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Comment by drusenko | Hacker News Reader

To post up a counter-perspective here: From our perspective (Weebly) the DMCA is quite convenient for us. We turn away any DMCA complaint not related to copyright (like trademark infringement).

Other than invalid complaints (did not meet the requirements for a complaint, was not a copyright complaint, etc) we have never had an abusive DMCA notice -- 100% of our notices (and we usually get a couple per day) have been valid.

We don't have the issue with our host being able to unplug us that easily (we manage our own network) but we do have the issue of liability, which the DMCA solves for providers like us.

Also -- I'd definitely be interested in the cases you're referring to, where false DMCA claims have resulted in major damages.

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Could you explain why have you decided to manage your own network. If I remember correctly, that wasn't the case in the early days of Weebly.

For many reasons, including:

- We already have the expertise to do so, so the cost to us is much smaller

- We can ensure a much higher level of service by making sure every component along the line is up to par (you'd cry if you heard what some colo providers do)

- We can fix problems in-line with our priorities, since we're the ones that fix them (like keeping published sites up, even if the editor is down, for example)

- We can set up and manage geographically redundant datacenters

- And finally, we're able to do so extremely cheaply

It's definitely something to consider when you reach a certain scale, and especially if you have the know-how to get it done. We've calculated that for every server we purchase, we'd pay that cost every 2-3 months on AWS, for perspective.

> (you'd cry if you heard what some colo providers do)

I'd love to hear more, if you're at liberty to share.

no ddos protection, lousy routers, single points of failure everywhere (on old servers that are about to die), running their racks very near electrical capacity (too many servers load up at once, breaker trips), way oversubscribing bandwidth, not doing appropriate preventative maintenance, downtime because some tech slips up when editing routing configuration, downtime because some tech trips over your power chords (honestly, a top cause of downtime), downtime because another customer in a shared-colo environment trips over your power chords, etc. the list goes on and on and on.

and, worst of all, you're at their whim -- if they decide, for whatever reason, to unplug you, that's it. we prefer to eliminate anyone who has the ability to take our service down :)

What are you doing for DDOS protection now?

I don't want to give away the specific device we are using, but it's something that does everything in custom hardware and sits on the edge of the network.

Believe it or not, we've had botnet attacks that took down $100k Cisco routers. Nasty :(

if people are tripping over your "power chords" you ain't playing them right!

"Tripping over" is more a figure of speech. In shared hosting, it usually involves someone trying to install or remove a server in your cabinet and accidentally tweaking the power chord just enough to reset the power to a critical piece of equipment (like a storage array, for example).

I think you need to re-read the part he put in quotes, not the "tripping over" part!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_chord http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_cord

haha, thanks :) didn't catch that

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