Legal - Finding and Stopping a hack hosted on a website -

[andie]

I don't know if it really fits here, but what I want to know is what do you do when you find a hack being hosted on a website? What's even worst is that it's not a patch or serial number, it's the whole damn program. Since PPC apps are small, they just release the whole damn thing patched so even if you change/recompile it does nothing to stop them from releasing a full copy of our apps.

Any thoughts?

Do you have a website address where this product is being distributed illegally?

Not knowing what type of application this is - we can only offer an assumptive opinion.

The players whom rip applications are the minority and most likely never pay, regardless, they find a way.

You need to weigh the costs involved in your time, energy and legal fees to follow through with a cease order.

Should you decide to send them a written notification by email and via certified snail mail (look for their mailing address under the website owner information as found under regnow.com)insisting they remove your product immediately.

If they do not comply within a set amount of time and you elect to do so - you can always contact a Copyright Attorney in or around Virginia, as the Courthouse is nearby, and discuss with them the option to file a legal complaint in Superior Court charging said "Website and Company Owners" with Copyright and Intellectual Property Rights Violation and in affect seek to shut down their website.

Please note PocketMatrix is not providing Legal Advise and can only offer opinions in a open discussion format.

Good luck and let us know what happens!

Andie

[Conan]

I work for a law firm ( in an I.T. capacity )
What we do for clients who have problems with websites is have the domain name taken away from the offending people. This does not seem to be too time consuming a task so not very expensive. I will have a chat to one of the relevant lawyers next time I'm in that department to see what steps they go through.

Perhaps a fighting fund (who holds the money though?) would allow the worst sites to be taken off the air.

[andie]

Hi Conan -

What a great concept!

If memory serves, the fees to shut down a website are less than $1000 US. And this can be done direct, but of course an experienced attorney whom can walk into the Supreme Court in Arlignton, Virginia would be worth the $500 fee they charge.

Thanks so much for the feedback and let us know what else you learn.

I will begin talks with the PM team regarding your concept/idea for a legal fund.

Take care, Andie

[refractor]

What we do for clients who have problems with websites is have the domain name taken away from the offending people.

Ok, I'll bite. As somebody with several registered domain names, I'm was curious as to how this works, so I did a bit of digging. Plus I'm in the mood for a bit of devil's "advocacy"

So, let's pretend I'm "A. WarezGuy", running the site "pocketpc-pirate-king.com" and hosting illegal copies of {"your" software}.

Now, pretend "pocketpc-pirate-king.com" is registered with Network Solutions, whose legal stuff is <a href="http://www.networksolutions.com/en_US/legal/dispute-policy.jhtml">here</a>.

They state (my emphasis):

3. Cancellations, Transfers, and Changes. We will cancel, transfer or otherwise make changes to domain name registrations under the following circumstances:

a. subject to the provisions of Paragraph 8, our receipt of written or appropriate electronic instructions from you or your authorized agent to take such action;

b. our receipt of an order from a court or arbitral tribunal, in each case of competent jurisdiction, requiring such action; and/or

c. our receipt of a decision of an Administrative Panel requiring such action in any administrative proceeding to which you were a party and which was conducted under this Policy or a later version of this Policy adopted by ICANN. (See Paragraph 4(i) and (k) below.)

We may also cancel, transfer or otherwise make changes to a domain name registration in accordance with the terms of your Registration Agreement or other legal requirements.

And then later:

7. Maintaining the Status Quo. We will not cancel, transfer, activate, deactivate, or otherwise change the status of any domain name registration under this Policy except as provided in Paragraph 3 above.

So really, they're not going to touch my domain unless they get a court order.

So what basis would the court order take? It'd be a cease-and-desist order.. or..?

Say it works, anyway. "pocketpc-pirate-king.com" gets revoked. "A. WarezGuy" could still base a site off a raw IP address, or register "pocketpc-pirate-king.lu". You'd then have to deal with the country of "A. WarezGuy"'s provider rather than the all-American .com/.net/.org registrars (".lu" is Luxembourg, in case anybody was wondering - it'd be a bad choice as they're conservative, open, and business oriented here). But say he gets a ".ru" or ".az" domain name ... now that's a whole different ball game.

(Just to be clear - this is hypothetical; I'm just curious).

[sponge]

Going after the domain is a good start, but preferably you want to narrow it down to hosting, or ISP.

Frankly, WWW PPC warez is a small small tip of the iceberg, IRC and even Torrent sites like Suprnova are now starting to get into it. These are where the majority of the trading is taking place.

[David Horn]

I think there's a big difference between the small time warez people and the big time ones. Most hosting providers will pull a site on one email informing them that it's doing something illegal.

Someone tried to brute force the SSH login on PocketGamer twice last week - I emailed EV1 (who the server was hosted with) and it was pulled within 20 minutes, and 2 hours on the other host.

Admittedly, it had been compromised, but I would have thought that's how most warez stuff runs. Hosting companies are terrified of their upstream connection being pulled, so they respond really quickly. Also (I'm not sure about this) I think they might be liable if someone is hosting illegal software and they knowingly allow it to continue.

Personally, I think you'll get most success with a polite email to the ISP or web host, in my experience they're pretty quick to help.

[Conan]

According to an article on www.theregister.co.uk most hosting companies actually take down sites without even looking for evidence. Just an email can be enough. If I get a moment tomorrow I will find the article and post a link.

[Guest]

The issue was resolved a couple of says after I posted. All I did was traced the domain to the ISP and emailed the ISP. I didn't think I would have much luck since the ISP is in the Netherlands, but to my suprised they were willing to help. Though I figured they would have pull all the content from the site, instead they jsut asked me to send them a link and the names of the titles I wanted pulled. They had one of my applications and one of my games as a full cracked released, so even if I patched it... I wouldn't have been able to stop them. The ISP notified the website owners (Russians) and they pulled the titles. It's still very unfortunate though since I was hoping they would have pulled it all. There are MANY titles there and quite a few are from the developers that are here and in this very thread. Of course, I'm revamping the protextion routines but let's be honest... nothing we do will stop them from cracking anything. And the problem with PPC games/apps are they are small enough to just release the full program instead of a patch to crack. I'm not giving out the site's name. I'm sorry, but that will only promote it. I suggest that every developer search and look for cracks for their programs.

[TT]

Well, I think there's no way to protect your app from being cracked.

Here, in Russia, you can freely buy "pirated" CDs with cracked software near almost every subway station. Software collection worth over $3000 (AutoCAD, Photoshop, CorelDraw, Windows etc) can be bought for 80 roubles (less than $3). Specialized industrial CAD/CAM software for $2000-3000 each is "more expensive" - from $10 to $150.

So you can obtain any software almost for no cost.

Why? I'll tell you. Average person gets about $300-400 monthly. Now the expences: $30 house rent, $100 at least - food, $20 - subway and buses... Houseware and clothes - let it be as small as $50, Internet ($30) and cellular calls ($20-$50). It's already $250... If you don't own a car (then expences increasing dramatically). Something definitely should be left for entertainment, health and so on...

So I, for example, cannot afford to buy software for my PC and PDA. "Software pirates" are just using it...