Content supplied but not paid for

Hi all, curious to hear how anyone faced with not being paid for content delivered to a 3rd party dealt with it. Bearing in mind the client is US based and biz is UK registered/based so no access to small claims court.

 

Do a DMCA takedown request and send it to the web host. You were not paid, you still have copyrights.

 

Many thanks billzo. I am not sure how to locate their host, but will start digging and see how far I can get. Great help, much appreciated.

 

Start by doing a Whois on the IP address of the scammer who is publishing your content without paying for it. Go to the web host, not the scammer him/herself.

 

Cheers. Both sites where the articles are live are listed as being hosted with GoDaddy. I don't know (yet) if they even have a clue that the content they bought from the middle men has not been paid for.

 

Then perhaps you should send the webmaster a message first. Tell them you were never paid for the content you created, and as such you still have copyrights which they are infringing on and request they go to the middleman and tell him/her to pay you.

GoDaddy is pretty good at responding at DMCA and spamming complaints. So if you are not sure if the webmaster knows the content is not paid for, give them a chance to get things set right before you submit a takedown request to GoDaddy (mention you may have to do this anyway to get them in gear so they don't lose their hosting plan). Because if the middle man charged the webmaster but did not pay you, you still own it and the middle man is committing fraud against the webmaster displaying the content as well.

 

Cheers. I am on it, as soon as the time diffs allow. Will report back.

 

Well the plot thickens. Digging deeper it is looking very odd, had a strange conversation with someone from one of the companies who have the content, have a feelin it was actually one of the scammers as they all seem to be mixed up together in it. Now the other company's number gets answered then they hang up. Pretty suspicious.

Cannot waste any more time on it, going to do the DMCA.

Do you think it is possible I could still sell this on to someone else, even for less cash than before? I would have to lose the keywords they wanted but it is decent content and the loss of income on it has hit me hard.

 

why did you even supply it before payment was confirmed

 

Selling it to someone else is a bit unlikely, at least not until it is out of the search engine indexes. And I don't think you would have to lose the keywords. You wrote it, it belongs to you until you get paid for it.