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Aug 16 2017

Elizabeth Lennox Tackles Piracy that Comes between Her and Her Fans

Piracy is Impacting Everyone in Media

Book Publishers have removed over 15 Million infringing URLs from search engines over the past five years.  It impacts everyone– from the big five publishers to the smallest of independents.  Elizabeth Lennox is no stranger to piracy.  From the very beginning of her career, she saw she would need to tackle it if she was going to make it as a novelist.

About Elizabeth Lennox

Elizabeth Lennox wanted to be a romance novelist ever since she was in the eighth grade. Over the past eight years, she has turned that childhood dream into a reality, penning over 140 books and novellas and selling millions of copies.

How Piracy Became a Problem

Soon after she published her first books, Elizabeth began to notice that her work was becoming available for illegal download.

“I first became aware of the problem back in 2012” Elizabeth told us. “Before that, it had never even occurred to me that someone would steal my books on the internet. But at one point, I saw that my sales had been cut in half. I was shocked. We couldn’t figure out what was going on until my husband told me that he’d found my books on pirate sites. Then we hired a lawyer to send takedown notices, and the next day the sales started to climb back up.”

Why Do Anything?

Cybercriminals are targeting everyone in the creative community.  No target is too big or too small.  Their primary source of revenue is ad revenue and cybercrime from malware installs.  These schemes can make them a buck or two from almost any web traffic, but they take a huge chunk out of sales for the original artists.

Search link removals are effective in cutting down traffic to pirate sites. Artists face a challenge protecting their work online.  Pirates can upload files faster than traditional legal enforcement can keep up. With automated search link removals, artists can keep up with their pace and cut them off where it matters most:  their largest source of web traffic.

“It had never even occurred to me that someone would steal my books on the internet.”

As she learned more about piracy, Elizabeth was exposed to a number of different solutions to combat it. “We first tried sites like DMCA Force and Muso.  They were initially able to stop the flow of these pirated books,” she says.  However, the manual tasks required by these applications eventually got to be too frustrating for Elizabeth.

“It would be up to me to have to go through and send them links and figure out how many people were infringing. There would be an eventual decline in sales, so we’d try switching to another company. They would get it under control, and then there would be another decline. It was an endless cycle.”

Elizabeth Lennox Piracy Screenshot Before Marketly Services Began
Typical search results for one of Elizabeth Lennox’s best selling books before Marketly Services began

Why Now?

A lot has changed in the piracy industry in a short amount of time. In the past few years, the piracy industry has focused a lot on smaller businesses.  A major Hollywood studio has robust resources to deal with takedowns and enforcement, but small companies do not. Since all pirates care about is traffic for ads and paid malware installs, they will go after any soft target with keywords and traffic.

“It’s become a pretty pervasive problem for small publishers and independent authors.”

“These pirates now are even going beyond the most popular authors” Elizabeth told us.   She mentioned another author she knows who does a lower volume of sales, around 300 copies per month. “This author is now finding her books on these pirate sites, too. Unfortunately, because of her limited resources, she can’t afford to do anything about it. It’s become a pretty pervasive problem for small publishers and independent authors.”

The CPC rate of piracy sites and availability of cheap domains is only going to increase in the coming years. Today, anyone producing digital content needs an anti-piracy plan.

Why Marketly?

Elizabeth first learned about Marketly about a year and a half ago.   However, she didn’t initially think piracy would remain a constant issue. “At that point I didn’t yet know how big of a problem it was. When I realized I had to step up my game on anti-piracy, that’s when I came over to Marketly.”

She began using Marketly to help takedowns and enforcement of copyright-infringing material she found on the internet. Marketly automates those infringement notifications and takedown enforcements for you, meaning it’s always working, keeping you focused on the work itself.

The Results

Marketly has allowed Elizabeth to see her changes in search rank, measure her increase in web traffic, analyze how we’re pushing pirate sites off the front page, and maybe most importantly, have some peace of mind.

