How to stop illegal downloads??.. I Need Your Help Pros, Gurus or Anyone

by Gengis
24 replies
I can't seem to figure out a way to fully secure a product, I think i'm doing it wrong so I need some advice..

I was putting together my last wso which was a video course and while finishing it a well known internet marketer who's name I won't mention stayed at my house for a week while traveling because we wanted to do some master minding.

So I ask him to tell me what's the best way to secure this new course of mine so it won't be downloaded in illegal sharing sites..

So he advises me to download the videos to amazons3 and add wishlist membership to my optimized press and this way only those who buy could register to see the course..

The next morning after launching the wso I had 600 new registrations so I was so pumped! I've had 5 figure offline days but never a 5 figure online marketing day so I was so excited and little did I come to find out within minutes it was added to a blackhat site and was downloaded a few hundred times throughout the night with registrations and all while I was sleeping..

I was pissed.

So i'm not going to use wishlist again but I just finished another video course and don't want this happening again or atleast to this extent in just 1 night, so my question to you pros that know the ins and outs better than me obviously is what is the best way for me to secure this video course to not allow this to happen again ?

I have never used Digital access pass or DLguard but heard another online marketer talking about him using these for his products. Do you guys recommend these, or is there a better solution?

What is the best way to secure a video course that you have found?


Thanks alot for any feedback!
#blackhat #downloads #gurus #pros #stop
  • Profile picture of the author hustlinsmoke
    You can't secure your downloads, you can try but if they want it they will get it. I just use jvzoo system and let them do it, the downloaded part of the website will still be on blackhats though.

    You need to go here DMCA Notice Generator
    and just start filling it out. Get them off as soon as you can.

    You know its not so much the piracy but its the low epc you get from all the traffic to your launch that I can not stand.

    Edit; sometimes I put my foot in my mouth now everyone is going to put a crappy report together, put a great sales page up and collect emails lol. Only usually works for the first day so you need to distribute to the black sites fast and furious.
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    • Profile picture of the author Gengis
      Originally Posted by hustlinsmoke View Post

      You can't secure your downloads, you can try but if they want it they will get it. I just use jvzoo system and let them do it, the downloaded part of the website will still be on blackhats though.

      You need to go here DMCA Notice Generator
      and just start filling it out. Get them off as soon as you can.

      You know its not so much the piracy but its the low epc you get from all the traffic to your launch that I can not stand.
      Wow you just let them, I guess it makes sense. If someone wants to steal a car they're going to do it. But there has to be a way before having to even use DMCA isn't there?

      Maybe i'm being optimistic lol.
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  • Profile picture of the author hustlinsmoke
    Yes I said I use the inbuilt system from jvzoo. There is also dl guard but it won't stop them. Someone will buy your product on black hat and they will put it up still on a file sharing site, they have threads in there where they get together and put a few dollars each in just to buy what they can't steal.

    It is not possible to completely secure a product that can be copied or downloaded. You can do your best but it is still going out there.

    You know sometimes I put my products on blackhat. They may be conniving but they still spend money. I do it just to collect emails.

    I have collected as many as 300 emails by just putting some stupid one page report up there and making them think I scraped the url to find it. Then they come to a download page and thank you page where they have to input there email to get it sent to them.

    In fact that is the only time I use double optin cause I know there so greedy they will confirm there email address.
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    • Profile picture of the author Gengis
      Originally Posted by hustlinsmoke View Post

      Yes I said I use the inbuilt system from jvzoo. There is also dl guard but it won't stop them. Someone will buy your product on black hat and they will put it up still on a file sharing site, they have threads in there where they get together and put a few dollars each in just to buy what they can't steal.

      It is not possible to completely secure a product that can be copied or downloaded. You can do your best but it is still going out there.

      You know sometimes I put my products on blackhat. They may be conniving but they still spend money. I do it just to collect emails.

      I have collected as many as 300 emails by just putting some stupid one page report up there and making them think I scraped the url to find it. Then they come to a download page and thank you page where they have to input there email to get it sent to them.

      In fact that is the only time I use double optin cause I know there so greedy they will confirm there email address.
      Thanks for the feedback.
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  • Profile picture of the author sidneyng
    LOL.

