Slashdot Mirror
Humorously Bad Web Hosting Policies
retard2112 writes "In the Terms of Service for pagecreators.net I found this about halfway through.
D. You agree not to post any type of review about Page Creators at any time anywhere on the web. This includes any statement good or bad. You understand you will be held liable for damages of no more than fifty-thousand dollars if a review is found and traced back to yourself. What is up with that?" I ought to make a Slashdot Terms of Service thing like that where I get to hold the dude who posts goat trolls all day from behind a law firm's firewall liable for $50k! Seriously tho', that's pretty nasty. Larry Ellison would be proud.
For those who are interested. I originally found the link to pagecreators.net from cruel.com. A collection of horror stories about people dealing with pagecreators.net can be found here. Enjoy!
Right Now, our government is doing things you think only other governments do.
Did they just get /.-ed or what?
-bluebomber
The Daily Build
Cute, nice timing Slashdot.
Go to http://pagecreators.net now.
Page Creators has ceased to operate. Route questions to pcoffice@pagecreators.net.
Pagecreators has ceased to operate.. 15 minutes after a bad story? Geeze, thats getting rid of the crap.
Just three more hours seapeople and you can finally take me away from this crappy God Damned planet full of hippies
The site is mysteriously down and disappeared. What is funny is that Wired just ran an article on the company (and the teenage owner) at http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,1282,40673, 00.html
Information is the catalyst for revolution
However, while I don't like this policy, I still defend their right to pursue it. If you don't like their policy, don't do business with them.
There really isn't anything more to be said.
KTB:Lover, Poet, Artiste, Aesthete, Programmer.
KTB:Lover, Poet, Artiste, Aesthete, Programmer.
There is no
That your not being hosted by these guys because that statement could be construed as a review and you could be liable. Some companies are really dumb and have really dumb lawyers who write that stuff.
-root is lord.
PageCreators is run by an 18yr old who is scamming people of thousands of dollars, by charging $1/kb of traffic. In some cases, he has falsified logs to show higher traffic. One person had such a small page, that they would have needed over 800,000 visitors to generate the traffic that Page Creators charged their credit card for.
The punk who runs it has a lawyer (or someone pretending to be a lawyer) who routinely sends threatening letters to sites that post bad reviews.
Looks like the page was slashdotted already! Sweet sweet vengance.
----------
do { Work(); PayTaxes(); Eat(); Sleep(); } while (alive)
----------
while (alive) { Work(); PayTaxes(); Eat(); Sleep(); }
Bool
Rogers Cadenhead (Web: http://www.cadenhead.org/workbench)
Google's Cache of their TOS
is that you don't talk about Page Creators...
"Watch these suckers jump when I get root." - l33t j03
I submitted a story about this last week after the Wired article, but it was rejected. :(
.3k/s or greater. Again, couldn't see any TOS to verify this or not, but that's not a whole lot of bandwidth.
What I found extremely interesting was that I couldn't find the terms of service anywhere. I actually signed up for an account (old CC number, so it wouldn't go thru) but at no time was I actually even offered the option of seeing what I was agreeing to.
The Wired article pointed out that for 'unlimited' bandwidth, you were actually charged $1/k for traffic over a sustained transfer rate of
I guess their point was yes, it's unlimited bandwidth, but that doesn't mean you'll only pay $24.95/month (or whatever the rate was).
I was very surprised the guy lasted as long as he did, charging people THOUSANDS of dollars, then defending himself by saying they didn't 'understand the technical nature of hosting', etc. Wouldn't the banks get suspicious? You have 200 charges of $24.95/month for 18 months, then 3 charges of $10,000, then hundreds more $24.95s. I think that SHOULD raise some eyebrows, just like my CC usage causes calls from the CC company occasionally - "you've never charged anything over $200 in the past 10 years we've known you, and you just charged $10,000 in 5 different states in 10 minutes. Is everything OK?"
creation science book
That's just dangerous.. :/
:/
We can't have companies interfering with our fundamental right to gripe! I mean, sure, if somebody's posting stupid rumors about Satan Worshiper P&G People or trying to pull of scams, that's illegal because of Libel and Fraud, but bad reviews are a part of life.
I mean, think about what would happen if every piece of review hardware for the computer mags and sites came with a TOS agreement that dictated that you couldn't write a unfavorable review of the piece of hardware. A good review wouldn't mean anything.
Now, I suspect that a good lawyer could get you out of the TOS's review clause. But your average pissed off customer makes a lot less legitimately than he does illegally, where the problem then lies.
Let's just hope that nobody else gets such bright ideas..
Gentoo Sucks
The company's Terms of Service are likely just fallout from their other problems. Wired reported last week that the BBB is mad at them for persistent reports of fradulent charges. It's my guess that they are just trying to do damage control. Though it certainly seems unlikely that they will obtain any benefit for it.
In a similar note, the last company I worked for had as part of their NDA a nondisparagement clause. "You agree not to talk smack about The Company, its business practices, its officers, etc etc". Anybody know how enforecable such an agreement is, especially for people who are no longer with the company? Seems questionable to me.
From Pagecreator's TOS:
C. Copywritten Files
1. Files found on Page Creator's servers which are found to be copywritten will be removed and the account cancelled immediately without prior notification to the customer. All copyright owners will be notified accordingly.
Notice how they don't say anything about only removing files that illegally violate copyright! Any piece of work is immediately copyrighted when the author creates it. This means that each and every page that is on Pagecreators site should be removed according to their TOS. (The funny thing is that it looks like they've complied with this by taking down their entire site.) ;P
Did the policy say anything about a fine for slashdotting? Will I receive a bill for visiting their site?
That's a great reason for not doing business with little kids. Speaking of which, aren't the /. guys just kids, too?...
Right to pursue? Where?
Exactly what right do they have to shut people up? Where is that a right?
There is no right to looking good in the eye of your beholders. Sorry. Check out China.gov or something to that effect. It has a capitalist economy I'll give it credit for that, but it's still a communist, repressive government, mostly because of convenience.
The message on the other side of this sig is false.
Not too dissimilar to the charges that MS and Oracle licensing (and probably others) prohibit publication of benchmarks without prior written approval.
:)
I've not gotten all the way thru my MS SQL7 license to know if it's completely true or not, but it wouldn't suprise me at all. This type of 'agreement' doesn't seem too far out of the norm, or at least where the norm may be soon.
"You can only do business with us as long as you don't ever tell anyone at all anything about us, our products, our service or what we do." Seems to cover most of the bases...
creation science book
The first ever Slashdotting that has resulted in complete and total collapse of a company.
Oooh! Gotta go report it at FuckedCompany!
thelocust[dot]org
Geoff McCabe, a 32-year-old jewelry designer from Seattle, wanted a cheap place where his wife could post a few photos online. He found Page Creators with a search engine, and signed up for an "unlimited" package advertised at $15 a month. For a few months, he was billed as expected. But then, last November 13th, he received a three-line invoice from Page Creators by e-mail:
.8 Kbps in bandwidth overuse. He disputed the charge with his credit card company and cancelled his card.
"Usage: 9057kbp/s, Debited: $9057, Due $0. Please let us know if you have any questions about these charges. Thank you for your business!"
His wife e-mailed the company to let them know there had been a mistake.
Page Creators responded that the charges were in accordance with the contract "$1 per 1kbp/s" in "usage."
McCabe ran the traffic tracking program provided for the website. He couldn't make out anything about Kbps, but he did see that the site had received a grand total of 48 hits all year.
After subsequent requests for clarifying documentation failed to bear fruit, the McCabes informed Page Creators that they had disputed the charge with their credit card company and threatened to report the company for fraud.
