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Avoid Blasty for DMCA Takedowns

Blasty is a paid online service that sends DMCA takedown notices to infringing websites on your behalf. As the author of several books, I paid for one year of the service in March of 2018 to help combat rampant piracy. And for several months the service worked great. I enjoyed receiving the periodic email reports letting me know of successful takedowns. And I could log into my account and check out specific takedowns, view reports, and find all sorts of useful infos.

Update 2019/01/08: After weeks of no service, Blasty finally is sending automatic email notifications/alerts. Not sure yet if the service is actually working at this point, but something seems to be happening. At least, more than nothing. Still have not received any reply to numerous support requests after about two months.
Update 2019/02/11: I received a few more Blasty email alerts. But the number of successful DMCA results is low, like one or two. Still have not received any response to numerous support requests after about three months now.
Update 2019/03/21: Based on the evidence, I’m declaring Blasty as a dead, useless service. Still getting a couple of email notifications trickling in, each with like one or two takedowns. Still no response from Blasty. Check the comments for some further infos and updates.

Blasty not working

For awhile Blasty was a dream come true: a practical, affordable DIY solution for fighting piracy. Unfortunately for the past couple of months Blasty has been inactive, no longer doing takedowns, doing absolutely nothing. They are MIA.

I’ve tried contacting Blasty support four times via their only channel of communication, and over a month later.. still waiting to hear anything back from Blasty. It’s very frustrating to pay for something and then not get it. So until Blasty responds or somebody explains why things aren’t working..

Avoid Blasty

I’m posting my experience with Blasty for two reasons:

  1. Ask if anyone knows anything about what happened to Blasty
  2. Warn people that may be considering paying for Blasty service

After some searching, I found no current/relevant information as to why Blasty is no longer working, and why they are not responding to support requests (sent via their own contact form). So if anyone knows more infos, please post below in the comments or feel free to send any infos via my contact form.

Otherwise, until more is known about what happened to Blasty, I highly recommend to save your money and AVOID the Blasty DMCA service. Hopefully they come back and all is well in the end.

About the Author
Jeff Starr = Designer. Developer. Producer. Writer. Editor. Etc.
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11 responses to “Avoid Blasty for DMCA Takedowns”

  1. Jim S Smith 2018/12/30 2:34 pmReply

    Is “CopyScape” still a viable option?

    – Jim

    • Jeff Starr 2018/12/31 11:39 am Reply

      That’s just a search engine, last time I checked..

      Also, Jim, not sure if you are aware, but literally every one of your comments (for as long as I can remember) end up in the Spam bin. I always check for false positives, so it’s no problem for me, but just FYI.

  2. Wow!

    I never see a captcha-style challenge either. Maybe your software just doesn’t like? LOL.

    – Jim

    • Jeff Starr 2019/01/04 11:50 am Reply

      My software is WordPress, is what I am trying to communicate to you here. No antispam plugins, just WP. And it always sends your comments to the Spam bin. Even the comment to which I am replying now, rescued directly from the garbage pile. Not a big deal for me personally, but keep in mind in case some of your comments disappear. On this WP site and most likely others.

  3. I just wanted to say thanks for your post about Blasty. It’s the only post I’ve seen come up in Google when I try to find out what in the world is going on, and I was starting to feel crazy. I haven’t gotten an email back from them recently, and while I’ve had some blasts go through, I’m still waiting on a bunch that are about a month old. On top of that, I noticed that their entire support site is just gone. No more FAQ, no more tickets, nothing. On top of *that*, when I looked at their jobs page (just to see if any of the links worked), it took me to a private form.

    This has all the signs of a company slowly going out of business, so I’m definitely canceling my membership. It’s a shame, though, and I’ve been looking to no avail for a service similar to Blasty. I don’t suppose you know of any? I can make do without just like I did before, but this was a really neat tool.

    Anyhow, thanks for reading!

    • Jeff Starr 2019/03/21 7:00 am Reply

      I too thought Blasty was great, until they dropped off the face of the earth. STILL have not heard anything back after months and months. So yeah Blasy is officially dead in my mind, just hope that people bother to research before losing their money.

      • I was just clicking around the Blasty site and found basically all the links not working. I guess I had a few good months with it. It still wants me to upgrade, though; I started out on the manual plan, then later saw it had been removed and replaced with autoblast only, I think? I emailed to ask if it was a fluke and that’s when I started to notice. It’s definitely only gotten worse since then.

      • Jeff Starr 2019/03/21 7:01 am

        Thank you, I appreciate you sharing the infos and your experience. i think it will help others who may be looking at Blasty. Also may I ask, have you received ant response(s) from Blasty? As mentioned in the article, I’ve sent numerous email/support requests and have not heard anything back at all.

      • I haven’t. The last email response I got was a few months ago by now; I’d emailed about blasts that took over a week, and they took care of them. This was back when the FAQ worked, of course… but nothing since, even when I directly asked if they were still in business. :(

      • Jeff Starr 2019/03/21 7:02 am

        Well at least I know that it’s not personal. If they are ignoring everyone that’s one thing; if they are ignoring only me that is not good. Thanks again for the infos. Feel free to pass along any other related blasty tidbits, they are useful for those looking for infos.

      • Another exciting update in the Blasty saga. Apparently the site is down completely now. On top of that there are rumors that the CEO left late last year and that most of the alerts of successful blasts have been fake. Not sure if it’s true, but I finally managed to find some discourse about this stuff happening.

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Perishable Press is operated by Jeff Starr, a professional web developer and book author with two decades of experience. Here you will find posts about web development, WordPress, security, and more »
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