  • In a week, Elizabeth Lennox saw a 10-15% increase in sales
  • Piracy was reduced to 0% of Search Visibility 
  • In one month, Marketly removed more than 6,000 links— more than Harvard Business School, Princeton University Press, or even the classic author, J.D. Salinger

“I think the biggest difference for me is a psychological one.  So far I haven’t been able to find any pirated titles when I’ve looked. I’ve only found sites where they’re trying to trick people into downloading them.  They’re not real Elizabeth Lennox books.  They’re only a segue to another site. I’ve been able to feel more comfortable with my fans. Now when someone contacts me, I can feel more confident that they’re not stealing from me on purpose.”

Within a week, Elizabeth saw a 10-15% increase in sales.   Also, she was able to spend less time looking up enforcements herself.  “Now, when I do look, I don’t see a lot of infringement issues.  I can just click out of that search, whereas before I would spend about an hour every Friday, combing through the various search engine reports and finding infringements.  It was just one keyword after another, and sending them to whichever vendor I was using for anti-piracy. Now I’ll go through and skim the first page and if I don’t see anything that’s really infringing, so I just click out. I feel more comfortable, and I think that psychological edge is what i needed.”

“Now, when I do look, I don’t see a lot of infringement issues.”

Marketly has also afforded Elizabeth the opportunity to learn how people are finding her pirated materials, as our keyword dashboards give valuable insights into the fans’ search terms. “I’ve looked at the keywords and begun to use those in my marketing. If someone’s using a search term to try to find an illegal download of my book, I’m going to try to get them to use that keyword to buy my book, so I take the top 25 most infringing keywords and use them for Facebook and Instagram marketing as well as info when uploading books to vendors.”

Elizabeth Lennox Piracy Screenshot Before Marketly Services Began
Typical search results today after Marketly began protecting Elizabeth Lennox’s books

Learn More

Marketly has helped numerous brand owners like Elizabeth Lennox protect their brand online through targeted anti-piracy that deliver business results.

Want to learn more about how you can protect your brand? Schedule a demo today!

Posted By: Ross Reynolds | Filed Under: Community

Jun 05 2017

Google Transparency Report Passes the 1 Million Domain Mark

The creative industry just passed a quiet milestone this spring.  The Google Transparency Report shows that the Search Engine has enforced on its 1 Millionth domain for copyright infringement at the request of rights holders.

What does this means for artists and creators?

Google Transparency Report Passes 1 Million Domains

Internet Piracy Has Changed Since the Google Transparency Report Began

The cyber crime industry around copyright infringement used to be an industry of branded sites like The Pirate Bay.  Some did it for money, some did it to prove their technical virtuosity, and others did it to thumb their noses at The Man.

The long term odds were always against this model.  It costs nothing to set up a pirate site, so laws of economics drove the market to become a highly competitive fragmented industry.

Created with Highstock 5.0.7# Domains (000s)Google Transparency ReportTotal Domains Enforced to Date61611851853133134644647197199699691 0661 0662011201220132014201520162017025050075010001250

User Behavior has Changed

Any great marketer will tell you that there is a Rule of Three for most markets.  When consumers think of where to find your content, their consideration set is not 1 Million Web Sites.  The consumer mind can’t organize that many options.  At most they can think of three or so.  When they look for content, their mind narrows it down to 3 Search Engines, 3 Online Distributors, or 3 Artists like yourself.

Search - Think Like a Customer

Media Distribution and Enforcement Has Changed

The same laws of economics that drive the fragmentation of piracy are also bringing new companies into media.  Digital distribution has enabled thousands of new independent artists.  The Long Tail that Chris Anderson envisioned is long past being a reality, but it is being diluted by piracy.
Cybercriminals and the bottom feeders of society are taking advantage of these changes and are exploiting the weak.  When you talk to independent artists, especially in film, music, and publishing, they will share with you the frustration with piracy and the impact it has on their bottom line.  As a result, you see far more artists and creators enforcing their copyright.   You can see it in the growth in rights holders enforcing on the Google Transparency Report.  
Created with Highstock 5.0.7# Rights Holders (000s)Google Transparency Report# of Rights Holders Enforcing Each Year (000s)11111919232326263232201220132014201520160k10k20k30k40k

