Bodog was lucky, Godaddy Doesn't Wait for Court Documents

[adioking]

I'm not usually one to complain, but Godaddy has really done it this time. They received a copyright infringement notice from somebody else and decided that this was proof enough to completely pull down HighStakesReport.com until legal procedure is done.

However, more information is necessary to fully understand the situation.

First, the company that filed the complaint was vBulletin, claiming that my forums were not operating under a valid license. However, upon logging in to my account, the license was in fact valid for Highstakesreport.com. I should note though, that there was a slight typo... it was pointing to highstakesreport.com/poker-forum/ when the forums were hosted on highstakesreport.com/poker-forums/ so I updated this information.

Any and all of my other forums have been shut down for a long time, including my forums that were located at imaconlinepoker.com/forums. These forums were shut down from the administrator's end to preserve forum content in case I wanted to reactivate the forums in the future. The index page clearly stated something like "The administrator has disabled use of this forum. Please bear with us as we make changes."

I sent an email back to the copyright department at Godaddy explaining the situation and including a copy of my valid license to operate vBulletin on Highstakesreport.com. Now, I wanted to get them to look at it as soon as possible so this could be resolved before the weekend.

I then took several hours working things out, making phone calls to anybody that could help.

First, I called the number that is listed on HighStakesReport.com. After 3 minutes of an automated system, I got on hold to talk to a representative. The representative explained to me that there was nothing she could do because she was with the billing department, and that the copyright department didn't have a phone line because of the legal issues involved with copyright infringement. I told her that all I wanted was for the copyright department to open their email and see the valid copy of my vBulletin license and put my website back up. She explained to me that the copyright department doesn't work on weekends and that I would have to wait until Monday to hear back from anybody about putting HighStakesReport.com back up.

After speaking with her, I shot an email to my Godaddy VIP sales representative, a guy who as always been able to help me out at least a little bit. I asked him to call me immediately when he received the email.

I then called vBulletin and they were no help either. I was told that they outsource their anti-piracy to another company, which would explain why the complaint originally came from a Romanian. So vBulletin had no clue what was going on and couldn't help me whatsoever.

How can a person from another country submit anything "under penalty of perjury" anyways? Who is going to sue somebody from another country if they send one of these documents in? Probably very few people.

After a couple hours passed, my VIP account manager from Godaddy called me. I explained the situation, he told me that he would see what he can do and that he would make some phone calls. When he called me back he explained that he couldn't do anything and that he was really sorry.

So, I'm just really upset about this. I'm blaming Godaddy for the loss of revenue during this time, as the vBulleting copyright infringement document that was issued explained that vBulletin did not require Godaddy to completely disable the "infringing website." However, before getting my side of the story, they decided to just take the website down. It really would have been nice to at least explain my side of the story to a mediator, but now I'm stuck here losing revenue, search engine rankings, and lots more to do with my business.

So... does anybody know a good host that I can switch to?

[ClarkePromotions]

WOW - that is really, really scary stuff Dan! I would be definetly be looking for another host!!!

[ResIpsa]

I'm not sure I understand; is it GoDaddy as your host or as your registrar that is the problem (presumably they are wearing both hats if you are hosting the site at godaddy)?

If its a hosting issue only, then can't you buy new hosting elsewhere, change where the DNS settings point to and put the site right back up? Definitly an inconvenience and probably a day of downtime, but at least you can fix it and move on. If it is a registrar issue and Godaddy has locked your DNS settings....well then they've got you over a barrel.

Good luck getting things cleared up as quickly as possible.

[adioking]

Godaddy is both the host AND the registrar. I was told that it was something that had been written in the TOS when you sign up for a domain name that they can take your website completely down if anybody puts a claim against it. I'm trying to be totally legit here and remedy the problem. I even went as far as completely removing all of my self-deactivated forums on other sites because I'm scared that even a deactivated forum without a license would cause an infringement problem.

[Jeremy]

I can't believe you can't just renew the license and have VB contact Godaddy that all is good. Pulling a site down seems pretty drastic.

Had Vbulletin contacted you about the license? You would think they would have contacted you a few times before sending an infringement letter to Godaddy.

[DealerDan]

That sucks adio. Also this is the kind of story that might just get some diggs etc too - every cloud has a silver lining

[kdollar]

Yea that is pretty lame by godaddy. I have always heard it is better to have a different registrar and host. This way if you have a problem with one you may be able to do something to get your site backup..

[imteaz]

Well, i never use Godaddy hosting, caz they sux at hosting. but i use their domain regsiter. howeveri will suggest you buy a VPS or dedicated server.
for domain issue, i will suggest you transfer your main domain to namecheap.
i have been using namecheap 2 years, and never had any problem.

few month ago V-bulletin email me that i have 30 days time to renew my forum licence, as soon as i get the email, i renew it right away, caz if i forget, i will be in trouble. so yeah good luck man. very sad to hear your both forums r offline.

[ThePokerBank]

Seems like your caught in a big circle of companies that are just looking to pass the buck when you get in contact with them. If its not their problem, then they don't have the inconvenience of having to sort out somebody elses' problems. Hope things sort themselves out quick for you, but the whole thing is really shitty.

[adioking]

No, vBulletin never contacted me. If the site isn't up by Monday evening I'm going to be having a serious discussion with an attorney, whether this is legit or not. I've heard of companies being compensated for downtime due to reasons like this. I had 2000 unique/day going to that site, just finished the redesign, and can't lose my SERPs. The site wasn't making much money before, but with the redesign I'm hoping that it will pick up, but now the problem has grown even larger.

Oh, also about the vBulletin license... I purchased an "owned" license so I own the license forever, I just can't get the board updates thats all.