The Fucking problem with DMCA bots
 

Got this DMCA complaint today:

https://www.rhinosgirls.com/wp-conte...enshot_2-1.jpg


Standard shit. We get them from toothless idiots who don't know what advertising is all of the time.


But then I look closer and see this:

https://www.rhinosgirls.com/wp-conte...reenshot_3.jpg


Okay... WTF? Etsy? So I look further:

https://www.rhinosgirls.com/wp-conte...reenshot_4.jpg


Fucking DMCA Bots. It would be nice to collect a useful amount of data on this and sue some of these fucking moronic companies that think google results for any two common names = the right to DMCA.

I am getting those DMCA crap all the time. I am just dropping those stupid sponsors who hired agencies, without notifying them.

Do you just ignore the DMCA crap ones?

I am referring to DMCA complaints sent to Google. There are no "crap ones" in this case because Google acts on all complaints. Even when they don't give correct information that should be denied just because it is crap.

For instance... Lets say I run a cam site called Chaturbate.com and the complaint states that I want Chaturbate.com/modelprofile removed from Google because it infringes on my content located at: Chaturbate.com/modelprofile

Now, any monkey with half a brain should say, denied! Why? Because the URL you are complaining about is the same as the URL you are using as your proof of ownership of the content.

But now lets say you own something like Nudelive.com and the same thing happens. How does it make any sense? It doesn't and that is why there are no "crap ones" with Google.

Just the other month or so a model from OnlyFans got one of my sites index page banned in Google. How? Why?

She said I infringed on her somehow. How? I have no fucking clue because my site pushes porn sites like Brazzers, Evil Angel and Scoreland. So there is ZERO way for her to have been on my site since she doesn't do hardcore porn and only does pornographic stuff on her OnlyFans profile. All of my marketing materials come from the sponsors in question and none of them used her in them.

But... my index page is banned. So yeah... there are no crap ones with Google.

However... we do get DMCAs sent to Google from models who haven't done anything meaningful in 2 years or more. And they are basically trying to erase themselves from the Internet anyway that they can. In this case we delete their profile and content and then ignore the DMCA. The complaint is only for their page so no use in crying over it if she isn't a money maker.

But... if she is a money maker. We will counter with her content being owned by whatever respective party shot it or were able to include it into marketing materials. And get it reinstated. If she really wants to fight it she should have went to the content owners first and had them contact us. That happens from time to time and we remove it. No use in biting the hand that feeds you.

We also get requests from models/performers directly. If they are no longer active we almost always remove them. Unless they are a money maker. Then they can bring it up with the company that pays us. If they are still active we have a template that explains why we are able to use the content in question and what affiliate marketing is. If they have more questions, send them to their own management company. And we send them to spam so that any more banter goes to spam.

A while ago, I even got a dmca for an interstitial ad page, which obviously wasn't even indexed in the first page, because well, it's just an ad in between pages... But the interstitial page had a model's name in the url's query string (which was enough to get "triggered").

Then you go and lookup some of the other urls on the DMCA list, while there were plenty legit urls to be found, also plenty that weren't.

For example, those morons even submitted multiple dmca's to that model's own official website. Like... what the fuck. It shows how some of these fuckers don't even bother to even slightly check or verify links before submitting DMCA's on a mass scale.

What if you're running a cam aggregator such as https://cams.mechbunnydemo.com/
Can cam models strike you with DMCA even though you are just using the chaturbate API and don't have any images stored on your server? can these be ignored?

Yes, as they simply target every page which contain model name, regardless what kind of content it is. So in this case, it's not what content you have, it's what name is listed. Even if you have blank page containing nothing but name, you will still be targeted. And google dont care where is images stored, so you cant ignore it.

If this happens is it best to delete the model's profile?

Yes, not just model profile but also pages where name could appear, like index page or categories, since in that case page will be gone from google.

Is this DMCA service hired by Chaturbate or by the model directly?
WG

Ok thank you for the info, it's good to know for any future DMCA notices I might get

EDIT: If you do get a DMCA where do they show up? Email or Google Console?

Google webmaster tools

Models directly. Chaturbate hits us up directly if they have issues with something we are doing.

In this mode... You have profile pages, tags pages, index page.

Most often you will get DMCA for the profile page. But, every once in a while you will get one for a tags page a model shows up on. So now you lose your milf page completely. Let's say that was #1 for milf cams. Now you are fucked.

Or, she includes your index page because she was there as well. Fucked again.

Unless you counter. And in these extreme cases we send a lawyer to make sure that doesn't happen again.

:thumbsup

In the example you gave, I wonder if Etsy is filing counter-claims to these DMCA requests.
WG

The poor Etsy artist that is going... WTF? How am I stealing her porn? LOL

When i get one from Google i have a standard reply that i always send to Google.

Never got any trouble and Google dropped the complains.


Dear Google,

My site xxxxxx.com is a site that only use the API from Chaturbate to promote the live model feeds from the main Chaturbate site. There are no other pictures or banners with content of this model (xxxxxxxx) or other models illegal taken on my site and have never been there before.