PC's response:
"Do as you wish, we have proof of your usage and will take it to the maximum extent needed. Check with the Attorney General of Minnesota, you will see our point. We will also provide Visa/MasterCard with the proper documentation. There is a fee of $150 per disputed charge which will be handled in small claims court in Minnesota. We will immediately file claim for suit if you dispute these charges with your credit card company."
Others report receiving similar threats of litigation when they questioned charges.
McCabe was incensed.
"This kid literally dared me to call the attorney general because he thinks he's untouchable. I've now made it my personal hobby to get him brought to justice."
...
Travis Gochenaur, a 23-year-old from Wisconsin who says Page Creators attempted to hit him with over $7,000 in illegitimate charges, wonders why the company hasn't been shut down. Last April, Gochenaur signed up for PC's "monthly special" that offered Web hosting for just $200 a year. In June, Gochenaur says he received a cryptic "invoice" from Kruchten saying he was being charged $1,000 for
"It felt like there was a little kid using my credit card like a candy jar," he said.
After gathering his evidence, Gochenaur called the Alexandria police and sent them his evidence. Eventually, they informed him that they were passing the case on the state attorney general. Four months later, he can't believe that Page Creators is still operating.
So Wired couldn't touch them. But fifteen seconds into their Slashdotting, they're off the web and probably going to be sucessfully sued by the people whose webpages they are no longer able to serve. Interesting.
Steven
-- I have marked myself unwilling to moderate-- I don't have other accounts to artificially inflate the karma of
Hanna said that if they had any more problems with Page Creators, Registrars wouldn't do business with them any longer.
Wouldn't it be cool if we could blacklist people like this to the extent that they could never do business on the net again? Never register a domain, never host another page.. haha would serve people like him and those damn Microsoft nazis right. "What MS is charging $800 bucks for Windows 3000? Eh put 'em in the list!"
Ahh visions of heaven dancing through my head
Are YOU listed?
Bravo!!! An ON-TOPIC, relevant goat sex link!
I kiss you!
I certainly hope that no-one in here has agreed to that license!
"Ummmm..."
Between the accusations of fradulent charges and the TOS it sounds like a sickening child molestation technique or something. Don't tell anyone about my fradulent charges to your card or bad things will happen sounds alot like Don't tell your parents what i did to you or bad things will happen. sick sick sick.
http://www.livejournal.com/users/cixel
Here it is, since they have slashdotted and closed down :)
.jpeg, etc.) stored on Page Creator's server.
3. Web sites that are found to contain no html
documents, or a large number of unlinked files, are subject to warning,
suspension or cancellation at the sole discretion of Page Creators management.
4. Any customer who
violates Page Creators' Policies in abusing disk storage will be billed $1 per
10MB in one months period.
E. CGI Scripts
1. Each account comes with its own cgi-bin.
You are free to use any CGI scripts you wish.
2. Page Creators reserves the right to disable
and or remove any CGI script that affects normal server operation without prior
warning.
3. Any CGI script owned and installed by you
which has been stuck in memory by error will be charged
a $100 management fee for each instance removed.
VIII. Conditions
A. Any provision of this contract which is
broken will result in immediate account termination.
B. Payment Policies
1. 30 day guarantee applies to month-to-month
customers only.
a. Setup fees not refundable.
b. Guarantee does not apply to overages of any
kind.
c. Resellers do not receive a refund.
2. All accounts are set up on a pre-pay basis.
a. Super, Super Plus, and E-Commerce plans
have a setup fee of $25 dollars unless you are a Page Creators customer and are
opening another account.
b. E-Commerce Pro service plan has a setup fee
of $100 dollars.
c. NT Pro service plan has a setup fee of $40
dollars.
3. All pricing is guaranteed for the term of
pre-payment.
4. Page Creators reserves the right to change
prices at any time, unless other terms have been agreed upon in writing signed
by management of Page Creators.
5. Any account not brought current within one
week (7 days) of e-mail notices or exceeding this time frame in any way is
subject to suspension or cancellation.
6. The customer is responsible for all money
owed on the account from the time it was established to the time that the
customer notified Page Creators via provision VIII, D, 1-5, to request for
termination of services.
7. All payments are to be made and are charged
on your credit card (if applicable) in U.S. currency.
8. Page Creators will bill each client an
extra $50 for every returned check and $25 for each wire transfer received.
9. Accounts not bought up to date will be
submitted to a collections agency if overages are owed.
C. Cancellation
1. Page Creators reserves the right to cancel
service at any time for any reason without liability.
2. Any violation of policies which results in
extra costs will be billed to customer (i.e. transfer, space, etc.). This
billing will be on the original credit card (if applicable) as originally
submitted at time of order with the approval of you by signing this agreement.
3. All clients who wish to cancel must do so
at pagecreators.net/cancel. Page Creators DOES NOT accept
cancellation requests via e-mail, phone, or other method of communication. For
security reasons, we require a faxed or mailed request provided by us after
submitting the online cancellation form.
4. Clause VIII of this agreement shall remain
in full effect even after full account cancellation has been completed and
confirmed via electronic mail.
5. A fee of $200 will be applied to
your account if Page Creators does not receive proper cancellation request yet
you move your site to another provider. This fee is not refundable. You give
Page Creators authorization to charge your credit card this amount (if
applicable payment method).
6. Once an account is cancelled and customer
notified by electronic mail, customer understands that all material stored
including but not limited to email will be lost. Customer can not hold Page
Creators liable for any lost information the customer failed to back up.
V. Method of Payments
A. Credit Card Payment - You understand
that all account sales are final. you further understand that unfounded disputed
charges will result in a $50 merchant processing fee and a $100 account research
fee.
B. Check Payment - Accounts are set up
only upon receipt of payment and this signed agreement. Any check that is
returned to Page Creators is subject to a $50 returned check fee and $25
processing fee. You understand that all account sales are final.
C. Wire Payments - Any wire received
from customer of Page Creators will be subject to a $25 wire processing fee.
Advanced notice to sales@pagecreators.net must be received. Page
Creators must pre-approve any request made. You understand that all account
sales are final.
VI. Prohibitions
A. Server Abuse
1. Any attempt to undermine or cause harm to a
server, or customer, of Page Creators is strictly prohibited.
2. Page Creators will strongly react to any
use or attempted use of an Internet account or computer without the owner's
authorization. Such attempts include but are not limited to "Internet
scamming" (tricking other people into releasing their passwords), password
robbery, security hole scanning.
3. You understand that any unauthorized use of
accounts or computer, whether or not the attacked account or computer belongs to
Page Creators, will result in action against the attacker. Possible action
include warnings, account cancellation, and civil or criminal legal action,
depending on the seriousness of the attack.
B. Unsolicited E-Mail
(spam)
1. Unsolicited commercial advertisements are
not allowed in e-mail, and will likely result in account cancellation.
Commercial advertisements are unwelcome in most Usenet discussion groups and on
most e-mail mailing lists. Inappropriate postings may result in account
cancellation. See the newsgroup or mailing list's charter for whether
advertising is allowed or not.
2. "Spamming," or sending a message
to many different off-topic newsgroups, is particularly unethical and will be
treated as such. Sending a message, especially an advertisement, to more than
five or six recipients, is by itself spamming unless the individuals have
specifically requested to be added to a mailing list on that topic. E-Mail is a
person-to-person medium, not a broadcast medium.
3. Upon even your first Spam offense your
account will be terminated and a maintenance fee of $1000 will be billed to your
payment method used upon sign up. This is due to the enormous amount of time
it takes to serve spamming victims. If customer paid by credit card, they agree
to pay this fee.
