It has been a challenge filing my DMCA Take Down Notices against the website of Pinsdaddy who illegally took probably hundreds of my copyrighted images for use on their website, without my permission. The challenge has come into play that there is a lot of passing the buck or passing the DMCA Take Down Notice on to somebody else to handle.
I am not the only copyright holder affected by this copyright infringement! It is concerning that many of the images used there do bear the copyright imprints of the respective owners yet, Pinsdaddy thinks it is OK to use those copyrighted images!!
I first completed an abuse report with Cloudflare using their online abuse form. Cloudflare responded very quickly to the submitted report, supplying me with additional information:
I am not the only copyright holder affected by this copyright infringement! It is concerning that many of the images used there do bear the copyright imprints of the respective owners yet, Pinsdaddy thinks it is OK to use those copyrighted images!!
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| Autumn Beauty Sunflower - Copyright JaguarJulie Ann Brady |
ABUSE FORM ON PINSDADDY TO CLOUDFLARE
abuse@cloudflare.com
Cloudflare received your copyright infringement complaint regarding: pinsdaddy.com
Please be aware Cloudflare is a network provider offering a reverse proxy, pass-through security service. We are not a hosting provider. Cloudflare does not control the content of our customers.
Accepted URL(s) on www.pinsdaddy.com:
http://www.pinsdaddy.com/jaguarjulie-pinterest_gkiiz3R7BbA2IibC5mVlOgvUYAlR3d0GITH%7CNC5ln84/
Hosting Provider:
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OBENETWORK, SE
Abuse Contact:
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legal@evoluso.com
We have notified our customer of your report. We have forwarded your report on to the responsible hosting provider. You may also direct your report to:
1. The provider where pinsdaddy.com is hosted (provided above);
2. The owner listed in the WHOIS record for pinsdaddy.com and/or;
3. The contact listed on the pinsdaddy.com site.
Note: A lookup of the IP for a Cloudflare customer website will show Cloudflare IPs because we are a pass-through network. The actual website is still hosted at the hosting provider indicated above. If the hosting provider has any questions, please have the hosting provider contact us directly regarding this site. Due to attempted abuse of our complaint reporting process, we will only provide the IP of pinsdaddy.com to the responsible hosting provider if they contact us directly at abusereply@cloudflare.com.
Regards,
Cloudflare Abuse
I next sent my DMCA Take Down Notice on Pinsdaddy to legal@evoluso.com as recommended by Cloudflare. However, that email was returned with a bad email address. I next sent the DMCA Take Down Notice on Pinsdaddy to abuse@enom.com. After visiting evoluso's site, I found an abuse email for them of ab@evoluso.com to which I then forwarded the DMCA Take Down Notice on Pinsdaddy.
DMCA TAKE DOWN ON PINSDADDY TO ENOM
Thank you for contacting us. Your email has been submitted to our Compliance Department, #ABUSE-14995.
PLEASE DO NOT REPLY TO THIS EMAIL as this email box is not monitored.
Please note that due to the volume of complaints received, unless we need additional information, you will not receive a reply or update from us. Please be assured that we take abuse very seriously and investigate every incident that is reported.
Regards,
Compliance Department
www.enom.com
I received this reply from Namecheap although I did not send the DMCA Take Down Notice on Pinsdaddy to them. I think perhaps Cloudflare had sent it to them for me.
DMCA TAKE DOWN ON PINSDADDY TO NAMECHEAP
abuse@namecheap.com
Hello,
Thank you for your email. Please note that Namecheap is not the owner of the domain name mentioned. We are simply the Registrar it is registered with. Please contact the domain holder regarding your request. You can find their contact details using any Whois tool, e.g. at http://whois.domaintools.com/pinsdaddy.com . If Whois details are hidden by WhoisGuard, feel free to send an email to the protected email address (like ****.protect@whoisguard.com). It will be forwarded to the real email address of the domain holder.
You may also address the issue through the company that provides hosting services for the domain name in question since they are responsible for the content being displayed on the site or transmitted through it.
It appears the hosting company is currently hidden by Cloudflare. Hence, please be advised to submit an abuse report at the following link: https://www.cloudflare.com/abuse/form.
Additionally, if you believe you are a victim of an Internet crime, or if you are aware of an attempted crime, you can file a complaint through Internet Crime Complaint Center at https://complaint.ic3.gov , who are in the best position to fully investigate any such issue across any/all service providers.
