TopTorrents.org is a bittorrent news site. We do not operate a tracker, we do not host any torrent files, or directly link to any torrent files. We provide news about torrent releases, and we provide snapshots of video files in order to verify the autheticity of releases, and to provide information about the quality and nature of video being shared via bittorrent.
I am a student, and I do not have the money to pay for legal services, but I have always done my best to review applicable copyright laws, and make sure that my site is in compliance with them. It is my belief that the content on the site is 100% legal and non-infringing. I have not recieved any complaints from rights holders regarding images posted on the site, nor have I recieved any DMCA takedown requests regarding any link, or any user posted content. No complaint has been recieved by any company hosting the site, or at least none has ever been forwarded to me.
Despite the apparent legality of the site, and the absense of any official complaints about any of the content, I have now had my DNS service suspended by two seperate companies in a span of about 3 weeks. That these DNS providers have seen fit to block access to the site is made even more bizzare by the fact that the company that provides the server itself, which is also hosted within the U.S., has taken no actions against me.
The first company to suspend my DNS service was InfoRelay Online Systems, Inc (www.sitelutions.com). They suspended my account without notice, shutting down all of the domain names I had registered with them. Their claim was that the site violated their Acceptable Use Policy. This claim was completely specious, and I attempted to engage in dialogue with them to refute it, but they refused to even discuss the issue. (You can read my discussion with them here.)
When this happened, it was my belief that they had probably originally reviewed the site due to its high level of traffic, and because they are a value provider, had acted to eliminate a high-traffic site, which wasn't profitable for them. I don't know if this was the case or not, but at the time it was my best guess, and so I decided to move to another DNS provider immediately, and try to recover damages from InfoRelay after the fact.
If you look at Alexa's traffic history for toptorrents.org (Here) you can see that the site was achieving record traffic at the time it was first taken offline.
On May 13 I established a new account with Dynamic Network Services, Inc (www.dyndns.com) and services were started on May 14. On May 15, according to the server logs, an IP address registered to Dynamic Network Services was used to retrieve some pages on the site, and to register an account using their abuse email address. That registration was completed on May 23, using the same IP address, and the domain was suspended that day.
Dynamic Network Services notified me of the suspension via email, and immediately posted a viciously libelous notice at the domain, which states that "This domain was purchased by fraudulent means and/or used in violation of our Acceptable Use Policy and has been placed under lock."
In response to my inquiries, a representative of Dynamic Network Services, Brian Chabot made the following statement:
Your account was blocked for "facilitation of the illegal distribution of copyrighted materials" (AUP, section 12) and the unauthorized hosting of related copyright images (violation of US law). We do not believe the screen captures were used under the Fair Use exceptions of US Copyright law.
I replied with the following statement:
It is my belief that the content in question on the site (toptorrents.org) is protected by "fair use" rights.
1) The site is a news site focused on bittorrent, p2p, and copyright law. The site does not have any content available for download, does not host any torrent files, does not link to any torrent files, and does not operate a "tracker." The site is in no way associated with any illegal copyright infringing activity, and is only providing a journalistic function. The site unquestionably has a "fair use" right to make limited reproductions in order to carry out these journalistic functions.
2) The site has no advertising, and has always operated at a loss. While the site is not a non-profit, the fact that the site has only nominal revenues demonstrates that the primary purpose of the site is not commercial in nature.
3) Snapshots from video clips, taken from films or television, represent an insignificant and degraded fraction of the complete work. They have no commercial value whatsoever, and could not possibly directly affect the potential market value for the underlying work.
The site does meet every condition of the test laid out in the law for determining whether a legitimate "fair use" reproduction right exists. If you disagree, I would be interested to hear how you or your lawyers interpret the law differently.
I have yet to recieve a reply, but since it took them 8 days to review and suspend the domain initially, I suspect that they lack the staffing to actually deal with these disputes in a timely manner. As a result, I am in a holding pattern currently, with the domain suspended, and most users unable to access the site.
I would really like to fight this company, and force them to restore my service. The site in question is, to the best of my knowledge, fully compliant with U.S. copyright law, and I believe that any reasonable person who reviewed the content of the site and the law would come to the same conclusion.
More to the point, it isn't the reponsibility or right of hosts, and especially DNS providers, to review sites and make hasty determinations as to their legality. The determinations made by both companies that have suspended service are wrong and clearly unsupportable. Unfortunately, I have limited recourse.
In the case of the InfoRelay, my attempts at reasonable dialoge were rejected. Dynamic Network Services is still out to lunch, but my confidence that they will do the right thing is pretty low. As a result, my only recourse is to the courts, where I could probably recover the actual damages I have incurred, but will not be able to recover anything that compensates for all of the lost value that the site provided to its users. Because the site is ad-free, and supported by myself and subscription fees, the actual monetary losses are very low, while the loss of value for our users is enormous.
While I continue to fight to get the domain name restored, I would like to ask everybody to help in spreading the word about this situation. Unaccountable corporations like InfoRelay Online Systems and Dynamic Network Services should not be able to block public access to a completely legal site at a whim, for their own personal reasons, and without any legitimate cause. The users of TopTorrents.org, who could from all over the world, should not lose access to a valuable resource because of the arbitary and illegal actions of two U.S. corporations.
If you believe that the internet should be a place where speech is free and the rule of law is upheld, I would ask you to take action, and help us in our battle to regain our domain name, and continue operating. Help us spread the word about what has happened, and put pressure on Dynamic Network Services to restore our domain. You can do this by posting a link to this blog or our IP on your site, blog, or profile, and by emailing your favorite internet news sites, and asking them to report on our situation.
4 comments:
hey m8 sorry to hear about the problems
the site was great dont let them win
m8 find another host and see you there
good luck bud and thks for all your hard work :) admin Phantomp2p.co.uk
pop over and say hello bud
I think you missed the part where you agreed to the AUP of both of those companies. They always leave themselves loopholes that are much less specific than "illegal content". You don't have to do anything illegal at all to violate these AUPs - legality doesn't even matter. They don't want the liability of your site on their hands because a Luddite judge could rule any direction. It's just not worth the risk so they leave loopholes and thus the ability to can sites on a whim.
Hey m8 just me again. good to see the sites back up :) keep up the fight Eh
Fuck em E. You can do better with less hassle. Don't sweat the small stuff, and this is definitely small stuff. DNS service is a dime a dozen.
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