Bogus DMCA takedowns, will offshore help?

[aww]

I've had the unfortunate experience recently to have my first DMCA take down after several years of hassle-free hosting, on a small site, not once but TWICE in two months.

Something very fishy is going on as the site is mostly text written by myself and uses thumbnails or images altered enough not to violate copyright.

What's worse is I can't find out who is complaining or what specific content they are complaining about! Yes, this is how the DMCA works, anyone can take anyone down for at least 10 days just by sending to your ISP that URL "so and so" has infringing content. Doesn't matter if that page has one item on it or 100k of text you wrote - it's taken offline - not just that page, the entire site!

So, I am tired of this nonsense. It's a small site but I want it running. It's not adult material but I suspect its right-wing religious groups being offended by the content because of how tightly wound they are.

Will offshore hosting solve this issue - and if so, can I get some recommendations? It needs to be cheap, this site isn't paying any big bills. I'd like CPANEL if possible but I can use almost any linux based host with apache 1.3x

Thanks for any help!

 

[AdoptableDomains]

... uses thumbnails or images altered enough not to violate copyright.

The above statement seems to admit the content is not original. Just changing or altering an image doesn't take away the original copyright. You can't alter somthing you didn't create "enough" to do away with a copyright. You must create it yourself or license it.

Going offshore won't help you if you are still either a US citizen, located in the US, host in the US, use a .us domain, or have any other legal connection with the US which could even include using any domain in which the registry is managed or on a US based server (com/net/org, etc).

However, I suppose you could renounce citizenship and move to Russia or a non-treaty country and get away with many things.

 

[Zeeble]

Actually, if you can visibly see that both pictures are significantly different, then there should be no problem.

 

[equity78]

No you cannot alter someone elses copyrighted material.

 

[sunken]

Altering an image does not affect the copyright of that image. DMCA does not say that anyone can say you have such and such content and it's an infringement. DMCA says that the original copyright owner can make a claim against the site for their own artwork. Believe me, if the former was true, there would be sites shut down left and right by everybody and his brother who had a bone to pick. The reason it is set up that way, is only the artist or photographer can say what is done with his work. I often get mail asking permission to use my work and I grant it a lot of times, but to an outside party, it would look as though they were snagging my work without permission. The DMCA also requires that the specific item be included in the form that is required, but some ISP's tend to not care what item it is, and only that there is infringement which is against their TOS. That would depend on the ISP and their judgement. Smaller companies just don't want to deal with it, while larger companies tend to have investigations rather than knee-jerk reactions.

BTW, by altering the image, you've probably pissed off the person who created the image. Nothing an artist hates worse (and I didn't mean above to separate photographer from artist) is to have their work mangled.