Most of the time, the pattern is fairly consistent. Plagiarists usually host on the easiest and cheapest platforms they can. If the plagiarist is using a custom domain, they’re most likely on an inexpensive shared host such as Hostgator, Godaddy, Dreamhost, etc. If they aren’t, then they are most likely on a social networking site, a free blogging platform or a forum.

This makes a good deal of sense. Plagiarists typically have less experience with the Web, at least with running their own site, and are already looking for a shortcut in at least one regard. It makes sense that they would choose the path of least resistance and that seems to largely be the case.

To be clear, this is not a slight on these hosts, most of whom are cooperative. The trend is also caused largely by the sheer number of customers many of these hosts have. That being said, many find they send notices almost exclusively to larger shared hosting companies, even as other types of hosting are growing in popularity.

That general rule also holds up well when dealing with business plagiarism. Plagiarists in this are tend to be small businesses, often just a few employees, who set up quick sites and either got scammed into buying plagiarized content or simply ripped it off themselves.

The lone exception to this rule appears to be large-scale spammers who often use either VPS or dedicated servers. However, they tend to favor either very small companies or hosts in foreign countries, both of which make it more difficult to get an effective response.

That being said, not all spammers use that structure, it’s a fairly risky approach since it places everything in one location that can be easily closed, but it’s a popular system nonetheless.

What This Means

The implications of this are fairly straightforward. In the battle against online plagiarism, these shared hosts as well as free hosts are going to play a pivotal role. Fortunately, most of the hosts, including the ones I listed above by name, are overall pretty good at dealing with plagiarism and copyright infringement on their servers, at least in the cases I’ve filed.

However, this works because most of the major players of this kind of hosting are either in the U.S. or the EU. this gives creators access to laws to get infringing content removed. If there’s a geographic shift in this kind of hosting away from those areas, this could pose a real problem in the future.

Fortunately, such a shift doesn’t seem likely at this time, but it is definitely something to watch moving forward.

Bottom Line

In the end, most of this is pure logic. Plagiarists are usually trying to cut corners so it makes sense they would land on the easiest and cheapest hosts possible. While these companies certainly aren’t necessarily bad, either in terms of their service or their handling of these matters, it does mean that a lot of pressure is placed on them to respond.

It also means that, if you send enough takedown notices, you’re going to find that the majority of your notices go to a relatively small number of hosts and that there are a few names you have to keep on file constantly as they keep coming up again and again.

In that regard, it actually makes sending takedown notices and doing other copyright work a great deal easier. After all, there’s a lot less research involved if you already have the host’s DMCA agent on file.

According to his blog post, he had recently reported another Flickr account containing “obviously stolen material” and feared that Flickr had accidentally deleted his account instead of the infringer. A quick email to Flickr confirmed that fear but it was then Flickr dropped a major bombshell.

Even though Flickr admitted that the account had been deleted on accident, there was nothing that they could do to restore it. Wilhelm’s account, along with years of history and over 4,000 photos, was gone. Basically, there was nothing that Flick could do beyond re-enable his username and offer him four years of “Pro” access for free.

But while many have lamented Flickr’s poor handling of this matter, going as far as to call the system broken, I know well Flickr is not alone in this problem. I routinely hear of horror stories of getting content restored on Facebook and the problem seems to be spreading to other sites.

More to the point, this Flickr debacle points to a serious limitation in the counternotice process and why filing a counter-notice in response to a false DMCA notice is absolutely no guarantee that your content will be restored. In fact, with many hosts, once content is deleted, for any reason, it never comes back, no matter how many counternotices one files.

No Returns, No Takebacks

Let’s turn this situation around and say that, instead of Flickr deleting the wrong account, someone had filed a mistaken or outright false DMCA notice against Wilhelm and, as a result, got his account deleted. Wilhelm, if he disagreed with the notice, could file a conternotice and, if he did so, nothing would happen.

Unless the process for deleting a Flickr account is different for DMCA notices vs. regular TOS complaints, Flickr would be unable to restore his account, even if they wanted.

Of course, this is allowed under the law and Wilhelm wouldn’t have much recourse in the matter. There are two reasons for this:

1. The DMCA Doesn’t Require Counternotice Compliance: The DMCA is about removing liability for the host. By complying with a DMCA notice, the host is no longer potentially liable for the alleged copyright infringement. By filing a counternotice, your host can then repost the content (after the waiting period) without fear of liability. However, nothing says they have to.
2. Terms of Service: When you sign up with a site like Flickr or Facebook you agree to a terms of service that, generally, means that they can deny you service at any time for any reason. In short, if they can’t or don’t want to restore the content, you have no legal lever to force them.

In short, considering that most hosts can simply delete your content whenever they please, you have no means to force them to put it back after a DMCA spat. This has less to do with the DMCA and more to do with the fact we are at the mercy of the companies that host our content, especially those we don’t pay money to or have any kind of two-way business relationship with.

