Someone Is Selling My Ebook!

Talk about slime. I'd start with a formal complaint letter and see if they take it off.

If not, I would then follow-up with a forceful letter from an attorney to help them with the gravity of the situation.

Can you tell if they are a past customer of yours?

Brian

Send a letter to their webhost and to Google Adwords as well, as he is in clear violation of Adwords policies by advertising pirated materials. He should be shut down within a matter of days.

Also contact the other vendors who he's victimized and tell them to send letters to the same people as well.

This happens way too often in IM. And I'm sorry to hear about it just the same. Others will probably give you this same advice. Contact an attorney before doing anything drastic. There are numerous threads here that relate directly to what you are currently experiencing. Don't know if any have been successfully resolved but you might want to check them out just the same.

That stinks!

Contact them and demand they stop. I'd email them first and then send a formal written complaint. My feeling is that they would take it off after the email. If that doesn't work, file a complaint with the Attorney General's office (both in your state and in theirs) and the Better Business Bureau. You just need to let them know you mean business (beginning with the first email) and that should scare them into submission.

Good Luck!

1. contact adwords
2. contact his billing provider
3. contact his hosting provider

he can't advertise, wont have a website and he can't receive payments

you have just shut down his operation

you should do all three of these things today... right now... stop reading this and do it.

If you really wanted to go for the gold you could take him to court and through his billing provider be able to find out exactly how much money he has made... and yep, sue his ass. Should be an open and shut case.

Hate when that happens. I would do the above. But, you can also look at it a different way. If it is CB they are just promoting your product and If you have any affiliate links locked in it (ebook) your getting your product spread to more folks on their Adwords dime.

Thanks for your comments. I'm not sure whether this person is a past customer.

This person appears to be located in the Philippines though, so I'm not sure whether copyright laws are the same over there.

I will target godaddy, paypal and google adwords. Do you think I need a lawyer to do this, or can I contact them myself?

Rosie

Here's his host: 365salesbot.com

It comes back to a Phillipine company.

Cebu Wintrade Corp.
Marfa St.
Mandaue 6012 PH

File a DCMA notice anyway. Then file a report with Paypal since that's who their payment processor is.

If you can find who the upstream provider is for the hosting company, complain to them too. The host will have to shut down the site or risk losing their entire business. Here's a link on how to find an upstream provider: Rick's spam digest :: Spamstopper's notebook -- finding upstream providers

There may be an easier way, I don't know. That's the first thing I found. Maybe you could just tell the hosting company you're thinking of hosting with them and ask them who their upstream providers are.

Please remove the link to the offending site from your original post. No sense in giving them publicity. Some people browsing this forum may go buy from the offending site.

You should be able to do this yourself. Just make sure you bypass the 19 year old phone monkey's and foreign tech support and get someone who can actually do something for you. Godaddy and paypal shouldn't be a problem, not so sure about google.

If you can afford it, a lawyer isn't a bad option but a lot depends on your financial situation, how much money this product earns and how much money you are losing out on (being stolen from you). Are we talking $xx or $x,xxx or $xx,xxx (you don't need to answer). Is it is a $19.95 ebook that has sold 3 times in the past six months or is this guy cutting into your six figure IM empire.

Not sure what your problems were but if paypal is knowingly handling payment processing for stolen products then they can be held liable as well.

A complaint to paypal along with some amount of proof should be enough to get the account locked.

If the web hosting is in the Philippines you may not be able to do much about that but you can still attempt to cut off adsense and paypal.

Good luck with paypal. I would at least first try and target his domain kill that and then go for the host. Had it happen to me years age and I had some success doing it. Finally just said screw it and moved on to next project.

I hate plagiarists and have been dealing with them for years. This is even worse because it's stealing money from you not just material.

I'd contact a lawyer first off, because you don't just want them shut down, you want to be awarded damages. This person made a tidy bundle off your work and that money is rightfully yours. Don't contact Google yet or anything before you speak to an attorney.

You need to file a DMCA with his host. Instructions here:

http://domainingdiva.com/legal-issue...ipoff-artists/

Gives you a sample DMCA notice also.

I agree, contact his host, contact clickbank, contact google - will be a lot cheaper than hiring an attorney.

I can't even express how much stuff like this sickens me.

send an email to adwords, the owner of the site and their site, a dcma notice I mean - that will sort your problem out.

Get a lawyer 1st. I think you just became a rich woman. If he/she has decent insurance or any assets, you did.

PS-Let them keep doing it until the lawyer makes them stop. If MY lawyer is correct, there is a 'per day' penalty that the plaintiff gets.

Is there no end to what people will do to make a buck?

On the other hand, I guess you now know that you can make a profit with adwords (if you didn't already). You should steal his campaign.

And click on his ads a lot.

Lee

According to a US attorney at Patent & Trademark, (I know, not the copyright office, but she used to work there), No copyright symbol, name or date are required anymore. A registration is; and the perpetrator does not even have to have sold any copies. The fact they were for sale and they had been used in a commercial venture, make them eligible for a $150,000 per day that they are attempted to be sold, 'punitive' fine that the plaintiff gets.

The plaintiff would need to pay for the copyright registration, but many copyright lawyers may take the case, depending on merit, on a percentage basis (and you should have that commitment before registering if you go legal). Talking to a lawyer 1st is always advantageous as none of us are acting in a lawyer basis, therefore whatever we say is practically meaningless. (Since Ms Xxxx works at P&T and I haven't talked to her for a year or so, whatever she said then is probably just as meaningless.)

Yes, it was a joke, but on the other hand I really wouldn't feel sorry for the guy if someone ran up his adwords bill ... would you?

(I was thinking of in the search results, not on someones website as that could hurt the website owner who would probably be an innocent party)

The customer should be able to tell you where they purchased the product and then give the domain to the authorities to track and see if the slime ball can be caught.

Indeed. If he or they as probably in this case, signed up as a affiliate they would make more money.

But then again many of these kind of operations are not really too smart.

Lawyers won't make much sense since laws in the Philippines don't really count for much if you have money and the connections.

Besides unless you're either the US government you can't really pressure the officials to act on an international complaint for something which many see as open market.

Filing a DMCA would be your best bet at this point. I don't think calling Cebu Wintrade Corp or emailing them would do anything. For one thing their email is a gmail account so.

But here it is: cebuwintrade (at) gmail.com. As for their phone try this one: +63.6022551234

Again I doubt if contacting them directly will do anything but you can give it a try.

And there are a lot of companies (and I use the term company lightly) in the Philippines.

Gives legitimate rule abiding IM in the country a bad name.

And just so you know I'm just an hour plane ride away from Cebu where this so called company is based.


Cezar Abadiano
Conversion-Affiliate Manager
affiliatedistrict.com