Competing with sites that ignore copyright

[palmpal]

Hi,

I recently became aware of a site that has tons of copyrighted material! This site offers freebies based on famous cartoon characters. The website owner has taken the stance that if the copyright holder doesn't respond to his/her email then it is okay to post the characters and the freebies. In some cases the copyright holders have given him/her permission to use the characters to help promote the character. While there are no direct sales of the freebies, the WS owner has Amazon links at the bottom of every page for products with these characters! Somehow this doesn't seem right. It would be hard to compete with sites that offer this type of free product.

Thoughts?

[rogerd]

Blatant ripoffs of copyrighted material are short-term strategies. The copyright holder will either stumble across the illegal usage, or some well-meaning web surfer will blow the whistle on the site.