The only change needed in the headline is to replace Pearson with Serverbeach. Im no fan of Pearson, or DMCA notices, but yes Serverbeach is the dangerous incompetent here.

And, do you know what? ServerBeach is not even a good hosting service (my experience).

Good things sometimes come from shit: maybe ServerBeach will clean up their act.

We do a lot of business with ServerBeach / Peer1, they are good and have gotten a lot better in the last 24 months. I just don't think they deserve total blame in this situation.

If you are you are providing unmanaged servers, that client misses the warning and doesn't respond, you have to take the next step and suspend that server because many times your contract prohibits you from going in and removing one URL. I wish they had called too but sometimes that isn't possible given the margins on some of these businesses.

Thanks, Ben (CEO at Site5.com)

You're seriously saying that ServerBeach's margin on $70k in annual hosting is so low that they can't be expected to pick up the phone before taking down somebody's site?

Gosh, whose fault could that be? I'd say it's the people who set those prices. Given that the first item in their "Why Server Beach?" list is "Superior Service", they should price in some actual service. Including, say, checking to see if you had fixed the DMCA issue before turning off the site.

The article is somewhat poorly written with the chronology being difficult to follow, but this is what I made of it:

1. the Edublogs team removed the offending post within the 12 hours, thereby complying with the request.

2. apparently ServerBeach took it upon themselves to double check through presumably automated means and detected the file in a Varnish cache (which would be inaccessible to the public)

3. this led to ServerBeach deciding to shut down Edublog's servers on the grounds of non-compliance.

If my interpretation of the jumbled order of events is correct, it's pretty clear ServerBeach is at fault here - it's not illegal to have a copyrighted file on your server; it's illegal to serve that file without proper rights. Their system is flawed.

I did a lot of hosting (of well over a million sites and clients) and this is simply not good practice. Not even looking at the amount paid by edublogs to host. If a warning is ignored you automatically dispatch another mail (and/or sms as some do which is even better). Then you block web traffic in the firewall, leaving :22 open so the client can repair if they missed the 2 warnings.

Depending on the prior cases for that client (or; is this client a notorious spreader of illegal materials or someone who didn't paid in time on numerous occasions) you send automated warnings for a few days if the content remains in place and THEN you can decide to (manually) switch of the server. Unfortunately bigger companies forget about client support / contact and that client is king; Pearson is not your client, edublogs is; you are supposed to defend them, especially lacking prior cases over a larger period of time.

If edublogs called serverbeach to explain the case, telling them they removed the content (from varnish as well) through the open ssh connection, the support person can immediately check and switch it back on. That's normal practice to me and any host who doesn't do that is not worth paying more than $1.99 for some experimental landing page/site which doesn't mean much to you anyway if closed down.

Sorry to say if this is how Serverbeach or Site5.com treat paying customers, I will never bring my business there and I hope others do not either to show that we expect better from you in this day and age. There are clear ways to treat DMCA's and most can be done automated without actually removing anything yourself on the server; there are plenty of filtering rules to block outside the actual server while keeping the rest of the system up and giving the client ample opportunity to remove the offending content.

How interesting it is that they have three contact numbers listed, the site had already removed the content and it appears that 10 days ago their automated (read: unreliable) notification system had apparently notified someone of a DMCA takedown that never appeared to get to their client.

Guess I'll never use them. Ever.

Still, 12 hours after receiving notice seems a bit extreme. Especially for content that wasn't publicly accessible anymore.

Thank you. Just added another hosting site to my black-list.

Really? Downvotes? Is HN becoming Reddit? He isn't spreading misinformation or misleading anyone, just offering a different viewpoint (and one of a hosting company, mind you).

>What would you have them do instead? They're bound under OCILLA and the DMCA in general to act in a certain way. Any other host on the Internet will, if they are interested in remaining in business, act exactly as ServerBeach did.

No, not EVERY host. FusionStorm for example actually read and comprehend DMCA claims, to narrow down their scope. You DO NOT turn off a customer of this size WITHOUT GETTING ON THE PHONE with them FIRST. I hope this will teach ServerBeach a lesson. However, as I said in another comment, the overall landscape here is deteriorating is far beyond ServerBeach's control: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4657833

PS. I should also add here that the revenues of a company that pays $70,000 for hosting annually could well be above $2m/yr, and such company could be capable of raising serious legal issues with their hosting company.

Like I said elsewhere; the hoster is supposed to defend and support their clients. Who cares if they were justified in doing this.

I think your Tiny and our Tiny are clearly quite different ;)

According to the article, ServerBeach did have justification: it's the letter of their policy. That doesn't make it smart or sane, but it is justified. They did what they said they'd do.

This is an interesting point. But the story does raise the issue of "social-engineering" other people to do your bidding using (or as a consequnce of) DMCA notices.

There's still the troubling question as to why ServerBeach felt compelled to take down 1.5 million blogs over a single DMCA notice. There's nothing in the DMCA process that demands an entire "ecosystem" be killed off to eliminate a single "bad apple."

In that context, and perhaps with a re-written headline, the issues raised here are more generally extended a single company, no?

See my comment re: call I just had with them , hope to be able to report some new policies that'll stop this from happening to their other customers shortly!