Client's commercial product released as free download on bit torrent

[littlegiant]

Greetings,

I discovered this morning that one of my client's commercial products has been released as a free download on a bit torrent site. Now it seems to me the obvious solution is to contact the bit torrent site and demand that they remove that download from their site. Unfortunately these scumbags have it set up so that the only way you can contact them is to pay their registration fee. Does anybody have any other suggestions about what we should do about this before we go ahead and pay their registration fee in order to contact them to demand removal of the product from their site?

[activeco]

Originally Posted by littlegiant

Unfortunately these scumbags have it set up so that the only way you can contact them is to pay their registration fee.

Lol. Sorry, I just can't stop laughing. I have some sympathy with them.

Does anybody have any other suggestions about what we should do about this before we go ahead and pay their registration fee in order to contact them to demand removal of the product from their site?

Check domain registrant address.

[littlegiant]

Thanks for your reply and your suggestion but why would you sympathize with them?

[activeco]

Well, you shouldn't that the life so serious.

[littlegiant]

Originally Posted by activeco

Well, you shouldn't that the life so serious.

Uhh.. you might want to spellcheck that or something. That doesn't make sense.

[activeco]

Originally Posted by littlegiant

Uhh.. you might want to spellcheck that or something. That doesn't make sense.

take...ly.
Got it?

[littlegiant]

No. I don't get it. Why don't you just correct your post?

I'm guessing that you're saying don't take life so seriously. If so, I can see that you've never tried to sell a product online. Also, I might add that the link to the ILLEGALLY provided bit torrent download appears on page one of Google search results for the client's own company name. This is of great concern to us.

[wige]

Unfortunately, you are pretty close to out of luck as far as dealing with the situation. Generally, prevention is the best bet. For software, this would include registration or license management features embedded in the application (ok, yes, these can all be circumvented, but they prevent the casual person from breaking your application and freely distributing it) or DRM if it is a media file.

Once the file is on a sharing network, your options are very limited. The first step is to track the servers to determine where in the world they are. If they are not in your country, the US, UK, Canada, Australia, or certain parts of Europe, sorry, you are out of luck. Chalk it up as a life lesson, and move on. You can contact the ISP or hosting company, but don't expect much action.

If the file is being shared on a network in the US, UK, etc., you may have more success in getting the file removed. Contact the ISP with a DCMA complaint. Also, try to go through the hosting company. If it is not removed, you may have to take legal action. This can be very time consuming if the file is being shared on a network outside your country. And, even if you are successful, the file may simply move to a place that is out of your reach.

[littlegiant]

Thanks for all the details, Wige. That gives us a much better idea of what we're looking at here. Although I think maybe you're right in that we're pretty much S.O.L. on this one. It's a very low priced product so putting some kind of advanced copy protection was not really viable. Even then, as you said, there are ways around it. I'm reading lately about how big video game developers are having a real go of it stemming the tide of online piracy. I was kind of under the impression that a low priced product put out by a small business would fly under the radar of the whole bit torrent thing. We've been carefully monitoring some other products over the past year and none of them have shown up in bit torrents or file sharing sites so far (that we know of). So the lesson I'm learning here is that it's really just the luck of the draw and no product is really safe.

[epep]

If you don't have an intellectual property attorney retained already, you may want to look into doing so.

Even if the domain name registration is private on the WHOIS database, you should be able to get that information from the registrar by showing cause. Copyright violation is typically one of those "for cause" exceptions to their privacy policies. Once you have their true contact information, send a cease and desist letter to their main offices so they're on notice of their copyright violation and your knowledge of their violation. I know it isn't the end-all-be-all type of solution, but that may at least give you a start.

Best of luck!

EP

[claybutler]

Other options after exhausting the ones posted above are to do your best to make sure your paid version comes up first in the search engines and perhaps release a new version (even if it's totally cosmetic and in name only) to make the free bittorrent one look like the "old outdated" version. Also the free version may not eat into your business as the bittorrent crowd may not be your target audience anyway.

Hope it works out for your client.

