Open Call: Your DMCA Stories

By Jonathan Bailey • Apr 4th, 2008 • Category: Articles, Personal Experiences

Google DMCA LogoWhile I was at WordCamp Dallas, I had an opportunity to speak with many bloggers and site owners about their interactions with abuse teams and DMCA agents at various hosts.

Needless to say, the stories ran the gamut from wonderful, helpful agents to nightmare tales about excessive hoops to jump through and unanswered emails.

I am wanting to prepare a series on abuse and DMCA agents. I’ve done some of it in the past, including retelling some of my personal horror stories, but after three years at this site of running this site, I sense that my experiences are no longer the norm (this bolstered by the fact I am on a first-name basis with several DMCA agents).

So, with that in mind, I want to hear your stories. Specifically, I am looking for any of the following:

  • Stories, good and bad, about dealing with DMCA agents at various hosts/search engines.
  • Interactions with various Web hosts, good and bad, in reporting spam.
  • Incidents where your site has been reported for abuse and/or copyright infringement and what happened afterward.
  • Information on the time it takes to obtain a response from Google or other search engines on DMCA mattes.
  • Finally, any abuse or DMCA agents that have interesting stories about either really good or really bad filers.

If you have any of those items, please either leave a comment to this post or send me an email with the details. This is a great opportunity to get help with a host that has been giving you trouble or give praise to a company that went above and beyond in helping you out.

If I decide to write about your case in the future, it will only be with your permission and you can choose not to have your name attached to it. Also, I will work to certify all stories as best that I can and will not publish any claims that are unverifiable.

Thank you in advance for your help with this and please feel free to spread the word of this open call around. I’m eager for anyone’s input so feel free to get your friends involved if you think they might have something of interest.

I look forward to hearing what you have to say!

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Jonathan Bailey is The Webmaster and author of Plagiarism Today, which he founded in 2005 as a way to help Webmasters going through content theft problems get accurate information and stay up to date on the rapidly-changing field. He is also a consultant to Webmasters and companies to help them devise practical content protection strategies and develop good copyright policies.
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  • Jeremy: Those are all priceless.

    The lawyer one is interesting but could be a lot of things. I've seen spam on law blogs lately because the domains expire and get snatched up. I guess my first question is "Are you sure it was the attorney himself?" Just have to ask these things.

    The HostGator one has me very worried, I'd love to see the correspondence on that so I can inquire further.

    The same goes for the Adsense and the BlueHost ones if you have them. The BlueHost one is especially worrisome as it is something I have suspected these companies do but have never actually seen proof of.

    I'm interested in all of these cases, long and short of it, please feel free to send me an email, I think you know where to find me!

    Thank you for all of these!
  • There was the time a lawyer stole my content, and I found out he was running at least 50 other splogs under his law firm. After doing more research I realized he had several bad marks on his record, and was even banned from practicing for several years because of one. I never sent a complaint to the state's bar, but I did get his splogs and domains removed.

    Then there was the time HostGator (my own host!) told me they wouldn't removed a splog because it was "content aggregation" and is legal. It took a bitching e-mail asking for the CEO to get it dealt with.

    Then there was the other time Google Adsense told me a splog contained "no infringing material" in a response e-mail. I took a look at it and my stolen articles were right on the top of the friggin page! How they missed it remains a mystery to this day.

    Then there was another time when a host (I think Blue Host) basically gave me the middle finger and said FU for sending a DMCA Notice. The lame custom support guy told me "That blog's owner is one of our best customers and we won't pass this notice along!" For the fun of it I told him I contacted a lawyer and would be suing both the host and the site's owner, and literally 2 hours later the guy's account was completely deleted. It was a little lie - but it worked :)


    Take your pick :P


    None of these are too bad - and usually all it took was a slightly "encouraging" e-mail to get the issues dealt with. I'm sure there's some real horror stories out there - especially with Google.
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