I sent DMCA take down to the web host and they didn’t reply or took down infringing content for 3 months
The said website was hidden behind Cloudflare so I contacted them and they forwarded the DMCA takedown email to the web hosting company, The-Online.com, but The Online seems never responds to Cloudflare DMCA notices as I’ve sent twice or thrice.
Then, Cloudflare provided me the hosting company’s name – which is ofcourse The-Online.com so I sent email to their support and abuse email addresses. I got a reply that The Online has forwarded the email to their user (infringing site). Even after 3+ months the said content is still on the web and can be accessible via public URL. It’s an image and article content copied from my site. How long does The-Online.com waits to disable the content or suspend the infringing website after I send DMCA take down notice?
Hi Andrei, We at The-Online.com support the protection of intellectual property and asks our customers/users to do the same. It is our policy to expeditiously respond to clear notices of alleged copyright infringement that comply with the United States Digital Millennium Copyright Act (“DMCA”), the text of which can be found at the U.S. Copyright Office website, http://www.copyright.gov.
We forward all DMCA takedown and abuse notices to our customers. It’s their responsibilty to repond or file a counter notice claim with us which we forward to original complainant. If the complainant does not reponds within 14 days about they going to the Court, then we restore the said infringing content. Please remember that we are not the court to decide what is true or false and neither we have right to investigate. We as a reputable and trustworth web hosting company abides by the law.
Also we do not disclose any personal identity of the customer even to law enforement agencies with a valid court order. Your email had a request to provide the infringer’s personal email address and phone number. This made your DMCA take down notice invalid.
Andrei, you must know that The-Online.com has Netherlands server location. If the said infringing website is hosted in their Netherlands datacenter then they’ll never respond to DMCA. The-Online.com is one of the few, secure hosting companies which is DMCA ignored in Netherlands, Europe location. Had it been their U.S. datacenter then they could have asked their infringing user to respond to your takedown notice. But since you also asked personal details of their user your DMCA ultimately becomes invalid.
The-Online.com only responds to DMCA notices sent to them only if its sent by a lawyer. I had tried DMCA.com’s free plan to send take down notice and they never responded, then I used paid option from dmca.com still no response. The content was still live on internet for 4-5 months. Even Google had removed it from their search engine results when I sent DMCA to Google. Later I hired a professional lawyer from New York who sent proper DMCA to this web host and then they forwarded and responded to it. Seems they are too slow or just don’t give much attention to DMCA take down emails.
The Online’s EU server location is quite safe. I don’t infringe anyone’s content, but people do mis-use DMCA just to take a website down of their competitor or whom they don’t like. Many web hosting companies including AWS, Google Cloud, or Hetzner, OVHcloud, etc. will swiftly act on DMCA and just disable the content or suspend the entire website of their user. Even small hosting providers and those low end hosting companies that advertise on lowendtalk or blackhatworld forum rapidly act on DMCA takedown without even checking if the notice is legit or just sent to harass a website owner. But The-Online.com does a good job that they ignore DMCA in Europe (Netherlands) and even I think in Singapore too. I’ve read that somewhere a user talking about DMCA ignored host in Asia and had mentioned the-online.com’s name along with Shinjiru.
From my personal experience, The-Online.com does responds to DMCAs if their user is hosting in their USA datacenter. Though its right they are too slow and one needs to provide letter from their lawyer. It’s costly to hire a lawyer for non-us residents. How about alexhost and vsys or other offshore hosting companies? Are they truly DMCA ignored or just advertise to be free speech?
Are their any reliable hosts on lowendtalk.com? I am looking for DMCA ignoring web host and my budget is $5 a month. I’ll be hosting manga images/photos.
The-Online.com itself is hosted on dedicated server from PrivateLayer – a European web host well-known for for ignoring DMCA take down. So, they might just keep forwarding the complainant emails or Cloudflare forwarded DMCA emails to their clients. Most EU based web host do the same, except, OVH, Hetzner, Strato, Gandi.net, – they’ll shut you down if you receive DMCA repeatedly. Get some secure hosting or host in Hong Kong, China, Singapore, Malaysia. Though many local web host there abide to DMCA. Avoid India, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Sri Lanka web hosts. Most of them are mere reseller from big U.S. datacenter and they too act on DMCA complaints without even investigating the legitness.