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I'm the hardbin guy. Since I wrote the post about the DMCA takedown notices the other day, someone kindly offered to provide alternative hosting for hardbin.co

I'm the hardbin guy. Since I wrote the post about the DMCA takedown notices the other day, someone kindly offered to provide alternative hosting for hardbin.com that should be more resilient to bogus DMCA takedowns, so happily hardbin.com is back online (but not operated by me any more). Also I emailed Sean Lang (the guy with the github repo with dozens of example DMCA emails from these guys) and it turns out that in the last few months he also took his IPFS gateway offline because dealing with the takedowns was too much trouble.

briantakita 3y ago
> because dealing with the takedowns was too much trouble. What are the consequences of ignoring these notices?
- thrashh 3y ago
  The DMCA is protection for an operator because instead of the first step being “get sued,” you get a letter and if you comply, you are protected. If you ignore them, it’s basically as if the DMCA never existed and they can just sue you. And without the DMCA, you are liable if it’s some random user uploading copyrighted content to your website.
  - lol768 3y ago
    > If you ignore them, it’s basically as if the DMCA never existed and they can just sue you. Pretty sure jes is in the UK though, and it's not the sort of thing you'd ever be extradited over... so not really sure why the notices matter. I guess some hosting providers are more sympathetic here than others.
    - masfuerte 3y ago
      Don't be so sure. The English courts agreed to extradite Richard O'Dwyer to America for link sharing. In the end he avoided it by signing a deferred prosecution agreement and paying a fine.
      - hulitu 3y ago
        Like in any corrupted democracy, it depends. See Asange for a counterexample.
        iudqnolq 3y ago
        What exactly do you mean by counterexample? Assange has had access to UK courts to attempt to challenge his extradition, but he hasn't been successful. He's nearly exhausted all the possible things to appeal.
        ipaddr 3y ago
        What is the current fake charge keeping him in jail?
        boffinAudio 3y ago
        Not kowtowing to the military industrial complex that rules the West ..
    - toyg 3y ago
      US-UK extradition agreements are so lopsided and wide-ranging, you can basically assume that one will be extradited for breaching US law while on Airstrip One. That infamous treaty has turned the Special Relationship into full-on vassalage.
- slang800 3y ago
  I'm not sure how likely it is that they'll try to sue me for failing to take down content, but I don't want to find out. Running an IPFS gateway doesn't make me any money and even consulting a lawyer is way outside my hobby project budget.
slang800 3y ago
Yeah, I took ipfs.slang.cx down after Hetzner threatened to kick me off their service. I was able to stay on top of the takedowns by writing a script to create & deploy nginx block rules for each URL in the DMCA emails. Obviously I had no time for manual review of the URLs. But I guess that didn't matter and Hetzner got annoyed with all the emails and decided my business wasn't worth the trouble.
- qingcharles 3y ago
  How did Hetzner become aware of the notices? Were they CC'd to them? I ask because I'm building a web site currently hosted on Hetzner that will provide access to files that have fallen into the public domain, but also files that for all intents and purposes appear to copyright orphans. I will take down anything where an entity asserts a valid copyright against anything where a mistake has been made, but I don't want Hetzner just arbitrarily shooting down my site.
  - tinco 3y ago
    Don't directly expose your servers to the web, proxy them through some other provider so that whenever that provider falls under pressure you already have the infrastructure to move to different ip addresses and you don't have to deal with the hassle of migrating your data to other servers.
  - slang800 3y ago
    First the ciu-online.net people sent DMCA notices to myself and Cloudflare, since I used Cloudflare as a caching proxy. Eventually Cloudflare gave them the IP address of my server and the ciu-online.net people were able to determine that IP address was owned by Hetzner. Now they send DMCA notices to myself, Cloudflare, and Hetzner. I think the goal is to annoy as many people as possible. Even after I shut off my IPFS gateway they continued sending notices. Anyway, if you're hosting anything that might generate a DMCA notice, don't use Hetzner. They will kick you off even if you're complying with the DMCA process. Also, they make you submit a statement on abuse.hetzner.com for every single DMCA notice that gets sent to them. If you don't submit the statement in 24 hours they threaten to block your IP address. It is extremely tedious and annoying.
hackerfactor1 3y ago
Sounds similar to a SLAPP: Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation The goal is to burden the recipient with overhead costs that it becomes impractical or cost-prohibitive to participate.
- sidewndr46 3y ago
  Doesn't the plaintiff have to be the government for a lawsuit to be a "SLAPP" suit?
  - schlauerfox 3y ago
    These are different state by state, but Anti-SLAPP is meant to protect from vexatious litigants, that is someone rich threatening to sue you to shut you up. I'm not a lawyer, I just listen to Serious Trouble podcast.
  - KptMarchewa 3y ago
    No.
  - SAI_Peregrinus 3y ago
    No.
ldehaan 3y ago
[dead]
pelorat 3y ago
But you are in the UK, the DMCA had no legal standing there. Did you host on a US service?
- kobalsky 3y ago
  for all practical reasons, the DMCA is global law. I mean it obvious that it's not, but are you willing to test how far they can reach when you have stories like of Peter Sunde and Kim Dotcom to see what happens?