Since all models on Chaturbate have to agree with the TOS of Chaturbate, all the models have no right to claim a DMCA notice if the site only shows the live feed from the Chaturbate API, that also counts for complainer xxxxxx.

So I hereby ask you to declare this complaint unfounded and not to remove my site or this url from Google.

Kind regards,
xxxxxx

I got notices filed by : "Home URL Removals on behalf of Lena Evans" ?

They are fairly aggressive: they have been filing numerous times, de-indexing 50+ of my URLs in a few days all legit and none have anything to do with "Lena Evans". Some URLs are list pages of entire categories.

Any ideas if they are a real company (that can be contacted) or even if they are hired by a cam sponsor?

I was always suspicious of these as they could be ruthless competitors removing links from Google.

I always reply to Google with the "above" mail and that's it, never got problems, every time a mail back from Google that the URL is restored

It's amazing that no-one say this DMCA law coming back to hunt the industry like a big fucking evil boomerang.

And yes, it would be nice to sue the fuck out of those automated DMCA services and their clients.

We get hit with a few dozen of these per week. Some are accurate and correct, and then we act and remove the material. Most are not, and we almost always send a counter-notice and get it reinstated.


Agreed. It's very annoying and a big waste of time for us. The DMCA is abused a lot. Google gives every complainer the benefit of the doubt, so it's usually a "4-week delisting" if they hit a popular, legit page.

These dmca cowboys are in breach on 2 accounts:

1- they are not allowed to crawl websites without authorization, especially if it is written in your terms. (they need an identifiable bot with a header that can be blocked in robots.txt with a web page to explain its purpose. Besides, it uses hosting resources which in some case have a financial cost.)

2- It is illegal to file a false dmca claim. Essentially, they know that we have a non-exclusive license to use promo tools and that filing a notice is therefore not permitted.

Thanks PretjeNL

Whenever I can I delegate this task to the cam sponsor for many obvious reasons: they are the ones whom models have an agreement with, they are a trusted party, they have a legal department, they have the financial means, etc ... Don't forget a counter is the last step before a lawsuit, so you need to be sure (it's not always the good guy who wins in the real world, unfortunately).

But on occasion I file a counter myself. If a model wants out I don't bother, I just delete the page and show a 404. But if it is a "dmca company" that sends abusive notices, that is another story.


I am interested to know of webmasters experience in the matter.

I have seen those dmca cowboys coming back relentlessly even after receiving counters from cam sponsors on my behalf. They clearly don't care, maybe someone needs to step up further.


How about a consortium of webmasters to help pay the lawyers upfront. There is only a handful of these malicious companies and they would quickly have to implement a whitelisting system.

Question: is cloudflare paid plan useful to identify/block crawling bots and in turns mitigate these malicious bots?

:helpme

This "industry" was the biggest violator and is reaping what it had sewn.

:2 cents:

yes yes yes
 

100% they can , and I have been hit that way... the issue is there is fuck all you can do about it.. I even got hit with a DMCA for hosted content which was provided as marketing and I auto tweeted it out... wtf !

Do you know of any case where a counter-notice resulted in a lawsuit, in our adult world?

I'm under the impression that most complaints are based on what Google shows. I don't think blocking bots would make a difference.

Same here. I counter every single illegitimate DMCA, in hopes that someday Google will begin penalizing those who send false/fraudulent DMCA's.

That's a good idea ^^^


I think it'll take one large lawsuit and fine for these companies to start doing more due diligence. All of those DMCA takedown services I talked to allow models to list the sites and sources that are OK, but looks like they do nothing at all to ensure those lists get filled out.

Another thing about counters: you need to enter your name and address to make it legit. Who wants to send their details to those people. If you are registered as a company you can at least put the address of the company but if you are a sole proprietor then it is your home address.


Useful tool to see who is after you the most (replace with your domain name at the end): : https://transparencyreport.google.co...YOURDOMAINNAME


You have to be cautious with that and read your cam sponsor's terms to be sure : for example, in the case of Chaturbate, you are allowed to do Twitter promo but not allowed to use a model picture even if provided trough their API after the show has ended. Anything that shows up in "Twitter media timeline" is therefore off boundariies of what you can do. Other sponsors do allow for offline profile pics.


I do not know any case. I have not researched that extensively though.
The fact that few (none?) go to that extend is probably why those dmca cowboys file the notices in the first place.

I see what you mean, you are suggesting the bots are using Google results as opposed to crawl our sites. You could be right.

:thumbsup:thumbsup

Rulta OU
DMCA Privacy Prevention = Aka Branditscan
Cam Model Protection

These are the ones that send the most fake reports...

The good news about Rulta is that they are a real company. They are also easy to get in touch with, they have a chat support on their home page. They are experienced and know very well of the various cam programs. So if your content is in line with the sponsors terms, they are filing illegal dmcas against you from my understanding.

On the contrary, International Management is blurry: how do you get in touch with them? I have had a cam sponsor filing the counters against them and they don't give a flying F they just keep coming.

One of our fellow webmasters here on gfy has a cam site that pulls 1.5 million hits / month and doesn't seem to get ANY dmca notices (based on the URL I posted above), I'd be really curious to have his input.

