Brand Protection Made Easy: Q&A with Gino Sciretta of BranditScan

Content piracy is so ubiquitous these days, combating it is an enormous challenge for content producers – or even so burdensome for any individual creator that it might feel like an entirely futile endeavor.

Farming out the task to a third-party has its complications too, particularly if the service you select is cavalier in its business practices. There have been many instances in which DMCA takedown services have issued takedown notices capriciously, causing needless backlash when the notices are sent in error. In some cases, takedown services have even issued notices to their own clients, or to media outlets that were provided the images by the very clients the takedown service in question represents. There’s also the issue of cost, as some takedown services are priced in a way that’s out of reach for smaller operations and individual content creators.

Enter BranditScan, a company that offers DMCA takedown services and brand monitoring designed to ease the process of protecting your content and brand, at a price that’s affordable to small businesses and independent content producers. YNOT recently spoke with BranditScan CEO Gino Sciretta to get the scoop on the company’s services – and the benefits to your brand that those services provide.

YNOT: For those who aren’t familiar with the company, please give us a quick primer on what BranditScan does.

Sciretta: We do it all, and we have developed BranditScan to be an all-in-one for content creators. We help creators take back control of their brand. With our tools, they get daily scans to find any stolen content that pops up on the web. We cover it all, social media catfishes, forums, tube sites, Google listings and much more.

Once they get their results, creators can easily choose what they want to take down, or keep up, they have full control. The standout of it all is that we are only 45$ a month.

YNOT: Since there are so many new and aspiring clip artists, content creators and adult film directors who may not have heard this perspective before, why is it important for them to protect their content from piracy sites and content thieves?

Sciretta: If you are a content creator trying to grow your brand and presence online, my best advice is to Google yourself. If within your Google results your fans can find your content for free, they are not just stealing your content but also potential earnings stunting your growth. Each click on Google should go towards your legitimate content so you can get paid for your hard work. It is important to protect yourself from piracy early on because this issue only gets bigger with time.

YNOT: What distinguishes BranditScan from other companies that offer similar services? In other words, if I’m interested in takedown services and brand protection, what are the best reasons for me to use BranditScan?

Sciretta: The best reason of them all, we are affordable and we work. At 45$ a month, creators big or small can access the tools they need to protect their brand and take down stolen content. On top of that, our incredible team works to develop new tools to adapt to the needs of creators, we are here to innovate and empower creators to protect themselves.

YNOT: I’ve heard a lot of complaints about DMCA takedown services that aren’t cautious enough in sending out notices, making mistakes like either demanding the takedown of images that aren’t owned by the client in question, or demanding the removal of promotional images that have been provided to media outlets by the rightsholder directly. What sort of measures does BranditScan have in place to prevent that sort of thing from happening?

Sciretta: This is top of mind for us and from the very day we started, we wanted to change the way we did DMCAs. We started by giving our creators the power to send out their own takedowns as they know their brand best. On top of this, we have been putting in preventative measures to help our creators by whitelisting platforms and manually reviewing takedown requests for anything that slips through. We have also been hard at work creating smart crawlers that can analyze video sources and determine affiliations. The power is in the coding, and we want to be a part of a new wave of how takedowns are done so we can continue to support promotional media, affiliates and rightsholders.

YNOT: Related to the question above, what are some of the risks of using less reputable and less cautious take-down services?

Sciretta: There is always a risk to giving your entire brand’s online exposure to any service and allowing them to remove content on your behalf without your overview.

Creators work really hard to create strong brands in this industry and form relationships with studios, platforms and media outlets. Creators can also grow from free exposure through reviews and posts that they may not even be aware of. We knew that we wanted to give creators that full visibility so they could make the decisions they needed as no service will ever know your history, goals and relationships as well as you. Takedowns are not a one-size-fits-all; creators risk permanent damage to their brands if their takedowns are not carefully handled.

YNOT: Tell us a bit more about the phenomenon of social media impostors and ‘catfish’ accounts; is this a widespread problem for creators and influencers? What does BranditScan do to combat it?

Sciretta: It is one of our most asked about features and it seems as though every day there is another tweet, story and post on social media from a creator asking fans to report fake accounts. Catfish accounts are problematic as they convince fans into believing they are the real thing, and can even gain quite a large follower base at times. They are known to scam money from fans, and also share misleading statements and attitudes tarnishing the real creator’s image.

With BranditScan, we wanted to be a part of the solution and get these accounts removed. We created a custom Instagram scanner that uses facial recognition to find catfishes. We also allow creators to submit profiles to us and we do all the heavy lifting. There is a lot more to come and we are looking forward to expanding our scanners out to social media platforms so creators can focus on connecting with their fans.

YNOT: Anything else you’d like to add?

Sciretta: If there is one last thing I can share, it’s that protecting your brand doesn’t need to be expensive. We wanted to make sure creators big or small could begin to protect their brand at any point in their careers, and we were able to meet our affordable 45$ a month through smart automation. We want our tools to be accessible to all, so with BranditScan, creators do not even need to pay for it. Content creators can ask their fans to be their Guardian Angels and receive gifted BranditScan memberships. We want our tools to be accessible to all, and we will keep innovating to make it happen.