Forum Moderators: martinibuster
The violations are so flagrant and so frequent, it's unbelievable! The owners of the content are unaware and the thief posts a note on his site that he'll remove content he stole if asked, an admission of TOS violation.
It's not as if the thief can complain if he gets banned, because he knows he's a thief. I also consider it "unfair competition," using the theft in the market place, therefore action to deal with the unfair competition is warranted.
Now I don't own the intellectual property, so I can't file a DCMA complaint. And Google apparently only responds to DCMA complaints. Or do I contact the property owners and ask them to file DCMA complaints? Other people are paying for the stuff he stole.
I estimate losses run into the thousands each month due to the klepto's daily crime spree. Would you do anything or wait for karma to bite him in the a$$?
p/g
Is there anything unethical about getting a competitor banned from Adsense?
No. Not unless you plan to do something unethical to get him banned.
Like you mentioned, it may be best to just contact the property owners and make them aware of the situation.
Since many site owners/companies aren't web-savvy and do not know how to track their content, they may not know it's been stolen.
Is it ethical to knowingly allow a cheat to defraud advertisers and steal content from unsuspecting copyright holders?
each page has Adsense TOS violations
I'm a bit skeptical of copyright infringement claims in general (not saying that there isn't a lot of outright theft, just that I don't blindly accept anyone else's judgment on the matter), and I don't really think that egging others on to file DMCA complaints is a respectable use of your time.
i've reported 4 sites who were in SERIOUS violation of the TOS, 2 were removed from adsense but the other 2 are still happily serving ads 6 months after reporting them despite the fact that one of them is an illegal software site which does nothing but sell cracks and serial numbers of copyrighted software products.
