Behind the scenes at the internet

[Daisy123abc]

Just had an extraordinary experience on a discussion forum where I have ended up being accused of copyright infringement. I posted something in December but somehow my comment has ended up on a website hosted in a far away land and now attributed to a Mr. Douglas Bush from Indiana who seems to have written it 4 months before I did.

As a result of this astonishing fact my comment was deleted and the discussion thread has been removed from Google search.
This seems impossible to turn this around. Thanks to other contributors I know understand more about this however a counterclaim went nowhere and I wondered if there is actually anything I can do about it.

See the discussion thread here:
www.mumsnet.com/Talk/property/2533596-Buildteam-Clapham-based-company-Side-return-specialists?watched=1&msgid=60767127#60767127

The new home for my comment which someone decided no longer belongs to me is now here:
www.gotohomestay.com/buildteam-interior-designers/

The complaint which triggered the whole thing is here: www.lumendatabase.org/notices/12083648#

Any technological geniuses able to offer advice?

Have you had legal advice on this?

The date on the blog means nothing, you can "back-publish". Essentially telling search engines that was published before it was.

Who has accused you of copyright infringement? What evidence are they using?

Oh I've just opened that link. Is that all you've had?

Essentially they've made a request to Google to remove your link because they say there's predates it. Have you made a counter claim?

Yes I did but nothing happened. I wasn't sure what to put in all the forms. As it asked for "Service Provider" details. Which didn't make any sense. I also wrote to DMCA and they just said they wouldn't do anything and said something to suggest they had loyalty to their paying customers.
There doesn't seem to be a system of directly contacting Google. Very confusing to navigate through it all.

Have you had any contact from Mumsnet about the thread?

(Just working out where in the process you are, sorry for all the questions!)

Writing to DMCA won't get you anywhere. Their business it to help people file takedown notices. They don't deal with disputes. Their name is deliberately derived from DMCA notices but that doesn't mean they have any authority.

The Service Provider in this case is Google. That is who received the takedown notice.

I suggest you file your DMCA counter notice properly. That won't instantly result in anything happening. When Google receive it they will pass it on to the person who filed the original DMCA notice. They then have 10 business days to go to court to prevent restoration of the Google listing. If they don't do so the listing will be restored.

You may also want to file your own DMCA notice with Google asking them to remove links to the gohomestay.com article, pointing out the unlikeliness of an apparently Seattle based poster using builders from London and also the fact that, unlike most other posts on this site, this particular post is in good English which therefore suggests a different author.

Thank you. It asks for contact details etc for the service provider. Any ideas where I might find the right ones to put?

www.google.co.uk/about/company/facts/locations/

And just to be clear, this is about Build Team, maybe sometimes written BuildTeam, in Clapham, London, who are builders specialising in side returns.

There are many companies with similar names registered at Companies House, with some of the same directors, eg:
Build Team London Ltd
beta.companieshouse.gov.uk/company/06601658

Build Team (Holdings) Ltd
beta.companieshouse.gov.uk/company/07384749

Build Team Holborn Ltd
beta.companieshouse.gov.uk/company/07249621

Build Team (Holdings) Ltd
beta.companieshouse.gov.uk/company/09352041

Build Team Clapham Ltd
beta.companieshouse.gov.uk/company/10038144

Officers listed for these companies at Companies House include (in various combinations):
Dan Davidson
Daniel Joseph Davidson
Benjamin Luther Davidson
Sarah Davidson
Mark Eden
Andrew William Kafkaris

A poster on the previous thread also identified Bruton Street Partners Ltd as a owner of one of the companies, but I haven't been able to work out how to get that info from the Companies House site. However Bruton Street's info at CH is here: beta.companieshouse.gov.uk/company/06278230
and the officers listed are:
Daniel Joseph Davidson
Benjamin Luther Davidson
Andrew William Kafkaris
Zickie Hwei Ling Lim
Tom Pickthorn

I hope I've got all of that right: do please follow the links to check.

And if I've understood the original thread correctly, Daisy in your original thread which you've now linked to above ( Buildteam - Clapham based company "Side return specialists" ) you posted a negative review of your experiences with BuildTeam or Buildteam.

Other posters also posted negative reviews.

Many of the posts have now been deleted.

If I understand correctly, some posts were deleted on the other thread because Build Team contacted MNHQ and threatened legal action because of the negative reviews.

If I understand correctly, your original thread has now been made unGoogleable, after someone made a (very interesting) claim that your Opening Post infringed their copyright and they invoked the Digital Millennium Copyright Act ( DMCA ) to ask for a take down.

Fuller - fascinating! - details on your original thread: Buildteam - Clapham based company "Side return specialists"

Oh dear whoops, I seem to have repeated an awful lot of info on this thread, which IS Googleable and links to the original thread.

Fancy that.

I should clarify that my post at Tue 24-May-16 09:59:59 should read

"the original thread was about Build Team"
not
"this is about Build Team".

I am not stating that Build Team are behind the DCMA take down.

(MNHQ, feel free to amend my post per clarification, if you wish.)

The content may claim to be written last Sept, but spot when the images were put on the server

Last-Modified: Mon, 18 Apr 2016 06:09:00 GMT

Last-Modified: Mon, 18 Apr 2016 06:06:40 GMT

yanbu (!)

Original thread now back on Google search, it's the top result in search for "Buildteam reviews".

livuvakar - how did you see the modified date of the photos? Trying to improve my skill set. Thanks

I thought I'd posted on this thread, but actually posted on the newer one, so just placemarking here now.

funny though that the blog post is only archived on the wayback machine in May this year:
<a class="break-all" href="https://web.archive.org/web/20160701000000*/www.gotohomestay.com/buildteam-interior-designers/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">web.archive.org/web/20160701000000*/www.gotohomestay.com/buildteam-interior-designers/

No record of it prior to that - despite the wayback machine archiving that website:
<a class="break-all" href="https://web.archive.org/web//www.gotohomestay.com/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">web.archive.org/web//www.gotohomestay.com/
in April & March 2016
seems strange that they didn't find the link then...