[incrediblehelp]

uhh, why are you dealing with this and not the lawyers?

[krisidious]

report them to their host, their hosts local police, the FCC and then go download a torrent program and download the software... then make changes to the software to break it... then leave your torrent program up so that users will get a corrupt copy.

[JezC]

I once had a Beta leaked from a testing group. It had a software crash reporting feature built in, so it emailed problem reports when it crashed. It was a Beta, and the Beta participants were told - no foul play. We found out about the leakage when Beta reports came in from ten times as many machines as we'd offered Beta copies, and from countries that weren't included in the Beta test. What could we do? Nothing. Without an identifiable component (e.g. steganographic printing of each distributed copy and matching that to the discovered versions or having the crash emails include a key) - no police force would take action.

If your software is related to finance. and exported from the US, then the US Secret Service may be interested. They take interest in anything that devalues the US Dollar. Again, without any kind of tracking and tracing, you're roadkill.

We ended up realising that we would probably support a community of users between five and ten times larger than we had sold to. Price reductions made a small difference in the ratio. A very few of the "extra" users became buying users, but it wasn't a good lead generation mechanism.

Consider making your product into a legit ShareWare product. Free distribution with nagware or feature limitation pending an unlock. Then the BitTorrent distributors become a friend rather than an enemy.

Cheers, JeremyC.

[bj]

uhh, why are you dealing with this and not the lawyers?

I think Jaan has a point. If you aren't their attorney then it's not your job to worry about it. Out of courtesy, a simple notification of what you found should be the end of your responsibility. If you manage the site, then you should make sure in future to let them know the upside and the downside of not putting some sort of protection on downloadable goods, and I hope you did this in the beginning, before this happened. And if they choose to cheap out, it's on them when stuff like this happens.

[activeco]

Originally Posted by JezC

We ended up realising that we would probably support a community of users between five and ten times larger than we had sold to. Price reductions made a small difference in the ratio. A very few of the "extra" users became buying users, but it wasn't a good lead generation mechanism.

Consider making your product into a legit ShareWare product. Free distribution with nagware or feature limitation pending an unlock. Then the BitTorrent distributors become a friend rather than an enemy.

Exactly. The huge majority of illegal downloaders would never buy the product anyway, so there is no real damage. Instead, in this way you can only get more sales when some of them realize they really need it.

[microtekblue]

Best bet is to PAY the Registration fee and FIND OUT WHO is handling their payment service. You can then try to track them down by following the money trail.

Since most likely the torrent site won't listen to your request by contacting them anyway nor will they take off the torrent file in question.

[annonymous]

It helps to understand how torrents work.

A torrent file is basically a map that points you to other users who have part or all of a file. When you download a file from a torrent, you are downloading directly from the other users.

The website that you are referring to is called a tracker. It hosts torrent files, but not the files themselves. Basically, it hands you a map and tells you to find the file on your own. The tracker does not directly interact with the pirated material. It only points users towards it. Because of this setup, it is extremely difficult or impossible (depending on your location and the tracker's location) to prosecute them.

Your best course of action is to download the torrent yourself. Once you are connected to a torrent, you are able to see the IP addresses of every other user who is connected to it. Track these IPs and report the users to their ISPs.

[clumberman]

Originally Posted by microtekblue

Best bet is to PAY the Registration fee and FIND OUT WHO is handling their payment service. You can then try to track them down by following the money trail.

Since most likely the torrent site won't listen to your request by contacting them anyway nor will they take off the torrent file in question.

Make sure you pay by credit card, then file a chargeback on the card. You've gotten access to send your email, then you take your money back. I don't think a credit card company will argue too much about a copyright violation. I also like the idea of d/l'ing the file yourself and getting the locations of everybody that's got it posted and going after them directly.

