This is the second article of work horror stories on dealing with clients and workplaces. You can find the first one here
This article revolves around Digital Millennium Copyright Act. I am not fully sure what it entails, but you should read up some info on its position and criticisms.
Some time ago, I was on track in working with a client on their old PHP website. Someone developed it, but it wasn’t fully polished. There were a few forms, a few issues with it and some text changes, I was brought on to finish the work and hand it over to an offshore SEO company in India.
Easy enough! I got a grip on the requirements, discussed it with clients, they never mentioned anything about who developed or how. It was hosted on name.com. I started one night, woke up next day to a call from the client, saying the website is down, and they got an email. Well, it wasn’t my fault, I didn’t do any drastic changes to break production.
That’s where it all begin, they got a notice for a DMCA takedown and only the nameserver is disabled as the hosting service investigate the issue. Hosting and domain access are still present. They wanted the site up and running as soon as possible.
So, I moved the nameserver to Cloudflare free tier temporarily and pointed it to the hosting IP address. We were back on !
The client was happy but came around with a new problem. The developer who actually created the website was the one who gave the notice of DMCA saying he was owed more money but was not given the final payment. The client claims he paid them in full and asked for more money they agreed upon. I haven’t heard from the actual dev, so was wary.
That was not the end of the story tho, the actual dev found out and sent the same notice to Cloudflare which forwarded it to the hosting service. The client explained that the dev was alright and professional, but as end came closer, he would go out of contact, say his girlfriend has some problems. Yada Yada…
The client asked my advice, should I pay the dev for what he is asking to get out of the trouble ? or let it be and submit proofs to name.com. What if it takes so long to resolve with name.com ? They don’t have a support phone number to reach in our tier. How long is the email conversation going to take place?
I responded saying, What’s the guarantee the dev is going to withdraw the notice, who’s to say he won’t try this again after spending all his money ? I suggested stand firm but also change the hosting to someone better slowly and one who won’t bend to these takedowns or are much more resistant to these.
The client was relieved from their stress and tension. Thanked me for my advice and cut the call that night.
Next morning rolls around, and I hear back saying he paid the dev again and all of it is resolved. There shouldn’t be problems anymore with this. That wasn’t my advice, but anything that solves the issues for me is welcomed. The developer also replied to the original complaint that it was resolved, and the DMCA notice be suspended.
I sat down and after a few hours of debugging and changing text. The website is down. Again. Something with the IP of the hosting maybe, my login and the hosting section is empty no options, or anything. I was shocked with that sight. I called the client to try it on their end, or they received any emails. Well, there it was. With the complaint, they went ahead and cancelled the hosting and will refund the client money and only left us with the domain rights and access.
Turns out, the actual dev DMCA takedown got escalated since it happened twice but not the reply saying it’s cancelled, explaining to them via email didn’t go anywhere. With the client being frustrated more than ever, we decided to move the hosting. I gave a list of hosting services that may not be that well known but won’t take DMCA seriously. The client thanked me and chose BlueHost(thankfully they couldn’t see my expression). Which is not the best either and will take down the whole site if a takedown was issued what can I say. (Reddit is filled with issues calling out BlueHost)
I can only advise the clients, their choices are something I can’t control. I helped them set it up again, migrating the whole website and called it a final done. They wanted me to be a translator for the Indian SEO workers who couldn’t speak English well. But that’s a story for another time.