GoDaddy Agrees to Disable Fox-MusicaGratis.com After Complaints from Music Industry
- GoDaddy pulled down popular music download website Fox-MusicaGratis following complaints from the music industry.
- GoDaddy is the largest domain name registrar in the world and has pulled down several other pirate websites after complaints from the DMCA.
- The website was not given a chance to make an appeal to GoDaddy according to reports, and the site was taken down directly.
GoDaddy has been actively removing ‘pirate’ websites based on complaints from the DMCA, court-orders, and appeals from the music industry. Copyright complaints are being taken seriously by the largest domain registrar in the world, which multiple websites being taken down in the recent past including Melodia VIP, Fox Musica, and Fulltono. These websites were reported to offer MP3 music without any copyright licenses from the original owners of the content forcing GoDaddy to suspend these domains after complaints from the music industry were filed.
Multiple DMCA strikes often lead to domain registrars deregistering websites. In this case, complaints from the Peruvian Copyright Commission (PCC) declared that FoxMusicaGratis caused irreversible damage to copyright holders by distributing MP3 content for free and should be taken down. Once the request was put out by the PCC, GoDaddy took down the website without allowing the website owners to make an appeal.
Image Courtesy of Fox-Musica
Many copyright holders from around the world choose not to deal with pirate websites. Websites only remove the content that is claimed to be copyright protected by their respective holders each time a complaint is made and continue their piracy activities. Such behavior by pirate websites has led to copyright holders reaching out to the web hosts and service providers, which leads to the websites being shut down based on copyright grounds.
The complaint against FoxMusicaGratis was made by the National Institute for the Defense of Competition and the Protection of Intellectual Property (Indecopi). The entity filed a complaint to GoDaddy reporting that Fox-MusicaGratis’ illegal activities go against copyright laws and that the web registrar should take down the website to prevent further infringement. With web registrars cracking down on pirate websites based on requests from copyright holders and copyright protection entities, pirate websites have to settle for less reliable domain registration options. With legal music streaming options becoming cheaper than ever, the future of pirate websites is unclear.