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Back in July 2002 one of our competitors lawyers threatened to sue us for using one of their trademarked terms in our meta tag keyword section. Realizing our mistake, we removed the keyword within 2 days of receiving their letter. We also created a script to redirect any user traffic searching for this trademarked term to their site.
Their lawyers also asked us to contact MSN (INKOTMI) to have our page removed. Removing the page was out of the question since it was legitmate and had original content advertising our competing product. (Again remember, we were only guilty for using one of their terms in our meta tag keyword section)
Rather then removing the page, we emailed INKOTMI and asked them to re-spider our site. Not unexpectedly, Inkotmi told us it would take a maximum of 30 days to have the page re-indexed.
We passed all this information along to our competitors lawyers and figured they would be satisfied and not pursue the issue further.
Fast forward to May 2004. I recently noticed our site was no longer showing up in Yahoo's web results. We had maintained top positions for many of our keywords in the past before they had merged with Inkotmi. I emailed YAHOO and was told we were removed because someone had filed a DMCA with INKTOMI against us in August of 2002. I was told to contact the Yahoo copyright office for further information.
I have yet to hear back from the copyright office, but I have a pretty good idea what happened. Even though we had removed the offending keyword from out meta tag AND redirected all users that searched for that term to our competitors site, their lawyers decided to file a DMCA upon Inkotmi to force them to remove our site from their index.
So Inkotmi went ahead and permantely banned us from our index. I can understand why Inkotmi removed our site, but I do NOT think a permanent removal is warranted. A minor infraction for a meta tag keyword should not permantely ban a site with legitimate content.
I am in the process now of trying to get our site re-instated. On a positive note, Yahoo has been fairly responsive in helping us understand why we were banned. The key test will be getting them to reverse Inkotmi's ban.
Jesse
I'm not an attorney, but I have had quite a bit of experience with DMCA removals. Based on that, I's say that your chances of getting back in are quite good.
One of the requirements for 3rd parties to free themselves from liability, is providing notification to the parties whose content is removed. Upon notification, you have an opportunity to file a response to the DMCA complaint. If you do that, they are required to put the content back. And from that point on, they are no longer liable, and the two parties involved must slug it out on their own.
Since the DMCA wasn't really written to address search engines, the notification requirement becomes a bit tricky. Unlike an ISP or a hosting company, search engines don't keep contact info on all the sites in their database.
Google has addressed this issue by posting a notice on the SERPS that originally contained the removed content. It isn't perfect, but it does tend to get the job done, since most site owners do check their rankings from time to time.
Since it appears that ink didn't have any type of notification system in place, they haven't really met the necessary requirements to be excused from potential liability. That being the case, I would think they would be more than willing to allow you to contest the original complaint at this point. If you do that, they are required to restore the content in a very short time frame.
The other issue I would take a hard look at if I were you is the date of the actual complaint. The letter one must submit includes an affidavit that everything included in the complaint is true and accurate.
If they filed a DMCA complaint after you had responded with evidence that the term in question had been removed, then they were making a claim of copyright violation that they new no longer existed. If it were me, and I had solid documentation that showed that I was cooperative and resolved the issue, and they filed a complaint anyway, I would seriously consider going after them for damages suffered because my site was removed.
For those of you interested - [learnaboutlaw.com...] does a pretty good job of explaining the law in laymans terms.
My next step is to file a counter notification letter. In so many words, Yahoo has basically said their hands are tied and unless I go the formal route of the 'counter notification' letter they cannot act.
Meanwhile our site has now been banned from practically every website under Yahoo ownership. Thank god for Google.
Jesse
