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Censorship

Hosting Advice for Consumer Advocacy Websites? 46

Posted by Cliff from the avoiding-censorship-troubles dept.
rcthompson asks: "I host a web site with information about fraudulent career marketing companies, but over the past year it has been repeatedly deleted by a series of hosting companies after they received a threatening letter from the lawyer for one of the companies listed on the web site. Are there any hosting companies out there who are involved or interested in consumer advocacy and will not delete a web site just because they receive a threatening letter? Is it better to use overseas hosting companies? Is there any way to completely hide who your hosting company is so that the bad guys cannot figure out who to send the threatening letter to? One could host the web site on one's own server and use one's own nameservers, but the IP address will reveal your ISP who could possibly shut down your site. Any advice is appreciated. Thanks."
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Hosting Advice for Consumer Advocacy Websites? More

Hosting Advice for Consumer Advocacy Websites?

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  • One suggestion (Score:2, Informative)

    by chemstar ( 457943 )
    Media Temple [mediatemple.net].

  • spam? (Score:4, Informative)

    by ceejayoz ( 567949 ) <cj@ceejayoz.com> on Tuesday February 18, 2003 @11:32PM (#5332127) Homepage Journal
    SPAM Violation!

    This site has been banned for SPAM violations. We apologize for the idiot webmaster who could not control him/her self.

    Perhaps there are other reasons your site keeps getting taken down?

    On the chance that you're not a spammer and that's just their standard removal notice, I'd recommend contacting your potential hosters before signing up and inform them of the situation. They'll be much more willing to stand by you if they know what's going on in advance.

    • addendum (Score:3, Informative)

      by ceejayoz ( 567949 )
      Sorry to reply to my own comment, but I forgot to say something.

      Find some other sites that have similar content (and appear to be surviving legal threats) and ask/find out their ISP. Easy, eh? :-)

      p.s. popup warning for IE users on the link in the article...

    • Re:spam? (Score:1)

      by PD ( 9577 )
      Where did you see this message?
    • In the case where he was not banned for spamming, he could sue them for inappropriate use of words which cause millions of people who visit the site believing that he's a 'spammer' and 'idiot'.

      Oh wait, did he post this story in order to increase the publicity so that he could ask more damage recovery in the lawsuit? Damn.. :)
    • The author's site is about career marketing fraud. It has nothing to do with spam.
      • When this article was posted, the URL execcareer.com listed in the article redirected users to http://execcareer.0catch.com/ - now, it goes to http://membres.lycos.fr/execcareer/.

        Thus, the submitter appears to have gotten kicked off his old host for spamming - a slight problem with his contention that he's being persecuted for exposing bad business practices.

        Now do you get it?
        • Talk about the power of paradigms. Your paradigm = the only reason people are removed from an ISP is because of spam. READ THE CONTENT!!!

          The submitter got kicked off of his old host for hosting the consumer advocacy site. One of the companies that is covered at his site (Wellington Burke) has been trying to eradicate the site and fires off threatening letters to every ISP that the site is hosted on.

          There is no spamming going on here.
          • When the ISP puts up a "this stupid webmaster was removed for SPAM" notice on the page, it's a rather logical conclusion.

            I am reading the content - the content of what remains on the old host, which says he's a spammer.

            He says he got kicked off for being a consumer advocate, but we have no way to truly verify that, so I'll trust his old ISP as much as I trust him.

  • Sealand-based HavenCo (Score:4, Informative)

    by eggstasy ( 458692 ) on Tuesday February 18, 2003 @11:38PM (#5332169) Journal
    http://www.havenco.com [havenco.com]
    http://www.sealandgov.com [sealandgov.com]
    • I'd rather be interested how could I obtain a citizenship in Sealand. :)

      Btw, should I be worried that an offical Government website use .com? Don't they have a root domain themself?
      • Comment removed based on user account deletion

        • Sealand isn't a real country, so no, they don't have their own ccTLD.