    Like piracy.
    I guess at the end of the day if people see that you are sincere - they would want to be in your list and buy from you.

    You can have a "I Believe in Karma, B**ch" disclaimer.
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    • Profile picture of the author Gengis
      Originally Posted by sidneyng View Post

      LOL.



      You can have a "I Believe in Karma, B**ch" disclaimer.
      LOL or maybe "If you stole this your ferret will wake up dead tomorrow lmao. I've always wanted to use the term "wake up dead" and I finally got the chance
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  • Profile picture of the author hustlinsmoke
    And before anyone says use a membership site, they share login details. I have never been able to keep them away completely and even if its not shared you got the get post.
    Like this [GET] 2 Simple and whatever else it says and that drives traffic to your product and completely screws up your epc and then jv's don't even want to promote it cause you have a .25 epc even though its selling like hotcakes.
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    • Profile picture of the author Gengis
      Originally Posted by hustlinsmoke View Post

      And before anyone says use a membership site, they share login details. I have never been able to keep them away completely and even if its not shared you got the get post.
      Like this [GET] 2 Simple and whatever else it says and that drives traffic to your product and completely screws up your epc and then jv's don't even want to promote it cause you have a .25 epc even though its selling like hotcakes.
      Yea like I said in the OP I used Wishlist for a membership site and it didn't secure a damn thing for me , I even set it up where I had to manually approve new registrations and some how like I said 600 new registrations slipped though the cracks that first night without paying..
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      • Profile picture of the author hustlinsmoke
        Did you at least collect there email on a autoresponder. If not I know if its a membership site then there in your user panel. So you could add a wp autoresponder and utilize them that way. If 1 percent buy a month that is six sales, so at least you make something on it.
        Originally Posted by Gengis View Post

        Yea like I said in the OP I used Wishlist for a membership site and it didn't secure a damn thing for me , I even set it up where I had to manually approve new registrations and some how like I said 600 new registrations slipped though the cracks that first night without paying..
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        • Profile picture of the author Gengis
          Originally Posted by hustlinsmoke View Post

          Did you at least collect there email on a autoresponder. If not I know if its a membership site then there in your user panel. So you could add a wp autoresponder and utilize them that way. If 1 percent buy a month that is six sales, so at least you make something on it.
          No the thought never even crossed my mind but I will next time cuz atleast what you're saying does make sense to try to sell them in the future.
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          • Profile picture of the author hustlinsmoke
            Yeah not many will buy but you will make some money and blast that da_n list man. Send them ten emails a day. Don't stop till they say bye. If its in a membership site they should be in your wordpress user section.
            You can download wysija from your plugins tab.
            Get mandrill or whatever works for it. You can have 2000 on your list with the free version. I use wp autoresponder but its not supported any longer and my coder fixes the bugs every wp update.
            Then just start blasting away lol.
            Originally Posted by Gengis View Post

            No the thought never even crossed my mind but I will next time cuz atleast what you're saying does make sense to try to sell them in the future.
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  • Profile picture of the author WillR
    I will tell you one sure fire way to reduce the number of people downloading on Blackhat sites. That is to not advertise the use of blackhat sites on the biggest IM forum in the world.

    I know you are wanting a solution but I will guarantee you every time one of these threads is started, all it really does it alert even more people to the fact they can download some products from blackhat sites. And so the problem gets worse and worse.

    If you allow people to download and look at your products, there is no way you can stop them sharing them. That's the unfortunate truth.
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  • Profile picture of the author mervp
    I think in the age of computing and the internet, marketers must face the business reality that the controlled "exclusive distribution model" of marketing info/idea based products (especially those made up of 1's and 0's) is outdated. Blackhatters didn't "steal" those digital products, because it's arguable you never owned those intangible 1's and 0's to begin with. Even if you did own it in the original sense, you don't really have control over other people's use of mere copies of it once acquired, including their ability to share the digital items with others.

    Copyright was historically simply a limited government subsidy designed to temporarily provide enough initial monopoly control to the marketer to enable that publisher/distributor to recover their expenses. It was always understood that thereafter, intellectual content ultimately belonged to the public domain. The digital age has simply defacto restored this natural free access to content.