[peterboz]

if, as i assume, you're talking about the pirate bay,many have tried and failed before you:

The Pirate Bay - The world's largest BitTorrent tracker

you're very unlikely to convince them to remove the torrent from their servers, despite what online lawyers with dollar signs in their eyes might tell you. since the torrent file itself does not contain the copyrighted data, merely instructions on where to find pieces of it strewn across the bittorrent network, under swedish law there is nothing illegal going on.

i'd recommend including at least a basic protection/authorisation system, since some people may be put off using cracking software by the threat to their machine's integrity, or their antivirus software might pop up and scare them into not running the crack. however if someone's able to find and download a torrent they're probably fairly web savvy and might go ahead and take the risk.

the double layer of serial number and authorisation number (used in many Adobe products for example) seems to confuse the less determined cracker and might reduce the overall number of successfully cracked versions in circulation.

as for the SERP problem, you could consider adopting a 'reputation management' technique and building multiple pages and blogs referring to the product and SEOing them hard to push the offending bittorrent listing down off page one.

i'd advise you not to spend effort trying to get the genie back in the bottle - focus on version 1.1 and what protection features you're going to include.

[icoombs]

Unfortunately i think you will find that taking action against them would be pointless as the file they are offering for download is not your program. It is just a file that tells the torrent client where to look to find copies of your file on individual users PC's where it is then downloaded from.

The only way would be to download a torrent client and download your program from the network and monitor the download for all IP addresses sharing the file, you would then need to take action against all the individuals sharing the file, which in the long run will probably cost you more than you would make through legitimate sales to all the illegal down loaders.

As mentioned previously, you would be better releasing a Shareware with nag or restrictions, you will be more likely to get people to pay to get the unlock code.

[cbosleeds]

I've just read through this and my first thought is: this is theft, but is it really damaging your sales? My theory is that part of Microsoft's success depended on piracy - piracy spreads brand awareness, and once the next version of the software comes out you just need to try and make it more secure, so that you get more sales out of the new brand awareness. I'd be having a 'Gatesean' fit myself if someone did this to me, but in the bigger picture it might not be such a bad thing in the long run.

Generally people who grab things for free were never going to pay for them in the first place so the chances are that this isn't going to hurt ROI. market the product like hell and find a way to take control of the 'free'/stolen one by maybe releasing a free version or shareware yourself if you can. Or go down the OS route and charge for support. Everyone makes their money somewhere - Linux OSs may be free for instance, but Linux support generally costs a lot more than Microsoft support.

Finally, since politics reared its head here, a comment on that too. A good product should be ethical, but as apolitical as possible (if that makes sense) - I'm a socialist, but a realist. Its often quite amusing how some left-wingers ignore that they've got money, evade thinking about where it came from and consequently fail to appreciate that time, effort and innovation need rewarding and renumerating, while some right-wingers seem to beleive that anyone left of centre thinks that everything should be free and communal. It pays to be pragmatic rather than taking cheap shots, or using cod-politics either to self-justify stealing or to over-deterministically generalise about the political opposition's proclivity towards a free ride. Most people don't fit into either category that I described but those that do, are doing no favours for either side.

[Renegade]

Speaking as a software author... Move on. There's nothing that you can really do about it other than get a better protection scheme.

I've got friends that put "crack detection" in their software then when they detect a crack, they direct people to a special piracy page with FBI warnings and the like. It does convert sales.

As for if piracy hurts sales? Yes. It does. But it can also help generate that brand awareness that brings in more paying customers as well. Piracy isn't a simple issue, and the type of software matters.

Just move on though. You can't stop BT downloads.

Worse, with "grey hosting" in some countries, it's impossible to even threaten a lot of illegal sites. Again... just move on.

[incrediblehelp]

Originally Posted by Renegade

Speaking as a software author... Move on. There's nothing that you can really do about it other than get a better protection scheme.

Right, why does it even matter if the software get downloaded. Should have a more secure activation method?

[xtempore]

Actually MOST torrent sites will remove a torrent file IF you follow their rather exhaustive procedures for PROVING that...
A. The item breaches copyright,
and B. You are the owner of the copyright (or a representative thereof).

I am quite surprised that they have no way to contact them without paying a registration fee. Perhaps you missed some link, or feedback page. What torrent site is it? I know the last thing you want to do is promote them in any way, but it's hard for us to provide feedback without knowing the details.

