I had a DMCA takedown notice sent to me on behalf of a website owner who didn't want me linking to their site. My hosting provider gave me 24 hours to remove the link or else they'd cancel my account.
The owner of the link claimed that their Google rankings were dropping because my site, iHackernews, linked to their site. With this, they were able to force me to remove it via a DMCA takedown notice.
DMCA takedown notices cannot be ignored.
Which I've blocked: http://ihackernews.com/by/jayjay1010
My host is Softsys hosting. http://www.softsyshosting.com
How does that even work? How does the DMCA apply such that I can invoke it to tell you to stop linking to my site?
I'm guessing it doesn't, but if you're at the mercy of a hosting service that doesn't actually understand the DMCA you're in a jam.
The logic is that DMCA notices are sent under penalty of perjury, and people aren't going to risk perjuring themselves just to improve their SEO or take down a blog post they don't like. Unfortunately, the courts seem willing to accept excuses like "the automated process i use to send out DMCA takedown notices got a little overzealous" as legitimate, so DMCA takedowns are now pretty much just a free-for-all for anybody who wants anything taken down.
AFAICT from actually reading the act, they only have to comply with notices meeting the facial requirements, and failing to do so only exposes them to liability for the content covered by the particular notice for which they failed, and only where they would have had liability without the DMCA safe harbor provisions. I'd like to see any analysis supporting the characterization you make here.
Utilizing the law to its letter and to impose the fundamental flaw in it is simply making that hurt visible.
Again, and in hopes of a more substantive reply: when has hurting innocents been an effective way to get what you want in a society with political representation for its citizens?
It's bad enough that they have automated the process to allow companies to delete millions of links from Google every year, but to downrank sites is a bit overboard.
I definitely agree though - they sound like a very poor host. One of my websites received an invalid DMCA via my host, and my host handled it well (i.e. listening to my side of the story, before deciding not to pursue the 'complaint').
Any host that handles DMCAs so poorly (i.e. threatening their customers without knowing the facts) doesn't deserve to be in business IMO.
In your case obviously it was unjust though.