C. Copywritten Files
1. Files found on Page Creator's servers which
are found to be copywritten will be removed and the account cancelled
immediately without prior notification to the customer. All copyright owners
will be notified accordingly.
2. In addition, a management fee of $500
per copywritten file will be billed to the customer's method of payment upon
sign up. If you paid by credit card you agree to accept this/these debits.
3. This includes but is not limited to, files
with the extension .zip, .exe, etc.
4. Page Creators will be the sole arbiter as
to what constitutes a violation of this provision.
D. IRC -We currently do not allow IRC
or IRC bots to be operated on our servers. If one is found to be operating, it
will be removed and your account terminated without prior notice to you.
E. Chat Rooms
1. Due to the large amount of bandwidth and
system resources used by chat rooms, you understand that you are not allowed to
install your own chat room without first approving it with the Page Creators
support team. The Page Creators support team can be reached at support@pagecreators.net.
2. Parachat chat rooms are acceptable and do
not apply to this rule. They may be installed without prior approval from Page
Creators.
3. If you have any questions concerning
whether your proposed chat room is a parachat chat room, contact Page Creators
prior to installation.
F. Abuse of SMTP Mail
Server
1. We do not allow clients to send more than
2000 pieces of electronic mail per day. If you do send more than this amount,
your account will be suspended for network abuse.
2. If you are sending legitimate electronic
messages and they total more than 2000 per day your account will be moved to a
special server that is specifically designed to handle high volumes of email. You
will be charged $50.00 per month and a setup fee of $50.00 in addition to your
regular hosting charges if your account is moved to this server. Please
contact noc@pagecreators.net to have your domain moved or
initially installed on this special server. The maximum allowable electronic
messages per day on this special server is 20,000 at the price above.
3. You may contact Page Creator's sales
department to work out a contract for additional e-mail at a price to be
determined by Page Creators.
VII. Lawful Purpose
A. Page Creators reserves the right to refuse
service to anyone.
B. Customers may only use the Page Creators
server for lawful purposes.
C. Transmission of any material in violation
with Federal, State or Local regulation is prohibited. This includes, but is not
limited to, copywritten material, material legally judged to be threatening or
obscene, and material protected by trade secrets. The designation of any
materials as such described above is left entirely to the discretion of Page
Creators management.
D. Regardless of the place of signing this
agreement, the client agrees, for purposes of venue, this contract was entered
into Douglas County, City of Alexandria, State of Minnesota, and any dispute
will be litigated or arbitrated in this jurisdiction.
VII. Indemnification
A. You agree to defend, indemnify, save and
hold Page Creators harmless from any and all demands, liabilities, losses, costs
and claims, including reasonable attorney's fees asserted against Page Creators,
its agents, its customers, officers and employees, that may arise or result from
any service provided or performed or agreed to be performed or any product sold
by you, your agent, employee or assign.
B. You agree to defend, indemnify and hold
harmless Page Creators against liabilities arising out of but not limited to:
1. Any injury to person or property caused by
any products sold or otherwise distributed in connection with Page Creator's
server;
2. Any material supplied by you infringing or
allegedly infringing on the proprietary rights of a third party;
3. Copyright infringement; or
4. Any defective products sold to customer
from Page Creator's server.
IX. Disclaimer
A. Page Creators is not responsible for any
damages suffered by you or your business as a result of services we provide.
B. Page Creators makes no warranties of any
kind, expressed or implied, for services we provide.
C. Page Creators disclaims any warranty or
merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose. This includes loss of data
resulting from delays, non-deliveries, wrong delivery, and any and all service
interruptions caused by Page Creators and its employees.
D. Page Creators reserves the right to revise
its policies at any time without notice. It is the customer's responsibility to
monitor pagecreators.net/contract for policy changes.
E. All Sub-Networks and resellers of Page
Creators must adhere to the above policies.
F. Failure to follow any term or condition
will be grounds for immediate account deactivation without refund.
ALL CUSTOMERS MUST BE AT LEAST 18 YEARS OF
AGE
SERVICES AGREEMENT I. Mission Statement A. Page Creators provides Internet World Wide Web page hosting. Page Creators has certain legal and ethical responsibilities regarding the use of its servers and equipment involved in these services. B. Page Creator's general policy is to act as a provider of Internet presence. Page Creators has specific ethical concerns regarding the use of its computers as detailed below. C. Page Creators guarantees to respond to any and all e-mails regarding any question or problem you have with our service no later than 36 hours after said e-mail is sent. This guarantee does not apply to lost deliveries due to outside network problems. II. 99.9% Uptime Guarantee A. Service Level - Page Creators endeavors to have the content of your web site available for http access by any part in the world 99.9% of the time. B. Coverage - This 99.9% uptime guarantee applies to any Page Creators client in good financial standing with Page Creators at the time of a service outage. C. Credits 1. In the event that your web site is not available for more than 99.9% of the time, Page Creators will give you a credit on the following month's service fee as follows: a. For any shared hosting client, such credit shall be retroactive to the first day of the month in which the access was denied, and shall be as calculated below and as measured 24 hours a day in a calendar month, with the maximum credit not to exceed the monthly service charge for the affected month. Page Creators offers this guarantee to every month-to-month customer. b. Monthly Uptime Credit. 95% to 99.8% shall govern a 25% credit. 90% to 94.9%% shall govern a 50% credit. 89.9% or below shall govern a 100% credit. 2. In order for you to receive a credit on your account, you must request the credit within ten (10) days after you experienced the down time. a. Your request must be made by sending an electronic mail message to noc@pagecreators.net. b. For security purposes, the body of this message must contain your account user name, the dates and times of the unavailability of your web site, and such other customer identification requested by Page Creators. 3. Credits will be applied within ten (10) days of your credit request. As a courtesy to our month-to-month customers, an in-house credit to your account shall be your sole and exclusive remedy in the event of an outage. D. Restrictions on Credits - Credits shall not be provided to you in the event that you have any outage resulting from the following: 1. Scheduled maintenance as posted from time to time at Page Creators; 2. Your behavior or the performance or failure of your equipment, facilities or applications; 3. Circumstances beyond Page Creator's reasonable control, including, without limitation, acts of any governmental body, war, insurrection, sabotage, embargo, fire, flood, strike or other labor disturbance, interruption of or delay in transportation, delay in telecommunications or third party services including backbone provider, DNS propagation, domain name registration / transfer, failure of third party software or hardware or inability to obtain raw materials, supplies, or power used in or equipment needed for provision of your web site; or 4. A client breaking any item in Page Creator's this agreement causing a machine to fail as a result. III. Miscellaneous Provisions A. Acceptable Bandwidth Use and Unacceptable Overuse Clause 1. Bandwidth is a term used to describe the total traffic your web site and other services associated with the use of your website consume. 2. We do not monitor traffic until you surpass the specified amount with your package at the time of purchase in one months period of time. This does not apply to provision III, A, 3. 3. In the event you consume more than 30kbp/s of sustained peak traffic within any 24 hour period of time, for any month, a fee of $1 per 1kbp/s will be billed to your account via the payment method used upon sign up. 4. You agree to pay Page Creators this $1 per 1kbp/s fee for bandwidth overages and you understand this fee is not refundable under any circumstance. 5. WARNING- You also understand that wusage statistics are not accurate enough for you to determine your own total bandwidth usage, as it does not include the following: e-mail transfer, httpd or ftp downloads from webpage, anonymous FTP downloads, CGI scripts, Real Audio, Real Video, Telnet, and SSH, as well as other items. 6. If you have any questions on this policy, contact us prior to signing up. 7. All customers who occur bandwidth overages will be e-mailed a receipt regarding the overages to the e-mail address provided upon sign up. 8. Client paying by credit card will be billed prior to invoice being sent. 9. Clients paying by credit card agree to accept charges for bandwidth overages. B. Background Running Programs 1. We may allow programs to run continually in the background. These are considered on a one-to-one basis and an extra charge will be incurred based on system resources used and operational maintenance needed. 2. You must notify Page Creators prior to the installation of any background running programs. The final consent and total fee must be arranged. C. New Domain Name Registration 1. The customer who registers for services is the legal owner of any domain name registered. 2. Page Creators reserves the right to seize any domain name at any time for the following reasons: a. Placing dispute with customer's credit card institution on any payment debited by Page Creators; and b. Violation of any provision of this service agreement. D. Disk Storage 1. The intention of Page Creators is to provide a large space to serve web documents, not to provide an off-site storage area for electronic files. 2. All (90%) of your web pages must be 'linked' with files (.gif,
Trust the source!
