Speaking of stolen content...

Tombarr's post reminded me that one of our website members emailed us about a site that was swiping our pics some time back. I emailed the webmaster, but never got a response and it wasn't worth the hassle to fight.

Anyway, I dug through my email archive and found the offending sites:

hockeycam.net
qtboys.com
boyvillage.com

I spent the $12.95 to join boyvillage to see if they'd taken down our stolen content, and apparently they have... but it looks like ALL of the content on the site is stolen, probably from newsgroups. There are no 2257 notices anywhere on the site. It's also a very poorly organized site; almost no photo sets, just single random pictures thrown into galleries.

I know for a fact there's content from Citiboyz, Miami Studios, and Ounique, because I recognize the models and photosets. At first I thought maybe they were from TGP galleries, but I don't think so. And there are other images I know I've seen belonging to other sites, but I can't place them.

What's the best course of action here? Neova.net is the biller, and I'm a little surprised they're even billing for a site that has no 2257 statement at all and obviously is offering stolen content. But I don't have any contact info for them and don't know if they'd give a crap.

I mean, the sites don't have any of our content (at least on the one site I joined), but it annoys me that the site owner is making money off of stolen content. If anyone wants to "borrow" my password to look around, send me a PM (but you'll need to be someone that posts at least occasionally on GWW so I'll know you're really an industry person) I don't have any ethical problem sharing a password on a site that exists solely on the strength of stolen content :)

If anyone has any ideas on how to take action against these thieves, I'd appreciate the input.

The problem is that the only ones that can really do anything about it is the owner of the content as he/she has to sign an affidavit swearing the ownership and the violation of his/her copyrights.

Unfortunately many companies couldn't be bothered. They don't like it, but they dont' do anything about it when told. We just went through this with larger porn companies, e.g. Falcon, Jet Set, Channel 1, Colt, Belami, etc. And they sort of shrugged it off.

I guess it's too much hassle to take this on as part of their protection of their property rights.? I think they don't have people who know what to do or how to do what needs to be done and don't realize that sometimes all it takes is a certified affidavit mailed to the legal department of a hosting company, or Secure cert authority or a domain registrar...

It royally pisses me off to see sites like this knowing how much we pay to have original content on our asianguys.com site, and how much we pay to just operate legally, only to have people steal what we work so hard on?
I wish we could do something, I'd jump to the front of the line on helping anyone track down and torture sites like this.... :)

His sites have been online forever.

The sites have an old school design, so it's no surprise that his content acquiring methods would be out of 1998 also. I'm guessing he simply has no idea how affiliate programs and whatnot really work.

He's linking to Citiboyz videos at a Yahoo store. Does he even get credit for that? Maybe the Citiboyz content there accounts for that.

He's got an affiliate link to Miami Studios, so that could explain their content being there.

Hard to say.

As for the Citiboyz content he's using, he purchased it years ago. So it's legit. Haven't done business with him in a long, long time, though, so I have no idea if he's still operating.