nnn2007's Journal: Bluehost and Copyright

Without notice Bluehost has shut me down after a banking institute claimed that publishing international banking law violated their (!?) copyright.

Apparently on Thursday (11/29) my hosting service provider bluehost received a request from a banking institute that "ISP 98" be removed.

On my web site on international finance law I had posted a couple of articles I had written and published the underlying laws. Laws is not 100 % accurate since in international finance, there are few conventions (that is government to government agreements to implement the same set of laws) but "international standard practices" (ISP), a set of rules agreed upon by banks and other interested parties, which everybody follows.

When asking bluehost today for technical support (Saturday), they asserted that bluehost's abuse department had contacted me.

Under the phone number on file I have not received any message from bluehost and since the last email I had received from bluehost dates from two weeks back, their technical staff suggested that bluehost had sent the email after they shut me down.

The banking institute never contacted me.

The shutdown means that I cannot access any of my several domains unconnected to the allegedly infringing site or receive email from them.

The request by the banking institute raises an interesting question whether international practices/customs can be copyrighted.