Quote from: Microbius on November 06, 2011, 01:57

Quote from: julie123 on November 05, 2011, 05:25

I  just had a look at www.gfxtra.com They have some of my art work  that they are  just giving away. I don't know what to do.   

DMCA their webhost, find out who provides their ads and follow their procedure for reporting it too.
If they take payments directly through Paypal etc. I think there is also a procedure for reporting the account to Paypal.
 Also could everyone that posted a link to the site please break it/ write it as text to avoid helping their rankings.

But what can I do, when I found my illustrations on more than 500 sites for free ?
Also are my illustrations or mostly parts of my illustrations in some microstockportfolios.
I was so grazy and searched intensive with google etc.
The result is more than 1.500 copyright infringements.
and I didn't search all my pictures...
(and much more from I don't know...)
So,what now ?
I don't want to spend weeks for this.

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For those images of yours that are in microstock portfolios, you can contact the microstock companies themselves and they should take down those images and portfolios quickly

Honestly you don't have to spend too long doing it, there aren't that many of the larger Warez sites. There just have to be enough of us getting their ad income shut down for a day or two each to make it too much hassle for them to keep responding to the DMCA to get the ads back up. Or to get enough broken links on the sites to make it too much hassle for users to bother with them when they can get the files legally for a couple of dollars.
Just when you happen to spot some of your work spend a couple of minutes taking action, or when you spot another artists work send them a pm or email and let them know.
No one's suggesting spending all day on Google image search tracking down every single violation.

Another user of this forum has very kindly put together a DMCA info page here:
http://flemishdreams.com/index.php/dmca
The DMCA needs to be sent to the hosting company etc. not the website owner. A lot of the Warez sites have a page saying they care about copyright etc. as a smoke screen and say they have a DMCA form to fill out, procedure to follow and so on but in reality you will get no joy by using these methods.

If the site has ads on the page where your work appears there is usually an automated way of letting the company providing the Ads know. I have found Google, for example to be very responsive. The way it works is that the Ads get suspended for a day or two, the thief takes the work down and then the Ads get reinstated because they have corrected the problem. This sucks because the Ads get reinstated, but the thief has lost a couple of days of Ad income. There is actually an advantage to us in the huge volume of stuff these people seem to steal, it only takes a few artists to complain, get the Ads stopped for a day or two each, and get their work removed, to make the collections look like Swiss cheese and put a big hole in the income generated too, till it's no longer worth the hassle of the thieves to maintain the sites respond to the notices etc.

Here's an example for Google.
There are two things you should do, the first part isn't a DMCA, it's letting Google know that the site violates the terms of AdSense by systematically violating copyrights and stealing IP:
1.
Where you see a Google Ad there will be a tiny blue arrow with an "i" on it that says "AdChoices" when you hover over it. Click that.
On the page that pops open click the drop down list under "Report a policy violation regarding the site or ads you just saw" choose "the issues are with the website"
Tick "The site violates AdSense program policies in other ways."
The write out something to the effect that it is a site distributing people's Intellectual property in violation of copyright. Here's where this is explained:
https://www.google.com/adsense/support/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=105959

2. This is the DMCA bit:
As above but instead of Ticking "The site violates AdSense program policies in other ways." tick "The site is hosting or distributing my copyrighted content, without my permission." Follow the DMCA link click "Infringement notification form" fill it in and you're done. You need to provide a link to your work in the form. You can just have a link to the work on one of the micro sites.

All this takes far less time to do then it took to explain. The AdSense actions take about two minutes.

Thanks, again forgot to say anything about how to send DMCA takedowns to the file hosts that often have the actual files (Rapidshare and the like). If we just email the standard form or if there's a quicker way?
I don't have a lot of experience about how to handle each of these specifically, maybe someone else could chime in? If I remember correctly Holgs on this forum seemed to know a bit more about this.

That's great Microbius.  Thanks for all this.  I wonder if Tyler could put your post in the 'Wiki' so it's easy to find.

+1

That was one of the easiest and clearest explanations of how to hit them in the pocketbook and make something happen. Most of these sites don't really care about content or how they get things, all they want are page views and click-troughs. Not saying they are innocent, just that their motivations aren't theft or distribution, but is getting clicks for cash.