I'm coming to get you, you thieving m***er f**ker!

To other interested parties: this 'wam girl 2' guy posts dozens of videos by other producers, routinely, with utter disregard for host take-down notices and violations of DMCA laws (as proven by the fact that he keeps posting THE SAME copyright infringing videos).

This guy will be taught an expensive lesson.

That name looks familiar.

I think he puts up copyrighted material on YouTube as well.

If you can actually get PH to cough up a legal name.... AND you can win a case against one of these pirates to force them to pay up thousands for lost sales.... Then by all means, let the rest of us know your secret!

A couple pirates having their life savings wiped out for uploading WAM videos would probably have the kind of "chilling effect" that stops this kind of thievery dead in its tracks.

Rich....my plan exactly! Obviously, it's involved, and, since I do not know the SysOp/admin for PH personally (unlike a few other platforms where I just needed to ask the admin to ID the nearest router, and then use a process of deduction based upon known or most probable location, etc.)...I will have to resort to more "round-about" means.

My issue with PH is that they have the means to ID every poster's IP address, and simply BAN that IP address (not just 'close' the account) permanently. I have filed a complaint with them, and have taken other steps (as I have narrowed down the likely culprit to a handful of customers.)

What would be most useful to producers is if video download sites introduced an invisible, unique code onto each file purchased (which is associated with a person and email address -- as is listed in the purchase order information that is sent out to owne4rs with each sale)) and which remains, invisible, on that file. Thus, whenever the file is uploaded to any social media site, all one need do is 'read' the code (custom, encrypted, code-reading software is needed) to ID the poster (or the original buyer, who is responsible, most of the time).

If only there was a web/internet system genius handy....Soundguy?

The problem with this is that either each video would need to be re-encoded, instantly, for every purchase, which would be an insane processing load - to give an example, one of my 25 minute clips takes over 2 hours to render to MP4 here on my master system, even though I'm running an i7 with 32 gig of ram - OR the sales system would need to render multiple versions in advance, each with a different unique key, and provide a different one to each purchaser (and as soon as someone bought one start rendering replacements to put in the queue), which while probably more manageable from a processing POV would massively increase the disk space needed to store all the ready-to-be-sold files.

Hypothetically I can think of other ways to do it that don't involve re-encoding. The thing is that these schemes don't work reliably anyway; if someone wants to strip the watermarking there are ways of doing it.

Out of interest, how did you put an invisible QR in there in a way you could then recover?

My router drops the connection at least twice a day. After reconnecting I have a new IP address. So I'm not really sure that doing anything based on IP is productive.

These are all good feedbacks...I appreciate them.

DM1 _ your point is well made; for me -- who has a very small catalog -- such a scheme would be less gluttonous with the disc / server space. Obviously, with a massive catalogue, not practical. But I always like to remind myself that (digitally speaking) things that were hard (time/CPU consuming) to do just five (or ten, or 15) years ago, are now routinely done in milli/micro seconds. re-encoding each video could be as simple as adding a new (single) digit (and only changing the full code every so often)...but I am not a coder/web devo dude, just a designer-artist.

Stevolution: I love the idea of an invisible QR code!This is especially appealing in that, even if the user knows it's there, they can't remove it (ideally) without also ruining the video. This may be superseded by newer tech in the months or years to come but it might be doable. If so, will my QR reader program have to be re-coded to read the invisible QR codes?

J-abc - I appreciate that observation; my connection only drops once every week or two (and that's an averaging of worst cases). I suspect this varies greatly from user to user. Point is, it's at least a starting point (towards better enforcement). So, if the IP address is no longer 'real' or working, that's fine, but there's a good chance it's the same. Further, even if the practice -- if adopted -- gets known by pirates (who just might be lurking here on this forum) I doubt they are going to want to disconnect their in-house router every time they want to illegally upload a video. But I may be underestimating the will of vid pirates.

Not sure why any of you think discussing the details of file watermarking and security schemes in an open forum where any scumbag can read it is a good idea, but let me assure you that nobody designing or implementing these methods will ever discuss it publicly.

