NRA guns down 38,000 Surge.sh sites in anti-parody spray-and-pray

Updated Web publisher Surge.sh blames a single trademark-infringement complaint for stripping more than 38,000 websites from the internet.

Surge offers webspace and tools for creating sites, and uses New York-based DigitalOcean to run the underlying server that powers its hosted websites. Surge said DigitalOcean pulled the plug on its rented system after receiving a takedown request from the NRA, which was upset about a parody website lampooning the ammosexuals.

The gun-loving lobbyists claimed the site, hosted by Surge and DigitalOcean, infringed its trademarks, and requested the website be taken down.

According to Surge, the NRA went to CloudFlare with its complaint, presumably because San Francisco-based CloudFlare was providing DNS for the domain.

CloudFlare passed the gripe on to DigitalOcean, and 22 minutes after notifying Surge of the request, DigitalOcean switched off Surge's virtual server without any further notice or time to plead their case:

Nothing but radio silence from @digitalocean while 38k sites remain down. Demoralizing.

— Surge (@surge_sh) June 29, 2016

DigitalOcean, however, offers a different take on the story. In a comment to The Register, trust and safety manager Jason Valenti said his company told Surge.sh of the violation several days ago before disabling its droplet.

"We received notice on behalf of a trademark holder that a customer of DigitalOcean was hosting infringing content on our network. DigitalOcean immediately notified our customer of the infringement, and the customer was given a five day period to resolve the issue," Valenti said.

"The infringing content was not removed within the specified period even though several notifications were issued. Per DigitalOcean's terms of service, a final reminder was issued to our customer and, when no action was taken, access to the content was disabled. The infringing content was subsequently removed by the customer and all services were restored in less than two hours."

The Register has attempted to contact Surge.sh for further comment, but has yet to hear back.

Meanwhile, DigitalOcean's CEO is reaching out to Surge.sh in hopes of making nice.

@surge_sh 1) sorry for what happened last night. While we followed our standard due process - we need to upgrade our procedures as a result.

— Ben Uretsky (@benuretsky) June 30, 2016

@surge_sh 2) Admitting our mistake and working on improving is what I’m committing to you and the community.

— Ben Uretsky (@benuretsky) June 30, 2016

The NRA has yet to respond to a request for comment on the matter. ®

Updated to add

DigitalOcean boss Ben Uretzky has posted a blog reiterating that Surge.sh was notified of the complaint on June 23. Uretsky did however express remorse for not standing up to the NRA.

"In retrospect, we believe that the website identified in the NRA's takedown notice was not a trademark infringement but was instead protected by the First Amendment," Uretzky said.

"We at DigitalOcean champion freedom of speech and the free and open web."