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.