    Instead of holding on to notions that one retain 100% control over something you cannot, use workarounds. Understand that while a few saavy people online will always know how to download your stuff elsewhere, most consumers will not, or will not bother to, so focus on earning from the 90% traditional audience, not on controlling the 10% sharing communities. Or, use the digital product more as a loss leader to build a list or upsell to other products one can control more fully, like physical items, services and follow-up consulting.
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    • Profile picture of the author dad2four
      There is no way to stop this completely. It's the nature of the beast.

      For instance, someone can always just do a screen capture of your video as they watch it, then they can do what they want with the recording.

      I always think it's funny when some site disables the "save as" feature when you right click in your browser.

      First, there are many browsers and you can always use one that they have not figure out how to block yet.

      Second, you can always just hit print screen then paste it into paint and save it.

      Do your best to protect it. Make it difficult. But realize that the majority of those downloads are not money you are losing. The people that download that way would most likely never buy. Now lets assume that a very small percentage of those people would buy. You must put a price on your time and energy as well as the amount of time you are losing by stressing over it and measure that against the money you may have made off those few sales.

      IMHO, don't stress over it, do your best and move one. The peeps you want to do business with WANT to buy your product honestly. Karma will take care of the rest.
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      • Profile picture of the author mrgoe
        Originally Posted by dad2four View Post

        There is no way to stop this completely. It's the nature of the beast.
        You should check out the services offered by remolver. Check out the website from my signature.
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        Worked as a senior editor on ThePricer.org, experienced in financial topics
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        • Profile picture of the author Steve B
          Gengis,

          Here is a thread that has some useful information. It is a bit dated, however, I think the post still applies and the replies are helpful.

          Check this thread

          Especially note the posts by long-time Warrior Josh Anderson (Nanacast).

          It seems you should be careful to balance the attempt to curb piracy with maintaining a positive user experience for those who are honestly purchasing your product.

          No one has a fool-proof system so accepting the fact that some piracy may happen seems appropriate. The best advice I have seen is to:
          • Adopt the best security procedures you can find that still allow for a great customer experience
          • Don't lose sleep over the copies that are pirated
          • Instead, focus all your efforts that otherwise would be lost on stopping the thieves and instead ramp up your marketing of the product so you sell more copies to make up for those that are lost
          • Sleep soundly at night knowing you have done the very best you possibly can

          The best to you on your next product.

          Steve
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      • Profile picture of the author hustlinsmoke
        Actually you can just go to tools in chrome and click view source then yank the urls out or text. Maybe I shouldn't tell people this.
        Originally Posted by dad2four View Post

        There is no way to stop this completely. It's the nature of the beast.

        For instance, someone can always just do a screen capture of your video as they watch it, then they can do what they want with the recording.

        I always think it's funny when some site disables the "save as" feature when you right click in your browser.

        First, there are many browsers and you can always use one that they have not figure out how to block yet.

        Second, you can always just hit print screen then paste it into paint and save it.

        Do your best to protect it. Make it difficult. But realize that the majority of those downloads are not money you are losing. The people that download that way would most likely never buy. Now lets assume that a very small percentage of those people would buy. You must put a price on your time and energy as well as the amount of time you are losing by stressing over it and measure that against the money you may have made off those few sales.

        IMHO, don't stress over it, do your best and move one. The peeps you want to do business with WANT to buy your product honestly. Karma will take care of the rest.
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  • Profile picture of the author Story
    It's virtually impossible to stop these guys on their track. Anyone can just pool their money, buy it and share it to the world.
    It has happened to almost every product.

    Heck even Microsoft can't stop the piracy of their product!
    I guess it's just something we have to live with.
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  • Profile picture of the author Brandon Tanner
    Originally Posted by Gengis View Post

    what is the best way for me to secure this video course to not allow this to happen again ?
    There's no foolproof way to prevent digital content from being shared online, unfortunately.

    Some membership site owners restrict their members to using a single IP to log-in (in hopes of preventing them from passing around their log-in details to others). That's not very practical though, because some of your legit customers will have dynamically assigned IP addresses, so they will be locked out if you do that.

