I contacted HostGator a few days ago in regards to a website being hosted on their network. The blog post had a link to a decompiler that would decompile applications written by a certain program. The responses I received from Richard F. (Network Security Administrator) of HostGator was not what I expected.
At first, Richard F. wants to see the EULA of the software that the decompiler is made for. So, I send him the URL and even quote the EULA. It states, "Neither you nor any third party may modify, adapt, decompile or reverse engineer the Games." In addition, I pointed Richard to the author's blog where the author is not happy about the decompiler as people can use it to steal and ripoff games and applications written with this software. Richard F. then defends the decompiler by stating the following:
"Well, this is a complicated situation. Having the decompiler available is in itself not any violation of the EULA. However, if someone uses it then it's a violation of that EULA. Making the decompiler available solely as a source of information is not in any way infractionary, this has been held up in court cases with companies such as Microsoft."
It seems he is trying to use some alleged loophole of having it available for "information purposes only" does not make it illegal or a violation of HostGators TOS/AUP. I then notify him that it is also a DMCA violation as the only reason for reverse engineering per the DMCA is if the software is no longer available nor the author available. Neither of these conditions are met as the software that is decompiled is still being made and the community that uses the software is active. Richard F. then makes the following illogical analogy:
"Yes it could be seen as a violation of the DMCA. However, again, as an informational source, it is not in any violation. If we wanted to go on a tangent and say that this tool was written in, say C#, we could then hold Microsoft liable for creating both the C# language and an IDE to allow someone to write this tool. But they're not liable for what is created with or done with their tools, they merely provide them. This is where we are in this situation. Simply providing the information is not illegal."
Firstly, no one ever went on any tangent. Next, his analogy makes no sense. The fact of the matter is that the website being hosted on HostGator's network is distributing a decompiler that circumvents security measures in a program. People that use this particular software to compile their games and applications can have their source code revealed by a person simply running this decompiler.
I guess Richard F. is not used to dealing with techniaclly adept people. Therefore, he pulls a bunch of technical BS out of his gator butt and expects me to believe it.
I have forwarded this issue to The Planet as well as to the author that made the software being decompiled. I have notified him of HostGator condoning the use and distribution of this decompiler. I think it's pretty sad when a hosting company starts to defend immoral and unethical activities. And to think, this joker is actually has the position of "Network Security Administrator." He sounds like some kid barely out of high school computer science class.
First off thank you WHT for providing these forums and please forgive me for my first post being a huge rant!
We have contacted ThePlanet multiple times with DMCA requests to have a website remove illegal copies of our software from their website. The website is (*****.com *removed link*), and ThePlanet hosts them.
This issue has been ongoing for over 10 days, our original DMCA from them was ignored.
We resent another on Tue June 2, 2009, that one was responded to. Either no one from ThePlanet bothered to visit the warez website or they encourage warez on their networks because the website is still up; they initially removed links to our software but added new ones hours later.
We contacted ThePlanet again hours later with our email again to be disregarded. We sent another reply last Friday, ThePlanet responded back that our email was not in proper DMCA format; but do not bother to see the entire website is nothing but warez. Do these guys just not care that warez is on their network? I didn't realize the economy has gotten so bad they now cater to warez websites.
Visit the website and see that is has full ISO copies of Windows and other software, has full dvdrip movies and copies of games, as well as crack patches and keygenerators.
Why is it that ThePlanet allows these websites to operate and that their AUP is a total joke? Obviously if you want to distribute warez ThePlanet seems like the best place to do it.
We also hosted our websites on ThePlanet but intend to cancel service with them due to this issue. I encourage anyone that is a software developer and uses ThePlanet to also dump their service.
my host freaked up when getting a letter from a company about DMCA, and quickly shut my site down.
Does anyone know of a dedicated server hoster who does not jump the gun and shut down sites from a little Cease and Desist letter for around 299 EUR a month?
The site gets roughly in the thousands of hits per day.
