{"id":7032,"date":"2013-04-08T06:00:44","date_gmt":"2013-04-08T13:00:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/bensettle.com\/blog\/?p=7032"},"modified":"2013-04-08T06:00:44","modified_gmt":"2013-04-08T13:00:44","slug":"suing-goo-roos-for-fun-and-profit","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bensettle.com\/blog\/suing-goo-roos-for-fun-and-profit\/","title":{"rendered":"Suing Goo-roos For Fun And Profit"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>About that <a href=\"http:\/\/bensettle.com\/blog\/swipe-file\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><strong>swipe file<\/strong><\/a> page from Friday&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>All weekend long people have been asking me to explain the story behind it, why I put it up, and should they hire an attorney like that and do something similar. (Not surprisingly, the people asking this have mostly been &#8220;Email Players&#8221; &#8212; <a href=\"http:\/\/www.EmailPlayers.com\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><strong>www.EmailPlayers.com<\/strong><\/a> &#8212; subscribers, as once they learned my system and started kicking bootay, they were suddenly &#8220;targets&#8221; for swipers and thieves, too).<\/p>\n<p>Incidentally, I can&#8217;t help but wonder:<\/p>\n<p>Will someone be dumb enough to swipe the copyright lawyer&#8217;s letter?<\/p>\n<p>Only time will tell&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>In the meantime, here&#8217;s the story behind it:<\/p>\n<p>A few weeks ago, some shmuck who positions himself as a 7-figure guru in the fitness niche used one of my emails 95%+ word-for-word to sell someone else&#8217;s email product.<\/p>\n<p>(Which doesn&#8217;t say much for that email product&#8230;)<\/p>\n<p>I wasn&#8217;t just PO&#8217;d.<\/p>\n<p><strong>I was like a mushroom cloud-laying mo&#8217; fo&#8217;.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>But, that soon turned to gratitude because it *finally* motivated me to consult a copyright attorney about how I can go after these bastards.<\/p>\n<p>It was a very edu-ma-cational experience, too.<\/p>\n<p>When someone steals your emails or sales copy, you got rights.<\/p>\n<p>Including the right to collect damages.<\/p>\n<p>To get attorney fees.<\/p>\n<p>And, even press criminal charges.<\/p>\n<p>Don&#8217;t let the &#8220;swipe &amp; steal&#8221; goo-roos fool you, either.<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s like the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.bensettle.com\/blog\/swipers1.jpg\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><strong>attorney&#8217;s letter<\/strong><\/a> says:<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\"><strong>There&#8217;s no such thing as &#8220;innocent&#8221; copyright infringement<\/strong><\/span>.<\/p>\n<p>It doesn&#8217;t matter if you&#8217;re &#8220;in a hurry&#8221; or are &#8220;sorry&#8221; or simply stoopid enough to think it&#8217;s okay because your favorite goo-roo does it. It&#8217;s no different than stealing money right out of someone&#8217;s wallet. And if you have copy and emails and informational products that are making you sales, I HIGHLY suggest consulting a copyright attorney about how you can not only stop the pirates&#8230; but maybe even profit from the situation by going for damages (and it&#8217;s not nearly as hard as it sounds &#8212; especially in <em>blatant<\/em> cases, like mine was).<\/p>\n<p>So that&#8217;s the story.<\/p>\n<p>I know, I know&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>The standard line is not to worry about this stuff, right?<\/p>\n<p>Just send some outdated boilerplate &#8220;cease &amp; desist.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>I think that&#8217;s insane.<\/p>\n<p>If enough people start hitting back, you&#8217;d see a LOT less theft.<\/p>\n<p>A LOT less competition.<\/p>\n<p>And, a LOT more profits overall.<\/p>\n<p>Ben Settle<\/p>\n<p><strong>P.S.<\/strong> I would not recommend &#8220;swiping&#8221; that cease &#038; desist letter. For one thing, that was unique to my business and situation. I have recently learned how idiotic it is to use &#8220;boilerplate&#8221; legal documents. People have no clue how their &#8220;swiped&#8221; legal documents are not only worthless&#8230; but could land THEM in some serious legal trouble. And for another, these things have much sharper &#8220;teeth&#8221; coming from a law firm, rather than Joe Internet Marketer.<\/p>\n<p>But, I realize this falls on mostly deaf ears.<\/p>\n<p>Everyone wants to swipe.<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s all &#8220;cheap, cheap, cheap&#8221; online.<\/p>\n<p>But, as I always say, cheap is the new expensive.<\/p>\n<p>Especially when it comes to things like this.<\/p>\n<p>So SPURN my advice at your peril&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>About that swipe file page from Friday&#8230; All weekend long people have been asking me to explain the story behind it, why I put it up, and should they hire an attorney like that and do something similar. (Not surprisingly, the people asking this have mostly been &#8220;Email Players&#8221; &#8212; www.EmailPlayers.com &#8212; subscribers, as once [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[8,9,14],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-7032","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-copywriting-and-sales-letters","7":"category-email-marketing","8":"category-sales-marketing"},"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bensettle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7032","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bensettle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bensettle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bensettle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bensettle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7032"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bensettle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7032\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bensettle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7032"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bensettle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7032"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bensettle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7032"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}