You really should also strongly recommend to the client that they at least make some attempt to copy protect their software.

As a software developer myself, I had once thought much the same as was expressed here... "It's too much effort, and it can be broken".

But recently I had a client who wanted their software locked down, so I finally got off my ass and wrote in a licensing module. It took me about 4 hours in total, including a tie in to the on-line payment system - not too big a development effort in the overall scheme of things.

I'm sure there are guys out there who would crack without too much effort, but as with all forms of security, all you really need is enough of a disincentive that the would be thief looks at it and decides there are easier targets.

Frankly anyone who develops a commercial product and then fails to put some form of copy protection in place is asking for trouble. Tell your client to stop whining, get over it, and put some protection in place from now on (of course far more tactfully than that!)

[microtekblue]

Originally Posted by incrediblehelp

Right, why does it even matter if the software get downloaded. Should have a more secure activation method?

Why not just upload your own software to torrent sites then?

It's not about security features, its about the fact that internet piracy exists and is very common on torrent sites. I don't think I agree with adding more security due to torrent piracy issues, rather than trying to solve the open source torrent technology that has lead to massive piracy and copyright violations.

These sites should not be given a free to reign thumbs up, but they should be threatened legally and taken down.

I think trying to get your software off the site is an excellent approach. We should not run from this problem but fight it accordingly.

[annonymous]

Originally Posted by microtekblue

These sites should not be given a free to reign thumbs up, but they should be threatened legally and taken down.

In most areas, the sites are functioning within the law. Though they may point you towards illegal materials, they are not breaking the law themselves (assuming they are outside the US or UK).

Originally Posted by microtekblue

I think trying to get your software off the site is an excellent approach. We should not run from this problem but fight it accordingly.

Again, the software is not on the site. The software is on the computers of a bunch of users who are sharing the files directly. The site doesn't touch the files themselves. They host files that tell you which users have the illegal file.

[microtekblue]

Originally Posted by annonymous

Again, the software is not on the site. The software is on the computers of a bunch of users who are sharing the files directly. The site doesn't touch the files themselves. They host files that tell you which users have the illegal file.

Well the ACCESS given to the "software" by these torrent sites is the issue, not where the files are located. This is why Napster and other P2P applications were sued and taken down, since they did provide the Gateway so to speak and did make it possible to access the copyrighted materials, regardless of who has the files.

They may not be a direct source to the files, but they are definitely acting as an accessory. And that makes them liable!

And I know what your saying and your right, but I just feel and think that we should do more in trying to fight the problem, instead of trying to fix our own softwares by adding more security features. Also, considering the fact that even if you do add more security to your softwares, there's no telling whether someones going to crack it, and make it publicly available on torrent sites.

IMO

[deepsand]

Originally Posted by clumberman

Make sure you pay by credit card, then file a chargeback on the card. You've gotten access to send your email, then you take your money back. I don't think a credit card company will argue too much about a copyright violation. I also like the idea of d/l'ing the file yourself and getting the locations of everybody that's got it posted and going after them directly.

VERY BAD ADVICE.

The motive of the cardholder is irrelevant under the law. That he is/was trying to "right a wrong" does not alter the fact that he authorized a transaction, and is therefore not grounds for disputing the charge.

The action you suggest is, at Law, fraud.

[langsor]

Originally Posted by annonymous

It helps to understand how torrents work.

Your best course of action is to download the torrent yourself. Once you are connected to a torrent, you are able to see the IP addresses of every other user who is connected to it. Track these IPs and report the users to their ISPs.

Just my two cents ...

The MPAA, Microsoft and other super-giants have barely scratched the surface battling against the epidemic torrent activity, so unless your client has money to burn, I would say write it off as a business loss and lesson learned.

Also, if you get one tracker to remove it, if the software is any good, it will show up again somewhere else -- out of reach.

I believe the most successful approaches for Software companies that don't produce full software suites (eg MS Office, Adobe CS3, etc) is to provide constant releases and updates of their software package and keep a database of legitimate users and some ID key in each release ... thereby eliminating the pirated copies from updates. This approach may also inhibit some people from contributing their own copy to the torrent culture, when they realize they wont be able to get updates either, without a big fuss.

