The site author decided to keep it down, even though his ISP gave him a (somewhat work-intensive) way to clear the DMCA trouble and get the site back online.

It's 2012. Are there really no ISPs willing to host a site like this?

The site not only got hundreds of DMCA and cease & desist orders, there was also a huge amount of harassment including threats of violence. http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4360626 I don't blame any ordinary ISP for pulling a site under those conditions.

OK, but you just said the ISP would put him back online if he dealt with the DMCA, indicating the threats of violence didn't take the site offline. So violent threats took the site down, except they didn't, except they did?

They said they would put the site back online if he sent a reply to every cease and desist order. He decided to keep the site offline, having lost faith in the community.

Looks like he's changed his mind. http://www.digitalmediamachine.com/2012/08/lendink-starts-cr... Faith can be restored for the low, low price of $10000. :)

AFAIK, many authors and publishers sent DMCA notices and other threatening letters to the company hosting LendInk's website. Out of fear of litigation, the hosting company shut down LendInk.

I guess I don't understand why somebody would post "Not due to DMCA complaints" on their website if they took it down because of DMCA complaints.

Firstly, I see "This account has been suspended. Either the domain has been overused, or the reseller ran out of resources." on http://lendink.com.

Secondly, even if it did say that, it could somewhat be construed as true. The DMCA process wasn't necessarily followed since I don't think the hosting company gave the website owner the opportunity to refute them. Again, if I remember correctly, the website owner does not blame the host and did not see it as a fight worth fighting since there was little (or no) revenue involved.

Edit: the last paragraph may be incorrect; the hosting company may have given him an out. Regardless, he decided it was not worth the effort.

Yeah, when he first took over LendInk he was an Amazon affiliate. So if a user ended up buying a book that they had borrowed but didn't finish he made a little coin. Once Amazon severed it's affiliate links in California he lost that. Even at it's peak he still didn't make that much money.

You get a different message at http://www.lendink.com/

I see the same as tedunangst: "Currently offline / Not due to DMCA complaints."

Somewhere else I read that they were not formal DMCA requests, more like his ISP got flooded with a lot of informal "fix this or we'll sue" notices. The ISP told the guy he could get his site back if he personally responded to the hundreds of complaints.

Edit:

http://www.digitalmediamachine.com/2012/08/what-happened-to-...

Thanks. Sounds like the site operator is among the least angry people here.