That's about as reasonable as a Click-Wrap license that I have recently encountered. "By opening this package you agree to be bound by the license found on the media enclosed". The license was on the CD-Rom and you have to open the package to view it. so much for freedom of speech and freedom to choose.
Slashdot admins: How much will you pay me for not doing an Anonymous Coward posting with a full review of Page Creators and dropping them a note? :> I'll probably do the same thing for any other website allowing comment posting...
(This business idea has been patented with little trouble; as long as I use lynx (and the keyboard), I don't violate the infamous one-click patent...)
This message is provided under the terms outlined at http://www.bero.org/terms.html
Hey, don't forget us left-wing lunatics too. B-)
Anyway, Slashdot provides a means to help you do just that: set your threshold higher.
Set your threshold to "1" and you won't see AC posts (except those very few that get modded up).Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | http://www.infamous.net/
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
Sure, you can put any nonsensical thing you want into a contract. It doesn't mean that such terms are enforceable. I could insert terms into a contract that give me the right to administer a severe beating to any signing party who pisses me off, but guess what would happen if I demanded a court enforce that? I'd like to see this company just try to get one of their $50,000 judgements for the simple act of posting a review on the net. The velocity with which it was tossed out of court would create quite the breeze.
"If I have seen further than other men, it is by stepping on their glasses." - Michael Swaine
In June, Gochenaur says he received a cryptic "invoice" from Kruchten saying he was being charged $1,000 for .8 Kbps in bandwidth overuse. He disputed the charge with his credit card company and cancelled his card.
.8 Kbps bandwidth overuse? I'm surprised that the cops aren't busting down this kid's door for credit card fraud.
----
WOW, this kid must be getting rich. $1000 for
I suggest that we all take them up on their admonition to route questions to that email address. In fact, I have, oh, a couple of hundred questions that I'd like answered. I've always wanted to know the capital of North Dakota for example.
"If I have seen further than other men, it is by stepping on their glasses." - Michael Swaine
Don't want to be slapped with a $50,000 charge for this story which could be interpreted as a negative review!
it hasn't ceased operations, that "error" message is actually his page.
other sites on the same machine are operating perfectly (try woodyrussell.com)
-dk
-dk
Dream with the feathers of angels stuffed beneath your head.
hmmmm, what if some university student w/access to an oc3 decided to look at every pagecreaters.com website? in 15 seconds? 24 times a day? i bet the teenager used a local university line and just accessed the pages from the schools fat pipe across town to his server.
"Hey, don't forget us left-wing lunatics too."
:-)
He was correctly assuming that we're part of the 70% insightful
"You can't get something for nothing." - my grandfather, on the stock market and Reaganomics.
Counter on that page read 728 when i got to it.. let's see what it looks like in five or ten minutes
Are YOU listed?
So their doing of scheduled maintenance makes you not qualify for credit :) tres cute :)
No. He's charging $1/b/sec, NOT $1/kb. Big difference! :)
From their TOS, cached on Google:http://www.bootyproject.org
OtakuBooty.com: Smart, funny, sexy nerds.
It looks like you guys hurt their feelings. :P Their website now says they have shut down.
Do you like German cars?
From section III of the TOS: "5. WARNING- You also understand that wusage statistics are not accurate enough for you to determine your own total bandwidth usage, as it does not include the following: e-mail transfer, httpd or ftp downloads from webpage, anonymous FTP downloads, CGI scripts, Real Audio, Real Video, Telnet, and SSH, as well as other items." Check the spelling of usage. Notice how this protects the charges. I've never seen Telnet or SSH take up more than 1 kbps, unless port forwarding is on. Anyhow, how do they calculate bandwith usage? Do they use usage statistics?
There are bigger fish for Taco to fry...
for instance, the so called 'slashdot effect' is dangerously similar to the DDOS attacks of recent occurance. Couple this with the large number of "dot comms" that are imploding left and right, and considering the notion that during this startup lifecycle phase many of these companies fall into the hands of the mean green litigating machine that the money and lawyers are eager for, it is a wonder that we don't pick up more lawsuits over toppling these medium sized servers.
This story is a perfect example, a foul EULA, obviously crafted by an aggressive attourney, their hatred of negative press and a slashdotting of their service, it seems obvious that trouble is near. One quick glance at the referer data will make it all so clear even to the simplest fool: slashdot causes server outages when they post a story. Couple this with the editorial shortcommings and faulty reporting standards so prevelent on slashdot, and the case of negligence that could ensue would be entirely reasonable. WATCH OUT TACO, THEY ARE COMING TO GET YOU.
:::
:::
Vaginux.
"eat me".
"I'm sorry, it seems that someone who shares the mySQL server with you sent a bad query that brought down the whole thing."
[sound effects of various guns cocking] "Okay. Well, let me know as soon as we're back up. We have a business to run, you know."
Frank's Pagan Holiday
is the site still up?
the American dream. I mean he's making alot of money, has no boss. There is the issue about breaking the law but that's just a minor detail. After all, the law is a grey area anyway.
I love the smell of Karma in the morning
(Sorry for all the posts, seriously) I wonder what the bill would be if the site was slashdotted...
Do you like German cars?
The TOS agreement, which forbids any criticism of the webhosting company, was hailed by Jack Valenti as "a sterling example of the bold future available to all content providers."
"It was a long shot actually," said Valenti. "We were getting pretty pissed off about all the flak we were getting about DeCSS- and Napster-related lawsuits, and so we were just blue-skying one day about what to do. The idea came up, and since everyone was coked up at the time we just went with it, you know? We found a pissant little webhosting service, offered the contract, and waited to see how far it would go."
"We had no idea it would be so successful," he added. "But we're definitely happy it did."
A spokesman for the two agencies would not speculate further on where the agreement might be used next. When asked just how far punishment for criticism would go, he replied cryptically, "Just watch us."
Free Software Foundation programmer and founder Richard M. Stallman could not be reached for comment. Said a source close to him, "He's desperately grepping all the click-wrap agreements on his hard drive."
Carousel is a lie!
this is too damn funny. i used to work for the company that hosted (sorry, not gonna mention this b/c i know they read this site) this box. (they offered co-lo services as well as web hosting services, and this was a co-lo box.)
this guy was a fucking idiot! he had no place in at all running a linux box, let alone a web hosting business. i can't begin to even recall how many countless hours i spent fixing his scripts, programs, etc etc b/c he was too dumb to figure it out and i was "required to" by my job. (i fucking hated that w/ a passion - i can't stand it when i have to clean up other ppl's fuck-ups).
i'm surprised that it actually took this long for this to come up. i remember getting phone calls from his customers where i worked complaining about his service and the fact that he was never there.
ahh - if only this had happenned to the company i worked for. they are as big a set of idiots (well, most - i don't want to lump everyone into that category) as this guy is.
