What is the DMCA?
The DMCA is an acronym for the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. It’s a tool that can be used effectively by all camgirls, content makers and porn performers to ‘take down’ their own, copyright content when they find it infringed upon aka ‘pirated’ by thieves.
Below I will go through how some of these so-called DMCA companies are actually thieves in their own right, stealing the money you pay for their services and how they impede healthy relationships with other, non-performers in our industry.
I will then outline how you can effectively lodge DMCAs and have content removed on your own steam, without involving these nefarious actors.
The Bad Actors
What I term ‘the bad actors’ usually use what I have heard termed the “spray and pray” approach. A performer will sign up to their service and the company will use a scanning system (usually AI) to search the internet for any reference to that that performers name. Sounds thorough, right? Quite the contrary. Legitimate self-promo links, guest posts and self-promo pics will get caught in that scan, in one horror story a few years ago a camgirl’s own C4S studio was targeted for takedown.
The Impact on Legitimate Cam Affiliates
Another group that is harmed by these bad actors involve legitimate affiliates who use promotional material provided by cam sites or porn studios to promote the site and its performers. A significant target of these erroneous DMCA recipients are affiliates who use webcam aggregate scripts. An aggregator is a script that involves feeding the various APIs from various cam sites into one presentation. These APIs only show currently live cams and a viewer who clicks on it is taken directly to that performer’s room. There is no recording, no infringement, simply exposure to a larger (and hopefully paying) viewing audience. Many sites sites have a function where performers can opt out of external promotion, however that is at the expense of lower viewership.
Two exceptions that I know of to this ‘no legit use of recorded shows’ policy involve LiveJasmin and Streamate, both of which contain performer agreements that grant the sites respectively full ownership/copyright to video streams, images and videos uploaded to use and distribute as they so chose (this does not apply to performers located in California). This is why some legitimate affiliate who work with Livejasmin especially feature often lengthy free cam show recordings on their affiliate sites-LiveJasmin gave them access to those recordings. This unfortunate reality is why, if privacy is of utmost importance, to chose the site(s) one works carefully and only after thoroughly reading the model contract.
To be clear, while I find this practice abhorrent, the affiliates who promote LiveJasmin et al. are not to blame here. They are simply using materials provided to them by the cam sites. As such, DMCAs against these affiliate sites are fraudulent, in that in contract the sites, not the performers, own the material. More on fraudulent DMCAs later.
The Impact on Legitimate Porn Site Affiliates
Another segment of the adult industry targeted by the ‘bad actors’ and fraudulent DMCAs are affiliates who promote porn sites. Generally when a performer is hired for a porn shoot, the studio who hired him/her is granted copyright/ownership of the material. The studios/producers then release segments of this output (clips, images) for use by affiliates in promotion. When these affiliates are targeted with fraudulent DMCAs it hurts both the affiliate (whose sites are impacted) and the studio itself. The situation got so dire that it provoked Stunner Media, Grooby and Yanks to join together to create a new policy against the ‘bad actors’ involving monetray damages, which can be found here
How the Bad Actors Steal Performer Money
Aside from the impact on promotion of one’s live cam room, generally these companies offer tiered packages of so many takedowns per month. As such, it is in their interest to allow their AI scripts to scan the ‘visible’ web and snag any instance of a performer’s name that they can, in the hopes of upselling to a larger, more expensive monthly package. What these scans do NOT pick up, however, is the trade in pirated material that is conducted in unindexed, closed Telegram, etc groups and file lockers-this is where the real piracy occurs.
As a Camgirl Who wants to Protect My Copyright, Who Do I Avoid and Where Do I Turn?
Off the top of my head, the worst actors are Branditscan aka DMCA Piracy Protection, Rulta, Leak Cleaner, Cleaner Web…I could go on and on but generally any ‘company’ that uses the word DMCA in the title.
One good company that I’ve heard awesome things about, and who do not use the ‘spray and pray approach’ is TakeDownPiracy. There also used to be RemoveYourContent (I have personal experience with this company and have nothing but glowing things to say), but they have sadly moved off to mainstream I believe.
Legal Liability for Fraudulent DMCAs
While Stunner, Grooby and Yanks have taken the strategy of targeting the DMCA companies, the general legal opinion is that it is the performer who hires the Bad Actor that is ultimately liable for any damages arising from fraudulent DMCAs issued on their behalf. While it would take a court case to test this theory, no one wants to be the subject of a precedent setting case, whether the performer wins or loses. The point is, the bad actors don’t care. They’ll simply rebrand, create a new LLC and start all over again scot-free fresh and clean.
Strategies to Deal With Pirated Content
As a performer, you can take one (or more) of various strategies when you come across someone who has pirated your content. You can
a) ignore it (particularly if it is watermarked with your cam name) and consider it free promotion
b) hire a company like TakeDownPiracy
or
c) handle it yourself (my personal strategy)
Handling Your Own DMCAs
This is tedious, but not difficult. It involves sending DMCAs to several different entities including Google (to remove the listings from search), the host, the registrar, the payment processor if applicable, any advertisers featured on the site, and the site itself.
When you encounter a site hosting your pirated content, you first need to compile a list of every URL on that site which features it. Spend a few minutes searching through tag pages, category pages, etc and copy/paste every URL that hosts your video or image.
Next, DMCA Google. Click here and follow the steps. List every infringing URL you compiled, and as your ‘original content list your cam site, clips studio or personal website.
Next, if the site has a contact method listed, send the exact same thing to them.
Next, DMCA the host. Use a tool such as HostingChecker to find out who hosts the site. If it is not Cloudflare, send the same DMCA to the host. If it is Cloudflare, move on to the domain registrar using a tool such as Lookup.ICANN. Submit the same DMCA to the registrar.
You can also submit to any payment processing or advertising sponsor used by the site. For example Chaturbate has been know to remove affiliates who use pirates cam show recordings. In my case, an idiot who created an AI chat bot of me (and countless others) was using Stripe for payment processing. I contacted Stripe, and within a week the site owner lost Stripe on his site, and perhaps his whole Stripe account-I don’t know or care.
The Sum Up
I know this is a lot, but this is important information every performer online should know. I hope I’ve helped clear up any confusion about the DMCA, the companies who feign to work in furtherance of it to your detriment, the role of legitimate affiliates, and how you can rightfully protect yourself when you discover your content stolen.
Good Luck out there, and happy camming
XXX
