I am an owner of a Pay To Click website. A site that pays it's users a number of cents for clicking an ad and viewing the page. Now, there are some people that host downloads for "AutoClickers", which are against our TOS, and cause me to lose LOTS of money. I think there is grounds for a legal complaint here, or even a lawsuit, or at least some sort of DMCA takedown notice. I just dont know how to go about things. I'd really just like to send a DMCA or equivalent and hope that it does the trick. How would I go about this? If the DMCA doesn't work, should I bother getting a lawyer to sue for the damages caused by the AutoClickers? *edit* Oh, and the site is hosted by uni.cc, a free subdomain registrar. I'm thinking I should get them involved, but their TOS states that they aren't responsible for the content, the member of the site is responsible. I don't really think that would hold up in any court though. So maybe a DMCA would be effective if sent to them?
DMCA won't help you in this situation as there is no copyright issue. You also probably cannot sue the makers of the auto-clicker unless they specifically target you or the ad network you use. Alright, you could sue, but not win. Your best option would be to monitor the number of clicks per account and set a threshhold. If the account seems to be clicking on more ads than possible for a human, then don't pay. I would also set it up (if you can) to not display the same ad to the same user for a period of time.
from what i know it's the advertisers who are are paying those clicks, why you lose lots of money?. what's the setup? suppose to be advertisers pay you to advertise on your site and you pay a portion to the clickers. pls clarify
Thats what I meant, the Advertisers are losing money. I also have two sponsored ads on the site that I would like to get real hits from. As for the autoclickers, they are targetting my site(s), and many others. The autoclickers are specially programmed for each site. The programs are titled for eg. AdverCash Autoclicker, Bux.to Autoclicker, AdBux Autoclicker. Each are different made for separate sites. Therefore the specific targetting is there. You put in a login name and password and it clicks for you with no browser or anything. Users get paid for viewing an ad, wen they never really viewed the ad. Another reason I believe I have some sort of case is due to the fact that it says right there in my terms of service that it is not allowed.
I have it set up right now so that users can only view an ad once per 24 hours. Other than that, and the captcha I have on the login, there isn't much else I can do. I once made an anti-macro that made a user click a certain number that they saw when the time was up on their ad in order to be credited, and it ruined user satisfaction since very few sites do that. So I had to remove it.
While it violates your ToS, the manufacturers of the software did not necessarily agree to your ToS. Your ToS can only bind your users. It does not have the power to bind the world. So unless you can prove that the manufacturers agreed to your ToS, then there is no breech of contract on their part. Regardless, a DMCA has no authority in this case. If the ad network is yours, you may have some trademark issues you could persue. If you are just an affiliate then no. Talk with a lawyer. This is not something there is a simple fix for.