          Neither are a number of places with their own ccTLD. Off the top of my head, the Cocos Islands (.cc), Christmas Island (the infamous .cx), and the Heard and McDonald Islands (.hm) (all part of Australia) come to mind... have a look here [norid.no] for more info.

          So why shouldn't Sealand get their own ccTLD?

        • Why do you say Sealand isn't a real country?

          Since Roy of Sealand was still an English citizen, he was thus accused of extensive crimes in Britain and was summoned to an English court. The result of this lawsuit in Chelmsford, Essex was a spectacular success for Sealand's claim to sovereignty. In its judgment of 25 November 1968, the court declared that it was not competent in Roy of Sealand's case as it could not exert any jurisdiction outside of British national territory. This is the first de facto recognition of the Principality of Sealand. English law had ruled that Sealand was not part of the United Kingdom, nor did any other nation claim it, hence Prince Roy's declaration of a new Sovereign State was de facto upheld.

          Seems the courts may think so.

          Tim

    • I'd imagine HavenCo's rates are a smidge too high for this guy's small site...

  • EFF (Score:3, Insightful)

    by littlerubberfeet ( 453565 ) on Tuesday February 18, 2003 @11:54PM (#5332260)
    those guys at the EFF might be willing to lend a hand and a bit of server room...If you truly are an advocacy and information clearinghouse site.

  • Community Colo (Score:5, Informative)

    by smoondog ( 85133 ) on Wednesday February 19, 2003 @12:20AM (#5332394)
    Assuming you are non-profit, you might try:

    Community Colo [communitycolo.net] in the bay area. They host non-profit servers for free, or by reasonable donation. I think there was a /. story about them in the past.

    -Sean

  • Judging by your site you have gone overseas. http://membres.lycos.fr/execcareer/ [lycos.fr] All of the companies on your site are based in the US, and the site is hosted by lycos in France (read: under French law).

    It's not a permanent solution but it doesn't look like your site requires a lot of maintenance so I'm not sure there's a problem with it.

  • Have you considered hosting with a non-US provider?
  • If the things you say have supporting evidence then shuting you down is a violation of your free speech rights. Sue the ISPs who turn you off...
    then sue the company getting you shutdown...

    Second of all Host on a Cable modem or DSL line...on your own server.

    • Re:First of all! (Score:5, Informative)

      by abh ( 22332 ) <ahockley@gmail.com> on Wednesday February 19, 2003 @11:41AM (#5335065) Homepage
      > shutting you down is a violation of your free speech rights

      No, not it's not. As posted in many businesses, "we reserve the right to refuse to serve any customer". A company cannot violate your free speech rights. Your free speech rights can only be violated by the government, if they choose to use a law that abridges such rights. A company deciding they don't want you as a customer is not a violation of rights.

      It's stupid arguments like this that water down legitimate first-ammendment violations...

      • Umm...I beg to differ however if your ISP gives in to threats from a third party and cuts off your access witrhout discussion its the same damn thing...its the govenment shutting you down by proxy. And this is a definate free speech violation is the same thing as some company threating a news paper for a story they wrote, and going after the people who manufacter the paper its printed on...to enforce the threat.
        • if your ISP gives in to threats from a third party and cuts off your access witrhout discussion its the same damn thing...its the govenment shutting you down by proxy.

          Only if the government is one of the third parties that complains. The government had zero, zilch, zip, nada, dum-diddly-squat to do with this. The third parties that complained are all private business ventures. Why is that so hard to understand?

      • A company cannot violate your free speech rights. No offense, but his is nonsense. A company can certainly violate your free speech rights and while it is perhaps not specifically the case in this instance, there are several legal cases which have determined that the rights of individuals have been infringed upon by private corporations. Most importantly the issue for private individuals revolves around prior notice in a contractual situation. For instance, your employer cannot prevent you from praying since this would violate your right to practice your religion. They cannot fire you for holding any particular opinion either. One such example of the courts opinion on a corporation infringing upon the public rights...
        No individual or corporation can acquire any portion of a public street, for exclusive private use, to the exclusion of the public. Hibbard S. B. & Co. v. Chicago, 40 L.R.A. 621, 173 Ill. 91, 50 N. E. 256. (L.R.A. Digest 1888-1918, Highways and Streets, 66.)
        Clearly their are conditions where a corporation or individual can violate your rights. If your proposition were in fact true, then a corporation could not ever commit a crime could it? After all a crime is the violation of an individual's rights by another individual or entity.