If your copyrighted content is being made available without the authorization on the reported website, you may submit a DMCA notice with us. The relevant DMCA takedown request requirements are available at https://www.namecheap.com/support/knowledgebase/article.aspx/9198//dmca-takedown-request-requirements . Please note that we will be able only to forward your complaint to the domain holder. We cannot remove any files as the domain is only registered and not hosted with us.
Please let us know if you have any further questions or concerns.
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Regards,
Alexander Neustroev
Legal & Abuse Department
Namecheap.com
One of my copyrighted images taken without my permission to use on Pinsdaddy:
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| Autumn Beauty Sunflower Cluster - Copyright JaguarJulie Ann Brady |
UPDATE: On October 27, 2017, I received this response from Enom.com after resubmitting my DMCA Take Down Notice to them on Pinsdaddy. It surely seems somebody is giving the copyright holders a runaround!
DMCA TAKE DOWN ON PINSDADDY TO ENOM
Enom Copyright copyright@enom.com8:24 PM October 27, 2017
Hello,
Thank you very much for your notification. After researching this matter, we have found that Enom, LLC. is not the webhost, internet service provider, or administrator for the reported domain. Given that we are not the webhost for this domain, the allegedly infringing material identified in your notification does not reside on eNom’s servers. Accordingly, we do not have the technical ability to remove or disable specific items of objectionable content.
Again, due to the limited technical sphere in which Enom operates, we do not believe that we are the correct party to contact regarding this matter. In this instance, we suggest that you contact the party operating the website or the party hosting the website to have this matter properly resolved. A "ping" of the website you indicated often reveals the IP address of the party which probably hosts this website. You may then use https://www.ultratools.com/tools/ipWhoisLookup or another similar tool to identify this party.
Thank you again for your report, and please do not hesitate to contact us should you have any further questions.
Regards,
Enom
5808 Lake Washington Blvd
Suite 201
Kirkland, WA 98033
11 comments:
Julie, Pinsdaddy has hundreds of my images too and although I will be filing DMCA complaints I suspect I will get the same run around that you have gotten. I am so angry that they offer our images for download and to embed on other web sites. I may contact my IP Attorney about this and have him contact CloudFlare.
Mia! I actually have a couple more follow up emails with more of a runaround!! We need a class action lawsuit against these people. I've been told they have at least one other site very much like pinsdaddy with our stolen images being offered up as creative commons free to use! Unbelievable. Sorry to hear that you are affected.
I'd sign up for a class action lawsuit against the owner of this site. I wouldn't be surprised if the person who owns it has a half a dozen or more sites just like this. And people going there believe the images are free to use. It is maddening.
I wonder if somebody is contemplating that class action lawsuit? I've not checked to see if unsuspecting online writers are using any of my images downloaded through pinsdaddy. They have got thousands of our images!
Thank you for writing this blog. I just discovered pinsdaddy today. They have grabbed a large number of my images from bridgehunter.com
I did one DMCA takedown against them as a test. I will await the results. It is sad that we have to constantly police the internet.
Hi Julie, thank you for this article - it was helpful since the same happened to me. I just can't believe how Pinsdaddy can infringing the copyright of hundreds of people without beeing sued for this! This really makes me angry! The law should do something against it. If anyone should start a petition in the future to shutdown Pinsdaddy, I would sign immediately for sure. Regards from Switzerland. Marco. P.S.: Your pictures are wonderful.
Pinsdaddy has stolen hundreds of my copyrighted images as well. Anyone who takes images from sites like this, thinking they have the right to use them and uses without a paid license from the copyright holders will end up in court as well. I think we could try the FBI or Internet crimes unit? Linda M
Julie, I hope you will keep us informed, if there are ever any further developments.
I'm a little late to the party, because I just discovered a bunch of my images on this pinsdaddy site and started investigating. There is another blog site that has several posts about them also, and apparently someone was successful in getting their images removed. I would join a class action as well. Cynthia W.
Cynthia, from what I've heard, there are other sites that might be connected with the pinsdaddy people in that they stole a LOT of copyrighted images and have them stored ready to republish elsewhere. Hoping for a class action lawsuit!
Have you tried submitting the DMCA notice with google? You can't sue pinsdaddy if you don't know who they are or who hosts them... But it might be possible for google to "hide them". essentially they just won't come up in searches. Thanks for writing this. Saved me buckets of time chasing these A-holes
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