I have sent a DMCA notice to softlayer because I saw warez forum thats abusing USA laws and they are giving away lots of hacked rapidshare accounts to its users. So I have made my complaint but I didnt said what infringed my copyrights. And softlayer can see the warez site and decide them selves.
So this what I got in reply after 2 weeks-
Quote:
Please review our DMCA procedures which follow the OCILLA. Also note, the sworn statements and all other information listed on our DMCA page are not only required but mandatory for any DMCA report. This will allow you to specifically identify the intellectual property that you own and is being infringed upon, which is required by law.
There are many verified third party DMCA/COPYRIGHT agencies who act on behalf of the intellectual property holders who can verify and submit these claims on behalf of the intellectual property owners. This will insure that legally, the intellectual property owner and the ISP is protected in the event of an account termination.
Softlayer DMCA information [url]
[url]
[url]
And they didnt took any actions against that site and what I see is that warez site is operating till now on softlayer servers. Looks like softlayer didnt warned the site admins too. 1 month passed after my complaint and its still operating.
We recently discovered another host had stole parts of our page and use it as theirs. Right now we are currently looking to contact it's service provider to submit the DMCA complain. However we have no success of contacting their provider XO. So now we are looking to contact their actual provider (reseller of XO) but we were unsuccessful in finding such info. If anybody here could give us a hand?
The site in question.[url]compare to ours[url] as you can see the table is identical.
Their IP- 209.31.114.36 XO Communications XOXO-BLK-11 (NET-209-31-0-0-1) 209.31.0.0 - 209.31.255.255 SECURE-24 XOXO-209-31-112-0 (NET-209-31-112-0-1) 209.31.112.0 - 209.31.115.255 # ARIN WHOIS database, last updated 2008-12-05 20:12 Have sent in a claim as instructed on this page [url], but havn't heard a reply yet.
How well does ThePlanet.com handle DMCA complaints?
Recently got shafted by a client for over $30K (3 months of work plus our own out of pocket expenses). To make matters worse, this crook took the PHP source code which my company offers as a hosted solution and installed it on a dedicated server at Theplanet.com.
I have sent DMCA take down notices to theplanet, following their procedure (which is the standard legal procedure) but they have not done anything to the perpetrator. He has managed to spring up 2 websites already, and is no doubt planning to launch more.
Not sure if anyone else has been in this type of situation but I need to get something done about this. I have no doubt in my mind that even if theplanet did shut his sites down, or at least wiped the infringing software from the disks, he would jump over to another host and do the same thing again. My company doesn't have time to waste chasing him around, however the software he has contains a lot of proprietary code that we created and was never intended to be public.
So far both of the domains that he is using have Network Solutions as the registrar. Does Netsol assist with this kind of thing? Hopefully someone with similar experience can chime in with some advice.
I just had the pleasure of having my entire host containing multiple sites,being suspended by Godaddy because someone sent them a notice of infringement. Even though I had resolved the issue with the copyright holder 8 hours before Godaddy suspend the host.
Which brings me to my question, anyone know of a host that's reliable, well priced and not effected by the DMCA?
We run into DMCA problems (Windows Media Streaming) 3-4 times a year and most of these requests come for content that are not even governed by US laws.We currently have Ecatel and they have been good with DMCA but their quality has been a major drawback (Stream buffering big time, even for a dedicated server)
We are looking for a Windows server 2003 streaming server with at least 100Mbps dedicated unmetered connection (will upgrade to 500 or even 1Gbps dedicated if the quality is reasonable).
At work, at home, and a couple of associates are with Hostgator on their reseller plans.
My employer's account with Hostgator... in about two years we only ever had one major problem. We wanted to change the primary domain and so the support boys and girls at HG did that for us. We then had a huge problem with propagation, and some of the packages didn't transfer over. That saga took about five days or so to fix but was pleased with the eventual outcome.
We had a mediocre problem about a year back when all of the websites under our reseller had crappy response times for about a week... something about a dictionary attack on the server I think. After that was fixed everything was fine.
