Well I think a few things could be done about this. Personally I think for an affiliate who wants to make a complaint to affiliate managers it might be better by RSS or by email instead of expecting or hoping all the affiliate managers would read these threads. If I get the email it is easier for me to open up everything and would probably allow someone like Engineer to post more details, perhaps some that have some privacy involved. I think having a system like this might allow for action to be taken faster and all at once. Imagine the affiliate receiving 15 emails in a span of a few days all asking for stolen content to be removed or their accounts will be closed. I think for this to be effective it has to be in numbers.
For Engineer to make a complaint the most effective means at the moment is either by forum or by individual contact and the affiliate’s time is valuable, actually everyone’s time is.
For affiliates who have stolen content and want to play the “dumb” card maybe getting them the basic tools or sites like CopyScape to check first would help. Also if I have some of this information already written up and ready to send the email to the thief affiliate would be easier to handle.
This weekend I have this on my task list to review the affiliates you mentioned to check for stolen content and if they are on my program I can give them a warning.
Closing comments about affiliate managers worried about losing business. If I threaten an affiliate to close their account due to theft I may lose business but in large numbers this is never an issue and cleans this up fast. If an email notification went out to all the affiliate managers then this concern would diminish (although personally I think we can handle losing a few affiliates who steal content). I believe there is more to gain than lose by doing the right thing.
John