Created: 02/01/2025
Updated: 02/03/2025
How to Fight Online Copyright Infringement and Get it Removed
I frequently get contacted by authors and publishers asking me how to remove infringing content from websites or take down entire pirate sites. Since I do this regularly as a part of operating Lybrary.com, here are some of the most important tools, techniques, and resources to fight back and get infringing content removed. If more authors and publishers do this the pirates will at the very least have a much harder time and make a lot less profit.I will walk you through a common scenario. An author or a customer sends me an email alerting me to a new pirate site or an unauthorized item on some platform. Let us assume it is a pirate site and not something unauthorized on eBay, Etsy, Amazon, or some other major retail platform. These big retail platforms have their own reporting facilities. It is best to search their website for removal instructions. So let's say the website domain is moronpirate.com.
Of course, the first step is to browse to moronpirate.com and verify that this is a pirate site. The next step is to find out who is hosting it.
Finding the Web Host
To find out which company actually hosts the website I typically use hostingchecker.com but there are other similar online services. Type in the pirate domain and you will see who is hosting it. If the returned result is CloudFlare, you will have to do another step. CloudFlare is a CDN, and thus merely a pass-through. A side-effect of their service is that they mask or change the IP address and thus one cannot immediately see who the underlying hosting company is. But this is quickly fixed because CloudFlare has an abuse form here CloudFlare Abuse Form. After you have submitted your complaint to CloudFlare they will pass this on to the hosting service as well as the website owner, but they will also in their second email to you identify the hosting company by name and their abuse email contact information. This will look something like this:-----
Hosting Provider: GLOBAL COLOCATION LIMITED
Abuse Contact: noc1@interconnects.us
-----
I then search for the company name, go to their website, and look for instructions to report copyright infringement. Some companies have directions, rules, and guidelines of how to report such infringements. Others have forms you can fill out. Some don't have anything, but you do have their abuse email contact information that CloudFlare will email to you. Thus, you have all contact information necessary to send as many DMCA takedown requests as necessary. Sometimes it takes several such requests before the web host decides to terminate their service for the pirate. The more infringing URLs you can report the better. The pirate websites I often have to deal with have thousands of pirated products. I typically send in my first email 20-30 infringing URLs and wait for the response. If the website is still operational after a day or two, I send another similar takedown request with another 30 or more infringements. After the third or fourth they typically get the picture and terminate the website. Even better would be if several authors and publisher send at the same time their takedown requests because then the web host will quickly understand the problem and act faster.
You can search online for how such a DMCA takedown request should look. Very briefly, you need to include your full contact information, not just your email address, and you have to identify where the infringement happens (the URL at the pirate site) and describe what is being infringed, a book, a video, text, images, etc. It is often best to send them a link of an authorized retailer or some other legitimate place that identifies your work. With European web hosts, it is often enough just to send a list of infringing URLs. In the US, the hosting companies are often a bit stricter and one has to identify an infringed work by title, author, and an authorized URL.
What happens after the web host has shut down the pirate website depends. In some cases, the pirate gets the message and goes away. In other cases, the pirate moves his operation to another web host where the game of hide and seek starts over. But as you can see above, it only takes a few minutes of work to identify the host and send takedown requests. It is more work and costlier for a pirate to move to a new web host. Thus, if you keep up the chase, check every day if the moronpirate.com domain has reemerged and again take it down it will eventually wear down the pirate. This is particularly effective in a wolf-pack fashion. If there are several authors being pirated by the same pirate then team up and take the site down in a round-robin fashion.
For particularly persistent pirates you can run a second line of attack that will further disrupt the pirate's operation. This brings me to ...
Discovering the Paypal account
Pirate sites that retail downloads and not simply give them away, have to be able to take money for the orders. This is in most cases done via PayPal. PayPal also has an infringement reporting process but you first have to identify the PayPal account of the pirate. You can do this by placing an order on the pirate site. You do not have to pay for the order because before you have to pay you will either get to a PayPal login or they will send you their PayPal-Me email address. If you get to a PayPal login copy and save the URL. This URL identifies the retailer and thus identifies to PayPal which business account this is associated with. With this information you go to the PayPal Infringement Report download the PDF, fill it out, and send it to the email address specified. Not always, but in many cases PayPal will either restrict or close that account entirely. Once it is closed the pirate cannot take payments via PayPal.Of course, also with PayPal, it isn't too hard for a pirate to open a new account. But all of this takes time and resources from the pirate, and you can report the new account just as easily, too. In the end, it depends on who is more persistent. At some point, PayPal might do an internal investigation, which could make it a lot harder for that pirate to sign up for new accounts.
Removing URLs from Search Engines
A third line of attack, which is entirely independent of the web host and PayPal measures, is to report infringing URLs to Google and other search engines. This allows you to have URLs that point to the pirate site removed from search engine results. While this does not remove the actual webpage or website, it removes one important way how the pirate site can be discovered in the first place. Google's form is here Google Legal Removal Request. In my experience, this is actually the most important measure to take because the removal from search engines is permanent. Even if the pirate changes the hosting company, the domain stays the same and thus the removal from search engines is longer lasting. A pirate would have to change to a new domain name but this means that they have to start from zero to build their domain authority and be discovered by new customers.There is one possible conflict you can run into. If you first send a takedown request to the web host and then later to Google, it can happen that at the time Google is checking the infringing URLs the pirate site may already be shut down. Then Google will tell you that they can't find the infringing content and not act. Thus it is best to have some time separation. I recommend first sending the Google takedown requests and waiting until Google has acted. Then contact the hosting company and PayPal.
Conclusion
The most effective way is to do all three strategies together and to do them as an organized group of authors and publishers and persistently and relentlessly disrupt the pirate's operation. Unfortunately, law enforcement is often unwilling to help but it can't hurt to inform the FBI and other local authorities. You can file a complaint at the FBI's Internet Crime Complaint Center, and or file a complaint with the Federal Trade Commission. If the FBI or FTC decide to get involved then that will be a swift end to the pirates. If you have further suggestions please comment below.Further Resources
You might be interested to read the following articles:- A Little Known Tool to Identify an Online Pirate or Copyright Infringer
- The Largest Pirate in Downloads for Magicians