My piracy patrol idea so far:
 

I will attempt to break down what I have been working on for the last few months. I will be the first to say I do not wish to step on JMM's toes and yes we spoke on the phone and some of what he said is also some of the same things I have been thinking about so I would gladly work with him or step aside to him if anyone feels their toes would be stepped on.

Here is a basic break down.

1. Everything would be niched out. Each niche would have so many volunteers or outsourcers. They would scour the net looking for any sites using questionable content and when they find it not being used to properly promote the site in question in an ethical way they would screen capture the content, record all relevant urls, user name that submitted it, any other important information and then submit it to our site.

2. Participating site owners could log in themselves or have an employee do it for them and check over any niches that they have content in. Using a check box system they would click off any and all content that is offending their TOS.

3. Script would then send out valid format DMCA letters to the sites, the hosts, the search engines, and of course any sponsors that are being wrongfully promoted. The script also would keep track of repeat user offenders to report to the site to have that user banned. It would also keep track of the number of violations each site has, how often they get notified, if they comply, time took to comply, and other information.

4. This would be membership driven by sponsors with an open book system. Aside from a reasonable salary to have someone over see the site and pay for any overhead from hosting, script development, and of course labor. Any additional funds would be set into a legal fund. This legal fund would equally represent all members of the site. Going after each offender or anyone they can collect from for the piracy of stolen content or purposely benefiting from it. Example if ABC sponsor has been reported 200 times in the past month they would make a prime example of someone to go after for damages.

5. Of course we would need some major help in setting everything up program wise and of course to protect the site from DDOS and hack attacks from some very upset site owners. As much barter or just good will assistance would work wonders to get this really rolling.

6. Ideally we could have it set up so that membership costs would not be to burdonsome for the small site owners who can not afford to shell out large amounts of cash, however those that could afford it or have more sites should pay more of a fee. Have not fully thought out this kink yet, thinking of maybe just a per site fee, or maybe have it set as a not for profit organization and additional donations could be made at a tax deductible status.

Any comments?
Anyone willing to assist me in setting this up?

I've been toying around with an idea very similar to that for some time (except with cracked password sites). Count me in, I'm happy to assist in any way I can.

Not a bad idea, when our You Tube clone for adult is released maybe we can implement some type of pre approved method for easier reporting based on an established network (so long as anyone or everyone couldn't report to it). This would be great since I believe after this script is released video sharing sites targeted towards adult websites will prop up everywhere. Keep me updated 360-63-200 is my ICQ.

that was a good idea you have there in your mind........

So in other words you want sponsors to pay you to find their own content theiving affiliates. Consider that sponsors generally turn a blind eye to this sort of thing until the dirty laundry is aired in public. Only then do they terminate the affiliate as a PR move.

Each and every sponsor out there knows of affiliates in their system who are doing things they sholdn't be doing. Ref URL's are no secret. Check your logs. You'll see sponsors visiting your sites just to see where the traffic is coming from. Think about it. If they are looking at your sites, then they are also seeing what the less reputable affiliates are doing...... and obviously not doing anything about it.

thats a great idea for me

I do not care whom runs it really as long as they are trustworthy and can not be bought off.

Your missing the main point. The participating sponsors just would have to check into this one site and check of check boxes of content that belongs to them. They would not need to scour the numerous offending sites. The rest is automated. This saves them time and human resources.

Then or course it would be a non profit with open books. Once enough data, repeate offenses, and repeate user offenses, combined with sponsors failing to terminate offending sites affiliate accounts despite a long track record of offenses would end up in court paid for by any extra money the site collected.

The backbone of this project is your idea of volunteer labor. I don't know as if the common webmaster is going to "scour the net" as you put it, in an effort to combat the stolen content of sites doing maybe millions a year in revenue. The feeling might be that they should hire their own people to protect their own copyrights.

So you'll have all this extra subscriber revenue, which will be used to sue infringers. Are you going to play Spin The Wheel at a show to decide which lucky subscriber gets all that cash to sue with? Certainly everybody will want that money.

That all is a really nice idea, but I'm afraid that you only waste your time with that. Would be great if not, but I doubt it.

After someone marks content as a violation, who is going to confirm it is not someone trying to hurt a competitor?

First off volunteer labor would be for the start up stuff not the constant checking. That would be done by paid outsourcers. You know volunteer stuff would be the initial programing, possibly some hosting or site security, etc.

As for legal payouts there would be no spin the wheel type mentality. Any site sued and if the case is won, all participating members who had material on that site would equally benefit assuming cash could be collected. Winning is far from collecting. Most of us just want the content actually protected and this would show offenders that it has teeth.


It is a lot better than doing nothing and loosing money.

The DMCA process can obtain that objective. Then if it is a repeat offender and the site does not ban the offender then court action could be implemented. Now unless some company is willing to litterally set up almost an entire site with sponsors ads on it and then fill it with infringing content owned by a competitor to try to take them out is almost a silly proposition. We are not talking about every single little small site out there. We are talking about the larger ones with hundreds of thousand to millions of users.

hmmm....

Maybe any site accepting submissions should simply require that a copy of the content license be uploaded as well. Too simple?

You are NOT stepping on my toes! I would actually prefer that you take the lead.

So far, I like everything you have said and think you are on the right track.

Bottom line here folks is that the DMCA is a tool that is very powerful, yet our industry hardly uses it. Time to change that.

This should be a sticky but I will be in for this Aftershock!!! You know how to get a hold of me :) If any content producer as myself really cares they should step up and help out!! There are a lot of negative people here maybe they run sites with stolen content and that is there reason for trying to damper this? WHO knows! But you're right it's better then doing NOTHING at all while the thief's get richer and producers work harder and make less!! :warning

el bumpo