However, as Wilhelm’s situation pointed out, even if you are a “Pro” member and have such a relationship, there’s no guarantee that it will protect you. The contracts are the same and the only lever you have is the threat of taking your business elsewhere.

All in all, not much of a threat at all.

No Easy Fixes

Unfortunately, there is no easy way to fix this. Rewriting the DMCA to force hosts to restore content would likely be a non-starter and would just result in hosts changing their terms to have customers waive that right. It also wouldn’t help situations such as Wilhelm’s where it physically impossible to get the content restored.

In some cases, you may be able to restore the content yourself but, depending on how it is uploaded, it may actually count as a separate “infringement” meaning that the DMCA filer could just refile the notice. Of course, they would be on notice that you disagreed with their assertions, possibly further opening a false DMCA notice lawsuit, but to the host it would be a separate “incident” of copyright infringement.

Really, the only thing that can be done is to find the hosts that aren’t able or willing to restore content after a DMCA notice and then avoid them. However, counternotices are so rare that only the largest companies see them regularly at all.

So, as long as hosts can do what they want with your content, counternotices will aways be a roll of the dice.

Conclusions

If you post content online, you are at the mercy of your host. If they lose your content, delete it, go out of business or if a disaster strikes, you’re out of luck. The terms you agree to upon registering unilaterally favor the host and that isn’t going to change. The only lever we have is bad publicity, as with Flickr in this case.

The good hosts, however, will have provisions in place to restore data that they delete or otherwise take down. Apparently Flickr is working on such a system though it won’t be available until later this year. As such, it’s of no use to Mr. Wilhelm.

This is always why you should assume your host, along with its content, could disappear tomorrow.

That being said, one of the great ironies in this is the reason Wilhelm’s account was deleted: He was trying to report an account with stolen material. Though I’ve never heard of a mistake like this before, I have to worry that it might discourage others from trying to do the right thing.

If Yahoo! (or any other host) is likely to delete the wrong account, it would, understandably, make people very nervous filing a report.

Servint is a well-known and respected VPS host that not only hosts Plagiarism Today but also is home to several smaller Web hosting companies. Based out of McLean, VA, the company, like all U.S. hosts, is bound by the Digital Millennium Copyright Act and has to respond appropriately to notices of copyright infringement and have a designated agent for receiving such requests.

Mike Witty is that person. Recently appointed the Director of Network Compliance after a decade of service to Servint, Witty oversees a team of 4-5 to handle DMCA, abuse and security for the entire company, which includes thousands of physical servers spread across two datacenters.

I sat down recently to talk with him about the DMCA, how it operates at his company and what, if anything, DMCA filers can do from their end to help speed the process along and help them deal with these issues quicker and more effectively.

Servint’s DMCA Process

According to Witty, there is a great deal of ebb and flow to the number of notices that they receive. Some weeks it can be extremely dead, with just one or two notices, other weeks it can be much higher, up to 4, 5 or more. Since they only offer VPS services, they don’t see a great deal of spam blogs or people abusing the accounts to distribute copyrighted works, it just doesn’t make financial sense, but they do see a fair amount of notices regarding resellers of their service who have created smaller hosts by carving up their VPS.

But despite the relatively low numbers, at least when compared to many shared hosts, Witty makes it clear that they take DMCA notices extremely seriously.

“As with anything involves lawyers and the threats of lawsuits, we have to take these notices seriously and we have a protocol in place for when we receive them,” Witty said.

The first step when they receive a DMCA notice is to make sure that it is an actual Servint issue. Sometimes filers get confused and file notices against Servint for content that is not on their network. In those cases, Witty will try to help the filer find the right person to contact.

Once it is determined to be a Servint customer, the notice is evaluated by himself and by attorneys to make sure that it is complete and complete. If it isn’t, according to Witty, they send the notice back to the filer with instructions to resubmit. However, they continue to work on the case assuming that the person is going to return and refile the notice very shortly.

This includes bringing it to the client’s attention and warning that the notice will likely be refiled. Many clients simply remove the content at this point, regardless of if the notice is refiled. Either way, the majority do refile their notices and, once the validity is confirmed, they move to acting on the claim.

They first open up a trouble ticket for the case and notify the client about the notice. They require the client to remove the allegedly infringing material within a window of time and, according to Witty, “99 times out of 100, they do.”

In the rare cases where the client doesn’t remove the content they will either go in themselves if they can (for example an image file on the server) or, if it’s not possible, diable the account. However, those results are extremely rare.

According to Witty, very few clients contest cases and, interestingly, most of the DMCA notices they handle deal with misused images, not text or multimedia content. The average time between when a DMCA notice is filed and the ticket is closed is 2-3 days though many are resolved within 24 hours.

