BinaryWolf

How to Get a Spammer to Delete Illegal Content

Recently my friend Red was spammed over on Twitter by a sleazy marketing guy. Out of misplaced curiosity Red clicked over to the spammer’s site to take a look at what this guy was pimpin’. He noticed that the guy had embedded the commoncraft video explaining twitter on one of his (the spammer) pages. The problem was that it was an unauthorized version of the video that had been illegally edited to display links pointing back to the spammers site.

Red wondered about the licensing requirements for the video and shot off an email inquiry to commoncraft asking about the legitimate use of the single user license which commoncraft sells.

Red received a quick response back:

Our licensing prohibits the alteration of any commoncraft video. Further, the single-use licensed versions that are available in the Store are not to appear on the public web under any circumstance.

Later Red got a follow-up email thanking him for alerting commoncraft to the violation. Commoncraft went on to say that at first they emailed and called the spammer. There was no response. Then they emailed the spammer once again and wrote that commoncraft has “12,500 blog subscribers who would *love* to hear about someone who is blatantly violating it’s licensing.” That did the trick and the spammer subsequently removed the illegal video from his site.

Red got some well deserved appreciation from commoncraft and a wee bit of satisfaction from nailing a spammer.

Tags: spammer