Web Hosting Talk : Web Hosting Main Forums : Web Hosting : Who is responsible for remove forum links ?

[powerhoster]

Hi, All,

I have a home business forum. The website owners hired a SEO team to post links in my forums before google penguin.

After google penguin, they hired another company to remove links, and notified my hosting provider that they wanted my forums to remove links.

My hosting provider gived me 24 hours to remove the links or suspend my website.

It is easy to remove their links, just delete one user's posts.

But I really want to know whether my hosting provider has the rights to suspend my website just because of a negative SEO link (this link was posted by the complaints themselves).

Thanks

[kpmedia]

Originally Posted by powerhoster

But I really want to know whether my hosting provider has the rights to suspend my website just because of a negative SEO link (this link was posted by the complaints themselves).

Absolutely not.
Find a better provider. Your current host is ridiculous.

[Collabora]

Didn't some other "Newbie" post something like this recently?

[KMyers]

Originally Posted by powerhoster

Hi, All,

I have a home business forum. The website owners hired a SEO team to post links in my forums before google penguin.

After google penguin, they hired another company to remove links, and notified my hosting provider that they wanted my forums to remove links.

My hosting provider gived me 24 hours to remove the links or suspend my website.

It is easy to remove their links, just delete one user's posts.

But I really want to know whether my hosting provider has the rights to suspend my website just because of a negative SEO link (this link was posted by the complaints themselves).

Thanks

Hello,
Respond to your host advising that no violation of any laws or policies have occurred. I have seen an uprise in false DMCAs requesting links being removed. DMCAs CANNOT apply to links to sites.

I would also start looking for a new host if they continue to press the matter further.

[KMyers]

Originally Posted by Collabora

Didn't some other "Newbie" post something like this recently?

There will be a ton of these appear over the next few months. There are a load of "SEO" companies who basically do little more then spam forums and blogs with "nofollow" backlinks in order to fool the search engines. Now that Google is cracking down on these tricks, they want to try to get the links removed quickly or risk getting sandboxed.

These sites even go as far as providing false DMCAs. I am appalled that providers are threatening their clients to remove the links within 24 hours or be suspended.


@OP - If you want to have fun, you can agree to remove the spam links however the site would need to pay a $100 administrative fee prior to doing any work. It is within your right to get paid for cleaning up their mess.

[powerhoster]

Originally Posted by KMyers

@OP - If you want to have fun, you can agree to remove the spam links however the site would need to pay a $100 administrative fee prior to doing any work. It is within your right to get paid for cleaning up their mess.

You are very , but I am


I have to disable one phpbb3 forum post to work {snip}, I am afraid my hosting provider suspend my website again because of negative link complaint.

What their abuse department said:

"please remove the links within 24 hours, and let us know once this has been done"

Then the complaint emails.


At the end:

"Please ensure that this newest complaint, and the previous issue are resolved in a timely manner to avoid any interruption of service."

I really donot know whether they have the rights to shutdown my website because of negative SEO complaints.

I want to find a new VPS provider but I am afraid the new provider shutdown the website because of this kind of negative SEO link complaint.

Is this the end of forum because of google penguin ? Can a webhosting lawyer answer this kind of question ? I have been in web hosting industry for more than ten years and never had this situation.

[Simplex-Ed]

Originally Posted by KMyers

Hello,
Respond to your host advising that no violation of any laws or policies have occurred. I have seen an uprise in false DMCAs requesting links being removed. DMCAs CANNOT apply to links to sites.

I would also start looking for a new host if they continue to press the matter further.

I agree with this... too many people think firing a pre-made DMCA solves your problems. We receive many DMCA notices from individuals a week... but we're bound to British laws and don't even have a shared hosting service in the USA!

[KMyers]

Originally Posted by powerhoster

You are very , but I am


I have to disable one phpbb3 forum post to work http://www.links4rank.com/businessforum, I am afraid my hosting provider suspend my website again because of negative link complaint.

What their abuse department said:

"please remove the links within 24 hours, and let us know once this has been done"

Then the complaint emails.


At the end:

"Please ensure that this newest complaint, and the previous issue are resolved in a timely manner to avoid any interruption of service."

I really donot know whether they have the rights to shutdown my website because of negative SEO complaints.

I want to find a new VPS provider but I am afraid the new provider shutdown the website because of this kind of negative SEO link complaint.

Is this the end of forum because of google penguin ?

Hello,
Respond to your host advising that you have investigated the issue and link removal does not fall under any legal requirement for removal. The links are not pointing to any illegal content and therefore do not fall under DMCA restrictions.

Also advise that if the complainer would like to pursue the matter further, then you can work out an administrative fee to remove the spam placed by the client.

If the host still pushes the matter, please find a new host, this is a sign of a company who clearly does not know what they are doing.

I get several requests for removal from one of my blogs, some include DMCA notices. ALL are responded to with the same message

[strugar]

Originally Posted by powerhoster

Is this the end of forum because of google penguin ? Can a webhosting lawyer answer this kind of question ? I have been in web hosting industry for more than ten years and never had this situation.

I think that all posts above pretty clearly explained you have nothing to worry about, neither you have to remove the links.

The biggest hassle you could have is to move to another host (OK, that's pretty big hassle to move the forum, but better than to worry whether your current host will suspend you because of groundless claims).

[adam-arvixe]

Hi,

This issue was dealt with in another thread:

http://www.webhostingtalk.com/showthread.php?t=1167881

Please see the following responses from the other thread:

Hello,

It is your responsibility to ensure that your website(s) comply with our policies as well as US laws. As you said, the website owner even tried to contact you.

I assume that you have a ticket open with our Abuse department already - please resolve this issue through that.

If for some reason you do not have a ticket, please post or PM me your username and I would be happy to look into this personally.

Edit: After doing some research and locating your account, it looks like what the person accused you of is not actually against any laws, so I've made sure that our support staff know that, and your account is now unsuspended.

I apologize for the misunderstanding.

Hello,

We're very sorry to hear about your recent experience and would like to ensure you that it is NOT company policy to suspend entire accounts based on content-removal requests such as the one that you've received. While we do strive to follow all laws and regulations when it comes to DMCA Notices and Trademark Infringement reports, we do acknowledge that there are certain unauthorized parties that send incomplete or harmful requests. For this reason we do make all attempts to contact any affected customer to ensure there is complete transparency between ourselves and the content-publisher – this is the most important relationship we have, after all.

Unfortunately, in this case, these steps and policies were not followed which resulted in understandable frustration and anger. Due to this breach of policy and procedure, we've had to remove the tech responsible to ensure that the integrity of our operations does stay in tact. For future reference, however (and I understand that you were quite upset about the interruption of service itself), if/when an account on your VPS is suspended you do have full control over the node – you are able to re-activate that account through WHM.

Again, we apologize for the inconvenience that you experienced and have worked to ensure that this does not occur throughout our organization in the future.

Thank you!

[nexxterra]

This is stupid, My company would send a notice back to the original complainant telling them that they are out of luck and only CC my user on the matter.
I would generally push things to the point of a court order than to tread on the rights of my clients... Free speech is one thing copyright material is another.
After all, YOU do not OWN your domain name and therefore do not own the rights to the link.
I also support moving to another provider!