briantakita 3y ago

> because dealing with the takedowns was too much trouble. What are the consequences of ignoring these notices?

thrashh 3y ago
The DMCA is protection for an operator because instead of the first step being “get sued,” you get a letter and if you comply, you are protected. If you ignore them, it’s basically as if the DMCA never existed and they can just sue you. And without the DMCA, you are liable if it’s some random user uploading copyrighted content to your website.
- lol768 3y ago
  > If you ignore them, it’s basically as if the DMCA never existed and they can just sue you. Pretty sure jes is in the UK though, and it's not the sort of thing you'd ever be extradited over... so not really sure why the notices matter. I guess some hosting providers are more sympathetic here than others.
  - masfuerte 3y ago
    Don't be so sure. The English courts agreed to extradite Richard O'Dwyer to America for link sharing. In the end he avoided it by signing a deferred prosecution agreement and paying a fine.
    - hulitu 3y ago
      Like in any corrupted democracy, it depends. See Asange for a counterexample.
      - iudqnolq 3y ago
        What exactly do you mean by counterexample? Assange has had access to UK courts to attempt to challenge his extradition, but he hasn't been successful. He's nearly exhausted all the possible things to appeal.
        ipaddr 3y ago
        What is the current fake charge keeping him in jail?
        boffinAudio 3y ago
        Not kowtowing to the military industrial complex that rules the West ..
  - toyg 3y ago
    US-UK extradition agreements are so lopsided and wide-ranging, you can basically assume that one will be extradited for breaching US law while on Airstrip One. That infamous treaty has turned the Special Relationship into full-on vassalage.
slang800 3y ago
I'm not sure how likely it is that they'll try to sue me for failing to take down content, but I don't want to find out. Running an IPFS gateway doesn't make me any money and even consulting a lawyer is way outside my hobby project budget.

slang800 3y ago

Yeah, I took ipfs.slang.cx down after Hetzner threatened to kick me off their service. I was able to stay on top of the takedowns by writing a script to create & deploy nginx block rules for each URL in the DMCA emails. Obviously I had no time for manual review of the URLs. But I guess that didn't matter and Hetzner got annoyed with all the emails and decided my business wasn't worth the trouble.

qingcharles 3y ago
How did Hetzner become aware of the notices? Were they CC'd to them? I ask because I'm building a web site currently hosted on Hetzner that will provide access to files that have fallen into the public domain, but also files that for all intents and purposes appear to copyright orphans. I will take down anything where an entity asserts a valid copyright against anything where a mistake has been made, but I don't want Hetzner just arbitrarily shooting down my site.
- tinco 3y ago
  Don't directly expose your servers to the web, proxy them through some other provider so that whenever that provider falls under pressure you already have the infrastructure to move to different ip addresses and you don't have to deal with the hassle of migrating your data to other servers.
- slang800 3y ago
  First the ciu-online.net people sent DMCA notices to myself and Cloudflare, since I used Cloudflare as a caching proxy. Eventually Cloudflare gave them the IP address of my server and the ciu-online.net people were able to determine that IP address was owned by Hetzner. Now they send DMCA notices to myself, Cloudflare, and Hetzner. I think the goal is to annoy as many people as possible. Even after I shut off my IPFS gateway they continued sending notices. Anyway, if you're hosting anything that might generate a DMCA notice, don't use Hetzner. They will kick you off even if you're complying with the DMCA process. Also, they make you submit a statement on abuse.hetzner.com for every single DMCA notice that gets sent to them. If you don't submit the statement in 24 hours they threaten to block your IP address. It is extremely tedious and annoying.

hackerfactor1 3y ago

Sounds similar to a SLAPP: Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation The goal is to burden the recipient with overhead costs that it becomes impractical or cost-prohibitive to participate.

sidewndr46 3y ago
Doesn't the plaintiff have to be the government for a lawsuit to be a "SLAPP" suit?
- schlauerfox 3y ago
  These are different state by state, but Anti-SLAPP is meant to protect from vexatious litigants, that is someone rich threatening to sue you to shut you up. I'm not a lawyer, I just listen to Serious Trouble podcast.
- KptMarchewa 3y ago
  No.
- SAI_Peregrinus 3y ago
  No.

ldehaan 3y ago

[dead]

pelorat 3y ago

But you are in the UK, the DMCA had no legal standing there. Did you host on a US service?

kobalsky 3y ago
for all practical reasons, the DMCA is global law. I mean it obvious that it's not, but are you willing to test how far they can reach when you have stories like of Peter Sunde and Kim Dotcom to see what happens?