I got into a discussion with a potential hosting company about their response to copyright infringement reports, and this was their last response (I haven't replied yet): Now, I can understand the hosting company's position, tho it is still crappy for the webmaster, not giving him time to fix the problem before disrupting the site. However, my question is this: is it standard for a webhost to first suspend/terminate the site and then inform the webmaster, like this guy is saying? I always thought that it'd be a case of "give the webmaster a day or two to respond first." It makes running sites with user-generate/uploaded content more complicated, for sure. wouldnt really want to wake up to a suspended site...
There's not even a governing standard to begin with. Needless to say, it's a case to case thing. Some hosts can notify first before shutting down a site, others do the latter and not tell a user about it if it's an especially severe situation. It's a choice between a rock and a hard place.
Nice hosts will remove the infringing content and then contact you, while others will simply remove your whole website. It varies from situation to situation and host to host. Most hosts will allow you one or two infringements before suspending your account. Often times when a whole website is taken down it is at the request of the copyright holder.
A whole site taken down because someone sent in a complaint about even one thing? Cripes, that's insane. I could just start sending copyright infringements left, right and centre and get my competitors nailed...
That's why I said it's a case to case thing. Neither is there a requirement for all hosts to do process A if situation X occurs. This is one reason why it's valuable to establish a relationship with whoever you're doing business with.
In the US, if a webhost has not registered an agent with the US copyright office, the host can be held liable for having infringing material on its servers even if they take it down immediately upon request. If they have registered such an agent, they are required to remove the content expeditiously. That is a subjective term that could be viewed by a court to mean almost immediately in such a case (or atleast as fast as possible). That's basically asking a company to risk thousands in fines, possibly lose their DCMA safe harbor rights (if they have them), and maybe get sued for what? The $20 a month they get from that site? Or the inconvenience to the webmaster? Yes it sucks to the website owner. If they infringed willingly then I don't have much sympathy. If one is willing to take the action, one must be willing to pay the price. I would have sympathy for a site that thought they had legally purchased content from another source only to learn that source didn't have the rights to it in the first place. Sometimes that is just how it is. Offering people time is nice, but not a solid business plan. Yes, generally one would not run into immediate problems. But you never know when you are dealing with somebody that is just itching for a reason to sue somebody else. One lawsuit could be worth hundreds of accounts, even if the webhost won in the end.