It was kind of funny for it to happen in real time: Just when we were launching a new upload / post for our project (it was about 10% finished), our posting software suddenly came to a grinding halt. “440 Posting not allowed” flashed on the screen over and over again…
That was when we received an email from Newshosting, informing us that copyrighted material was uploading using our account and that posting access had been restricted.
[x_blockquote cite=”Newshosting Abuse Department” type=”left”]”This will be the only notice you receive from Newshosting regarding the posting of copyrighted material. Upon receipt of an additional notice, your account will be canceled immediately, and you will be ineligible for a refund of account subscription fees.”[/x_blockquote]
We filed an appeal to get posting privileges reinstated (read the whole email exchange, along with the original DMCA claim here), so let’s see what will come out of it. So far, we have yet to establish a clear pattern as to how the bots work, and what sets off their spidey senses.
The only takedown we got so far had the exact same title as a real upload of Game Of Thrones, but maybe we missed something. Could it be that the bot actually scans the content, or looks for specific file sizes? No idea, and we haven’t been able to upload enough stuff to test our theory.
So we decided to up our game. From now on, we’ll be posting using a rented VPS with a big, fat uploading bandwidth, to upload more, faster, and more methodical. Let’s begin to phase 2, coming soon!