And on a final note...a link to a page on one of the biggest trackers around -- worth a look-see.

The Pirate Bay - The world's largest BitTorrent tracker

[ron angel]

Originally Posted by activeco

Exactly. The huge majority of illegal downloaders would never buy the product anyway, so there is no real damage. Instead, in this way you can only get more sales when some of them realize they really need it.

Many years ago (well not that many...) before the internet was as it is now there used to be BBS systems privately run all over the world.
every now and again there were meetings where all the users came together to meet in person at a hotel or other venue where electricity & telephone lines were available some travelling a long way. at some of these meeting were people that worked in software and hardware for big name computer company's. some of the people who came brought with them programs which they would give copies of to others & vice versa There was always an argument from the people that worked for the company's that it was stealing they would say would you go into your local (name of computer store) and take a copies off the shelf without paying. of course not some would say we would go without not being able to afford to buy as students. the software company would loose nothing as we would never be able to afford to buy it. If we try and like the software then we would buy it (full working not like trial or shareware) The problem is if you buy software and open the box unlike other goods it is not possible to get a refund most of the time. This is the reason people do these things also most of them just use the program once to see how it works and shelve it.
people who work for companies or themselves may download to test if it is suitable before spending lots of money which they are unable to get back as stated above,and buy if ok for their uses.
Following the IP addresses from torrents may get a few kids in their bedrooms or students in bedsits but more lightly the IP addresses have been spoofed & they are using another persons or a company network via wireless link from a laptop. you will
go to the place with a warrant at great expense break down the door & find some old lady's looking at flower arraignments who has a shock, & get sued for millions!
I know it is stealing but as has been said before it also promotes your program in places it would not have been seen before who knows maybe the father of one of the illegal downloads sees it on his sons computer and says that's just what our multimillion corporate company needs. so son can you make me 100 copies for work(grin)(orders 101 copies next day one for son... or more lightly stop playing with that thing & do your homework.

[langsor]

You know, it's an amusing look into the minds of software users and "piracy" ...

Would everyone here who's ever loaned a friend a copy of a Windows OS install disk -- please raise your hand.

I thought so.

Here's another little nugget that touches on this very large topic.

Windows Is Free (A TLUG Article)

[jawn_tech]

Originally Posted by annonymous

Again, the software is not on the site. The software is on the computers of a bunch of users who are sharing the files directly. The site doesn't touch the files themselves. They host files that tell you which users have the illegal file.

Exactly, great point. There are also legitimate uses of file-sharing apps and torrent sites in general. Legal files are also shared, but are dwarfed next to the huge volume of pirating. But file-sharing in general isn't the problem -- it's the millions of individuals who share and download files that are 'illegal' (if their country has such laws).

There's also millions of individuals who speed on highways, and few get ticketed.

Originally Posted by microtekblue

Well the ACCESS given to the "software" by these torrent sites is the issue, not where the files are located. This is why Napster and other P2P applications were sued and taken down, since they did provide the Gateway so to speak and did make it possible to access the copyrighted materials, regardless of who has the files.

Actually, Napster was quite different than the p2p apps today, which were not in fact taken down but are alive and well today. Napster was once promoted as a place to "get music for free", thus encouraging pirating -- which was the transgression, not facilitating file-sharing in general. All any p2p app today (and there are many -- Limewire, Kazaa, Shareza, Gnutella network, etc...) needs to say is, "don't use this for violating copyrights", and they're covered.

That alone shows that one needs to take the incentive to protect one's own intellectual property, like anything else in life. Think of it like a bank or a home -- do what one must to protect what's inside, even though the world would be a better place if you didn't have to.

