TAKEDOWNS
What happens when a notice arrives about your server
Hosting companies are vague about this on purpose, because the honest version reads badly for most of them. Here is ours, in the order it happens.
The sequence
- 01It arrivesThe notice reaches the abuse mailbox published in our WHOIS records. Most are machine-generated, arrive in batches, and name an IP address rather than a person.
- 02A person reads itNot a filter. Someone on the abuse desk opens it and establishes two things: which service it names, and which region that service is in.
- 03The region decidesIf the service sits in a safe-harbour region, the notice is logged and closed. If it sits in a standard region, local law governs and we tell you what that means for you.
- 04Nothing movesFor safe-harbour services no suspension is issued, no address is null-routed, no rate limit appears, and no email lands in your inbox. The file grows by one entry.
What we do not do
- We do not forward the notice to you, or ask you to respond to it.
- We do not relay your account details to the sender. There is very little to relay in the first place.
- We do not quietly throttle the service, move it, or degrade it while pretending nothing happened.
- We do not keep a strike counter that suspends you at some undisclosed number.
When you will hear from us
Three cases, and only three. A valid order from a court with jurisdiction over the facility. A report of something prohibited by our Acceptable Use Policy that we have substantiated. Or an operational problem with your service that you need to know about, such as a failing disk or scheduled maintenance on the host.
Everything else is our administrative burden, not yours. You bought a server to run something, not to argue with a crawler.
Published by NoDMCAVPS, an offshore host that files automated DMCA notices instead of forwarding them. What we still remove is listed in the acceptable use policy.