Piracy is not just about Major Media Anymore.  
32 Thousand rights holders from the creative industry enforced their copyright last year. If you take all the major trade associations and the top 5-10 companies in each media segment, it only accounts for <10% of the enforcements on Google in 2016.
Created with Highstock 5.0.7Google Transparency Report‘Major Media’ Enforcements vs. Everybody ElseMajor MediaMajor MediaEverybody ElseEverybody Else

Chart compares enforcement for all other rightsholders vs top 5-10 companies and trade associations in each media segment:  RIAA, MPAA, The ESA, Warner Bros, Disney, NBC Universal, Fox, Paramount, Sony, Viacom, CBS, Turner, Warner Music, EMI, BMG, Universal Music, Nintendo, Ubisoft, Electronic Arts, Square Enix, Microsoft, Bandai, Activision Blizzard, Penguin, Random House, MacMillan, HarperCollins, Pearson, Hachette, Schuster, Froytal, Touraine, Evil Angel, Vivid, and Wild Side Video.

Cybercriminals are Diversifying

Competition brings specialization.  Cybercriminals are no longer target just movies, music, and adult content.  They are branching into books, web software, online courses, and any kind of content that can be stolen.

Marketly’s rough break down of media segments in the top enforcers on the Google Transparency Report shows diversifying media segments.

Created with Highstock 5.0.7Google Transparency ReportMedia Segments EnforcingFilm & TVFilm & TVMusicMusicAdultAdultGamesGamesPublishingPublishing

Business Models are Changing

In the early days piracy exploited new ad platforms like AdSense that carried ads from anonymous publishers without much vetting.  From 2010 to 2015, the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) and industry leaders cleaned up ad fraud that placed ads against this kind of content.

Suddenly, piracy sites couldn’t place ads from premium brands without exceptional technical measures to mask the actual site that was hosting them.  All you could find is what you see today:  Cheesy, sketchy ads from scam businesses.

Today, we see a new model:  Revenue from Malware and Phishing.  The Digital Citizen’s Alliance published a study on piracy and malware in 2016 that revealed piracy sites were earning 10-20 cents per install.  Some malware ad networks pay as much as $2 per install.  Compared to Facebook’s own 20-30 cents CPC, this is great money.

What’s more, because almost half of the malware installs are silent installs, all the site needs is for the user to click on the search link and BOOM! money in the cash machine.   Any site no matter how small can make good money off of search engine traffic.

Today, the cyber crime world is playing a game with your brand.  It’s called:

Who can capture the search engine traffic?

Enforcement Models are Changing

Remember Kim Dotcom and MegaUpload?  He made a fortune playing whack-a-mole with the anti-piracy industry for years.  What about Rapidshare?  Big brand name file hosts like these dominated anti-piracy efforts from 2010 to 2015.

However there was a gradual migration to random, no name file hosts with slow compliance.  This led to what the industry calls Hamster Wheel Compliance Cycles.  Enforcers send a notice.  Three days later, some IT guy in Panama takes the file down.  One hour later, the web master re-posts a new file link.  Rinse and repeat, and the hamster runs on…

What Can the Creative Industry Do?

Our advice to our customers is as always

  • Remember:  You Have a Brand.  They Don't.  Anti-piracy now more than ever is a marketing tactic.  In this game of who can capture the customer, you have the advantage.  Customers have every reason to love and trust your brand over a sketchy web site.
  • Forget about Site Centric Strategies.  Think About Search Traffic.  Forget about whatever site of the week is pestering you.  Play the game of who can capture the customer.  Capture the most search result keywords you can, and the pirates will leave you alone.  
  • Don't Feed the Beast!  Everybody Has to Do Their Part.  Piracy is now a cottage industry in the cybercrime world.  Every member of the creative industry big and small has to do their part to suck the oxygen out of the room and put out the fire.  

As always, Marketly is here to help.  Here is to winning the fight for artist's rights in the next seven years.

Posted By: Ross Reynolds | Filed Under: Data

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