A few times Hostgator support helped me out when they didn't have to... many many times they went a little further to help me solve a problem, and a couple of times very promptly helped me fix a problem I'd created which would have got me fired had it not been done fast.
Some people complain about Hostgator response times to support tickets. I simply did not have a problem with that... they always got back to me within 2-6 hours. When I couldn't wait that long (which only happened a handful of times), I submitted a ticket by email, then got on the phone or live chat, and they very helpfully escalated the priority.
I haven't had any memorable problems with my personal reseller account with them the whole time I've been at Hostgator.
Their support is very very good... Brent seems to be the driving force behind the desire to be the best, and the fact that he's very well off yet still goes on to the support forums and is actively involved semi-frequently goes to the ethic of the company as a whole.
They DO go over and above - at least they have for me.
Recently, I was banned from their support forums permanently.. you can read about my side of the story at ryanpaul.ca.
Even after what I think was a unfair ban from their forum, I'm still perfectly happy to keep my business with them, as well as my employer's... and will still be referring people to them. Why? Because their service is undeniably splendid.
I am posting looking for anyone who is or has hosted with hostgator.com.
I am looking to move a site to their service that handles around 150,000 pageviews a month and was hoping I could get some input from actual users of hostgator.com. I want to do the basic shared hosting plan.
I experienced a problem with Hostgator servers where IE6 seems to cause problems and the response from Hostgator was sort of "They don't care and people must upgrade to IE7"
The problem is that on other servers several installations of a particular hosting BILLING system works 100% fine but with two separate installations on separate Hostgator servers the following happens. With IE6
1) Get a BLANK page regardless whether file in public or admin was called and the page only show if you click GO in url bar.
2) Refresh page don't help and page stays blank until click on Go (in other words you can click refresh till you are blue in the face, the page stays blank. You MUST every time click on GO for a page to be displayed - All links or submit buttons gives a blank page)
3) With such blank pages the "View Source" option however give the complete and correct page up to the last </html>
I'm a newbie and trying to figure out which host to use. I'm going to have about 20 different sites all with different names. I think i've narrowed it down to either 1and1 for $9.99/mo(2gis/50gigs) or Hostgator for $9.95(5gigs/75gigs) both with no setup fee.
Does anyone have experience whem either??or other recommendations.
See folks I want to run a forum and I have decided to either use Hostgator or 1and1 hosting. Which was is better if I want to host a forum with members no more of 1000 or so? What is there MySqL Database limit?
I signed up for their hosting on Sunday morning and completed payment for the first month using hostgators online payment system and paypal.
The payment was accepted and confirmed. An email was sent some time later confirming the account had been set up.
The email specified a user ID for cpanel as well as nameservers which I used to point two of my domains at the new hostgator account.
I used cpanel and FTP to set up the add-on domain, create some email accounts and upload content for the two domains (the same content as on the old servers which should now be shown k-free.co.uk and offshoreharry.com).
All appeared to work fine with no problems. I could use outlook to access email and the web sites were available on the new server (the old server was down).
A day and a half later, I WAS HORRIFIED TO SEE
- the emails accounts could not be accessed - the cpanel user did not work - Hostgator did not email me or attempt to contact me in any way to tell me there was an issue. (they had my valid mobile phone number - there are no unidentified calls in the period concerned). - the web sites that had been pointed at hoistgator were showing a suspended message and spammy hostgator context ads. My non-spam mostly non-ads content had been uploaded to the hostgator account.
One of those domains is freeware software on a site with ZERO ADS that has never been moneterised and sometimes gets 100's of uniques a day.
HOSTGATOR WAS STEALING TRAFFIC FROM MY ad free unmonetized site and showing a nasty spammy ad page.
Not only was I rather angry but also amazed that any company would ever do this. Just think how you would feel if all your sites - pages were hijacked and showing some of the nasty ad pages.
My opinion: Do NOT EVEN CONSIDER using HOSTGATOR.
