Yahoo has shut down my website

[legendsofamerica]

On Monday, I received a notice from Yahoo that I had infringed on another website's copyright. I had 48 hours to respond or Yahoo threatened to take down the entire subdirectory where the photographs
were stored. Though I was their customer, they did not even ask me for a response before making these threats. It was as easy as one person making a complaint, without any verification on Yahoo's part, as to the legitimacy of the compalint.

The alleged copyright infringement was actually for photographs that are in the public domain, that a website called withoutsanctuary.org published in a book. I did not utilize this website's photographs -
it's almost impossible, as they are too small. In any event, thephotographs that I utilized are from the Library of Congress and other institutions for which I gave proper credit.

Long story short, I responded to Yahoo in far less than 24 hours with a document that included the original source of the photographs and, as a "good will" gesture, for those photographs that I could not cite, I took them down. These photographs are all late 1800's and early 1900's. Copyright laws specified, at that time, that copyright protection lasted only 50 years and even then, was required to have been registered or no copyright existed. This too, I included in the response to Yahoo. I also reiterated to Yahoo that publishing a book, utilizing public domain photographs, does not provide copyright protection for the photographs, themselves, only the book and text. I received absolutely no response.

Suddenly, this morning (Wednesday, December 7th), my entire website has disappeared along with access to my email.

When I called the Customer Service Department twice, they could only direct me to a voicemail for the legal department. Again, I left two messages with NO response.

Though I own two domains, both hosted with Yahoo, and have been a customer for two years, this is the response, or the lack thereof that I have received.

My website is my business and my email address is my lifeline. Yahoo, on the say so, of one complaint has removed both without ANY communication to me, nor verification of the complaint.

I am currently working on moving the site to another hosting provider, but during the duration, my business is down.

Any ideas on how to respond to this? Do I have any recourse whatsoever?

Any help is truly appreciated!!

Kathy Weiser
Owner
www.legendsofamerica.com (currently down)

[ADAM Web Design]

The only recourse you really have is to get a refund for any prepaid hosting fees. The problem is that they've shut you down for a reason that is at least semi-legitimate.

I'm not saying you stole anything: I believe you. But hosts do reserve the right when questions of copyright come into play to shut anyone down as they see fit.

This is why, whenever I use images, they come from stock photography sites, CDs, and known free image sites. You may want to start doing the same, even if it does mean your site suffers a bit for it. Better safe than sorry, right?

Before you put the site up on a new host, make sure they're okay with the content.

[mishj]

I strongly suspect there is more to this story than we are being told. In case not, please send me full details and I will get this cleared up.

Yahoo! is certainly not the sort of company to act in this way, if anything, they let websites stay up far too long that should be closed down because they are so keen not to be seen as "censoring" the web etc. They usually wait for a court case to order them to take a website down in this kind of situation..

Please email me and let me know full details and I will investigate this for you.

Michelle

[corporateface]

Hosting with yahoo may have its benefits, but I prefer personally to host with "slightly" smaller companies that may have more concern about customer service.

Last I checked, Yahoo.com was way overpriced for hosting anyway. If you pay more than $10/mon for shared hosting you are overpaying IMO. Yahoo charges "Windows Server" prices but ONLY offers Linux or Unix hosting. If you pay more than $5/mon for Linux you are overpaying.

Keith

[strum4life]

I think people are wrong for questioning this guy's story. Huge corporations like Yahoo! simply don't take the time to properly investigate these matters.

Once a bidder on eBay got mad when I wouldn't end the auction early and give him a side deal. He then turned my auction into eBay for a bogus "copyright violation" and ebay suspended my whole account. It took me three weeks to get my account back.

[flood6]

Originally Posted by corporateface

If you pay more than $5/mon for Linux you are overpaying.

That's a bold statement. EDIT: I made kind of a wise ass post and wanted to change it. My point was that even with shared hosting if you're getting a lot of bandwidth with a lot of space and great service, there are plenty of cases where I could see paying more than $5 per month for Linux hosting.

Personally, they'd have to pay me to get me to host my stuff on a Windows box, lol.

