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Lentor

181 karma · joined March 4, 2016

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Lentor··on Shopify files lawsuit over DMCA abuse
We've been affected by these fake DMCA for one months now and there is ZERO support from Shopify.

(thanks to the OP for shedding light on this situation)

Running a business through Shopify has become very risky these days.

We are now working on transferring our online stores to Woocommerce where it is far more difficult to get your content removed with bogus DMCA.

Picture the situation to understand the Nightmare:

1) You are driving paid traffic to a product page with good ROAS because your ads are optimized after months.

2) Then the competitor submits a fake DMCA

3) Your page is content is removed automatically by Shopify (no check on their end)

4) Your optimized ads are now directing customers to an empty page

5) Then you risk having your ads accounts flagged

You might think you could just redirect the url to a duplicate? That would be a great solution indeed. BUT

6) The competitor is monitoring your product page and immediately submits another fake DMCA

7) You redirect again

8) Then another fake DMCA

Now WAIT for the cherry on the Cake.

9) After 4 or 5 fake DMCA, you Shopify account admin is locked

10) You may even get suspended automatically by shopify

11) Then you can no longer fulfill your orders from customers

12) Then your customers start making chargebacks

13) Then the payments processors on which you've built a reputation over the years can suspend you

14) Shopify (zero)support asks you to reply to the DMCA with a counter notice and WAIT for the Trust & Safety Team to get back to you

15) Then you receive an auto reply from them telling you that the other party has been informed and that you may repost your content in 2 weeks unless the scammer has filed a court action.

16) Then after 2 weeks, you repost your content

17) Then the same or the next day, the same scammer (watching you like a hawk) issues another fake DMCA for the same product page through the same fake account.

ISN'T IT BEAUTIFUL?

** Shopify could literrally STOP 80% of these false DMCA by just adding a field on their rudimentory form: asking to verify a phone number or upload an ID but NO, that seems to be a task too Challenging for a billion dollar company like Shopify

Lentor··on Shopify files lawsuit over DMCA abuse
take down competition
Lentor··on Shopify files lawsuit over DMCA abuse
The problem with Shopify is that literally anyone can open a fake account and submit a DMCA to take down any competitor.

Check how basic their form is >> https://help.shopify.com/en/legal/dmca#/form

We've been harassed by the same scammer that placed 7 fake DMCA over the past 2 weeks and Shopify automatically removes you content with zero check. That dude just mentioned the product pages he wanted and used totally irrelevant links as a source for what he claims was the original content even a .xyz domain.

Shopify support does absolutely nothing even if you send them 20 emails.

Hundreds of legit businesses are affected by this loophole exploited by scammers.

See https://twitter.com/hashtag/FixShopifyDMCA?src=hashtag_click