Checking my yahoo email, there was no email from hostgator saying my account had been suspended (if I hadn't checked it they would have continued stealing the traffic until I noticed).
The only email from hostgator was a request for a copy of my passport or utility bill! I am left wondering if they are really a front for an identity theft scam? I am rather unhappy that they have even my name - address - tel no - paypal email.
I obviously immediately changed the nameservers on the two domains back to the old servers. But since nameserver changes take upto 72 hours to fully propogator, hostgator could still be stealing some of my traffic now. The two sites contain nothing that any T+C I have ever seen would have any reason whatsoever to see as a problem. The two sites are k-free.co.uk and offshoreharry.com for anyone here who wishes to verify this claim.
Hostgator COULD be showing my content instead of their spammy ads - I uploaded it.
Hostgator was mentioned by a few on here and I thought them to be a big company who have a reputation to protect. Are you guys really comfortable with a company who behaves like this. Will they suddenly suspend your sites tomorrow and steal your traffic until you happen to notice?
I have requested to them that they provide access TO MY PERSONAL AND BUSINESS EMAILS on the email accounts I set up. I would also like any log data that was collected. I will report back here what the response to that (politely worded) request is. Giving me access to any email and log data that they have effectively kidnapped-stolen hardly makes amends for the wrong they have already done. Like any other victim of a common thief I may just have to accept that I lost something and will not see it again.
Additionally, search engine robots may have visited the sites and got 404s, any users who dropped by will certainly not be back, the damage caused is ongoing and difficult to fully quantify.
Hostgator did not email me or attempt to contact me (they had my valid mobile phone number). They did not tell me why the account was suspended and the trafic STOLEN. I have had web sites for 4-5 years and have never been involved in anything remotely dubious on the web. You can judge for yourself if there is any reason for them to do this [sites offshoreharry.com, k-free.co.uk]. I had sent at most 10 emails whilst testing the 3 or 4 email accounts I was creating.
Obviously I will never use hostgator or any related company.
My opinion: Do NOT EVEN CONSIDER using HOSTGATOR ... EVER.
HostGator is the worst hosting company ever. They took my website down in November 2006 without notice because they claimed my site used 11% of the CPU. The support department told me they would send me a .tar file of my site and a mysql export within one week which I told them was unacceptale because the site has paid advertisers (not Google Adsense) and I already had another dedicated server with PEER1 to move the site in question to immediately. After several hours of tying up their phone support, they finally relinquished and put the .tar file in an ftp for me to download. I told them cancel my account immediately and do not bill my credit card again.
OK, I had my site back up in several hours, and thought I was done with them for good, but they have continued to bill my credit card $29.95 per month since the incedent. I have called support and they said I needed to log into CPanel and cancel my account from there, however, they locked me out of Cpanel. I told them I was going to do a chargeback on the fraudulent billing and their representative stated they would file a judgment against me with the credit bureaus if I reversed the charges.
Here we are, now in April 2007 and they are still continuing to bill me for an account they cancelled and I have no recourse at this point but to do a chargeback through Bank of America for the 5 months they have billed me since I have not been on their service.
I have an impeccable credit rating and it is the absolute most dispicable act I've ever seen from an internet company since AOL pulled the same trick on me back in 1995.
I urge anybody reading this to never have any dealings with HostGator or you will seriously regret it.
I decided to try hostgator , so please advice me Which package is the best for newbie to buy in hostgator? I am interested in cheap price and best server uptime.
Sometime ago I was openly discussing which hosting company would be great to start a reseller account with, now, I was seriously thinking about going with Hostgator based on user reviews, but then went with my gut and signed up with MediaTemple to test them out.
However, based on reviews I've read around the web, I couldn't discount Hostgator, so... whenever a client asked which hosting company they should use, I told them that we use Mediatemple, but they could take a look at Hostgator if they feel MT is too pricey.
Big. Effin. Mistake.
It all started out smoothly. Clients paid. Got the passes. Setup emails, FTP's, etc. Done.
