Giganews DMCA ... Alternative Providers?

Khrest

Khrest

Khrest

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I hope this post doesn't break forum rules as I'm not discussing the rights and wrongs of posting copyrighted material, just looking for advice on getting out of a situation with Giganews that's not of my doing.

I've been with Giganews for 10 years and have always been pleased with the service and price. I have only ever used the service for downloading stuff (Linux builds and demos) and have never posted a single byte.

This week they have sent me a set of DMCA takedown notices because I have allegedly posted an episode of an HBO series and the studio has ordered them to issue warnings. The third email states that my account is suspended for postings. Funnily enough, tonight another set of emails landed so I am now apparently posting from a locked account!

My PC is clean (I'm an IT pro so I know what is good practice) and nobody else has access. Having had one round of support with them (clean your pc, it's your fault blah blah) I have a feeling I'm not going to get very far with them as regards clearing this up so I wondered what alternative companies there are that are trust worthy?
 
DMCA is it a US law. It doesn't have jurisdiction outside of their borders. So you are free to carry on...

Alternatively, switch to a European provider such as Astraweb.

Do you use Giganews' ViprVPN and BitTorrent, together?
 
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I vote for astraweb. I've been using their $98 a year deal for unlimited bandwidth/downloads, more than enough connections, SSL and over 1100 days of retention and so far have had very few issues with it.
 
NathanE said:
DMCA is it a US law. It doesn't have jurisdiction outside of their borders. So you are free to carry on...

Alternatively, switch to a European provider such as Astraweb.

Do you use Giganews' ViprVPN and BitTorrent, together?
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Never use BT and haven't had the need of ViprVPN to be honest.

As expected, I am getting nowhere with them and I dont appreciate having the stigma lodged against my account; one thing I cannot deal with is the blind accusation that I am to blame. I'm old fashioned enough to hold my hands up if I do something questionable, but really can't deal with being falsely accused, even if nothing further would come if it.

They keep bleating on about keeping my PC secure when I have run MSE and MWB for the last two years and theirs is the only account that seems to have been compromised. I suppose they want me to run Norton, AVG and Panda as well...

I'm giving thought to Supernews as I keep hearing things about Astraweb and incomplete posts; although it is patchy and some people seem very happy.
 
NathanE said:
I'm sure they do but they are a British company. They have operations (servers) in the US so that means they must comply with local laws. They are under no obligation to remove DMCA'd content from their European servers, and I doubt they do.
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Content would be removed from all servers. They're kept in sync.
 
KIA said:
Content would be removed from all servers. They're kept in sync.
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Not true. Articles are propagated, yes. But removal of those articles is then entirely up to the individual server. It could be that one server has more storage than another, so of course its removal characteristics will be different to a server with less storage.
 
NathanE said:
Not true. Articles are propagated, yes. But removal of those articles is then entirely up to the individual server. It could be that one server has more storage than another, so of course its removal characteristics will be different to a server with less storage.
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Okay it appears that my "and I doubt that they do" was wrong.

But still, one has to wonder if they are just saying that as their public stance on the issue. They've probably never been asked that question before so just opted for the most robust response.

It makes no sense that they would remove DMCA'd content from their European servers. But I guess it's understandable that a profitable business would adopt a belt & braces approach to protecting themselves from any possible litigation.
 
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