4 ms·

Digital Ocean Shuts Down Site with No Notice

4 points by burnerdo 10y ago

Digital Ocean shut down our droplet / site without any notice. They received a single DMCA request and immediately shut down without any notice. Is this standard practice? Seems extreme, very disruptive. Do all hosting providers take this tactic?

chirau 10y ago
You need to give more information on the sequence of events and the correspondence you have had with Digital Ocean. As it is, it is difficult to assess.
- burnerdo 10y ago
  There was no detailed sequence. Everything was fine one moment. No notice of anything. Then the website goes down. At the same time we get an email saying: "This notice is to inform you that material posted on one or more of your Droplet(s), was the subject of a notification of claimed copyright infringement pursuant to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (“DMCA”). A copy of that notice is included below. As you know, Digital Ocean provides hosting service to your Droplet, but is not responsible for the content hosted there. Copyright infringement is expressly forbidden by our terms of service and can, in appropriate circumstances, result in the termination of your service with Digital Ocean. Digital Ocean takes seriously the DMCA notices it receives and expects its customers to do the same. At this time we have disabled access to the droplet, pending removal of the infringing content." That was the first we heard about this issue from DO or anyone.
  - wmf 10y ago
    So did you file a counter-notice? How long did it take DO to bring your droplet back?
    - burnerdo 10y ago
      We removed the image, it took 30 minutes to an hour after after we notified them of it to get it reactivated. The problem was not giving us any notice in advance. This was a single image on our entire site. Seems excessive and unproductive to immediately shut down an entire site for a thumbnail image posted.
ctz 10y ago
This is how the DMCA works -- a provider is freed from liability if they process a valid-looking takedown request immediately. They can then notify you. You must now file a counter-notice if the request is invalid.

4 points by burnerdo 10y ago

chirau 10y ago

You need to give more information on the sequence of events and the correspondence you have had with Digital Ocean. As it is, it is difficult to assess.

burnerdo 10y ago
There was no detailed sequence. Everything was fine one moment. No notice of anything. Then the website goes down. At the same time we get an email saying: "This notice is to inform you that material posted on one or more of your Droplet(s), was the subject of a notification of claimed copyright infringement pursuant to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (“DMCA”). A copy of that notice is included below. As you know, Digital Ocean provides hosting service to your Droplet, but is not responsible for the content hosted there. Copyright infringement is expressly forbidden by our terms of service and can, in appropriate circumstances, result in the termination of your service with Digital Ocean. Digital Ocean takes seriously the DMCA notices it receives and expects its customers to do the same. At this time we have disabled access to the droplet, pending removal of the infringing content." That was the first we heard about this issue from DO or anyone.
- wmf 10y ago
  So did you file a counter-notice? How long did it take DO to bring your droplet back?
  - burnerdo 10y ago
    We removed the image, it took 30 minutes to an hour after after we notified them of it to get it reactivated. The problem was not giving us any notice in advance. This was a single image on our entire site. Seems excessive and unproductive to immediately shut down an entire site for a thumbnail image posted.

ctz 10y ago

This is how the DMCA works -- a provider is freed from liability if they process a valid-looking takedown request immediately. They can then notify you. You must now file a counter-notice if the request is invalid.