One of the big problems all creators of adult contents face is piracy. While the bigger you are, the more likely you are to be pirated. Even small time creators can be leaked or find a clip that maybe sold just once for them, is up on the pirate sites. Help with piracy take downs is extremely valuable!
Another big problem is being catfished. Scammers using your images (or video) to try to lure and scam prospective clients.
These are both frustrating. They can lead to loss of earnings, reputable damage, a strain on your time finding and trying to remove these, and of course, the principle if nothing else.
It also rather sucks when googling your own name returns pirate and illegitimate sites ahead of your own!
The process of removing these involves issuing what is known as a DMCA takedown notice. This is a basic claim that you own the copyright and wish for this to be taken down.
Doing it yourself is very time consuming and at the mercy of also manually searching for your own pirate content, along with then filing the notice, and escalating if it is not removed.
Because of this there are a lot of companies who will do this on your behalf. However, some you have to still find the links. While some will do more of this on your behalf, but many can be out of the budget of smaller creators.
I was recommended BranditScan as a more cost effective, and low labour solution and so gave it a test spin.
This is what I found.
First off that the full price was $45 per month, or $450 per year. They would do a first scan (but take no action) for free. Presently, new sign ups get a discount in their festive sale.
I entered my brand names, hit run, and watched as 3000 pirate links came up.
Ouch.
Now, some of these are sites like k2s and other file storage sites. Others are effectively sites which link back to those.
So if you see your clip on PirateSiteA, and get it removed from there, if it was actually hosted on K2S or another host, that was merely a head of the hydra.
Being able to find exactly where your content is stored or hosted from, that’s the main body.
Obviously 3000 results is a lot to go through. However, it did show quite a few which were legitimate, which meant I could whitelist those sites for further searches.
Although, it is important to watch out for legitimate partner sites. Sites like fapster, Pornfaze and TubeBDSM do link back to legitimate sites! So, again, they can be whitelisted.
Regardless. I set about filing for the others.
Branditscan both file a DMCA with the company, and with google. This causes the page to be delisted in Google, meaning it’s more likely people will find your content ahead of pirate content.
They will automatically chase up as well, if links or content are not removed. One of the big problems with piracy take downs is the time it takes, so they do most of the heavy work for you. Saving quite a lot of time!
Regardless, I found almost 800 of my reports had results in content being removed within days, a lot of those being from the sites that made up the main body. By extension this now means there are other sites which appear to have my content, but click to stream or download results in errors.
So, it’s doing the trick.
There’s also a function to upload your own photo and it will then do image searches to find people catfishing as you.
Probably not something I personally might have to worry about, but being able to identify and remove impostors quicker can only be a good thing.
While it’s not the only tool out there, this does seem both easy to use and cost effective. However, if anyone has had good results with other tools or services, we’d love to know your experiences!