Dealing with Piracy?

Hi

Piracy hit me hard at the end of last year, most of the referrers are now shady nulled sites, pushing my latest updates for free just hours after product updates. I do have stats running and I could say only 6-10% of installed/activated plugins were actually bought (stats based on usage stats I acquired vs sales made, excluding valid extended license users).

I’m trying to submit DMCA noticed to google, and obviously they remove the links from google search results but maybe there is better way to fight this? Some automated tools or any way to actually protect the WordPress plugins/themes and still comply with envato T&C?

Thanks!

1 Like

Unfortunately there is only so much anyone can do about this.

Authors own the copyright to files so DMCAs etc. need to come from them.

Maybe this might help or give you some ideas https://help.market.envato.com/hc/en-us/articles/202501554-Tools-For-Reporting-Copyright

2 Likes

There are a number of anti-piracy companies that provide answers to this problem: from templates and services that assist with filling out webforms, all the way to full-service solutions that handle detection and removal for you.

Pro-tip: Google actually provides a pretty complete list of DMCA reporting organizations via their very own Transparency Report
They can be tricky to compare but I would consider the amount of piracy domains they have in their database one of the most critical factors for success.

hi this sounds very good for sure , however if authors have to spend all their hardly earnt bucks in trying to protect themselves from piracy, they are going to end up with gaining absolutely nothing in this way too …

I can understand the frustration about having to pay to protect your products from theft, but it may be helpful to avoid thinking in absolute terms. The gain is relative for different authors and circumstances. How popular are your products? How much does it sell for? How much piracy is there? What is the cost of the solution? How likely is it to provide a return on investment? All these factors will change whether or not hiring someone to deal with piracy for you is a good idea.

That being said, if you’re to the point where the problem is frustrating enough to invest the time of figuring out how to send a manual takedown or filling out web forms, then you may want to consider the value of those hours and find a tool to expedite those processes.

Piracy affects small authors the most, between US withholding tax, local taxes and low sales there is simply no budget to pay fighting it. I personally make <2USD for 10USD sale being exclusive author, I simply don’t have budget to pay 30-50 bucks a month to fight piracy is just that simple.

2 Likes

hi indeed the frustration is not just that … the most important frustration is that websites that are reported are just still alive and quicking months after we do and the “funny thing” is that i realized that sone of them sell our stuffs and in my case i had way more sales there with the flyer that they pirated that i had with my graphic river account, in other words, there was a good deal of the money going outside of my pockets … and i am not the one who has the most to complain about that … indeed a friend of mine did know the concerned site and guess what instead to the equivalent of maybe 20 sales on the concerned site, in his case that was 20x20 … what i mean by that is that 20 of his items had been pirated and that each had an average of 20 sales , so when u put two on two together he had been stolen 400 sales and thus around 1300 bucks or something lookalike …