-Jae
Good for slash dot I'm tired of having half the web companies run by 12 year olds who think they should be able to scam every last person out of every last dime they have. Now if we could only get rid of those "get paid to surf" companies where 98.34% have no intention of paying there users.
- ...I do not want to see issues such as this decided by the government. I would like to see these issues decided by the common sense of the masses.
This is a great idea!Unfortunately, we need a way to distill and enforce this common sense. Sure, "market forces" seem like a tempting answer, but market forces only reflect the common sense of the market, not the commoen sense of the masses. As others have pointed out, a killer-for-hire service may be supported by the marketplace, but is obviously against the "common sense of the masses."
Maybe we could elect representatives who would be answerable to various segments of the population. These representatives could be granted enforcement powers -- powers they hold only as long as they stay in office, something they can only do by faithfully representing the "will" of their segment.
We could call it "Democracy."
Actually, on second thought, it wouldn't work. It would require the constant participation of the population, obviously too much to ask. Instead, the "masses" will call for some kind of new system that promotes their interests but doesn't require any effort from them whatsoever. They'll get what they deserve, at that point.
A few minutes ago I saw the note to contact pcoffice@... etc... Upon reloading it to show a co-worker, the page is now gone. Luckily, that email address is still here on /. so I can still get my questions answered!
** http://www.stinkingloser.com **
I wonder if that is a reference to /.
Cheers
The things are huge. If a consumer picked up a copy of a software license at their local Best Buy and read it before they bought it, no one would ever buy software. Now we can simply click right through those annoying legal things and play our games. It's one of the worst things happening in computing today and I hope it's legality is finally decided on. I'm pretty sure how it will turn out.
Steven
-- I have marked myself unwilling to moderate-- I don't have other accounts to artificially inflate the karma of
Has anybody noticed how credit cards lend themselves so easily to all kinds of monkey business?
Whenever you give your credit card number, you're handing over your wallet and telling the merchant to go ahead and serve himself. Although the credit card companies pretend that they regulate the merchants making charges, the scope for monkey business is astronomous.
The most dangerous merchants are, surprisingly, the bigger ones, like telephone companies and other utilities, and these are pushing for everybody to use credit cards.
I'm trying, however, to stop using credit cards altogether.
Since I live in Europe, and I'm quite lucky that most European consumers (and most smaller merchants too, because all transactions are registered, and handed down to the tax authorities) share this deep resentment for credit cards with me.
The more people use credit cards, the more I will be forced to use a credit cards. In the end, I'm not even going to be able to get a phone service, unless "I hand over my wallet".
Therefore, I would like to urge everybody to refrain from using credit cards as much as you can.
The web site is now completely blank. Those nasty /.ers have obviously started to flood his mail account out of existance as well. Poor wee chap was simply trying to follow in Bill Gates footsteps and he gets picked on by those horrid chaps that are equally as nasty to dear Bill.
Shame on you...
I love stacking my barbecues in the shed at the end of summer - you can't beat a bit of grill on grill action.
telnet pagecreators.net
Red Hat Linux release 6.1 (Cartman)
Kernel 2.2.12-20 on an i686
login:
Not that it means anything. Just something I noticed while trying to find anything except the ceased to operate notice.
I love going down to the elementary school, watching all the kids jump and shout, but they dont know I'm using blanks.
what to learn from this is never to use your CC for business on the internet. Yes, call me paranoid, what I did instead was open a checking account and got one of those bank cards that can be used as a CC, anytime I want to do a business on the internet, I just deposit an amount, and do it, if anyone ever tries to commit fraud with my card, the will at most get away with $100...
------ Curiosity killed the cat. {satisfaction brought it back | it didn't die ignorant | lack of it is killing mankind
It sounds like this guy is using incremental charges for people to be racking up these charges. That would mean that customers get penalized for downloading the same data in less time (i.e. better client connections)...
But how often would he have to sample the rates? Would you be charged for every minute you're over the bandwidth limit? He either has to make that clear in the "contract" or his methods won't hold up in court. And if he's using instanteous charges after all (as every other ISP does), a judge can demand his logs...something that would definitely favor the customers.
This entire contract is meaningless.
Section 1 and the uptime guarantee can be thrown out entirely. 99.9% over what period of time?? Generally, Uptime guarantees are yearly, but this must be stated. And then further reading provides that he is not responsable if A) There is Scheduled Maint. B) The downtime is due to a "Third-Party Hardware or Software" problem. OS crash?? Not our problem. Blown power supply?? We can't be held responsable. Heck, he's not even on the hook to refund your money if they cut his power off for non-payment.
He does not define the parties involved. "You" as it is used denotes noone. And "We"?? No corporate name that you are entering an agreement with??
- (Police: Did you get the name of the mugger?
- Victim: Yes, his name was "me".
- Police: "Me"??
- Victim: That must be his name, he said "Give "me" all your money!"
3. Credits will be applied within ten (10) days of your credit request. As a courtesy to our month-to-month customers, an in-house credit to your account shall be your sole and exclusive remedy in the event of an outage.The above section states that if you are MtM, and your site is down for an entire month (for resons not shot down earlier) you will recieve a credit fo the next month of crappy service only. No refund check would ever be cut. This is courtesy.
Anyone who signed this deserves to lose their second car.....
Hmmmmm..... Maybe I should get into web hosting.....
~Hammy
----- "A people that would sacrifice rights and freedom for a bit of safety deserve neither freedom nor safety."
--
Steven Murdoch.
Steven Murdoch.
web: http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/users/sjm217/
Check this out from the TOS:
IX. Disclaimer
D. Page Creators reserves the right to revise its policies at any time without notice. It is the customer's responsibility to monitor pagecreators.net/contract for policy changes.
Excuse me? It's my responsibility to monitor changes in a contract? BZZZZ! Wrong. You sign and agree to a contract, that's legit. But to create a clause that says NOT ONLY that the contract can be modified without notice BUT ALSO that one must adhere to the contract reguardless of whether or not the participant/s agreed to it without proper closure is not legal BY ANY MEANS.
One signs the TOS agreement. Legal. TOS agreement modified. Legal. Direct or written notification of change in TOS. Legal. (Why do you think banks, insurance agencies, credit card companies, and all other businesses write letters to you giving "Notification" over some business transaction?) If participant is not happy with TOS modification, the service can be terminated. Legal. But to modify a TOS without express notification to participants is not.
No doubt this is a scam.
Moderate the above jerk down to (-1, Troll) immediately or I will subpoena Slashdot for a list of all Slashdot users with moderation points .. and I'll sue each of you for $50,000!
-- The Owner Of PageCreators.Net
The original critical Web page hosted by Mindspring pointed to another page on AdWanted, which shut down the review on threat of lawsuit (but at least pointed to the current location on Geocities).
Stupid job ads, weird spam, occasional insight at
This guy not only is a scam artist but is also clueless when it comes to running a server. All of the servers listed in the domain of pagecreators.net has telnet access open. Here's the telnet banner: Red Hat Linux release 6.1 (Cartman) Kernel 2.2.12-20 on an i686 login: Looks like he's running a standard redhat install with the standard services running. I'm suprised someone hasn't compromised his setup yet.
There home page consists of a "." character. That's it... me thinks they been hacked.
From their TOS:
5. A fee of $200 will be applied to your account if Page Creators does not receive proper cancellation request yet you move your site to another provider. This fee is not refundable. You give Page Creators authorization to charge your credit card this amount (if applicable payment method).