  • Fidelity Hosting (Score:4, Informative)

    by uncoveror ( 570620 ) on Wednesday February 19, 2003 @09:59AM (#5334302) Homepage
    I have a consumer advocacy website, dontbuycds.org [dontbuycds.org] on Fidelity Hosting. [fidelityhosting.com] They have never given me any grief about the content of that site. They also have left alone my online tabloid, The Uncoveror. [uncoveror.com] I can't complain about them.
  • Consider hosting it yourself. It's pretty easy with a Consider hosting it yourself. It's pretty easy with a Linux
    distribution like e-Smith [e-smith.org] (now SME
    Server), and can be done on a broadband connection (depending on your
    TOS) without a static IP if you use an outfit like No-ip [no-ip.com]. You could also pony up
    the money for a business-class line and have even less concerns with
    having your service cut off. It's more expensive (I pay
    $250/month for 1Mb/s SDSL, but the benefits are certainly there.

    Really -- be your own webmaster.
    • This can depend on your ISP. They can just as easily request your ISP to shut down your DSL account (see my post later).

      Also, hosting it yourself doesn't leave you well prepared for the "slashdot" effect of what can happen when their is media (online or offline) coverage.

      That said -- I still host myself because:

      1. I can

      2. It is cheap

      3. My ISP has more balls than most hosting providers
  • Thanks for everyone's comments. I will check each of them out for a possible solution. My temporary hosting at execcareer.0catch.com was also deleted by the company (Wellington Burke) by sending a threatening letter to the hosting company. I am not a spammer nor am I trying to get publicity for my site. What you see on my site is what you get. It is there to protect job seekers from fraudulent career marketing companies which are scamming people out of thousands of dollars. It is basically just a collection of links pointing to publicly available information. I own the URL www.execcareer.com and can point it to a new location but I lose all the Google ranking which allows job seekers to find my site when they search for one of the company names.
  • The Online Policy Group [onlinepolicy.org] provides web and email hosting for groups that are having a problem with censorship. It might be worth a try.

    Blurbage:

    The Online Policy Group (OPG) is a nonprofit organization with the motto "One Internet With Equal Access for All." OPG focuses on Internet participants' civil liberties and human rights, like access, privacy, safety, and serving schools, libraries, disabled, elderly, youth, women, and sexual, gender, and ethnic minorities. OPG provides concrete services aimed at realizing a free and equitable Internet, including free Internet services, active research, and vigorous advocacy on behalf of our constituents.
  • Unfortunately, you can't conceal who your ISP is. It is easy to do a whois lookup on your IP address which will show who the IP belongs to. If you end up getting your own netblock, a combination of traceroute and whois will tell the complainer who your upstream provider is.
  • Tobinhosting.com will host just about anything, as long as its not blantantly illegal (like kiddie porn). Rates are decent, and tech support is first class.
  • My site Jobscams [jobscams.com] contains information about some of the same companies (i.e. Geneva Search Consultants [jobscams.com] and Wellington Burke [jobscams.com]) as the execcareer.com [execcareer.com] site.

    I speak from personal experience when I tell you that these guys are using every trick up their sleeves to try and silence consumer advocates. Wellington Burke has filed suit against me and recently contacted my ISP trying to get my service disconnected (I host my own site). Fortunately, my ISP (DSLextreme.com [dslextreme.com]) after reviewing the contents of my site told them that nothing there violated their TOS and told them to go to hell.

    It's amazing that your site can be featured in national news organization's reports (i.e. CBS national news, NY Times, Forbes, Wall Street Journal, etc), but that so many of these ISPs will shut you down in a second as soon as they receive a threatening letter.

  • Thanks to everyone's advice, I have been able to find secure hosting for my site www.execcareer.com [execcareer.com].

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