Making Millions on Plagiarism

are you?

[marbles88]

So, I have the classic situation of an old authority site where I am now taking a look at who was copying me. Found hundreds of people (quit looking so there may be thousands).

So, to chase everyone, I have a big slog.
The $0.05 per search pales in lieu of a few minutes per infraction to lookup whois and send letters to google, yahoo, ISPs etc.

Other than protecting my copyrights, what's in it for me?

Is anyone out there actually making money by pursuing copyright violations and getting awarded statutory damages or settling with the site owners?

If so, how are you getting it done? (beyond the "copyscape, filling out forms, send them in")
Are you just having a lawyer knock themselves out on contingency?
Are you settling for people to link to you without a nofollow?
How much money have you actually made?
How much money are you getting out of each violator on average?

[RandomDot]

Don't know. The music industry has the RIAA and their scare tactics to take care of the problem - not working though - think they get around 120.000$ average from the people they sue - who has distributed on a large scale. But they're like suing 600 people a year, and there's like a billion copies of every song out there .. and the RIAA is also getting a lawsuit now because .. uhrm, yah. The pirates got tired of them using DOS attacks on their servers, spreading virus and trojans and so on .... it all got tracked back to them...

And they can document a loss of income for the artists they represent because they have a real product on the market as in cd's, dvd's etc.. it might be a little harder on the internet - they might just say it was their content to start with - or that you took it from somewhere else and so on....

Can you document a loss of income on your website and document an increase of income from the time of the infringement until now for the websites which copied your works? .. And even more.. copyright definitions varies.. and the laws varies .. what might be an infringement in your country, isn't in another.. the server might be located in Uganda .. again, if you were to pursue any damage ... then be tactical - take those who is obviously copying for commercial reasons and making a net profit or just beating your website in the serps on whatever.. just advice..

Sincerely, and have fun -

Edit: details, as usual, and don't take any of the above as legal advice - just an example

[edited by: RandomDot at 10:21 am (utc) on Sep. 29, 2007]