FYI, virtually no consumer internet connections in the US have static IPs anymore. The ISPs don't want you running servers on a dirt-cheap connection. if you want a static IP, you have to sign up for a business account at a substantial cost increase. IP blocking is futile unless you are looking to block entire countries (which we do a lot), but ISPs keep access records for several months and can tell you exactly what router had a particular address at any given minute. You can get that information from most ISPs with a court order. Piracy is a civil matter, so the bar is pretty high, but if there's evidence of a felony, a prosecutor can get a warrant pretty easily.

Once identified, a pirate can be sued. These lawsuits almost never get anywhere near a courtroom. Most of the scumbags will settle. The reason being that the MINIMUM lawyer's fees to even start the defense process tends to be in the neighborhood of $5000 for a lawyer wearing an ill-fitting K-mart suit. For a GOOD lawyer (Brooks Brothers, Armani, etc), it's like $10,000. And that's before it goes anywhere near a judge. Since the average civil suit in the US takes 3-5 years depending on the number of motions and continuances, it's not too hard to see 6 figures going to the lawyer before the actual trial. There are historical precedents that have normalized the fines at $110,000 PER FILE. A judgement against a prolific uploader will be in the millions, guaranteed.

That's why virtually all of these shitstains will settle out of court. Typical settlement is $3k to $4k. In my experience, It's about $200 to have a lawyer send the initial threat letter. Not a bad way to earn a living.

Good point, Soundguy...but there couldn't possibly be 'scumbags' here on this 'non-wan' forum...

Honestly, even if they are lurking here...there is the psychological effect operating: we're coming to get them (or actively working to thwart them or make their piracy one royal pain in the ass). And, I suspect that most 'pirates' are college kids living in dormitories (who don't want their parents [who are funding them] to know how they are spending their time)....at least, that has been my past experience with some YT posters of my stuff; most YT posters quickly removed material when I gave them the courtesy of a polite message to 'please remove' the video (or clip).

Pornhub makes this difficult by forcing you to register with the site (which I didn't want to do) and even when you do, it's still difficult to message a given user.

As for IP addresses, yes, you're right: a court order would be needed to ID the router (and verify the IP address, within a limited time frame, as you noted)...However, there are OTHER ways (besides a court order) that one can trace the geographic location of the most likely router (at least, there used to be)...which can then be compared to the information provided in a cc purchase of one's video to ID the most likely culprit.

This happened once many years ago, but the thief [who was actually selling my video via his own network of wam schmucks] made things easy for me: he unintentionally let on that he had actually purchased my video via an advert on Hurley's old newsletter (and for which I saved all the letters I received requesting a copy)...and since there were only two people from this state (where the ID'd router was), it was then a matter of informing the a-hole (via the site messaging system that he was using to taunt me) how easy it would be for me to discover who he was...at which point the illegal selling -- and his taunts (yes, the guy actually taunted me with how easy it was to sell my 'sucky' video) -- completely stopped (it's a small WAM world, after all). I still have this guy's name (and his letter).

Note:
As a general rule: if a spate of illegal uploads suddenly starts ("out of the blue" like on porn hub)...chances are really good it was a recent purchaser of your video just check the dates of the upload and compare them to the dates of purchase...yes, it may mean contacting several people, but sometimes you have to "cast a wide net')...coincidences here are seldom just coincidences. This is a good place to start with sending 'cease and desist' notices.

As for the legal matters you point out, Soundguy...Yes, exactly. This would be my intent/approach -- and I'll happily pursue 3 - 4 K for each illegal upload (by each pirate)...and fortunately, this form of litigation is not foreign to me (and would cost me little)...but the purpose of litigation here is not to make 'profit' (of course) but to thwart and discourage piracy (or one's work).

There's no point in talking to these idiots. Just use the Takedown system at Vidown. During the work week, PH typically removes the offending file within 24 hours. If they get several, they delete the user account. Just treat the takedown process like a low-speed video game. It can be amusing.