[jhilgeman]

Krisidious actually has a good tactic - I'm surprised nobody backed him. If you want to stop the piracy, use the best hacker tool: social engineering. With a little ingenuity, you can stop most of the piracy by poisoning the supply. It takes a bit of work, but if you're determined, you can do it. Here's an explanation:

In order for Person A to fully download your application using BitTorrent, he/she must download it from other people who already have the full set of files (those people are called "seeds"). If there are no seeds, Person A can't download the files. On the flip side, if there are two torrents that claim to be "Application XYZ" and one has more seeds than the other, then Person A will choose the torrent with more seeds, since there is a greater chance of downloading the files and usually faster download speeds. They will assume that there is no fundamental difference between the torrents.

Here's where you get to play evil - there are a few things you can do:

1. Take the trial version or a corrupted version of the application and create a torrent for it. Call it something that will indicate that it is "cracked" or pirated in some way. Name it something very similar to the current "real" pirated torrent. Seed your torrent using your own PC, and get as many other PCs as possible seeding it, too. If you can get more seeds than the actual cracked application, you're going to frustrate potential pirates. If your torrent is named similar to the pirated one, they might assume that the pirated one is the same.

2. Report the currently-pirated version as a fake. Most BitTorrent sites will have simple systems to let users flag torrents as good or bad/fake. Most people are already wary of pirated content, so they're much less likely to waste time downloading, unzipping, and installing something that won't actually work. Especially if someone has said that the install program has a trojan horse virus in it. Likewise, flag YOUR torrent as a "good" torrent.

3. Distribute your trial version to some of the big BT sites, like btjunkie.com and Pirate Bay. Once it gets going, there are going to be some people that will seed your version and it'll outweigh the real pirated version. If you want, you can even add things to your torrent like a text file containing a "serial number" or a crack program. The more time a pirate wastes, the less likely they will end up with a real pirated version.

These are just a few ideas, but you can do a lot of stuff. Just remember - BitTorrent and piracy are a basic supply-and-demand scenario. You can't stop the demand, so the next best thing is to poison the supply.

That said, if you're worrying about it being pirated / distributed illegally, then that's enough reason to have copy protection. Yes, just about all copy protections can be cracked, but the point is to slow it. You don't need a fancy-schmancy copy protection scheme to outwit every hacker / cracker out there - you just want to slow them down and make life difficult for them. Personally, I like license files that rely on things like hard drive serial numbers and so on. A lot of that hardware info is easy to get through standard Windows function calls, and it's very simplistic copy protection. Or you can also require that the application "call home" with a serial number or something - POST some data via HTTPS to a simple web app that checks the info and sends back a code to allow the program to continue running. Again - relatively easy to implement stuff. Some of it can be considered intrusive or annoying for valid users, so you have to choose your copy protection scheme based on the nature of the application (what it does, who uses it and how, etc).

I'm starting to ramble, so I'll cut it short. Don't be afraid to get your hands dirty. It is YOUR application, and they are pirating it. Use their own tools against them.

[erima]

Pay their registration fee to document who is receiving the payment. Make sure the card you use is fraud protected.

As soon as the charge posts, dispute the charge which will create a paper trail leading to the person or company benefiting from the charge. Once you have established the payee on the charge, contact the DA and start fraud proceedings (you cannot recieve cash for a copyright product you do not have permission to sell). Usually the card processor will assist in helping to determine who is the payee on the charge so you can determine whether the charge is or isn't legitimate. (The purpose of disputing the charge is not to stop the charge, it is to document who is benefiting from the charge).

You have to press this issue, if you allow the product to stay as a free download you actually may lose rights. If possible you need to know the IP address of the original upload (which can usually be a good bargaining chip for a company looking at criminal and civil actions) and you will usually find a former employee or dissatisfied customer. If you are not prepared to invest the time and resources to send the offending person to jail, just spend the next 10 years whining about how great your life could have been and let it go.

Best of luck, it is a lousy situation to be in - I've seen companies invest thousands upon thousands of dollars only to have someone rip them off because they felt they were mistreated. No one ever seems to care about the investment, or the people who are put out of work because a project is undermined by sites like this.

[djrobs]

Frustrating as it is, i think you only have yourselves to blame for not putting adequate protection on to your software. If you considered it not worth the money, then you can expect this. Anyone can easily create and upload a torrent. It's not reserved for just big titles.