So how can copyright holders help speed up the DMCA process? Witty had several tips that might be able to help you get protect your work faster and easier.

Helping DMCA Agents, Getting Better Results

If you file DMCA notices regularly, or even just occasionally, you probably want to make sure that you get the quickest resolution with the least amount of headache possible. On that note, Witty had several suggestions for copyright holders could help him with his job.

1. Put the Notice in DMCA Format: The biggest slowdown for people whole make copyright complaints is that they do not put the notice in the proper format. Either use a good stock letter or otherwise make sure that your notice has all the required elements.
2. Avoid Phone Calls: With so many legal implications of filing a DMCA notice Witty tries to avoid phone calls and encourages those filing notices to do the same. It’s better to have a paper trail of everything that is said and done.
3. Show Respect for the DMCA Agent: Remember though the agent represents the infringer’s host, they are not responsible for the infringement. Being cooperative and showing professional courtesy and a cooperative spirit makes them more willing to help you and the entire experience smoother as there is no time wasted bickering or explaining.
4. Close the Loop: Once a case has been resolved, please let the agent know. This lets them close the trouble ticket and confirm that the matter has been handled to your satisfaction. Not only does it give the agent a sense of personal satisfaction, but it ensures that the trouble ticket system isn’t cluttered with closed cases.

Though most of these tips are pretty straightforward and are things I’ve talked about on here before, they are still steps that many DMCA filers omit when sending notices and thus bear repeating.

If you obey these rules, most likely you’ll find that your DMCA case is handled quickly and painlessly. According to Witty, one of the top priorities of Servint in DMCA matters is to treat the filer with respect and make sure that they know a human being is handling the case. This is why they send personal emails (after the initial confirmation) and attach names to every reply.

Respond in kind and, according to Witty, there probably won’t be any issues at all.

Bottom Line

In my experience, Witty’s story is a fairly typical one from DMCA agents. All in all, their policies are fairly typical and, based on what he has said, work very well. They have a fairly complicated networking environment with reseller hosts and they seem to handle things very well.

As someone who does consulting services for hosts on DMCA issues, Servint definitely appears to be a good example for others to follow, doing what they can to balance everyone’s rights and interests while resolving disputes quickly.

If only other hosts were as cooperative or as helpful as Servint is…

When I started Plagiarism Today, one of the things I wanted to do was draw attention to hosts that were mishandling DMCA cases, either by not responding to legitimate complaints of infringement or overreacting to such claims, especially dubious ones.

Though the law provides legal mechanisms for dealing with such providers, as a small copyright holder, using those tools is impractical in the majority of cases and the site was an opportunity to get answers in a public arena when I couldn’t get them in a private one.

However, over the years, this blog has grown and things have changed. I work directly with many hosts as part of my copyright consulting practice and am fairly well known among abuse teams. Though I’m sure many agents and abuse personnel don’t know me, it’s grown difficult to know when my experiences are representative or when the fact I run this site has an effect.

So, I depend increasingly on readers to tell me their stories involving DMCA notices and other copyright/plagiarism issues when it comes to Web hosts.

On that note, I want to issue an open call, if you’ve had a bad experience with a host, one where you filed a proper notice or had a bad notice filed against you and your host treated you poorly, let me know. Please send me an email with the information and let me know about it.

Likewise, if you’ve had a particularly good experience, I’d like to hear about that as well.

To be clear, these stories will be for future articles on Plagiarism Today and I will need some verification as to their authenticity, most likely relevant emails. Also, I will try to talk with any hosts before calling them out on this site, in an attempt to understand both sides.

So, if you feel you’ve been wronged by a host, or even a search engine/ad network, now may be a good chance to get some answers. I’ve found that this site is a great way to get hosts to respond when they won’t in private and has been very effective at getting hosts to change some of their policies.

So what are your horror stories? I’m interested to hear them.

When dealing with abuse on the Web, hosts are a critical player. More than just copyright issues, hosts play a critical role in dealing with spam, illegal content and network abuse.

Since hosts control the servers in their datacenter, they are vital in shutting down people who choose to abuse their service and nearly every host has a lengthy terms of service that dictates what their customers can and can not do on their networks.

The problem, however, is that many hosts don’t enforce their own terms. Spammers, infringers and others run wild on their service while people attempting to report them are left out in the cold.

Much of this is due to ignorance of the rules, with the barriers to entering the hosting industry dropping every day, more and more smaller companies, without expertise in this aspect of this field, have been getting into the market, especially as niche players.

However, this poor handling of abuse is dangerous not just to the Web but to themselves. Failing to address abuse issues correctly can open a host up to legal and technological repercussions (such as blacklisting) that can sink a hosting business.

So, if you are a host or work with one, here are the five of the biggest mistakes commonly made when dealing with abuse.

