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by rogual 97 days ago
Good article, and I feel your pain. Sometimes it feels like there's no point creating anything anymore, because shitty people will just steal it.

In case you're interested, though, I just wanted to point out that there are things you can do.

In my experience, Google does respond to requests to scrub infringing sites from their results if you submit their Copyright Claim form. They even give you a dashboard with the status of your claims. Probably worth trying your luck if you can be bothered.

Also, many of the theives have X and Bluesky accounts, and I don't believe either of these services let users censor replies to them.

There's also the payment platforms that are collecting money for your stolen work on behalf of these guys. They might be interested to hear about what's going on.

Then there's the hosting companies themselves, of course, hosting the infringing websites.

It's a pain, and it would be better if you could just create stuff and people weren't shitty, but we live in a fallen world and sometimes you gotta defend yourself. Up to you, of course, and I totally get it if you don't have the energy, but I've been through the same thing and you do have some power.

3 comments

There is a reason games and software have moved to the client server architecture even when it doesn't really makes sense. Its the only way to maintain copyright.

You can hate it, but for the creative types your options are: Assume it fails and no one knows about it / Assume it succeeds get stolen / build it on the server side

It also means everyone is on updated versions of software, or easier for devs to A/B different aspects. Anti-piracy is not the only reason
Yes I’ve had to do this but it does work. Unfortunately it’s a constant cost to have to look for stuff like this and then do the work.
With the amount of piracy that went on with the early 2000's videogames (doom!) I'm surprised anyone made money.
unless you're talking about doom 3 (which I can't really speak on), doom is from the 90s and was shareware