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Member since: Oct 2021Deals bought: 146
5 stars
5 stars
Posted: Feb 4, 2022

It Works!

The process takes about a week. You add your content and URL for the legit version of your work, and Harvel then searches the net for illegal copies of your content. In a few days you'll see the results of the infringements they found in your Harvel dashboard. Then in a few more days you'll see that the infringing content was removed.

I had 9 URLs that were identified as infringements, and all 9 were de-listed or removed.

Doing DMCA takedowns manually is such a pain, and it's frustrating and complicated, with a lot of handwritten messages to various sites and platforms. You get emotional about pirates stealing your work, and having to do it at all takes time away from work you'd rather be doing. The main selling point of Harvel is that they will do that crap for me from now on. So I'm glad to see that it worked. Even if it's a little slow, and in my opinion somewhat expensive for the limits in each tier, the fact that it's passive and doesn't require me to actively work on it makes it a good value, and they're lawyers, which don't come cheap. You're kind of forced to go Tier 3 if you have a decent catalog of work, but it's worth it.

In terms of results, Harvel removes search engine results of your pirated work, and if it's hosted on a Google Site, it will also remove that page and the account that made it. If it's hosted somewhere else, the content will remain up there, but Google will not show it in results. So that's a bit of a drawback at the moment, but it's better than nothing. If people can't find it, then they can't pirate it.

The only thing I'm not happy with is the lack of an on-boarding process and lack of clarity on what to do. I didn't know if I was doing the initial steps correctly, so I emailed them with questions and suggestions on how to improve this process, but they never even replied. So that's disconcerting. The UX also needs improvement, as you can't edit or delete a content entry once you've added it, even if there are typos you want to correct. Simple things like this make a difference to the user and their trust of the service.

In any case, the results speak for themselves, and I'm glad to see it works as advertised. Here's hoping Harvel will continue to protect my work in the months and years ahead, and their service continues to improve.

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