3 Months down, nearing the end of the projects, suddenly everything went tits up.
We couldn't log in, couldn't access the ftp, nothing. We emailed them, they sent us passwords to login (which did not work), and even suggested that we pay again to help reset their system (client paid again, still didn't work).
Now, get this: After emails from one of clients, they (HG) said that it may have to do with the fact that he was based in Asia (Hong Kong), which was causing problems with the system, including payments, and because the domain had a .asia extension.
HUH?!?! Say what?!
Our client couldn't be bothered, so he signed up with somebody else, and luckily enough, because his domain was with Namecheap, we were able to easily remedy the problem.
Last I heard, he said he was going to try to get a refund from HG, but he wasn't holding out much hope.
That wasn't the end of it though.
One of our clients, this one a personal friend of mine, whom I also gave the same advice (HG or MT), went with HG - and guess what? The exact same thing happened!
HG was, this time, saying something about problems to their password systems, and so they gave us links to reset the systems and re-enter our passwords. My friend tried, and still nothing. HG can't claim any .asia excuse on this one, because the domain is a .com, or credit card issues - as my friend paid in full for the entire year (and the CC is a US-issued one too). Eventually, we just gave up, and I've offered to let my friend sit his site on my MT server for the meantime.
Shady. Real Shady.
Anyhow, if any of you are thinking of hooking up with HG, especially if you're from outside the US, be wary.
Now, regarding Mediatemple? For all their bad press, their customer service (and their control panel setup) is spotless. I've had a few instances of downtime, but nothing insane. I think I'll be sticking with them until the need arises for an upgrade to AWS or Mosso.
Ive had a reseller account with HostGator for just over a year and I pay my $25 every month at the right time. Ive never been late.
I have the "Aluminum" reseller account - Everything unlimited including mysql databases..
The service until this week was insane - their the best.
But then Tuesday and Wednesday my site was down in particular my forums
After a ticket to the support department they fixed it (3 hours) and said all was working fine.
I was happy..
The next morning I get an email from them saying - My site has grown to large for my reseller account (5Gbs/50Gbs) and that its causing abuse on their server! The joke is my site is tiny compared to what some of you have
600 Visitors a day +- 30 ppl on the forums at all time 11 gbs bandwith
They said the forum is "crunching" their CPU...
So without warning they moved my site to a dedicated server and said:
Your site zoopedup.com has been determined to be causing high loads on the server and the cause of recent downtime. It is not suitable for a shared hosting environment and will need a dedicated or semi dedicated hosting solution. We sell semi dedicated servers for a month which come with 500 gigs bandwidth and 25 gigs disk space.
Instead of just suspending your site we have moved it to a dedicated server giving you one week to decide what you want to do. You can move it to a new host or put it on a semi dedicated / dedicated server with us. It is your decision to make but we will not be able to host it in a shared environment any longer and at the end of the one-week it will be terminated off the dedicated server.
WHAT!! I have already paid for the month of April for the hosting. But they will just terminate my site in one week?
Also if 30 concurrent mysql db connections makes their server lag - how would I use my "unlimited" mysql dbs they promise in my reseller acc's info.. ?
Is it just me or am I being treated unfairly...?
Now today my site is slow, lags and times out etc.. im loosing visitors.. my banner manager is broken because of their unwarned server move - I have advertisers breathing down my neck asking why their ads arent online.. etc
Im looking for a hosting package (no reseller) that can host my site and watch it grow with NO problems - Has 2b Linux.. I got about 20-25$ to spend per month
any ideas/feedback
I dont understand how my site can be to big for a reseller acc...
Salutations from sunny Athens. Ok, here goes. I have a problem with my forum, It just got temporarily suspended due to high server loads. I just cannot understand why the loads are so high, can someone have a look at the log and help me plz?... The site is anime.gr. Its a internet forum, based on vBulletin.