[kjohnson5576]

I wish Yahoo would take down one of my competitors that stole word for word my ad copy. I've sent both a notice and after 2 weeks, all the words are still there. Now I've got to go get a lawyer to hassle with them. IMO Yahoo isn't fast enough.

[timmathews.com]

legendsofamerica,

Ill host you for free.

I have Win2k3 Servers, and will hook you up no charge.
Consider it a kick in Y!'s pants.

Talk to me.
Tim

[krisidious]

whats the phone number for their tech support? they shut my account down and I can't contact anyone?

[corporateface]

You need to look at your original transaction email from Yahoo to get the support number.

[Andilinks]

1/3 of all DMCA takedowns are abusive...

http://lawweb.usc.edu/news/releases/...egalFlaws.html

I have discussed this matter with the owners of my hosting company (on their public forums) and I am satisfied that they will give the site owner(s) the benefit of the doubt when possible and will not just do the take-down the easy way as it was done by Yahoo and as many cut-rate hosts would.

see their reply here:

http://www.aota.net/forums/showthread.php?t=20542

[xsurveys]

It seems to me that you need a better web host - or at least one you can get a hold of.
I use fortehosting.com and they are everything I could hope for in a host. For starters - when you call them - they answer. When you email them they answer . And when you use their online chat - they actually help you. They aren't the cheapest - but I am willing t o pay for good service any day!

[mishj]

For those wanting Yahoo! support details, use the following link to either compose an email or get the phone number..
http://smallbusiness.yahoo.com/contactus/email_us.php

[espectations]

It is the first time I hear of this.

Interesting....

As a general rule I avoid using too many graphics and if I do, I make sure that it is my own.

Even if I have to go out and take a picture, change it and then use it.

Maybe it is good to rather be safe than sorry.

[cz]

I am a Y! store owner hosting two stores there. I have nothing bad to say about them (yet) after 4 yrs still no problems. This is SOP for Yahoo! and all that Kathy has to do is have the "offended party" shoot a fax to Y! that the offending matl. is down and the store will pop back on again.

This stuff is posted regularly in the Ystore Merchant forum and usually handled "in house" - lots of Y! store owners, with connections, jump on board to help and bingo the site is back up. Regardless of fair use issues - take the stuff down - get with the offended party and have them fax Y! that they're satisfied and you'll be up & running. You want to copy and paste your post here:
http://www.ystoretools.com/forums/lo...et=default.asp

[richard-s]

I no longer trust Yahoo: Recently, amongst all the spam and phishing emails in the POP3 inbox on my main ISP was an email with no "sender" and no "subject."

This email claimed to be from geocities at Yahoo and claimed that I had violated their terms of service.

I assumed that it was just another fake email and ignored it.

I use my geocities web site only for very occasional testing, so had only two very simple pages. I would delete the site completely, but Yahoo's on-screen messages imply that this would also delete my email account.

Soon afterwards, my Yahoo email account (which I do use!) was "de-activated," trapping several important emails.

Yahoo's response to this situation was very poor. Their TOS are very long and complex. De-activation of my email account was completely inappropriate.

Eventually, I persuaded Yahoo to re-activate my account. (I was pleased to discover that even the offensive spam had been carefully preserved in my inbox!) However, I no longer trust Yahoo: At any time, they may suddenly close my account.

[TrafficProducer]

Phishing Con?

Are you sure it is from Yahoo and not a Phishing Con?

If you have clicked on any links in any emails and been asked to enter Passwords watch out! Log on

Directly only don't click on email links.

[AuctionHugh]

Originally Posted by legendsofamerica

On Monday, I received a notice from Yahoo that I had infringed on another website's copyright.... The alleged copyright infringement was actually for photographs that are in the public domain...

What a horrible story. I have had auctions removed in the same frustrating manner, no real appeal process. I find this really scary.

Hugh

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[swordfish-1]

What happened to legendsofamerica is very unfortunate
and very unfair. I too have been accused of copywrite infringement and have been lucky enough to
not get shut down, sued, or banned from anything.

Using the graphics from manufacturers of products that we sell for them is essential to our website and our business, and they encourage us to use them
because they are usualy of better quality than we produce ourselves.

