When I got back home last night I received an odd e-mail from my hosting company with the subject line “Account WILL Be Suspended Urgent Response Required”. Of course, I’ve had numerous chats with my hosting company for help and support so I already knew this e-mail was legit. But I was very curious on what I did wrong to potentially get my account suspended.
As you know, you should always abide by their rules and regulations because they can delete your entire site(s) if you break any of their TOS without even warning you. I’m just lucky they notified me because it looks like a company filed a copyright infringement claim against one of my sites. Well, technically, it was one single post that was apparently ranked second for a popular search term.
My hosting company doesn’t automatically take sides but just like any other claim they have to take it extremely serious. And I’m taking this pretty serious as well and cooperating. They never accused me of anything but when it comes to legal stuff they obviously have to take things seriously.
Of course, I deleted the URLs that I was being accused of because it’s simply not worth the hassle.
Though, I’m not 100 percent sure what I did wrong given the fact that I wrote that post myself. I’m going to have to assume it was either the image I used or maybe I posted about a trademark company. It could very well be both but as of right now I couldn’t tell you until I hear back.
The reason why I’m posting this is to inform you guys to be careful on what you post about, what you include in the posts (images, URLs, etc) and where you get the information from. More importantly, always read TOS carefully before committing to anything.
I try to be positive and look at this situation in a brighter light. I’ve always said that the more haters you have and the more attention your sites are getting whether it’s positive or negative, you’re definitely on the right path to being successful.
Think about it, if I wasn’t ranked on the first page of that particular popular keyword, do you think they would be after me? Probably not. I’m a nobody. Well, a nobody that was ranked second in Google. 
But this was my first copyright infringement claim and I am hoping this will be my last as well. Has anyone else had a similar experience before? What do you think was the reasoning for mine?
Any legal people out there? I would definitely like you to drop some knowledge on this. Thanks!
I’m no lawyer so please don’t take this as gospel but as far as I know you can’t complain about trademark infringement unless it is part of the actual domain. So if it was just the name of something in your post URL/post content then that shouldn’t be an issue.
Your text is only a problem if you’ve lifted a large part of it from a copyrighted source, you’re not stupid enough to do that! So I’d guess that leaves you images. Where did you source them from? Did you have permission to use them? The days of using Google images to “source” an image are passed. Things like this are becoming more and more common and you have to be really careful what images you use and how you use them (hot linking is a real no no).
It’s natural in these situations to cr@p yourself at first and think that “the man” is out to get you. In reality take down what you think is causing the issue and if needs be communicate with whoever is complaining and you can normally resolve the issue nicely.
Be sure to let us know how you get on. Like I said don’t take any of this as legal advice, just opinion based on a bit of experience
You should have gotten a report of the claim. Odds are they were just trying to scare you.
If you would’ve talked to your hosting company and asked them if they’d keep your website up while you investigate, you probably could have gotten the support of Internet users and won the case.
I’ve seen it happen countless times. One company gets bad PR and they send their lawyer hounds out to erase all mention of it.
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That’s wild, I wonder why they were making that claim? Did you save a copy of the post so that you can republish it once everything get straighten out?
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I agree, it all has to do with the fact of ranking high on Google. You will be noticed only if you appear on the first 10 results. However, there’s nothing worst like having that guilt as charged feeling and being afraid of getting caught for copying other’s content. I stop doing that a long time ago and now everypeny I collect feels mine.
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