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]

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]

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

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

[activeco]

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