Affiliate Programs Stance on Stolen Content / Other Shady Practises

[Jokerman99]

Can some affiliate managers please chime in here with your stances on stolen content?

Scenario:

Site A run by trustworthy affiliate is ripped and rehosted by Site B. Site B then starts outranking site A for their own content.

Site B is promoting Affiliate Program X as their main brand.

Site A approaches the affiliate program and explains what is happening. Can affiliate managers please outline their policies for dealing with such issues?

Thanks.

[thebookiesoffers]

i've had this before mate and done a thread about it on here, most of the affiliate managers were very helpful in getting the content removed, actually surprised me how helpful they were when they could of just turned a blind eye

[Anthony-Coral]

That's right, a recent thread discussed the difficulty with actually verifying for certain who had the content up first but most of us AM's know the aff's we deal with regularly so all the more reason for you guys to cultivate strong ties to your various AM's and for Operators to treat content theft as a serious issue for their members

[Jokerman99]

What would Coral do in such a situation Anthiny given site A showed undeniable evidence that site B was guilty of stealing their content?

[Anthony-Coral]

Well the problem we encountered in the previous discussion was just that: What constitues 'Undeniable Evidence'?

In a previous case we suspended the account of the affiliate who was accused of content theft and contacted them about the issue. Suspending the account meant that the affiliate still earned money and credit for referrals but it prevented them from logging in to their account and would have prevented a payment from being sent to them if we had been at that stage of the month.

In our email we summarised the evidence that the original affiliate had brought to us and provided URL's. Finally, we asked them to consider if perhaps a 'mistake' had been made.

In the end the later affiliate apologised and removed the duplicate/copied/stolen content

[xecutable]

I've launched DMCAs twice to such sites, both with success. Hosts don't really want drama with content and suspend the accounts pretty fast,until the content is removed. Just to make sure Google knows about it, I submitted one to Google as well: http://www.google.com/dmca.<wbr>html .

If those were unsuccessful, I'd probably try to cut them of their revenue source, hence the affiliate programs.