1. Not Having an Accurate Abuse Contact

If someone wants to report abuse to you, who do they contact? There needs to be an account set up for this and it needs to be on your public site.

Likewise, this account needs to be checked regularly and by someone with authority to act. Too many times I’ve tried to report spam blogs or other issues only to find that I have to email the sales or support team to get a response of any variety, even though an abuse account is available.

Likewise, also make sure that the information in your IP whois is up to date as well. Many times I have found IP whois information that points to email address that bounce all incomming messages.

It is crucial for hosts to keep their abuse information up to date, in a location where it can be found and to be monitoring for and acting upon reports as they are received.

2. Not Having an Internal Abuse Policy

What steps does your company take after receiving a spam complaint? After a copyright infringement notices? Etc. Where larger companies tend to have policies for just about everything on the planet, smaller ones tend to eschew them, even in areas where they are necessary.

These policies don’t have to be extremely elaborate, but they do have to detail the steps that one would take from receiving an abuse complaint to its resolution including determining the type of infraction, fact checking the complaint, the steps that should be taken and the appropriate resolution.

Not having these policies leads to confusion and favoritism both of which can lead to problems.

Additionally, it is wroth noting that the policy should not be all or nothing. Some hosts will stand by their customers no matter what, even those who legitimately deserve the boot, others will drop their customers at the slightest infraction. There has to be a middle ground where customers are stood by when appropriate, punished as deserved and dropped when needed.

3. Not Being DMCA/EDEC Compliant

If you are a host within the U.S. or the EU, not being DMCA or EDEC compliant (respectively) may make your host a target for those who wish to set up sites for the purpose of infringing content and may expose you to legal risk as you may be found partially liable for any infringement that takes place on your servers.

For example, being DMCA compliant involves registering a contact with the U.S. Copyright Office and expeditiously removing or disabling access to works after receiving a proper notification of infringement.

Registering a contact with the USCO costs $105 currently and setting up the procedure is effectively free, especially if you already have a good abuse system in place. However, doing this can help you avoid a major potential legal pitfall down the road.

4. Not Communicating

With abuse issues, silence can be deadly. Talk to your customers about complaints that have been filed, talk to the person who filed them about the action you’re taking and, if needed, talk to authorities about any legal activity. At best, silence leaves people frustrated and angry, at worst, it legal and issues, including possibly criminal charges if the violation is serious enough and the silence viewed as deliberate.

Though I understand that hosts don’t like to talk about abuse it is important to be clear and keep all parties informed. To avoid saying things that might harm the company legally, it may be wise to create stock letters that can be customized for various situations.

In addition to avoiding legal issues from saying something inappropriate, stock letters also speed up the abuse process, making it cheaper for you and faster for everyone involved. Though often criticized by those who receive them, especially when they receive one that doesn’t apply, they are an invaluable tool.

5. Not Talking With a Lawyer

Finally, perhaps the most important piece of advice, you need to make sure you are aware of all your legal obligations and the only way to do that is speak with a knowledgeable attorney in your area.

Though this article above covers some of the broad strokes, the specifics are best left to lawyers. Having an attorney do an audit on your polices and practices is key to ensuring you’re complying with all laws specific to your country and region. Also, this will help you understand the kinds of abuse you don’t have to enforce yourself, such as libel in the U.S., and will help you streamline your entire abuse process.

Talking with an attorney may be pricey, but it is well worth it in the long run.

Bottom Line

More and more startups are getting into the hosting game, filling in niches and providing services larger players can’t. However, while many of these companies have a great deal of technical expertise, they don’t always have the legal and abuse background to understand what it takes to keep their service free of unwanted content.

Being smart about abuse isn’t something that one learns while studying networking or system’s administration nor is it in the manual of any reseller hosting account. Rather, it is something you have to work on and study.

Abuse may be one of the most unpleasant aspects of the hosting business, but it is also one of the most important. For that reason, it is worth investing the time and money into getting it right.

If you routinely file DMCA notices, you may want to take heed of the recent ruling in the case of Perfect 10 v. Amazon.com.

In the case, Perfect 10, perhaps one of the most famous copyright litigators (and losers), filed suit against Amazon.com for contributory copyright infringement. The story is that Perfect 10 filed a series of eight DMCA notices regarding infringement of its images made available through A9, an Amazon subsidiary, and none of the notices resulted in a takedown. Perfect 10, after seeing this filed suit against Amazon and claimed that they had waived their DMCA save harbor protection by not complying with the notices.

However, there was a very serious wrinkle with Perfect 10′s case, namely that they had filed all of the notices with Amazon and A9 separate company. The judge, in turn, ruled that doing so does not provide actual notice to A9, especially since A9 has their own DMCA procedure, has designated a DMCA agent and is registered with the U.S. Copyright Office (PDF).

