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Before they made the split, you could have signed up for the 10-year deal for as low as $1.67/month.

You have a very good point. Unfortunately, in today's legal climate, it's hard to find someone who:

a. has personal knowledge of the issues or events,
b. is ready to stick their neck out, and
c. won't panic under pressure.

You'd be amazed at how many people fail the last one. The least bit of pressure, and they cave in.

Lets look at the immediate facts.

1. I reported that 770star.com had been used by starmedia communications to, among other things, run an illegal lottery or prize draw.
2. Alex Cholella, the owner of starmedia, screams at iWeb
3. iWeb suspends my hosting account.

Most people would have agreed immediately to remove the "offending material." I won't. 770star.com is hosted by iWeb on one of their smart servers, and they need to buy a clue, that my reporting this guy's behaviour is helping them keep their servers clean.

PING 770star.com (184.107.161.43) 56(84) bytes of data.
64 bytes from 184.107.161.43: icmp_req=1 ttl=54 time=7.02 ms
^C
--- 770star.com ping statistics ---
1 packets transmitted, 1 received, 0% packet loss, time 0ms
rtt min/avg/max/mdev = 7.027/7.027/7.027/0.000 ms
barbara@u6:~> whois 184.107.161.43
NetRange: 184.107.0.0 - 184.107.255.255
CIDR: 184.107.0.0/16
OriginAS: AS32613
NetName: IWEB-BLK-07
NetHandle: NET-184-107-0-0-1
Parent: NET-184-0-0-0-0
NetType: Direct Allocation
RegDate: 2010-05-24
Updated: 2010-05-24
Ref: http://whois.arin.net/rest/net/NET-184-107-0-0-1

OrgName: iWeb Technologies Inc.
OrgId: GIT-20
Address: 20, place du Commerce
City: Montreal
StateProv: QC
PostalCode: H3E-1Z6
Country: CA
RegDate: 2003-11-06
Updated: 2008-09-08
Comment: http://www.iweb.com/
Ref: http://whois.arin.net/rest/org/GIT-20

For now, I'm assuming that nobody bothered to check that they themselves were hosting some of the illegal activities. If they restore my hosting account, I'll give them the benefit of the doubt. If they don't, then you can draw your own conclusions.

Most people wouldn't have even have bothered trying to expose the scammer, because they're afraid of getting a SLAPP suit. It's not easy being a whistle-blower.

And iWeb is now off the list of hosting companies that I would recommend, since they're located in a country that has no 1st Amendment rights.

First I dont have any link with Iweb.com and I support you against Starmedia.ca if what you said is true but please dont hide behind your american flag to cry. Canada has the same rules and laws you found in 1st amendment right it's just that we dont use numeral notation to classify laws. Basically American and Canadian laws are the same except the right to wear a shotgun as a decoration in your pick-up truck (4th amemdment) but Harper (our Bush) is working hard to regress us to that level.... Try suing a big American Corp and see if you would still have your internet hosting from godaddy.com and I am sure you will lose it since big corp have lawyer armies that we small people doest have...

If you REALLY want to laugh, I'm the one who set up the server at iWeb that Cholella is now using to run one of his scams - 770star.com. He's got logos of companies implying that they're sponsors, and he also used it to run an illegal lottery right after I quit, to promote 770star.com.

The tin-foil-hat brigade might think that iWeb suspended my account because i reported how one of their servers was used for illegal activities.t.

iWeb suspends trolltalk.com, I post it in my journal on slashdot ... seems to me that all they did was make themselves look stupid and give people a reason NOT to use them.

You only have a "price" if you aren't willing to drop your anonymity.

I posted a lot of whistleblowing material this weekend against my former boss - starmedia.ca - about tax fraud, over-billing customers, scamming the government-subsidized job training programs, etc.

I didn't do it anonymously, because anonymous whistle-blowing has zero credibility.

Sure enough, he got so scared he contacted my hosting company (iweb.com - if you don't use adblock, you'll see they're a big advertiser on slashdot and youtube), and they suspended my hosting account. He's too chicken-sh*t to sue me because he knows he'd lose.

So, having my account suspended is a minor inconvenience compared to the price of knuckling under and allowing him to continue to lie, cheat, and steal.

And iWeb is now off the list of hosting companies that I would recommend, since they're located in a country that has no 1st Amendment rights.

Thanks for replying :-)

The real issue is that to build a high-performance site, you have to have a good understanding of the underlying platform - you can't just "farm it out" because it will influence how you write your code.

However, for just starting up, get a cheapie shared hosting account from a place like iweb for $2 to $6 a month. 600 gigs of storage should be enough for you to start, since you've indicated that your main concern is LARGE amounts of code :-)
link
... and if or when it grows, move to your own server for under $100 a month. This way, you can do the learning curve thing and experiment at your own pace.

"The cloud" is not for you at this point. Not when you can get your own server with 10 TB of bandwidth and 500 gigs of mirrored raid for $89 a month. Or using the option of creating one virtual server spanning 1 or more physical servers (and pooling the bandwidth), you can easily have 20TB, 30TB, etc.

Of course, you can also use Amazon's free tier.

http://aws.amazon.com/ec2/pricing/

... but remember, it's like crack - the first hit is free only because they want to hook you up :-)

Heh, I think you don't quite understand that web hosts are being taken down with this exploit:

http://blog.iweb.com/en/2010/09/incident-panelbox-s001-affected-by-linux-vulnerability/5433.html

And I pay $44.99 forcable my connection with SHAW and get 60Gigs of traffic while iWeb sells a dedicated server for $49.99 with 1500gigsof traffic. http://iweb.com/promotion Yah thats perspective which is funny as the traffic cap was WAAAy higher even 5 years ago.

Then they file a DMCA complaint with your hosting provider/ISP.

Do like 95% of the world, get a hosting provider located outside the USofA, and not subject to the DMCA.

A simple search for "Canada web hosting" will work. Here's one that pretty much anyone can afford. The servers are located in Canada, not the US.

They offer KVM access, at $35.00/day and have a data center in Dallas. Surely we can figure out who they are. iWeb charges $35 for Emergency KVM over IP access but they also offer Free 1-day on demand KVM over IP access. MaxNOC charges $40 for anytime access IP KVM and $35 for 24 hour temporary access but they don't seem to have a Dallas data center. Another poster says it's Layered Tech but I can't find any useful information on their website to verify.

They offer KVM access, at $35.00/day and have a data center in Dallas. Surely we can figure out who they are.

iWeb charges $35 for Emergency KVM over IP access but they also offer Free 1-day on demand KVM over IP access. MaxNOC charges $40 for anytime access IP KVM and $35 for 24 hour temporary access but they don't seem to have a Dallas data center.
Another poster says it's Layered Tech but I can't find any useful information on their website to verify.