Shutting down pirates and gbs/group buys from bh forums via paypal infringement

Once you start battling these guys it's gonna escalate to a war soon enough. Is the 'recovered sales revenue' worth the effort?

I've been shutting down pirates for over 11 years. I vigorously protect my business. I shut them down, sue them, file criminal charges, have domains seized and other reliefs available to my business via DMCA and other legal statutes.

You can't blame a guy for trying. I admire the person who is willing to stick up for his rights and attempt to get rid of just some of these piraters more so than you guys who are just saying it's a waste of time and refuse to do anything. That's just a cop out. If you ain't part of the solution...

Can you imagine what world we would live in if the cops just said, bugger it, we can't get rid of all drugs and all guns, we may as well just not bother.

Yeah... great idea! :rolleyes:

For most of the ones who think it's a waste of time, if you have a WSO, I can find it for free and in many cases, you can see that it has been distributed to hundreds, if not thousands of people who then further distribute it, ofen selling it for less than the owner does.

So ... go ahead and do nothing. It's your business. I'm with the OP in fighting piracy.

Don't really need to. A simple DMCA to the filesharing sites they upload to gets it removed. They don't host the material and I have an automated DMCA software to issue DMCAs in seconds to these filesharing sites.

context: I run over 65 sites fulltime since the late 90s, one of the original IM pioneers in my niche (trading), widely copied, I've been online fulltime for a decade+ with thousands of customers and industry awards, top industry widely published expert etc. and well known. So when you get to be well known, your stuff gets pirated.

It's good to also do persistent google searches as well as visit the bh forums and have google alerts for your keywords. Sometimes the stupid pirates will substitute @ for a in your course titles, so you need to find and visit the pirate forums, then commence takedown actions (eg yourgre@course.c0m) to evade google alerts detection.

Best #1 strategy I've found is to file paypal infringement and DMCA takedowns, to hit them in the wallet, then file DMCAs to deregister their domains. btw it's helpful when submitting evidence to police, to have screencaps of the sites and/or pdfs, I do file/print to save pages as pdf, and camtasia techsmith to screencap pages.

I spend at most a couple hours a week on this type of activity, and it's helped keep my content piracy down online significantly.

Strategically it's also a good idea to include followup webinars w/info products, scheduled for a few months after purchase, since pirates don't get that info, and position it as the main thing people buy, is a) the dvd/course, plus b) monthly webinars once a month for 6+ months. That also reduces refunds a lot, plus pirates can't keep up with monthly webinar content.

Personally I like filing criminal charges against pirates in their home country (after doing whois/IP geolocation lookups, with sites like domaintools.com and IP Address Geolocation to Identify Website Visitor's Geographical Location ), just google for example "police malaysia" or "police netherlands" or wherever; sometimes you've gotta contact the US embassy to have them put pressure on local law enforcement. It works. Jailing pirates is great since it reduces root cause; if they are in jail they can't run a pirate forum or site.

also it's a good idea to do periodic google searches and do takedowns:
Removing Content From Google - Google Help

and youtube:
YouTube

Anyone who doesn't protect their content is misguided; why would customers pay if they can get it for free? Sure your avid fans will pay anyways, but all the others on the fence about buying, will at least rip it off via downloads from bh forums w/o paying.

Tip: it also helps w/legal action to do discovery motions via court to find IP addresses of downloaders as well w/their ISPs, and go after them, if resources allow. Having a reputation (like I do) of someone who vigorously goes after pirates w/law enforcement help also helps big-picture, because people know not to pirate your stuff; the risk is too high for them; so they pirate my competitors' stuff instead.

Here's my unofficial "piracy spectrum" action heirarchy:

a) info marketers who ignore piracy and stick their heads in the sand, pretending it doesn't impact them

b) info marketers who casually look for piracy and send occasional DMCAs if they see for example their course on a bh forum in google searches

c) info marketers who keep persistent google alerts for keywords in their courses, and regularly file DMCAs weekly when infringing content is found (make that your 2013 goal, at a minimum, guys)

d) info marketers who seek out and file DMCAs with domain registrars, hosting providers and payment processors for non-compliant DMCA takedown notice pirate site owners/filesharers

e) info marketers who file criminal and/or civil charges against pirates routinely, to take the garbage out off the internet

Where are you on that spectrum? Hopefully you're PUTTING THE LOCKS ON YOUR BUSINESS to protect it. Otherwise you have "DIGITAL LOOTERS AND SHOPLIFTERS" which is what I view scumbag pirates as (most are in 3rd world countries btw), who damage your sales.

Like the great line in one of my favorite movies, "Risky Business", from Guido, "in a tough economy don't ever f_ with another man's livelihood" , words to live by lol. Pirate my stuff and you run the very real risk of going to jail, do not pass go, bendover and meet bubba. I now have many LEO/law enforcement contacts and folks I know in many locations worldwide, which is a plus. Anyone who steals and redistributes my content, I go after with all legal/law enforcement action I can. I detest digital thieves. This is not a socialist welfare economy; we work hard to produce content.

here's to cracking down on piracy in 2013 - happy new years, fellow warriors -

- k

p.s. always look to the adult industry for leading-trends in IM; look at how badly the adult site industry has been damaged by all the free redistribution of their content... it's a major issue for them, threatening their survival, as it does for many people. It's a very real significant threat for all of us who produce info products. And big picture, piracy reduces All buying, since people can download a lot of ripped off content for free, satiating their thirst so to speak for all info products, even if you protect your content. The more of us that takedown pirates with vigorous action, the better.

Just maybe a head's up that doing that action is likely going to get some degree
of...unwanted attention. Namely, attempts to bring that page down or worse.

Personally, I think that's a nice idea. Obviously that won't stop everyone, but at
least it gives (potential) jerks something to expect if they press on.

As to everyone else thinking it's a waste of time...maybe it is. Like all other stuff
you consider, it depends how much value (if any) you think/feel you'll get out of
it if ever.

It doesn't have to be an either-or scenario. Apparently, Ken hinted that you can
do both depending on how you manage your time.

Prosperous new year to everyone. Keep rocking.

I salute the efforts of those who put it into fighting piracy. In a way you are doing a great service to all who publish some kind of digital products. Thanks!

However, someone suggested action should be taken against dowloaders as well, and here we are really on a very dangerous ground. Because a downloader may have no clue whatsoever. We all offer free stuff on squeeze pages. How does a visitor know you own the rights for the eBook? Do you want him/her to question this first? On this very forum, when someone asks a question, and another warrior points him to a PDF file - how could he tell if this file is "clear" or not? At least not before downloading he couldn't.

Yes, most western countries have passed laws that criminalize pirated downloads, and it's a worrying fact. It may end up in a situation where only certain big corporative sites may offer downloads. Sites exist where even big label music and movies are SOLD, and the seller is a pirate. According to law his customers are guilty as well, although they never knew. It looked like a store like any other.

Then there are lots of music and movies that have dropped into public domain and are perfectly legal to upload and download as you wish. Youtube is full of good old movies from the thirties, I sometimes watch them. And besides those some sites (and Youtube) list movies that are not in the public domain yet, and again, if they date decades back the visitor would never know. An obvious solution would be licensing downloads only to iTunes and just a few others. Good bye free enterprise and small business, and no more product making outside some corporative umbrella.

this looks promising Active DMCA (not mine and not affiliated)