The judge also ruled that the use of a form on A9′s site, as opposed to an email, is immaterial and does not remove A9′s protection under the DMCA and that, even if Amazon hosted the A9 website (which it appears to), it was not required to communicate Perfect 10′s notices.

The end result was that Perfect 10′s copyright claims against A9 were thrown out on the summary judgment.

It is also easy to see how this could affect any filer of DMCA notices and it is something to be cautious of.

What This Means

What this case means is fairly simple, you need to be absolutely sure you are filing the DMCA notice with the company that is either hosting (for Section 512(c) notices) or linking to (for Section 512(d) notices) the infringement. It is not adequate to simply notify their owners and expect that the notice will be passed along.

Specifically, there are two potential situations at stake:

1. Company A Owns Company B: If company B is hosting or linking to an infringing work, notifying company A is not adequate. This is only true so long as company B is a separate entity, but happens to be owned by A. A good example in this case would be Google and YouTube. Google owns YouTube but YouTube operates as a separate LLC (see the footer of the site). You could not file a takedown notice with Google’s agent and expect YouTube to respond.
2. Company A Hosts Company B: This is a situation common with hosting resellers or, more famously, with ThePlanet and Hostgator (ThePlanet currently hosts Hostagotor’s servers). In this case. Filing a notice against ThePlanet would not count as filing a notice with Hostgator and strip their protections under the DMCA should they fail to comply.

However, this ruling places a limitation on itself. Namely, it says that this is only true “where the two ISPs are distinct corporate entities and, more importantly, have each properly designated its own copyright agent.” Therefore, it is unclear what the situation would be if in a reseller failed to provide DMCA information and a copyright holder filed with the company over them, such as ThePlanet.

In the case of ThePlanet, DMCA notices are passed along and takedowns are completed, even though this ruling says it is not necessary.

While this makes sense on the surface, namely that no ISP should be responsible legally for forwarding on a notice to another, the problem with it is more technical in nature.

The Russian Doll Problem

Let’s imagine a scenario. A spammer sets up a domain at site xtremespam.spam (XS) (I’m intentionally not using valid domains) and hosts site with cheapohostingprovider.host (CHP).

If CHP owns their own servers, designates their own DMCA agent, everything works out well. But if CHP is a reseller for Hostgator, things fall apart quickly. CHP leases their servers from Hostgator, Hostgator in turn leases their servers from ThePlanet. Anyone who does a check on Domain Tools will that ThePlanet owns the IP address and runs the datacenter, however, they are two steps removed from the host.

This is the nature of the Russian Doll problem, you have a host, inside a host, which is inside another host. Using networking tools, we can only see the outside “Doll”. Through some detailed analysis, we might be able to recognize Hostgator as the host (since they are large enough and are recognizable) but every additional layer makes it more and more difficult to find the original host.

In short, if the CHP is viewed as a “distinct corporate entity” and has its own DMCA agent, Hostgator nor ThePlanet, theoretically, are obligated to pass along the information. With enough obscurity and layers, it could be almost impossible to find out CHP exists, much less that they host XS and that could prevent the filing of a proper notice against them.

Even though I am picking on these companies I wish to be VERY clear that ThePlanet does pass along notices (and I assume they will continue to do so) and both are very good about handling DMCA issues. However, they do illustrate the potential for this system to be abused and a possible hole in the safe harbor system that can prevent copyright holders from having an effective means of recourse.

What’s Needed

What is clearly needed is some clarification on this issue. What should happen when the actual host of a site can not be easily found but the company that hosts them can be? While I agree that the law should not force a company to forward on such notices (though I also believe ethics and common decency should), it is clear that something has to be done.

One idea would be to require the hosting company, when notified of an infringement taking place on their network but not under their control, to notify the filer of who the correct party is. However, that might actually create a worse burden than simply forwarding it along.

Another option might be to mandate that Web hosts have a way to clearly identify the sites that they host, however, that seems impractical with the current structure of the Web.

In the end, there aren’t many solid solutions to this problem. Though I have gotten very good at dealing with this issue in my own work, it’s only come with years of practice and a decent understanding of how to use various networking tools. Even then though, there are still limitations to what those tools can do. Also, though WhoIsHostingThis does a great job piercing the veil on some of the better known resellers, including Hostgator, it can not get them all.

In short, this ruling may, inadvertently, make it possible for hosts to hide in plain sight, avoiding ever receiving or being forced to act upon a valid takedown notice.

Bottom Line

My frustration with this problem is simple. Though I agree that Perfect 10 was in the wrong in this case (considering that A9 was clearly the service provider and did have its own DMCA agent), it also appears to me that Amazon was behaving less than ethically. It would have been trivial for them to forward on the misdirected DMCA notice but failed to do so.

