How to Remove Your Stolen Products from Hacker, Warez and Download Sites…

If you own a product, it will eventually get stolen, resold and/or offered as a free download. Here are the steps to get it removed.

First Step: Get a DMCA Notice

This part is simple. Here is the template I use:

I, in good faith believe that the disputed use of the aforementioned material is not authorized by the copyright owner, its agent, or the law.

The following web page is allowing the [illegal resale/download/whatever is happening] of a work I created called [insert product name] originally being sold at [enter the URL where you sell legitimately sell your product]:

[insert illegal URL here]

Please remove this content as soon as possible.

The swear the above information is accurate and, under penalty of perjury, confirm that I am the copyright owner.

Electronically Signed,

Your Full Name
Street Address (must be real..PO Boxes preferred)
City State Zip
[your email address…preferably from an account using your salespage domain]
[your phone number…must be real]

Paste the DMCA Notice Into an Email. Send it to the Illegal Download Sites

Subject: DMCA/Copyright Infringement Notice
Body: Paste the contents in. No need for Word, PDF, etc.
No handwritten signature is necessary.

Here’s a quick list of email contacts for popular sharing sites:

• abuse@rapidshare.com
• abuse@mediafire.com
• abuse@easy-share.com
• dmca@filefactory.com
• abuse@zshare.net
• abuse@hotfile.com

Found Your Product Being Illegally Resold at Another Site? Here’s what to do…

Don’t bother contacting the site owner. They obviously know what they’re doing is illegal and contact with them will become juvenile or get ignored. Instead, go straight to their “parents” (i.e. host and upstream provider). This technique works 80% of the time depending on the country the server is hosted on.

• Type the following into your address bar:
  http://whois.domaintools.com/thedownloadsitename.com
• You’ll get a report with tons of info. Look for the Name Server. Unless they’re covering their tracks, this will point towards their actual host 80% of the time.
• Go to the Name Server’s website (aka host) and look for the “Abuse” section. They’ll normally provide a way to report DMCA/Copyright infringement.
• Send the DMCA email from the 1st section.
• If the Name Server is NOT the host, click on the IP Address and then look for the Resolving Host on the next page.

• Go to the Host site (above is 7Web.ru) and use Google Translate if necessary to surf the site with translations.
• Send the DMCA. Most Russian sites are actually very helpful and remove Copyrighted Materials quickly.

How to Deal with the Shady Hosts

This method gets trickier. It’s a 2nd-to-last resort for stubborn “above the law” hosts in China, Amsterdam, Russia and other countries. You’re basically following the same steps from the last section. The only difference is you’re looking for DNS servers and submitting the DMCA to them.

• Type the following into your address bar:
  http://whois.domaintools.com/thedownloadsitename.com
• You’ll get a report with tons of info. Look for the Registrar Data. Some Registrars actually care about DMCA’s…others don’t.
• Go to the Registrar’s website (aka host) and look for the “Abuse” section. They’ll normally provide a way to report DMCA/Copyright infringement.
• Send the DMCA email from the 1st section.

If Nothing Else Works…Cut off the Gasoline Supply

• Last resort. If none of the above works, you need to contact their “Upstream provider” and send a DMCA. An Upstream Provider is basically the company providing bandwidth to the webhost. For example, if you’re surfing from home, you’re probably using AT&T or Comcast. You think you’re getting your bandwidth from them…but you’re only partially right. Comcast and AT&T actually buy bandwidth from larger companies like Level3 and Cogent. And these companies take their bandwidth and DMCA’s very seriously.So by doing this, you’re jumping over the heads of the owner and host. This means the host will get direct pressure from their internet provider to remove the files. And believe me, the host will contact the owner and tell them to drop the file or get shut down (in most cases). It’s like getting a direct warning call from Comcast.
• Here’s the way to find the Upstream provider.
• Click on the IP Address:

http://traceroute.monitis.com/

• Go to this site: Traceroute – Online tracert tool
• Paste in the IP 81.177.23.68 or 7web.ru (from examples above…yours will be different).
• You’ll get something like this:
• Ignore the entries with “theplanet.com”. You want to look for the last entry before the ***. In this case, it’s pccwbtn.net. This is the last person (or “hop”) providing bandwidth to 7Web.ru.
• It turns out this company is actually pccwglobal.com…a major Upstream provider. Sure enough, at the bottom of the page is a DMCA link. Report away.

I hope this helps someone. Once you’ve gotten the hang of it, it only takes minutes to report your files. Unfortunately, it normally takes 2 days to get them taken down. Good luck out there. Also, I’m not a lawyer. This is not legal advice. I will not be held responsible for anything as a result of the above methods.