Down Goes Thotsbay

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.