Pirates must love GoDaddy

If you are a pirate, then GoDaddy seems to be the place to host.

Last November, we spotted three stolen articles on the sephari.co.nz domain, which appears to be hosted by GoDaddy. I filed two DMCA notices, to no avail.

They were in the standard format, one that GoDaddy requests and has acted on in the past.

The only thing I got back was this:

Your claim was received and will be reviewed and processed in the order that it was received. There is no need to submit the claim again. Thank you.

Kindest Regards,

D Preston
Go Daddy | Trademark & Copyright Claims

Come March and the articles are still there. So I filed another. Here is the body of the letter:

It appears that a GoDaddy customer has taken our work without permission. The infringing pages may be found at:

http://sephari.co.nz/museums/royal-new-zealand-ballet-debuts-12-works-digitally-on-may-12-lucire-lucire/
http://sephari.co.nz/culture/hands-on-in-the-midwest-lucire/
http://sephari.co.nz/culture/travel-in-brief-dining-with-vistajet-indonesian-celebrations-holland-americas-150th-lucire-lucire/

The originals of the above items are located at the following URLs:

https://lucire.com/insider/20220504/royal-new-zealand-ballet-debuts-12-works-digitally-on-may-12/ https://lucire.com/2022/1014vo0.shtml https://lucire.com/insider/20221120/travel-in-brief-dining-with-vistajet-indonesian-celebrations-holland-americas-150th/

There is no contact point for this client, so we have come directly to you.

We do not believe that the unauthorized publication of our work can be defended under the fair use doctrine nor has it been licensed under Creative Commons. Its publication does not serve public policy. It is our copyrighted work, and we have never given permission for this party to feature it.

I hereby state that I have a good faith belief that the disputed use of the copyrighted material or reference or link to such material is not authorized by the copyright owner, its agent, or the law (e.g., as a fair use).

I hereby state that the information in this notice is accurate and, under penalty of perjury, that I am the owner, or authorized to act on behalf of the owner, of the copyright or of an exclusive right under the copyright that is allegedly infringed.

I see D. Preston is on the case again. Here is what they said:

Dear Sir or Madam,

The website jyanet.com is not hosted by GoDaddy. We ask that you please note the following information:

The REGISTRAR is the company that sells a domain name registration to a person or company.
The REGISTRANT is the person or company that purchases a domain name for use.
The HOSTING PROVIDER is the company that provides space on it’s computers for the files that make up the content of the website.

That’s right. They’re telling me that my own company’s website is not hosted by them.

A website that does not appear anywhere in the complaint except for under my signature and in the reply address.

The rest is all mansplainy bollocks that says I should approach my own hosting provider to complain about myself.

I don’t know if they are illiterate, incompetent, obtuse, or overwhelmed.

But a pirate would simply love having a host that will run interference for them.

I wrote back:

Dear D. Preston:

Please read my complaint. Jyanet.com is not at issue here and I know you do not host it—as this is our company’s domain name.

It is not even mentioned in the attachment (which I am re-attaching): why would I file a complaint against ourselves?

The only place jyanet.com is mentioned is in my reply address.

Now, as in November when we filed our first DMCA notices with you, the complaint is about sephari.co.nz, which, based on our research, is hosted by you.

This has gone on for months.

I know the difference between registrar, registrant and hosting provider.

You were sent a standard letter in the format that you requested. A format that GoDaddy has acted on successfully before, not to mention other hosts.

I respectfully request you act on this copyright breach.

It’s not all doom and gloom. I had some fun with a couple of these people who hotlinked our images, while stealing the articles or spinning them.

Update, March 24: Finally a resolution, which coincidentally arrived at the same time I was asking connections on Mastodon to check if the domain was down. This took four months.