However, Amazon is known for frustrating copyright holders. I am working with one band who is struggling to get a bootleg CD of theirs out of the Amazon store and I know many others that have had similar frustrations. Though Perfect 10 could have avoided this by simply doing proper research filing correctly, Amazon also had a role in forcing this showdown and, as a result, we now have a ruling that could have a much more broad impact on filing DMCA notices and leave holes in the safe harbor system.

I don’t think it was the intent of the DMCA to create this issue nor do I think the intent was to overly burden ISPs. As such, it is obvious that some compromise and clarification is needed.

Until then, the good news is that most IPSs will likely continue to forward DMCA notices to their subsidiaries. The reason being that it is not only the right thing to do, but also cheaper and easier than dealing with a lawsuit, even if they have the ability to win it.

Furthermore, no legitimate ISP wants to allow copyright infringement, spam and other issues to take place on their servers, it hurts others that host with the company and it is in everyone’s benefit, in the long run, that the issues are addressed.

Still, until there is clarification, it is important to be absolutely certain that you have the original host of a site when you file your notice. It is the only way to completely avoid these issues.

I’m proud to announce today that I am beginning a new series of video tutorials for Tubetorial that will focus on plagiarism detection, abuse reporting and other related issues. The first of those videos, entitled “How to Find the Host of a Site” was posted yesterday and is now embedded below.

Some may remember that I did a similar video back in 2007, however, the new video is a much more up-to-date version of that video focusing on both Domain Tools and WhoIsHostingThis. This video should explain how to find the host of a site both more easily and more accurately than the previous version.

I’ve also replaced the video on the “Finding the Host” page of the site with new one since it does provide instruction on the new tools (besides, the previous video even showed the old layout for the site).

The video, for those who are interested, is also embedded below:

Since locating a host is one of the most difficult parts of dealing with copyright infringement or spam, have repeatedly highlighted tools that have helped users detect who the host of a site is. I’ve specifically mentioned Who Is Hosting This?, a great tool to make finding the host as simple as possible, and Domain Tools, a site for finding out a wide variety of information about a site for those with more experience.

However, while doing research for another article, I ran across an old Firefox and IE toolbar by Netcraft, a British Internet services company that specializes in security, particularly with phishing-related issues.

Though it is called Netcraft Anti-Phishing toolbar, it provides a very unusual and powerful feature for those that deal with content theft and spam issues, namely on-the-fly hosting and country information about any given site.

In short, if you install the toolbar, for every site you visit, you’ll see the host of the site displayed in your browser toolbar, no need to use a bookmarklet or paste the link into another site.

Though the toolbar is primarily phishing oriented, providing information on the age of the domain, the estimated rank, a site report and a “Risk Rating”, it could also be very useful for those that are either curious about hosting matters or are constantly looking up hosting information for abuse complaints.

However, there are a few caveats to remember if you decide to install it.

Words of Warning

There are a few things to keep in mind as you use this toolbar and important considerations to weigh to decide if it is right for you:

1. Privacy Issues: The toolbar does do some very basic tracking in order to compile its rankings. Though Netcraft says none of this is personally identifiable, you may wish to read through their FAQs to ensure that you agree with their policies.
2. Some Inaccurate Results: Though any automated host detection system is going to make mistakes, Netcraft lacks some of the changes and improvements made by Who Is Hosting This in terms of detecting hosts that use other networks, such as Hostgator. This means that Netcraft will detect most networks well but isn’t a complete replacement for other services.
3. Strange Linking: Clicking the link in the toolbar doesn’t take you to the host’s home page or to a page about the host company, rather, it takes you to a generic page about the site itself.
4. Incompatibility: The toolbar is rather old, not updated since May, 2008 and doesn’t work out of the box with the new Firefox 3.1 betas. I was able to get it to work with Nightly Tester Tools and it seems to be moving along fine.
5. Screen Real Estate: Obviously, any tool bar you install is going to take away some from your browsing area. If you aren’t going to use this toolbar heavily or don’t need the extra security features, you probably won’t wish to bother with it.

None of these problems will likely be a deal-breaker for those that need either the security or the host detection elements of this toolbar, but they should be weighed carefully before hitting “install”.

Bottom Line

I’m likely going to keep the toolbar installed for a while. I am interested in host-related issues both as someone who files abuse reports and DMCA notices, but also for personal curiosity. I also like the fact that it plainly shows what country is hosting the site and the age of the domain.

All in all, with this toolbar, when I see a site I need to take some form of action against and I have the toolbar installed, I’m able to form the beginnings of the strategy right away. The information provided lets me determine if the site is a likely spam blog what country it is hosted in and, in most cases, who is hosting it.

Though it isn’t for everyone, for those that need this information, it is a powerful tool and a great time saver.

Sample Information

The vast majority of hosts seem to take these issues seriously and pull down any spammy or infringing content quickly. Others seem to ignore any such requests and others reply with polite, but clearly stock, letters saying that they can’t help.

And then there is Joyent.

