New Policy For Pirated Content Sites - Please Read

[Lee]

Effective immediately, if you are posting about a site that is using stolen content that you, or others on the GWW Community own, please DO NOT post a clickable URL.

To post a URL that is NOT clickable simply post the entire URL without the addition of http:// at the front of it.

This is for several reasons as follows...

1) The owners of these sites that are using stolen content will be able to see in their server logs traffic coming from GWW visiting their site and trace that traffic back to the discussion on GWW alerting them that they have been discovered, this in effect gives those site owners the chance to remove any stolen content they may be using.

We do not want these people to continue being able to steal others content but allowing them the opportunity to remove content that has already been stolen before DMCA notices hit their hosting companies, billing providers and ISPs it is counter-productive, the sooner these sites can get taken down, the better.

2) Many of the sites being posted about with stolen content on them are starting to send surfers to GWW, I am sure you folks can appreciate that having surfers registering on the GWW Community is no good for anybody, for the last 10 years GWW has maintained itself as a primarily business orientated, adult webmaster discussion community, we do not need surfers joining the GWW Community and turning it in to the equivalent of GFY.

3) By not posting clickable links, it gives the owners of ALL content that may have been stolen and posted on these sites the opportunity to do something about it, before the site owners discover that they have been found out, the more DMCA notices these site owners, hosting companies, ISPs and billing providers are sent, the more likely it is that these sites will vanish after being shut down.

Please try to follow this new policy as closely as possible from today onwards, together we can ensure that sites using stolen content can be punished and taken down by following this simple rule which in turn will mean that we all make more money.

Thank you for your understanding in this matter.

Regards,

Lee

[HunkyLuke]

makes sense to me!

[Rich]

i do think that makes sense

the cops do not let information about stuff they are doing until they make arrests so i do not think we should give pirate sites a way to track what we are doing to get them shut down

[derekt]

I agree as well and kudos to Lee for posting this! :cheerleader:

[DEVELISH]

I agree as well - content producers and copyright holders need time to get the BFG up and ready to shoot

[cezam]

..and another thing is, why boost their link popularity (and therefore SE exposure) by linking to them?