HAHA that's the funniest piece of crap I've seen in a long time. Not even aitcom nor 9netave can beat that!
Did a little digging on pagecreators.net...
a whois on them produces the following:
Registrant:
Page Creators (PAGECREATORS3-DOM)
1213 Lark Street
Alexandria, MN 56308
US
Domain Name: PAGECREATORS.NET
Administrative Contact:
ADMINISTRATION DEPARTMENT (AD9930-ORG) ADMIN@PAGECREATORS.NET
PAGE CREATORS
1213 LARK STREET
ALEXANDRIA , MN 56308
US
888-960-1387 Fax- 320-762-9060
Technical Contact:
NETWORK OPERATIONS CENTER (NO1334-ORG) NOC@PAGECREATORS.NET
PAGE CREATORS
1213 LARK STREET
ALEXANDRIA , MN 56308
US
888-382-4994 Fax- 320-762-9060
Billing Contact:
BILLING DEPARTMENT (BD2588-ORG) BILLING@PAGECREATORS.NET
PAGE CREATORS
1213 LARK STREET
ALEXANDRIA , MN 56308
US
888-960-1387 Fax- 320-762-9060
Record last updated on 03-Nov-1999.
Record expires on 06-Feb-2001.
Record created on 06-Feb-1999.
Database last updated on 27-Dec-2000 05:02:56 EST.
Domain servers in listed order:
NS1.PAGECREATORS.NET 209.123.201.128
NS2.PAGECREATORS.NET 209.123.201.130
When I look closer at the DNS servers....I get this curious information:
Net Access Corporation (NETBLK-NAC-NETBLK02)
110 South Jefferson Road
Newton, NJ 07860
Netname: NAC-NETBLK02
Netblock: 209.123.0.0 - 209.123.255.255
Maintainer: NAC
Coordinator:
Pavely, Ryan (RP2938-ARIN) abuse@nac.net
800-net-me36 (FAX) 973-590-5080 (FAX) 201-983-0453
Domain System inverse mapping provided by:
NS1.NAC.NET 207.99.0.1
NS2.NAC.NET 207.99.0.2
NS5.NAC.NET 207.99.5.190
I am not that familiar with DNS practices out there in the real world but IMHO it appears that they don't even host thier own website and that Net Access Corporation may be the ones supplying this little twirp with bandwidth and DNS. Perhaps one of the more savvy slashdotters out there could clear this up for me and others watching...
His fax number listed on whois.net reverse lookup is registered to:
Rose Johnson
105 Linden Ave
Alexandria, MN 56308
Phone: 320-762-9060
SLASHDOT.ORG TERMS OF EXISTENCE (TOE)
As a web netizen, you agree not to engage in any of the following activities:
1. Being an obnoxious Dick, Jerk, Wank, Weasel or other odeous creature engaging in human, elder, animal, bandwidth or customer abuse.
FAILURE TO COMPLY WITH THESE TERMS WILL RESULT IN REPEATED SLASHDOTTINGS UNTIL YOU CAN NO LONGER AFFORD THE BANDWIDTH.
You have been warned.
"A microprocessor... is a terrible thing to waste." --
"A microprocessor... is a terrible thing to waste." --
GeneralEmergency
That's great!
burlee.com is even worse, if you read the fine print on their unlimited space and transfer plan you really end up getting only about 14 megs and 3 gigs of bandwith. They scammed me with this (250 for one month of hosting) and many others (at least 3 that I know of) for over $1,000 each for one month of hosting. They try to redefine the term unlimited and are a major scam.
--
|-_-| . o O ( bEef!)
This is a typical licence agreement. Similar terms can be found for example in Oracle (and MS) SQL licence - you are forbidden to post any benchmarks or comparisons or product reviews without approval from appropriate company.
MSDOS: 20+ years without remote hole in the default install
dynamo
so much for freedom of speech and freedom to choose.
Such as the freedom not to buy it in the first place? (checks) No, you've still got that. Vote with your wallet.
--
Rob Carlson
I wouldn't be surprised, esp. since it appears that pagecreators fails to date their EULAs, and feels that is the user's responsibility to look for changed contractual provisions.
If anyone has the full text of the pagecreators EULA that contains the clause attempting to constrain negative reviews, please post it or email it to me. I'm collecting egregious EULAs/ TOS's for a page on UCITA.
Thanks.
Sincerely, Vergil
Vergil Bushnell
Insects and Grafitti Photos
But part of being insightful is understanding multiple perspectives. If you lean to much much to either direction, your vision can become clouded. I prefer those who are centered and balanced.
:)
After all, if you have but one wing, you cannot fly
But really, I enjoy watching and getting into debates with either side. People fascinate me.
On the other hand, TOS contracts bug me. (My random attempt at keeping this post on the story topic?
hmm.. ok..
tip tap... www
MarNuke
I don't hesitate at all to use credit cards over the 'net. Reason being that any charge without a signature on file can be disputed. I once had a problem with a hotel room upon arrival and decided not to stay. They previously had my credit card number from when I made my reservation over the 'net. The bill came, I got charged and I called Visa. My only question to the credit card company was "Can you produce my signature?" No signature, no problem (at least for me), no charge.
Hahaha. You're such a pathetic fuck that your gf left you, and the best revenge you can come up with is to ftp to his web site?
Hahahahahahahaha!!!!!!
It appears that their Error Documents are copyrighted, as they have been pulled as well. This is their Monthly Special page: https://ssl.pagecreators.net/pagecreators.net/secu re/openaccount/standard/special.shtml
Monthly Special, heh. I've heard it called Aunt Flo, the Monthly Visitor and the Cardinal, but that's a new one on me. Sounds like a sale on tampons.
--
--
"Outlook not so good." That magic 8-ball knows everything! I'll ask about Exchange Server next.
Sometimes you have to go to the up stream provider to have satisfaction.
Net Access Corporation (NETBLK-NAC-NETBLK02)
110 South Jefferson Road
Newton, NJ 07860
Netname: NAC-NETBLK02
Netblock: 209.123.0.0 - 209.123.255.255
Maintainer: NAC
Coordinator:
Pavely, Ryan (RP2938-ARIN) abuse@nac.net
800-net-me36 (FAX) 973-590-5080 (FAX) 201-983-0453
Domain System inverse mapping provided by:
NS1.NAC.NET 207.99.0.1
NS2.NAC.NET 207.99.0.2
NS5.NAC.NET 207.99.5.190
ADDRESSES WITHIN THIS BLOCK ARE NON-PORTABLE
* Reassignment information for this block
* available at whois.nac.net
Record last updated on 10-Sep-1999.
Database last updated on 27-Dec-2000 06:32:21 EDT.Registrant:
Page Creators (PAGECREATORS3-DOM)
1213 Lark Street
Alexandria, MN 56308
US
Domain Name: PAGECREATORS.NET
Administrative Contact:
ADMINISTRATION DEPARTMENT (AD9930-ORG) ADMIN@PAGECREATORS.NET
PAGE CREATORS
1213 LARK STREET
ALEXANDRIA , MN 56308
US
888-960-1387 Fax- 320-762-9060
Technical Contact:
NETWORK OPERATIONS CENTER (NO1334-ORG) NOC@PAGECREATORS.NET
PAGE CREATORS
1213 LARK STREET
ALEXANDRIA , MN 56308
US
888-382-4994 Fax- 320-762-9060
Billing Contact:
BILLING DEPARTMENT (BD2588-ORG) BILLING@PAGECREATORS.NET
PAGE CREATORS
1213 LARK STREET
ALEXANDRIA , MN 56308
US
888-960-1387 Fax- 320-762-9060
Record last updated on 03-Nov-1999.