Joyent takes things to a new level. Not only does the site not help when someone is misusing your content, but they actually support scrapers and defend them in email responses.

Though many hosts have a policy of inaction against infringement, something that is legally dangerous and ethically dubious, none that I have seen have spent the time and energy Joyent’s representative did to protect them and defend them.

What Happened

Sunday, during some of my testing of FairShare, a system officially launched yesterday, I was notified about a site on a .info domain that had used nearly 100% of my recent article about U.S. Copyright Law.

I looked at the site in question and it appeared to either be a spam blog or a misguided aggregator. It was displaying the full content of dozens of entries on one page, using hotlinked images and the only original content was a pair of “thumbs up” and “thumbs down” buttons with each article that seemed to do nothing.

Though it linked to Plagiarism Today in the headline, it was not linking to or referencing my CC license nor was it referencing the “Share Alike” attribute. When combined with the hotlinked images, I decided to take action, filing a DMCA notice with their host, Joyent.

However, that was no simple process. Never having encountered this host, I searched their site for information about their DMCA agent. However, all I found was a postal address (Note: Link is to a privacy safe harbor, not copyright safe harbor). I checked for a registration with the U.S. Copyright Office, but found nothing. Since all other abuse requests seemed to be routed through their “Support” account, I emailed it and, since it was a weekend and they had limited support hours listed, I did not expect to hear back.

However, I heard back relatively quickly (within an hour), especially amazing considering it was also Super Bowl Sunday. The letter was from Linda Derezinski, who identified herself as the “Director of Support”. Her letter was short and said in part that:

“That is just a RSS feed aggregation site which is properly identifying as such, it is not taking your work and showing it as theirs…. If you do not wish them to show your RSS feed you of course are able to block them from reading it.”

In short, Derezinski was telling me that it was my responsibility as the provider of the RSS to “block” this site from republishing my feed wholesale on their site. Even though that is impossible with FeedBurner and impractical without knowing more about how the site is obtaining the feed.

I’m used to working with and educating hosts about copyright issues, but never have I had such a strong defense for a spam blogger. I responded back with some basic information about the DMCA and links to information on the law, including the Chilling Effects FAQ.

There was a slightly greater delay in this response but, after about an hour, Derezinski wrote back a second time saying the following:

“You have your site identified as creative commons…. They properly identify that the article is from your site. This is not DMCA issue.”

I wrote back a second time, this go around linking to my article about using Creative Commons to Stop Scraping, which includes a discussion with then-VP Mike Linksvayer. I pointed out that the site did not complete the license, neither linking to the license or mentioning the share-alike element.

That was the last I heard of the matter. As of this writing, the article in question is still up on the page in question (though it may cycle off any time now, after being up for a week) and dozens of other articles from different sources are still up, all with full text and hyperlinked images.

To recap what happened. I filed a DMCA notice in what seemed to be a straightforward scraping case, Joyent first defended the scraper saying that it was my responsibility to block them and then, after I showed that was not the case, then tried to tell me there wasn’t a copyright issue since I had a CC license. Once I showed that the site was in violation of my license, there was nothing but silence.

Needless to say this has me frustrated, but not defeated.

Offering a Defense

In the interest of fairness, I’m going to offer some potential defenses here.

1. Splitting Hairs: I’ll admit openly that the representative was correct that I do have a CC license and the site in question did link back to PT. Though the use was a violation of the license, something I feel very comfortable saying, it is understandable why someone unfamiliar with the details of CC might think that the use was compliant.
2. Questionable Spam Blog: There is room for debate if this site was a spam blog or an aggregator. Though it clearly violates the best practices for aggregation, it does seem to attempt to add some value. This doesn’t make it less of an infringement, for a host that specializes in applications, it might have been seen as a defense.
3. Incorrect Person: Though it was the only email address provided, it is clear that Derezinski is neither familiar with nor accustomed to DMCA complaints. I could have sent the complaint via postal mail (I find it stunning that they don’t even offer a fax) but it is likely that the article would have scrolled off or changed URLs in that time.

I have no doubt in my mind that this is not an appropriate way to handle a copyright complaint (as I said in the title, the worst that I had seen) and that this company violates many of the best practices of the DMCA (Not registering their agent with the USCO, not having an email address, not having a direct copyright policy, etc.) but I do want to give them the benefit of the doubt.

I hope that this was a misunderstanding and nothing more.

Conclusions

One of the jobs that I do in my consulting practice is work with hosts on these kinds of issues. I’m often recruited to check for any flaws in their DMCA system and even do test runs of their takedown process. I have a lot of experience in this area.

This is the worst response that I have seen in seven plus years of handling DMCA issues. Though I applaud hosts for looking at DMCA notices and considering copyright issues, this was not a case where the notice was clearly false, the use raised fair use questions or had other common issues that arise with erroneous DMCA notices.

