Ask HN: What can we do to stop piracy?

[desperado]

Hey guys and girls ;)

I'm at my wits end, and need advice. The site http://www.gfxtraz.com uses stolen credits cards, signs up to our site through Amazon IP addresses, downloads our files, and makes them available for download.

This happens on an almost daily basis, and it is really starting to hurt us. Not only are our files available for free, but we end up having to pay chargeback fees with Stripe for every stolen credit card charge.

It seems as though if you file an abuse complaint with their registrar, they simply allow the site to change domain names. It was previously Gfxtra.

This is not only an issue for us but also for Envato, Creative Market, and the list goes on....

Is there anything we can do?

Thank you in advance!

[gus_massa]

Somewhat related: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10237697 (293 points, 587 days ago, 204 comments)

They were using his site to check if the CC were valid. It's not the same problem, but perhaps you can get a few ideas from the site or the discussion.

--

Other ideas. I'm not sure if they are good:

Mark the new / suspicious accounts and add captchas until the credit card is verified.

Are they downloading the images manually or automatically. If it's automatic you can offer some interesting images like "plain_white_wallpaper_full_resolution_16000x9000.bmp" (and the 4x3 version too) Just make the link no visible with a custom css / white text on white background / tiny font / whatever. (Are there some totally safe cc0 images that you can redistribute too?) Put this fake links only for registered users, not for google, because google may think you are doing something shady.

How are they monetizing the site? Are they using AdSense? Can you send a complain to Adsense?

[itamarst]

As far as content being posted for free, that seems hard to stop. One suggestion I've seen to reduce people actually downloading them in lieu of buying: https://successfulsoftware.net/2017/03/10/honeypot-page/

As far as stopping purchases: you can just disallow suspicious origins from purchasing. E.g. if you know it's Amazon IPs, ban those, very few people will legitimately do that.

[desperado]

We do ban those via Radar on Stripe... but there are so many... it's impossible to list them all.

[itamarst]

Some quick Googling suggests there are services to help with this, e.g. https://siftscience.com/products/payment-fraud (no opinion about this or any of them.)

[warsharks]

same thing we can do to stop the tides, not a damn thing

[desperado]

Perhaps if we blew up the moon the tides would stop.

[kk_cz]

I'm almost certain that if you successfully blow up the moon the piracy stops as well.