Completely false... Ahmet and Kerem from Tukey are those 2 idiots.

They are removing content from sponsors like nubiles and others always on behalf of the model.

When you contact them they start to become victims of "don't threaten me, you're not going to intimidate me" blah, blah, blah and they block the chat...

What I asked them is why they send legal notifications that are incorrect... I think it is clear that when someone sends a legal notification to Google they verify that the notification is correct, that it has been matched with the content and that the report is correct. By sending a false report you are committing various crimes.

Google makes you accept some terms that the notification is correct. So any false report that is sent is easily sueable based on the TOS that they agree that the notification is correct.

So all these DMCA companies are clearly and flagrantly committing crimes.

Judge: As we can see, you are sending reports on X content and you have signed at the time of sending the report that it is 100% correct and verified.

DMCA Company: It seems we made a mistake and sent a legal notice verifying that it was correct and verified, but it was not correct or verified.

Verdict: False complaint, compensation of X$ for each false url claim. Total number of false complaints sent 100 million...


The reporting sites have DMCA contact forms and respond to all properly submitted reports. It can be demonstrated with the history of lifetime managed reports. So why send the reports to google? Well easy, because they are a criminal organization of black hat SEO, their only objective is to gain positions in the search engines with criminal practices for their clients, they send false legal requirements about content that they did not check. All easily demonstrable by what was named above.

And just to make it clear, months ago I started looking for the keywords that these companies are reporting and I started putting them on blank pages. Or I started putting them in other models' content... The false reports keep coming, which shows that they do not verify anything.

Another thing I did was use an old domain, add all the keywords that are reporting mixed up, wait for the urls to be indexed and then take the site down. In other words, the site does not exist and multiple reports arrive every day. Which shows that the only thing the rulta do is pass a bot through Keywords in google. They don't even detect urls that throw a 404 error.

Some sponsors file counter notices on behalf of affiliates. They check that your content is indeed in line with their terms and then ask their legal dpt to file a counter. I would try to go through them first if I were you.

What did I say that was "completely false"?

Send them an email instead with a link to the terms and tell them that from now on they can not file new notices "in good faith". Remind them the potential cost of filing false notices.


That is my understanding. Yet nobody is doing anything.

Lots do not even have a website. What is the contact form of International Management?


That's interesting :thumbsup

This and all the other good words about them.

The times I contacted them, they had no fucking idea, they didn't know that sponsors' content exists or that webcams can be added using the programs' APIs.

According to their logic, all the keywords that they search for are illegal because they say so, period.

So what's the best way to deal with this if we are just using chaturbates API?

You misunderstood me or I didn't explain myself properly : I didn't mean to use "good words" about them. I merely tried to help you by pointing out there is a way to contact them. Now I understand you did that already,

Did you consider stepping up further?


- take down URLs that have been flagged
- file a counter notice (link in email received by Google)
- wait for "case closed"
- enable your URLs back again.


I have read that Google will penalize your site if is flagged too many times (in addition to de-indexing your flagged URLs). So if you are only using cb API and are in line with their terms, I suggest you file a counter notice. In addition, if the company has a way to be contacted I would try that too and ask them to be whitelisted. As a 3rd step, send an email to cb support.. This way you have covered all angles.

Any person who knowingly materially misrepresents under this section—

(1) that material or activity is infringing, or
(2) that material or activity was removed or disabled by mistake or misidentification, shall be liable for any damages, including costs and attorneys’ fees, incurred by the alleged infringer, by any copyright owner or copyright owner’s authorized licensee, or by a service provider, who is injured by such misrepresentation, as the result of the service provider relying upon such misrepresentation in removing or disabling access to the material or activity claimed to be infringing, or in replacing the removed material or ceasing to disable access to it.

17 U.S.C.A. § 512

They know exactly what they are doing

:thumbsup:thumbsup

cause it has the same post ID? hah thats funny

I get these DMCA bots on that demo site, too. We don't even host the images... I used to reply back explaining but never got anything back from them, so now I just ignore it. Models hire these stupid companies with these shit bots, the bots run their course and then they come back to the model with what a great success the campaign was and how they sent x takedown requests and that they should totally use them regularly.

If its ilegal, counter all them

It's cheaper and exactly as effective to ignore them. Their goal is to just present a nice report to the model that was stupid enough to hire them.

Very smart and true summary. :2 cents:

It's not that simple... for real sites, you lose SE clicks

If every affiliate, or third party recipient of such notices sent one back to the sender, it would only be a matter of time, predictably a short one, before they would value the importance of issuing concise claims.

Just send the DMCA company an invoice. When said invoice is not paid within 60-90 days, you send it to collections.

I don't think it will help. Most replies we send are ignored, especially with Rulta and Onsist.

That sucks! :helpme

I'm not talking about countering but sending a similarly fraudulent DMCA notice for the sponsor to Google.

Claim the sponsors home page or model's own page who issued the claim to be infringing in hope that they either have to waste time countering, just like we do, or google de-indexes their own pages. Maybe even send one for the DMCA agency too, just for equal measure.

They'll soon realise the value of issuing concise claims and not continually wasting our time!

What goes around, comes around.