Being a hosting reseller has been a pretty uneventful experience so far. I’ve been dabbling in the field since my college days, nothing ever too serious, but I do offer some of my MediaTemple DV space to a small number of clients to help offset the cost of dedicated server ownership.
However, yesterday marked a milestone in my hosting experience, albeit not a good one. I received notification from MediaTemple that a DMCA suit was thrown at me, for an instance of vBulletin running on one of my clients domains. A chill ran down my spine; DMCA suits are serious, scary business.
Long investigative story short, it turns out that my client was mistakenly in possession of a yearly license, and technically in the wrong. However, my client was misinformed when the site was built into thinking they had a permanent license, so the mistake was innocent enough.
What wasn’t innocent enough were the harsh tactics used by the vBulletin service to inform us of this error. One of my core values is the golden rule, to treat others like you would want to be treated. The fact that vBulletin’s first thought of action at discovering this expired license was to throw a *lawsuit* on us? WTF.
This blog belongs to Jade Rauenzahn, a 24 year-old web developer living in Hell's Kitchen, NYC.