The accusations will usually come from a second party
or a competitor. Most of the time, there may not even be a copywrite on a picture at all. A copywrite
should be used and enforced on a company logo, origional artwork, ad copy, or public personality.
Anything promotional or content used for the purpose of commerce is certainly worth protecting.

In the case of legendsofamerica, I would use a server
that has more personalized customer service and instant access to sitebuilder software, so that you
can instantly delete any content that may come into question. A customer oriented server will at least
disscuss matters with you before taking action.

Where servers are concerned, there is cheap, and there is value. An extra couple bucks a month is a small price to pay to control your own destiny.
So far, I have been happy with our web server in that reguard. I have a link to them on our site if
you want to check them out.

[quark]

The problem is two fold:

1-the search engines (not just yahoo) will act on a DMCA complaint for copyright theft, should they see a duplication of copy or images. they do not do any research, to see who had the copy first, they just side with the complaining party, providing they see duplicate page content. this is not a hosting issue. the same would happen if the complaint were made to the search engines.

2-on the other side of the coin, the search engines are flooded with DMCA complaints for out and out theft of page copy and images. this past week alone, on my usual sweep, i found about 50 companies using anywhere from a paragraph, TO MY ENTIRE SITE! as there page copy. i have found in the past some jerks would use my copy and even leave my email address and phone number within their copy. it is truly like the wild west. the problem is laziness on behalf of their webmasters and themselves and that they are, in some cases too stupid or illiterate to write there own.

therefore sorry to say, if you cannot document and post next to the photo or copy a credit from where it is from and the permissions given, you made a mistake. always cover your butt!!!

for the person posting here about your website copy being stolen, go to the search engine and search on DMCA claims. You will need to use their form,following their guidlines and write a letter (Microsoft is the only one to accept an email) and if you can add the search string, using your copy that shows the offending party's link. (Yahoo dropped one site within 5 days for us, MSN responded with a nudge and will drop this week. Google usuall is pretty responsive as well.)

further as to protection, use www.copyscape.com to show you who is stealing your copy. YOU WILL BE SURPRISED AT WHAT YOU FIND, SHOULD YOU RANK HIGH.
good luck

[legendsofamerica]

To everyone, I want to first thank all of you for the wonderful ideas and tips on how to protect myself in the future. I have already made steps to move the website to a new host, but it was an absolute nightmare to obtain the registry key from Yahoo. Finally, I obtained it via their “sub-contracted” registrar, but the website is still down.

Though I feel confident the site will come back up within the next few days, it does not excuse Yahoo’s immediate presumptions of guilt, as well as the loss of business over the last week, the total loss of two years of email communications that often include sales information and other important details of my business. Moving the website obviously loses all that documentation.

Furthermore, what happens to the 13,000 daily unique visitors that I have worked so hard to obtain, as well as potential page rank drop on Google, and to search engine placement while the website is down for a week?

Yes, the post was lacking in many specific details as I wanted to keep it brief, however, the full story can be found on my blog here: http://legendsofamerica.blogspot.com/ (thank God, not hosted by Yahoo.)

In response to a couple of specific questions:

To Adam Webdesign - I understand that web hosts reserve the right to take down a site when they see infringement and in fact, I wholeheartedly agree! The wildest thing is that when I did a thorough search on Yahoo complaints, it was the direct opposite – with almost all complainants alleging that Yahoo does absolutely nothing. Perhaps they have extremely changed their stance in order to defray this negative publicity. However, if they continue to make this type of move, their negative publicity, as well as loss of business, may just sway their complaints in the opposite direction. Keep in mind; this was the first and only complaint against my website.

To Misj (Michelle) – Though I have already started the process to move the domain, anything that you could do to figure out how this happened would be much appreciated. I will email Michelle all of the particulars along with documents, and will also do the same for anyone else that questions the legitimacy of my complaint.

To timmathews.com – Tim - What a wonderful, wonderful offer to bring my site back up! Wish I had had an email address in order to have viewed the responses that were coming in. Unfortunately, I just got my email reinstated today and have already set up the new web host.

Thanks to all!!

Kathy