Anti-Piracy Service Blasty is Back Online After a Week’s Downtime
Since 2015 Blasty has been offering an anti-piracy service where they automatically scanned the web for pirated copies of an author’s work and gave authors the option of automatically sending DMCA notices with a single click.
Edit: To clarify, Blasty submits DMCA notices to Google to get allegedly pirated content de-listed from Google’s search results. They use this route to respond to piracy because you can’t always get a pirate site to actually remove the content, and making it unfindable in Google is the next best thing.
That all changed last week when the service inexplicably went silent. The site went down, and no one was answering emails. The only part of Blasty that seemed to be working was the payment processing, which is a problem because there was no way to disable an automated payment and we had no way to tell whether service would be restored. There were even authors talking on Facebook about canceling their debit cards in order to stop the payments.
Now that the website has been restored, they will have the option of canceling their service. Since we currently have no word as to whether Blasty is still scanning for pirated content, they might be wise to do so.
I reached out to Blasty for comment, but have received no response.
Comments
Anti-Piracy Service Blasty Is Back Online After a Week’s Downtime – Copyright/Intellectual Property – – The Passive Voice March 23, 2019 um 5:27 pm
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Lynn March 24, 2019 um 10:35 am
I posted my response to The Passive Voice but it got lost (three times!) even though my other comments on other posts went through fine so I decided to just forget it and go to the source. 🙂
Someone set up a Blasty campaign last year and Blasty sent a DMCA notice to Google about it, and because I had my site set up in Google Webmaster Tools (Search Console), they kindly sent me a notice about it which I immediately disputed. Then I emailed the author whose books Blasty claimed I was infringing. The author told me they couldn’t figure out how to tell Blasty that my site wasn’t infringing.
Then the reported page was out of Google for 10 days while Google processed my dispute.
I believe Blasty is happily collecting money from authors who want to think they’re doing something to protect their content, while Blasty runs entirely by bot, searching out keywords, reports sites, and does it all without the least oversight. One hasty glance at my page would have told anyone that my site shouldn’t have been targeted because all I do is link to Amazon or BN or another retailer where people can *buy* books so I can make enough to pay for the site hosting and domain name.
There are authors who will now never be promoted or mentioned on any of my book review or promo sites. When I find out someone is using Blasty, that author’s name goes off the list. I’m just not going to deal with that. I highly recommend any author worried about protecting their reputation not use Blasty. Blasty is costing authors word of mouth promo and fans.
But people like to feel proactive so they’ll do what they want.
Nate Hoffelder March 24, 2019 um 10:48 am
Thanks! This service is growing less and less appealing as time goes by.
Thomas Greenbank August 22, 2020 um 12:24 am
Hi Nate.
I found this post while looking for info on Blasty. I read a post elsewhere extolling its virtues.
You’ve made me think twice about using it. Thanks for the heads-up.
I’ve subscribed to your newsletter, btw.
Might you be interested in doing a review of my soon-to-be-released novel?
Tab April 19, 2019 um 3:10 pm
I know this is an old post, but Blasty may be back but they’re also not letting you cancel subscriptions. You have to email them and then they don’t respond and keep charging you. I’ve been trying for over a month because I don’t want to have to cancel my card.
So… Blasty – Perpetualized June 1, 2019 um 12:36 pm
[…] As I said in a comment on The Digital Reader: […]