I think lesson learned and move on. If you don't want to happen again, do something different for next version or next piece of software.

[ron angel]

[QUOTE=erima;391290]Pay their registration fee to document who is receiving the payment. Make sure the card you use is fraud protected.
As soon as the charge posts, dispute the charge which will create a paper trail leading to the person or company benefiting from the charge. Once you have established the payee on the charge, contact the DA and start fraud proceedings (you cannot recieve cash for a copyright product you do not have permission to sell). Usually the card processor will assist in helping to determine who is the payee on the charge so you can determine whether the charge is or isn't legitimate. (The purpose of disputing the charge is not to stop the charge, it is to document who is benefiting from the charge).
quote: (you cannot receive cash for a copyright product you do not have permission to sell)
Using the above method to get the persons details will work ok, but they are not selling anything except a service which under the terms & conditions which you have to agree to when registering probably state that any use of the service & the way you use it is down to you & they take no responsibility or whatever. In fact they could probably counter claim against you for falsely stating your use of the credit card to get information about them when you knew it not not to be true. In the uk the DA (DPS) would not help you as the matter is a civil one of copy write not criminal such as stealing the dvds from your store. These people also probably use a different company to process site payments so even if you got the information it would probably take you to an off shore company. Good luck!

[chiron]

Would everyone here who's ever loaned a friend a copy of a Windows OS install disk -- please raise your hand.

What kind of friends are you people? Kidding.

It's not quite the same power of scale for a small-target application, but there was a recent Economist article touching on piracy that, to make it ridiculously brief, noted especially among those (majority) pirates who cannot afford $2500 software suites, once they can spring for costs, due to personal, small business, or country-wide financial growth, they are far more likely to pay the license fee for the given product - or buy a new version - than those never exposed to the product in the first place. Which is one reason Microsoft makes lots of noise in say, China, but mostly just noise.

Thus in some ways being pirated is both a form of flattery and "free" advertising, welcomed or not.

------
Sent from my stolen and ported Blackberry-iPhone hybrid

[littlegiant]

Holy moly... that's a lot to chew on. Much thanks for all the input, especially about whose responsibility it is, whether it's worth taking legal action, how to take legal action, exactly what bit torrent sites are, how to poison the supply and/or manipulate bit torrents to your advantage, the any-publicity-is-good-publicity approach, better copy protection- strike that- at least SOME copy protection next time. All great food for thought. Thanks again. But unless there's a huge impact on sales, we're leaning heavily towards forget about it , move on and do better next time around.

[deepsand]

Originally Posted by erima

Pay their registration fee to document who is receiving the payment. Make sure the card you use is fraud protected.

As soon as the charge posts, dispute the charge ...

As already noted, doing this constitutes fraud. Your motive for authorizing a charge does not serve to make such transaction disputable.

[zbatia]

Holy-moly! Everyone has the right point!
Here is a summary (as my 2 cents):

1) Torrent increases your brand promotion for free.
2) Torrent web site has no software "per se", so it will be wasted time/money to prosecute them.
3) Those who use the Torrent never buy the software, anyway, unless it cannot be used without obtaining a license/file from the software company (and cannot be distributed by hackers), so, they will be forced to pay if the software is "must have" for them.
4) There is no point to waste time. Enjoy your life!

ARE WE DONE WITH IT?

[pixma85]

Seed it with a batch file that states you have been detected please remove this software within 24 hours or some bs we will fine you xxx of dollars.

[ron angel]

Originally Posted by pixma85

Seed it with a batch file that states you have been detected please remove this software within 24 hours or some bs we will fine you xxx of dollars.

as above post
2) Torrent web site has no software "per se", so it will be wasted time/money to prosecute them.
The down loader will laugh at you if the great Microsoft cant get them
(unless the program phones home, which can be blocked with firewall) sadly you have no chance. Its like me fishing with a hand grenade, lob it in bang grab fish & be gone no waiting around for the warden to catch me..."grin" sorry could not resist it.