Hello,
I've been working with a hosting provider for about two years and recently we had an affiliate that was committing affiliate fraud (which is a whole different issue, I'll go into detail if you desire).
The point is that the owner of the company terminated the affiliate's account for violating the Affiliate Terms of Service and refused to pay out any affiliate commissions based upon the violations of the Affiliate Terms of Service.
The affiliate posted some defamatory information on their website about the company I'm working for and as such the owner posted on his personal blog a lengthy post about the affiliate (by his name), the company the affiliate works for (the site that was being used to commit the fraud), and then the emails between the affiliate and the company.
The emails were actually between the individual and our support helpdesk and as such numerous individuals on our end were able to read the conversation and respond as necessary. Due to the individual's actions and threats in those emails the owner of the company felt it was important to make the contents of those emails public to inform others about his actions and lack of ethics to hopefully help prevent him from committing affiliate fraud with other hosting providers.
The said individual has served the owner with a DMCA notification stating that the emails are copyrighted and as such the owner had no choice but to bring down the emails for the mandatory 10 to 14 days and the individual is threatening legal action. They actually went so far as to put on their site that the review on our company has been removed "Pending current litigation with (our company)."
The owner believes that posting of the emails to be fair-use and the emails do not contain any notices about confidentiality or copyright although the owner does realize that copyright doesn't have to be expressed to apply.
The feeling that the owner as well as myself get is that fair use does indeed apply to this particular instance and that the individual is simply doing their best to get anything negative about themselves pulled off of the internet (even though it's factual and is not defamation) and is using Copyright as a guise to do so.
What I am worried about is that the owner may be mislead about copyright and fair use and I really would hate to see him/the company sued which could lead to the end of my position at the company.
I'll provide any more information as needed but due to the legal threats and the inherent internet basis of these issues I'm not going to reveal specific names of individuals or companies in an attempt to keep this out of any court proceedings should that come to pass.
I really do appreciate any all time that you take to read over this post and give me any advice that I can pass to the owner of the company.
I've been working with a hosting provider for about two years and recently we had an affiliate that was committing affiliate fraud (which is a whole different issue, I'll go into detail if you desire).
The point is that the owner of the company terminated the affiliate's account for violating the Affiliate Terms of Service and refused to pay out any affiliate commissions based upon the violations of the Affiliate Terms of Service.
The affiliate posted some defamatory information on their website about the company I'm working for and as such the owner posted on his personal blog a lengthy post about the affiliate (by his name), the company the affiliate works for (the site that was being used to commit the fraud), and then the emails between the affiliate and the company.
The emails were actually between the individual and our support helpdesk and as such numerous individuals on our end were able to read the conversation and respond as necessary. Due to the individual's actions and threats in those emails the owner of the company felt it was important to make the contents of those emails public to inform others about his actions and lack of ethics to hopefully help prevent him from committing affiliate fraud with other hosting providers.
The said individual has served the owner with a DMCA notification stating that the emails are copyrighted and as such the owner had no choice but to bring down the emails for the mandatory 10 to 14 days and the individual is threatening legal action. They actually went so far as to put on their site that the review on our company has been removed "Pending current litigation with (our company)."
The owner believes that posting of the emails to be fair-use and the emails do not contain any notices about confidentiality or copyright although the owner does realize that copyright doesn't have to be expressed to apply.
The feeling that the owner as well as myself get is that fair use does indeed apply to this particular instance and that the individual is simply doing their best to get anything negative about themselves pulled off of the internet (even though it's factual and is not defamation) and is using Copyright as a guise to do so.
What I am worried about is that the owner may be mislead about copyright and fair use and I really would hate to see him/the company sued which could lead to the end of my position at the company.
I'll provide any more information as needed but due to the legal threats and the inherent internet basis of these issues I'm not going to reveal specific names of individuals or companies in an attempt to keep this out of any court proceedings should that come to pass.
I really do appreciate any all time that you take to read over this post and give me any advice that I can pass to the owner of the company.