John Di Giacomo and Eric Misterovich share how Revision Legal took down thotsbay.com, the process, the push back, and the positive results.
Short Story: Through a copyright infringement lawsuit, we were able to have a haven for leaked paid adult content taken down.
What was Thotsbay?
Explanation of forums
How people gained “points” upvotes etc
Number of people impacted by this website – hundreds of thousands of users
What we did
Filed a lawsuit in the ND IL for copyright infringement
The case for copyright infringement is very clear
We conduct discovery
Subpoenas to ad networks, paypal, registrars
We are able to find the people behind the websites, but they reside overseas
Not able to freeze a substantial amount of money, they switched into only accepting bitcoin shortly after the lawsuit began
We obtain a default judgment
That judgment requires third parties to act
This required us to enforce the judgment with Tucows / Verisign
Shortly thereafter, the site moved to a specific country code registrar outside the US, but able to convince them to shut down the site as well
What happened next
Subscription bomb, other bad actions
Sites give up, but we keep getting notices that the site is back, not entirely clear at this point
Ton of support from those impacted, positive end
Next steps
Fight isn’t over
Continuing our investigation
Other sites are in the cross hairs
May It Please The Internet is a podcast brought by RevisionLegal.com, lawyers who represent businesses who make money online.