Record expires on 06-Feb-2001.
Record created on 06-Feb-1999.
Database last updated on 27-Dec-2000 18:23:10 EST.
Domain servers in listed order:
NS1.PAGECREATORS.NET 209.123.201.128
NS2.PAGECREATORS.NET 209.123.201.130
Then there would be a "it's not our fault, we don't condone, we implore the parties responsible, blah blah blah" statement from Slashdot.
But by that point, people might start to get the point that you can't stop a determined and capable population of geeks with threats of litigation. At some point, lawyers will be pissing themselves at the thought of incurring the Wrath of A Thousand Cruel and Faceless SysAdmins.
Forget Fight Club. Terrorism doesn't require explosives. Just maniacs with a common goal.
Some reviews are hopefully still alive, and well, here are a few I found (courtesy of Google):
- hostsearch.com
- wuli.com
- And on the Worst hosts list, it's on the top !
Also, take a look at this site : interblaze.com, and look at the contact address : (support@pagecreators.net), and the cancel URL (http://www.pagecreators.net/cancel). Better stay away from interblaze too !!
Here's their DNS records :
Registrant:
INTERBLAZE ENTEEERTAINMENT (INTERBLAZE3-DOM)
740 BLUE MOUNTAIN ST
COQUITLAM, BC V3J4S4
CA
Domain Name: INTERBLAZE.COM
Administrative Contact, Billing Contact:
MCLELLAND, GAVIN (GMD98)
INTERBLAZE@HOME.COM
INTERBLAZE ENTEEERTAINMENT
740 BLUE MOUNTAIN ST
COQUITLAM BC, V3J4S4
CA
604-9373162
Technical Contact:
Network Operations Center (NO326-ORG)
noc@PROPAGATION.NET
Propagation Networks
1851 Central Drive Suite 110
Bedford, TX 76021
US
800-605-5438 Fax- 888-242-7554
"Naughty, naughty, naughty, you filthy old soomka !"
I read all these claims here that they got /.-ed.
This is just more proof that most slashdotters can't read as their homepage obviously says . and not /.
*sigh*
Monkey sense
The same goes with automatic bank drafts. For those that were being charged exorbant amounts, you never really know what you're paying for sometimes. At least when what you're purchasing is a one time purchase, if they continue charging you afterwards, its most definitely theft. But when they're allowed to charge you monthly, and there's some fine print buried in a contract somewhere that lets them get away with murder by charging you excessively every month, you will have to go to a lot of trouble to recover the funds.
If you're going to pay recurring charges, pay them monthly by check or money order or pay a year in advance if its cheaper or more convienent. But don't supply your credit card for automatic debits, and DEFINITELY don't do it with your bank account. Even if the company you're dealing with is honest, that doesnt' mean they can't make mistakes.
-Restil
Play with my webcams and lights here
------------------
Sure you are.
----- Original Message -----
From: Travis Roy
To:
Sent: Wednesday, December 27, 2000 4:40 PM
Subject: Terms of service request
Can you please send me a copy of your terms of service. I'm looking for a web provider.
--
Free Mac Mini
Crack headed moderation rears its head once again.
The owner of Page Creators' name is Bryan Kruchten. His company, according to the Minnesota Better Business Bureau, does nothing but scam the hell out of its clients. It's interesting to see that he hasn't been shut down yet.
Since his page is somehow down now and it seems that he doesn't answer email, I looked him up. If you're as angry as I am, send him a note, or give him a call. He's listed under his parent's number (he's only 18)
Kruchten Paul & Debbie... (320) 762-0538
1213 Lark St Alexandria MN 56308
Be nice though.
and it wasn't cracked either.
looks like the site shut down because of some serious heat they are getting into.
----------------
I am Moldy.
Is that elapsed time, or did you take a break to go to the bathroom ?
Penguins with perfect credit ratings. The Linux Pimp
--It's Pimptastic!--
This guy still has telnet open.
Shouldn't someone help this guy out?
This
Qwest, Global Crossing, UUNet, Digex...all of them.
hmmm let me see
... per inverts the following so ... thats kilobit-seconds...
...
:P
kilbits per per second
hmmm how to measure this
since its over any given 24 hour period, I guess we start our graph (to maximise scam value) of kilobits (total) vs time whenever we get a hit. The area on this graph will be the kilobit-seconds. For simplicity assume this is the only hit in 24 hours, and that the hit downloads a measly 10kb, now kilobit-seconds for the 24 hour period are... 10*60*60*24 or 864100
Now under the TOS you are over the 30 kbp/s limit... and are up for... close to a million dollars in charges...
Lucky this guy doesnt really understand his own scam.
Sigs are for wimps. I am proud to be one.
The kid is a thief and a liar......he deserves whatever he gets.
Dave
echo "."
sleep 1
done
He still will have to pay for his bandwidth too.
Dacels Jewelers can't be trusted.
"You will not find a better price for the features anywhere -- we guarantee it or we will give you one full year of hosting completely free! We have never given out one free year. Think you've found a better deal? Send us an email."
I wonder why he hasn't given out one free year, probably because the customers were so fed up in the beginning that they got smart and left.
This is very bizarre... I just ditched a domain I had hosted with pagecreators, but found myself having to be very careful because of silly clauses like the one that states a penalty will be charged if I change my DNS records on my domain! Theres another clause that states pagecreators can change the agreement at any time! Since that itself is in the agreement, it can be compared to shooting yourself in the foot.
I had to jump through hoops to cancel my account... including signing papers and faxing documents, etc... all this in fear thay they might nail me with one of their silly large $$ charges.
A little research turns up the real deal about pagecreators. It's ran by a kid, that only recently turned 18, who is more of a scam artist than businesman. Its too bad because a lot of people are getting hurt by this guy. This guy even has a hard core lawyer at the age of 18... barraged by lawsuits.
Skiers and Riders -- http://www.snowjournal.com
I think I speak for a fairly large portion of the /. population when I ask, "Who really reads those things anyway?" I guess this is evidence that perhaps we should at least skim through... Maybe. Sometimes. Or just doin't use Page Creators' service...
Check this:
http://www.interblaze.com
Guess who is the support for this site?
support@pagecreators.net
Guess where the cancellation policy for this site is at? yup pagecreators.net/cancel
now take a look at the whois....strange...
Bugs Bunny was right.
...the number you have reached is not in service. Please check the number and dial again. This is a recording. *beep* *beep* *beep* *beep* *beep* (ad nausem) ...then again, it could be because I'm in Canada, but it's still funny.
----
Toora Loora Toora Loo Rye Aye
to be the ignorant one here, but can someone explain what this code does? it's modded funny, and i hate it when i don't get the joke =(
--
Peace,
Lord Omlette
ICQ# 77863057
[o]_O
If this term is a scam then most internet companies use the same scam of assigning you the responsibility of checking for modifications to the agreement and that your continued use is your consent to the changes.
I've included excerpts from yahoo and msn but you can find the others by clicking on the TOS link that are at the bottom of most major internet sites
MSN:
Yahoo:... but I found this part of their contract as a rather good contract clause:
If just every company could have that kind of spam policy, I would feel rather happy
http://virtuelvis.com/
Are any of the sites hosted by Page Creators still functioning? Matt.
GOOGLE!
Google's cache of PageCreators
I think that the lawyer who wrote the TOS should find an unusual way to either kill himself or remove himself from the gene pool. That way, we can honor him with a Darwin Award.
