I have a blog post on my website that currently tells someone how to get rid of a malware application. It has come to my attention that the company who makes and distributes the malware has been e-mailing their clients this information word for word without a link to my website or written permission to use this content and I was wondering if I have any legal ground. Thanks Dave
Yes, you wrote the article and have copyright so you have the right to control how it is distributed. You can take several courses of action. You can try emailing the company and asking them to stop sending out your article or you can send them a DMCA notice to get them to stop. A DMCA notice takes a little more work to write up but it is more difficult to ignore than a simple email request to stop. If you have the money to pay for lawyers or have incurred large finical costs as a result of them sending out your article you can also consider suing them in civil court. Be aware that going to court will cost both of you a large amount of money and time, not to mention it would be a huge hassle. Hope this helps.
Im sorry for not answering your question here, but why would the malware creators email people with removal instructions?
Possibly so they could see the weaknesses in their malware so they can produce "better" malware that was more difficult to remove in the future. Or simply for entertainment purposes I suppose.
Well it's actually an online casino and they have a certain mail notifier that comes with their software that does not delete itself when the program is deleted. It took me some time to figure out how to get it off of my computer. Now why would you pay someone to find this information out when you can get it and distribute it for free.