issue. And if you don't have a legally enforceable contract (those things a lawyer write up) then a DMCA notice could get you into more trouble than the person you think is infringing upon you. At the very least they can respond to the notice with their own objection and nullify it.

Look, this is not a game folks, its a business and lawyers are a very important part of your business team.

Cornell has a pretty good website on copyrights (mostly for their organization, but it has good general content as well) so check them out:

Copyright Information Center

best,
--Jack

Thanks for all the feedback and input guys, I really appreciate it.

I've been thinking it over all day, and whilst I'm not happy about it, I accept that there's really nothing I can do about the people out there doing the wrong thing. It really is quite a low act, but what can I do, I can't police the entire world. It's upsetting, but hey, that's business. You live and you learn.

I honestly had no idea that there was any issue with setting a minimum price on products available for resale. I do try to educate myself as much as possible, so as to avoid "folly" as you say Josh. I had just never come across information that made me aware of a problem with this, and I've seen these stipulations so often and always adhered to them myself. Another thing learned though, and another thing to be aware of.

It really has made me reconsider even offering resale rights at all. It's become apparent that in order to protect the people who buy those resale rights, you really do need to qualify them for the position and have them physically sign an official document. Somehow though, I don't think putting people through a lot of hoops would work very well with my present business model.

Instead, I am thinking a better approach might be to seek out a small group of JV partners to work with. I know that some of the people who have already purchased my products for resale are exceptionally professional and proficient internet marketers, and I would rather do business solely with them. I make great products, if I do say so myself, and I think that from here on in I want to know exactly who is going to get the opportunity to resell or promote them.

It's kind of funny actually to come back to this thread this afternoon and read your posts Josh, as I have spent a big part of the day reading up on Nanacast, with a view to facilitating this kind of a new approach.

I have been offering resale right up and till now just trying to give people what they want, but I won't do it if it means that people debasing my creations is unavoidable. I take great pride in my work, and I want to see it meet its potential, not get undercut into oblivion.

Josh, can I ask you one quick question regarding Nanacast? I watched your video presentation and read all the threads here I could find on the product, but I haven't yet been able to find an example / demo site. I'd really like to see it in action if that's possible. Would there be a client site you wouldn't mind sharing a URL to at all?

Actually, there is one other question that just popped into my head. Would Nanacast be suitable for a business like mine, where I sell multiple products and like to faciliate multiple purchases at once? I'm also planning a couple of new stores selling different kinds of products, mostly still Wordpress oriented, and it would be great to have a single robust solution I could run everything on.

Thanks again for all your help and feedback everyone.

It all depends on the person. Try contacting them, most of the times they should take it down. Otherwise, try the web hoster. These will work about 90% of the times. For the other 10% it's going to be difficult. good luck

Hey Vadym, it's all good, I did sell resale rights. What I did have the understanding of was that I could include specific terms of resale, and have people abide by them.

I think Josh is right, I'm probably just stuck with the problem, but thankyou though for taking the time to make a suggestion and trying to help me, I appreciate it

I'm going to take it as a lesson and look for a way to improve my business model from here on. Thanks again for your suggestions.

Hi Kezz

Its the cost of doing business on the internet. Its similar to people asking for a refund when they have used your product.

We sell a physical product that is consumable. The customer used half the contents and then e-mailed us to say he was unhappy with the product and could he have a full refund. We were within our rights to refuse, but chose to refund him for the portion he'd consumed, which we did.

A few weeks later we got a chargeback from our merchant account for the Full Amount. So the customer actually made a 50% profit on this and got to use half the product contents.

We could have challenged this, but in honesty the time and effort wouldn't have been worth it, so we let it go.

These sort of incidents are rare so whats the point in getting worked up over them.

Graham

It's true, it is definitely a part of business dealing with these kinds of issues and I've cooled off now and am just taking it as a basis from which to improve my business model.

Unfortunately, I've recently discovered these particular incidents are less rare than is acceptable, so it's definitely a sign to me that I need a better way of doing things.

I think joint ventures and affiliate programs are that way at the moment. I had planned to release a new, similar product shortly with similar rights attached to it. But I think I will look at a different approach.

My entire goal is to create products that people can use to make money. I can't have people destroying each other's profitability - I just won't have that. I'm not the kind of person to say, okay, I'm sorted, so forget about you. I want to know that the people I deal with prosper, and I am more than willing to do things differently to make sure that happens.

So, I think I need to take the JV approach and make sure that the only people who ever get resale rights to my products are people I know and have prequalified. Aside from that, I think will take Josh's advice and run with an affiliate program instead.

Been doing business since 2003 Josh, studied business, so before you jump in and start sounding like the ultimate bigwig you should curb your thoughts, we all know you're knowledgeable, no need to prove it by bashing someone else

I was merely saying that it's illegal to set prices for products with resale rights, so if you decide to offer resale rights you better accept the consequences, people will sell for a buck, always have and always will.

As for my comment about the DMCA, I was trying to say that if people are blatantly breaking copyright terms then a DMCA can come into force, but that cannot apply to minimum pricing.

That's fair enough Josh, shall leave it at that, and you provided some valid points. Sorry I got the wrong end of stick.

Connor

On a humorous note,