Godaddy Copyright Infringement Policy

I’m pissed off at Godaddy right now.

Checking my sites to find one of my Godaddy Virtual Dedicated Servers (the one with most websites on, about 60 domains) is down. I go to the Godaddy control panel to find the following notice:

Current Hosting Account Status: Suspended

If you have a question about the status of your account or need assistance with anything else submit a trouble ticket by clicking on the link below. Ensuring that we have your latest passwords on file will help us assist you more quickly. Click the “Sync Passwords” button to do so now.

As you can imagine that wasn’t what I expected.

I check my email to find an email from Godaddy:

Copyright Dispute for your Virtual Dedicated Server (resolving to IP address xxx.xxx.xx.xx) – [Incident ID: 00000000]

The email dated 7 Dec 2011 15:48:27 is a response to an email from a company dated Wed, 30 Nov 2011 17:34:26 (7 days ago) that there’s been a copyright infringement on one page of one of my 100 domains that I host with Godaddy.

I currently don’t have access to the content of the site since the server is down, but looks like someone has copied content from a website and used it in an article that’s been submitted to an article directory which I’ve legally copied from the article directory to one of my sites. Basically if it’s what I think it is an honest mistake.

If I’ve got a copyright infringement on one of my sites I’m happy to remove it, just need to know there’s an issue which apparently isn’t the way Godaddy Copyright Department does things. Interestingly on the same domain I’d used an image of a celebrity that I thought was OK to use, the celebrity who the image was of asked me to remove it (they offered an alternative), I have no idea if it was a copyright infringement, but as I was asked to remove it I removed it within a couple of hours (life is too short for messing around with copyright infringement issues).

No, Godaddy apparently take 7 days to investigate and with no warning to the site owner take down the entire virtualserver with dozens of domains on it!!! How bloody idiotic is that to take out dozens of websites because of one post that as it happens isn’t even indexed in Google.

Fecking idiots.

I called the Godaddy support number and spoke first to Aaaron who didn’t have a clue what to do, he passed me on to an Inbound Supervisor Tray who was equally useless. I gave Tray the option to get the server back online before the end of the telephone conversation or loose me as a customer (been with them 5+ years I believe). Tray from Godaddy failed to get the server back online, I ended the call and went back to the incident email.

These were my options:

In order to resolve this situation and re-activate your site, you have 2 options.

Option 1: Remove the content that is the subject of the copyright complaint.

In order to reactivate the site in question we will need you to provide the following information in a single email response:

A. An electronic signature. (This can be a scanned copy of your physical signature, or as simple as typing your full name.)
B. Identification of the material in question.
C. A statement, under penalty of perjury, that the material has either been removed or promptly will be removed.

Option 2: Submit a complete counter notification regarding the works in question in accordance with our Copyright Infringement policy. You will need to reply via email and include all of the following elements:

A. An electronic signature. (This can be a scanned copy of your physical signature, or as simple as typing your full name.)
B. Identification of the material that has been removed or to which access has been disabled and the location at which the material appeared before it was removed or access to it was disabled.
C. A statement under penalty of perjury that you have a good faith belief that the material was removed or disabled as a result of mistake or misidentification of the material to be removed or disabled.
D. Your name, address, and telephone number, and a statement that you consent to the jurisdiction of the Federal District Court for the judicial district of Arizona, or if your address is outside of the United States, for any judicial district in which Go Daddy may be found, and that you will accept service of process from the Complaining Party or an agent of such Party.

I went with option 1 and sent the email about half an hour ago, so far the server is still down. When my General Election site is back online (not the site with the possible copyright infringement) Godaddy has acted on the email.

I am really pissed off and will be moving the 69 domains I have registered with Godaddy to another domain registra and moving my 100 domains from the two virtualservers and hosting accounts I currently pay from from Godaddy. Was days away from ordering a third virtual dedicated server from Godaddy as well.

Got over half my sites down which is going to be costly in lost revenue.

Was nice doing business with you Godaddy, will be moving to another company as soon as I find one.