A few weeks ago, we brought you the story of Retraction Watch, a blog that follows issues of research misconduct. One of the blog's subjects, Anil Potti, had been forced to leave Duke University under a cloud of suspicion that included accusations of falsifying research. A number of Retraction Watch's critical blog posts about Potti vanished recently, victims of a spurious DMCA takedown by a site based in India that had copied the original material from Retraction Watch and then claimed it as its own.

There have been a number of interesting developments since then. Most notably, the site in India (newsbulet.in) has been taken down and its DNS entry has been scrubbed.

Meanwhile, Potti himself has apparently been in touch with the people behind Retraction Watch, saying he wasn't behind the takedown. According to Potti, someone else had hired the reputation manager who acted on his behalf, and the service was terminated months ago anyway. But in the meantime, a second blog has been targeted with a Potti-focused DMCA takedown. Its author claims the missing post was little more than a collection of links, and he doesn't think it could have violated anyone's copyright.

Most of the blog posts on Retraction Watch have been restored. When the posts were first pulled, blogger Ivan Oransky used an automated counter-notice generator to alert his host to the fact that the DMCA takedown was spurious. He told Ars that no further action had been necessary; after two weeks, he received notice that the 10 posts that had been pulled were being restored. Nevertheless, after being targeted by an anonymous plagiarist—who has since disappeared—Oransky still only has 80 percent of his content back

Whoever was behind this effort can console themselves with the knowledge that the material was offline for two weeks and the fact that its rightful creators dealt with a lot of hassle in the intervening time. But if their goal was to take the spotlight off Potti, their actions have backfired spectacularly.

UPDATE: Ivan Oransky has let us know that the final two posts have been restored.