    Another thing some membership site owners do is cloak the actual URL's of their video files, to try to prevent members from downloading the videos to their hard drive (thus giving them the ability to upload the video files to BH sites). The problem with that though is that someone bent on downloading your videos is going to know about all of the free tools available (of which there are many) that will allow them to find "hidden" video file URL's in 2 seconds.

    And for the more casual "pirates" who don't know about the tools mentioned above, they can simply make screen recordings of your videos as they are playing back inside your members area, using Camtasia, or CamStudio, etc. And for anyone who thinks that content pirates won't go to that much trouble to rip off a popular product in order to be considered the "hero" at BH sites, think again!

    So the bottom line is...while there are a few things you can do to "slow down" casual pirates, it's not even worth the effort, in my opinion. Because all it takes is *one* person to upload your product to *one* BH site, and once that happens, it spreads to all the other BH and torrent sites like wildfire.

    Just be grateful that the majority of the people using your product are paying customers, and focus your attention on them, and you'll be fine.
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  • Profile picture of the author danlew
    For now, I don't have any idea how to secure our downloads. One thing for sure is that when you find any source that the product can be downloaded for free, you will email about filing DMCA against the copyright infringer. If that file comes from a file sharing site, better email them about filing DMCA to the one who uploaded the copyrighted file illegally, so that they may take action.
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  • Profile picture of the author benracz
    Hey Guys, and hello Gengis!

    I happen to be an expert in the subject of information security, and I have to disappoint you and agree with the guys who shared their opinions right before me:

    No matter what you do, there's absolutely no way to stop people from pirating and spreading your stuff. There's no security solution that can prevent a tech-savvy person from being able to download and spread your product unless it's a software.

    I do have some ideas for you though.

    1.) Use product launches to market your products and give intangible bonuses like coaching or seminar participation to build the anticipation and stack the goodies. This means people can only buy your product for about a week, so you make most of your money by building anticipation to that date.

    This way people who would be your buyers, and people who would be on the fence are both likely to buy this way in a shorter period of time... And you make most of your money the first week once the product is released.

    Now people who wouldn't be your buyers anyway are going to pirate your products no matter what, if you do it with a strong launch it doesn't hurt you so much because you have made your money.

    Also the intangible parts can't be pirated, and should represent a lot of the value. Plus if your product is a software there are other ways to make it very secure.

    2.) Go to the biggest pirating sites, 5 or 6 of the big ones, and upload an incomplete torrent with your product - but one that looks real. Put teasers on the end of the files and encourage people to buy, or make it just really really bad quality, unenjoyable audio / video, a pdf with ugly and scrambled parts, etc.

    Another option here is creating a fake product / misinformation for these torrents. You upload a bunch of PLR articles / books, a collection of fake reports or expired copyright books / audios and name the files appropriately to deceive. You can win some time with this strategy, at least until your launch is over.

    You can also use the "useful but incomplete" strategy. Do this carefully and make sure you give plenty of value because they'll remove your post otherwise and mark you as a spammer and someone will just upload the complete version... But it can work, and you can also put some teasers at critical parts encouraging the pirates to buy your product. :-)

    3.) Hire a VA and have them googling twice a day and issuing those DMCA notices for the time of the launch, and if you intend to do a bigger launch / jv launch / evergreen, etc., then have them do it regularly on the long run too. This shouldn't cost you more than $20 per month altogether. It's well worth it... But make sure they avoid the torrents created in the second bullet point.


    Just my 2 cents! :-)

    Warm regards,

    -Ben Racz
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  • Profile picture of the author ddev
    ShareFense. Just paste the illegal links inside a textarea (mirrorcreator, mediafire bla bla bla) and it automatically sends the DMCA notifications to all the sites with 1 click (don't need to make one submission per hosting site like with other tools). Also can monitor when the urls have been taken down etc.
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  • Profile picture of the author Vector Graphics
    You can do somethings to HELP stop internet piracy like secure DL pages or software licensing but the reality is that people are going to find ways to get your stuff for free. I think you are going the right thing to try to make it minimal but don't waste too much of your time try to completely stop something that is never going to stop!
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  • Profile picture of the author ddev
    Yes. People always finds a way. Imho, secure download pages help for nothing and products will sooner or later be hosted on file sharing sites.

    You have to be mentally prepared for this and get some mass takedown tool instead of putting your efforts on protecting download pages.
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