I'm pretty pissed off right now. We run a language online course and another guy from Australia (I got the name) resells our course on a DVD. He has set up a website and advertises a lot via Adwords / Adsense. What do you think we should do? Any advice would be great.
Legally you should hire an Australian attorney and sue for damages... that can be costly, to lose (because your attorney didn't prove your case), win but because your attorney couldn't prove actual damages and get nothing, or win and win rather big but then you need to chase the company for your awarded damages which comes at a greater cost still. This is the reality of getting "what is owed". If the content is factually your; you actually wrote it word for word and didn't hire out (which could leave doubt that you are the actual owner) you can file a DMCA claim with Google for starters. http://www.google.com/adsense_dmca.html Because the alleged infringer previously agreed to Google that they would only place ads on pages with their own copyright or get permission from the owner for use of the material... Google has a good faith belief that their publisher is the copyright holder or has your permission to use. Google with force their publisher to counterclaim - which means you have 14 business days to show Google proof of court action. If you have no intention of suing for damages be carefully about taking any action until you are prepared. If the publisher refuses to counterclaim, Google will shutdown their account and give you damages equal to 3 months of AdSense fees paid to the publisher (e.g. Google's 50% since Google had no right to collect) maintaining their original good faith belief. But there is no telling what an "alleged thief" will do to knowing they already committed fraud... what harm will come from committing more fraud? You can also file DMCA claims to all search engines both in organic results and PPC (seperately) to disable the companies ability to make economic returns off your work... but the only way to really shut this down is in a court of law in the country the alleged infringer is in. I'm sure you can try to get any proceedings in your hometown but it's more difficult to enforce a legal action from a distance.
DMCA the host and send him a C&D. It's also possible that he bought the course from a theif who claimed it was his own and that buyers have resale rights. This sort of thing goes on all the time, but mostly with ebooks and website templates.