khazard · HackerTrans

vor 14 Jahrendiscuss

I'm a SoftLayer employee, so my perspective on this might help ... A server at SoftLayer is often more expensive than the same server at another provider, but those identical server specs don't necessarily make it an "apples to apples" comparison. When you don't need any of the free value-add functionality that differentiates a SoftLayer server (which I won't include here for fear of being "salesy"), the numbers probably won't add up. SoftLayer isn't positioned in the market to compete on price, and you're right that there are a lot of quality hosters who offer reliable, powerful servers for lower costs.

khazard

vor 14 Jahrendiscuss

Hopefully I (as the only SoftLayer employee in this thread that I'm aware of) can provide a little insight. Before addressing the specific issue in the post, I want to share a quick overview of SoftLayer's Abuse Department and the processes of handling complaints.

The [email protected] address functions as more of a notification system than a medium for conversation. You don't have to be a SoftLayer customer to contact that address, and when reports of verifiable abuse are received, the abuse team will work with the customer responsible for the infringing server to get it resolved as quickly as possible. If the DMCA is properly formatted, the abuse team will work with our customers (who may, in turn have to work with their customers) to have the infringing material removed.

If a complaint is submitted to that address that doesn't meet the legal guidelines of documentation we need before we can take action, we cannot take action. If we can't take action because of an incomplete or invalid complaint, we also can't provide any visibility or feedback to the complaining parties about what was incomplete/invalid, as that could fall into the "legal advice" category.

Abuse tickets aren't handled by technical support, and they people creating and responding to the tickets are only responsible for abuse-related issues. Not only are they a distinct team, they fall in an entirely different part of the organization (alongside the legal, internal security and systems teams). As such, the way they respond needs to be extremely consistent from one issue to the next, and they're only able to make decisions based on the reports/evidence they have.

I don't have visibility into the specific complaint that was submitted, so the only assumption I can make is that the complaint wasn't properly formatted or it didn't have the legal evidence we need to take action. Whether or not the copyright infringement is "obvious" or "unquestionable" from an outside perspective does not change our legal requirement of having a properly formatted DMCA complaint to take action. If there's a lawyer in the building who is willing to offer his/her services to the game developer, a resolution might be a lot quicker. When the DMCA is submitted, I'd love to be copied on it ([email protected]) so I can immediately have it investigated and acted upon.

-Kevin Hazard

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