They have sent me, OUT OF THE BLUE AND AFTER THEY CLOSED ME DOWN, a notice with that log, telling me I had the option of either upgrading to one of their dedicated servers or moving to another host. Nothing more, no warning, no time for me to asses what caused the server load spike, nothing. I cannot even have access to Cpanel so that I can take a backup for the site. I am losing money every minute from this, I am pissed, and I am trying to find out what happened. I will certainly change hosts (and probably move to a VPS service).
So I finally have a site that is getting a lot of traffic. Yeah for me. That is when the problems start.
05/29/06 - I get a call from HostGator stating that my site keeps crashing their server and that I need to move to a semi-dedicated. I had a choice of upgrading or they were going to move my site to a 7-day temp server. That is totally fine with me so I say okay and upgrade.
05/29/06 - I receive a welcome email for my new semi-dedicated server and I think all is good. Next, I receive an email stating that they needed my account login and pass so they can transfer the files. I respond with the login details. So I assume that the transfer has been made and everything is okay.
05/30/06 - Everything is cool. Site is running smooth.
05/31/06 - My site gets suspended at around 1pm. No warning we are going to take your site down, no 7-day move to a temp server (like they said they would), just a big SITE SUSPENDED page. I call wondering what the heck happened.
Call 1 - HG: It appears that you have two accounts and the site that was using the most cpu power is on the "Baby" plan. Me: Huh? I thought that was transferred over to the semi-dedicated. HG: No transfer ever took place. I am then told that I have to fill out a bunch of forms in order to have the transfer happen. Fine, so I do that.
Call 2 - No response received from the transfer form submission so I call to see what is up. I am then told that a transfer DID take place. Then why is my site not up? Please allow 1 hour for updating is their response. Fine.
Call 3 - (one hour later) ME: Why is my site not up? HG: The site needs to be transferred. ME: HUH?!?! (I am furious at this point, but I keep my cool.) Okay so WHEN will it be transferred?? HG: I will have it done IN ONE HOUR the manager said!
Call 4 - (several hours later(I had college)) ME: Why is my site not up? HG: The transfer is taking longer than expected (only a 3 gig site) so it will be, yes, ANOTHER HOUR!!! I am pulling my hair out by now.
Call 5 - (one more hour) Me: Why is my site not up? HG: We needed to change the dns settings (I think this is what he said). Me: Okay how long will that take... you guessed it ONE HOUR!!!!!! OMG.
Call 6 - It has only been 30 min. so we will see if this really takes an hour or not. I am sure I will be calling them though.
Here is where I may have caused an issue:
In the initial email asking for my account login details I responded with the login details AND I also asked (in the same email) to see a CPU usage log. They treated this as a support issue so the login details for the transfer never made it to the transfer department!? Their response to this was that they thought I wasn't sure if I was going to go with a semi-dedicated plan... well I ALREADY PAID FOR IT. So why would I not be sure if I wanted to upgrade when I already paid for it?? Only they know.
All in all, my site has been down almost all day and I have lost a lot of money and visitors too I am sure. I used to think that HostGator was awesome, but after all of this I am starting to think less. I am still going to give them the benefit of a doubt and stay with them, but if you ever need to go from a Baby account to a Semi-Dedicated be sure to STAY ON THEM AND MAKE SURE IT GETS DONE!
After reading NUMEROUS fantastic reviews I know this is not the norm of HostGator, but it happened to me!
My head hurts now.
Sorry I just had to vent somewhere as this has really upset me.
Was actually wondering what you guys recommend as far HostGator Reselling opportunity vs HostRocket re-selling opportunity. I came prepared for this questions, so here are my goals:
Goals: Long Term - I've biz established already and would like to add hosting as unlimited bonuses and even start a hosting business slowly as my own forums start to pick intensity
The 24-month option of HostRocket seems irresistable with unlimited bandwidth and 1tb of space (as their chat), kind of skeptical as it isn't in writing, but it seems they have a better offter at first then Hostgator, but they don't provide a billing system like: whmautopilot. PL nameservers are also $2/month with HostRocket, but Hostgator reseller options has them included.
Am I missing something guys? Tried my best to describe this, let's see!