What makes it worse is that the host came down clearly on the side of wholesale RSS scraping and republishing. Meaning that, if you are a spam blogger reading this that engages in RSS scraping, Joyent is likely a natural choice for you as their staff, at least judging from this correspondence, feels that you are doing nothing wrong or illegal.

My hope is that this was just a miscommunication but it has been over 48 hours since my last correspondence with them and no action has been taken on my ticket. If I do not hear more within the next 24 hours, I will look at calling them or filing the notices with Google, provided that the work hasn’t scrolled off or naturally disappeared.

Update

At about 5 PM central time the day this story was posted, I was contacted by Peter Watridge, who said that Derezinski has “escalated” the ticket it to him and he had not been able to get it in a timely matter. He is going to work with the owner of the domain to get the work removed.

Though this is great news and certainly puts Joyent in a better light. The initial response was still not what I would characterize as appropriate. I will update again when/if the content is removed.

But while AbouThiSite was interesting, its data is woefully incomplete, forcing me to continue relying on other sites for most of my information.

However, long-time reader Voyagerfan5761 alerted me to a similar, though more complete, service that had flown under my radar. The service, Quarkbase, promises to provide “Everything About a Site” and to be everything I wanted AbouThiSite to be.

So, I excitedly gave the site a whirl and learned quickly that it is a huge step in the right direction, but not quite the endgame I was hoping for.

What It Does

Quarkbase works very similarly to other sites in this field. Users either punch in the domain they are interested in or use their bookmarklet, to pull up information from dozens of resources about the domain a site is hosted on.

That information is then broken up into seven different categories, which can either be scrolled through on the default “All” page or quickly selected via the tabs at the top. Those sections are as follow:

1. Introduction: This includes basic information about the site including its name, common tags, contact information, logo and slogan.
2. Social Popularity: This analyzes how well the site has performed on various social sites including Digg, Reddit, Delicious, etc. Also pulls the subscriber account from FeedBurner if possible.
3. Traffic: This pulls in a variety of traffic estimates from Alexa. Though notoriously unreliable, it does provide clues as to which countries most frequently visit a site and a general idea of popularity.
4. People: Takes a best guess at the person or people that run the site. It is not clear where this information comes from.
5. Spotlight: This section attempts to glean who is “talking” about a domain, specifically by looking at Twitter. Though flawed in that it can’t parse TinyURLs, which are heavily used on the service, it still works surpringly well.
6. Company: Only shows up on reports of sites owned by a company. Offers company profile information and job postings for the company that owns the site.
7. Technical: This is the “meat” of the site’s information from an abuse standpoint, providing information on who is hosting the site, what the nameservers are and the location of the server.

Quarkbase is able to do this by bringing together information from a variety of sources including Alexa, Zoominfo and more.

The result of all of this information is that the results page is extremely large and, at times, slow loading. The initial page is also very cluttered, though the tab feature makes it much easier to cut to what you need.

All in all, the information that Quarkbase provides is very robust and very simple to use, however, there are a few hiccups that prevent me from making this service my default.

Small Roadblocks

The biggest issue I have with Quarkbase is that the information, in particular in the Technical section, is questionable at best. For example, when looking up Hostgator’s main site, the site doesn’t even fathom a guess as to the hosting provider. It correctly guesses that the ISP is “THEPLANET.COM INTERNET SERVICES” but even that is not completely accurate as Hostgator is its own host, just using ThePlanet’s servers.

This was an issue that has tripped up other services, including Domain Tools, and prompted a fix from WhoIsHostingThis. During many of my tests, Quarkbase refused to even guess about the host information, instead just leaving that line blank, and the ISP information was dubious at best.

Other information on the service was unreliable as well. Alexa’s traffic data is notoriously unreliable, though still an understandable choice under the circumstances. Also, information in the “Introduction” section is routinely either left blank or inaccurate, especially the contact information on non-company sites.

This limits the usability of the service, especially when competing sites such as WhoIsHostingThis have largely overcome many of the same challenges, but it still remains one of the most complete overviews of a site or domain that you can get, even with the hiccups and speedbumps.

Conclusions

Quarkbase is far from perfect, but what it does it does well. Though its results are not as technically-oriented as Domain Tools or as accurate as WhoIsHostingThis, its sheer breadth of data makes it great for a “quick overview” of a site’s information.

Though I again don’t think Webmasters and bloggers will get a lot of use from this tool when chasing down scrapers and plagiarists, especially since the site does not do subdomains at this time, it could provide some assistance with directly contacting infringers, locating the host and learning about the background of a site before moving in.

If nothing else, it might be worth seeing what Quarkbase turns up on an infringing domain just to see if there is anything you were unaware and can use, such as an email address or contact form.

I can pretty much promise you that you will learn something about every site you punch into this service, the question is how accurate and useful will that information be.