Yeah i paid a huge amount for nothing... I didn't file a complaint... I think more people should do business like me with crappy companies.. Because well i can't find anything to do with all my money so running into a stupid overcharging company every once in a while does good for me...
Sorry i can't spell i'm only 10...
This is really amazing: the MSN terms of use do say this. Too bad I spent my mod points modding down some idiot troll in another thread.
MSN says they can change their policies any time they want without notifying you, and that your continued use of the system constitutes your agreement to be bound by their changes whether or not you're aware of them. This insanity has got to stop. Boycotting the gazoonga-services like Amazon and MSN and whoever else is trying to pull this shit is such a pain in the ass, but it looks like we really have to.
I continue to be amazed that "agreements" like this can be legally binding at all. Has anyone tried to contest something like this? Is it enforceable? Most federal judges won't enforce non-competition clauses in the tech industry (so an older /. story went) because they're absurd; these "agreements" strike me as way beyond absurd.
TomatoMan
-- http://frobnosticate.com
Hey, don't forget us left-wing lunatics too. B-)
There's no such thing as left-wing lunatics. Anyone who disagrees with us is just simply insane.
Looks like he backed everything up before he made the "." changes.
According to the Wired article, he's 18.
This story is a great example of a foul EULA, but it is obviously not written by a lawyer.
Conformity is the jailer of freedom and enemy of growth. -JFK
It would appear pagecreators.net made one last backup before bowing down for the mighty /.
http://www.pagecreators.net/secure/BACKUP_AS_OF_12 2700/
Among the files is a small core dump and a very interesting automated cancellation email which starts off with the following:
--------------------
We have received your notice to CANCEL your account with Page Creators.
Thank you for your business!
Please print this. You must submit this form to cancel your account. If we do not receive this form via fax or US Mail, you will continue to be billed and you will be responsible for the charges. We will not cancel your account and release your domain if your account has an unpaid balance or billing in dispute.
--------------------
Great! Even after acknowledging you want to quit, they will still continue charging you until you send written notice. I am sure they weren't so picky when people wanted to join.
-
Rod!
The clause about scripts running in the background was stolen from another web-hosting company - WestHost. It's not just similar - it's identical letter for letter!
From the WestHost TOS:
(http://www.westhost.com/policy.html)
"We may allow programs to run continually in the background. These are considered on a one-to-one basis and an extra charge will be incurred based on system resources used and operational maintenance needed."
From the Page Creators TOS:
(Google cached version)
"We may allow programs to run continually in the background. These are considered on a one-to-one basis and an extra charge will be incurred based on system resources used and operational maintenance needed."
Have you yet recieved a lawsuit from lawyers, for running this story? it it a negative story? hah
Jeff Eidsness Site Manager - http://thatcalendarplace.com
You are not getting it. They are talking about themselves, the five year old kiddies... Not about the website. They are nearly six though :-)
nosig today
until (succeed) try { again(); }
until (succeed) try { again(); }
I remember reading a free hosts' rules a couple of months ago - it went something like this:
"The following are not allowed:
5) No pornography"
--
mrBlond
CowboyNeal for president!
"Hit any user to continue."
This is a DIRECT quote from their Terms of Service:
... a fee of $1 dollar per 1kbp/s will be billed to your account."
"III.A.3 In the event you consume more than 30kbp/s of sustained peak traffic within any 24 hour period of time
Story Time! Gather round, Kids!
One day you find a picture of some guy opening his mail and screaming in horror. Ha ha! That's a funny picture. You get out Gimp and make his eye bulge out a little more. Ha ha! Now it's really funny!
Looks like a good day to put up a web site, so you buy an unlimited account for $40. Thanks, Page Creators, that's quite a bargain!
You don't have time to write any content, so you just put your funny picture of the man opening his bills and screaming there for now, and you go to have a beer and some pizza with a friend.
While you're away, you tell your friend about your funny picture. He dials up with his 28.8 modem and looks at it. Ha ha! That person opening his bills and screaming in horror is pretty funny! Luckily, his 28.8 modem doesn't exceed Page Creators generous bandwidth peak bandwidth limit. He sends his friend a link to your funny pictures and you go back to building him a couch using empty beer bottles and a hot glue gun.
Meanwhile his friend, who has a good 56k modem, looks at your funny picture. Ha ha! That picture sure is funny! Oopsie, but now our peak bandwidth is OVER the generous limit set by Page Creators, and they are forced to bill you $26. He emails a friend about your funny picture.
His friend has 750k DSL and she surfs through once. Poor Page Creators is forced to bill you $720 for the month. She sends an email to a friend.
Oh, no! Her friend is a bored person whose business has a T1 and they're looking at the picture on your website!! This is gonna run you $1,410 this month. Her friend sends a link to a friend.
You're still emptying beer bottles so they can be added to the couch, so you don't know that her friend is also at work, but HIS company has a T3! This costs you $44,970. It's OK, you can still sell a kidney and come out of this a few bucks ahead...
...but OH NO!! The friend has a friend who works at MCI and has a PC sitting on the same OC3 as your web provider! HE looks at the picture the instant before you're able to remove all the files from your site! Damn you, section III.A.3! You've just been nailed for $154,970!
Your site becomes wildly popular. You put a UGO banner over the funny picture of someone opening their bills and screaming, and it makes you $5000 a month due to all the hits. This amounts to about 3% of your web hosting bill.
You sell your house, your car, a kidney, a lung, both of your children, and everything you own, but you still come up short a few months down the road. You are tracked down by Page Creators' goons and killed horribly.
The end.
Such as the freedom not to buy it in the first place?
Does not apply. The return policy does not allow "unbuying" what has already been bought without prior knowledge of the terms.
Tetris on drugs, NES music, and GNOME vs. KDE Bingo.
Will I retire or break 10K?
Hmm, not quite... Remember the recent poll asking about browsers? And a lot of slashdotters were using Internet Explorer...? Well, IE5 and higher doesn't send the referer field if it's from a different domain. So they'll have no idea where it came from...
We just all hope that by only doing business with "reputable" companies, it won't be us. But, was anybody else surprised about the Yahoo! and MSN TOS? Modifiable at any time, with no notice?!? WTF?
I think the real issue is that companies are allowed to come up with these things in the first place. I think all TOS/agreements/contracts/etc. should have to be provided in plain English that the common, reasonable man can understand without having a damn dictionary and logic book by his side. And, if said agreement goes over 1/4 of a page for something that should be relatively simple (like a web-hosting contract) then ther should be a summary page.
Let's face it, we're all being fleeced (yes, even /. geeks like us fail to read and comprehend TOS's at some point, I'm sure), it's just a matter of what company is going to take advantage of it. I'm pretty sure MSN and Yahoo! aren't going to start charging $10/page view, but they sure as hell seem to be able to! (For registered members, at least)
According to Web Hosting Monitor, Page Creators has reincarnated as Trinity Host. So post a new article CmdrTaco and we'll Slashdot them again...
https://ssl.pagecreators.net/pagecreators.net/BACK UP_AS_OF_122700/secure/output.html
--
Free Mac Mini
I noticed this problem too, most recently when I tried to get an ISP here in Toronto *without* a credit card. I can't imagine what kind of a market it is where businesses can actually say NO to potential customers who want to give them cash in hand...and yet, I kept hearing, "We don't accept payment except by credit card," and I kept saying, "I don't have a credit card. Can I just come to your office and give you cash up front?"
I finally found an ISP that would let me pay cash. They got bought out, and now the new provider is losing 1/2 my e-mail messages, and I can't log on from home for shxt.
Any suggestions, Slashdots & Slashdaughters?
I'm not a geek, I'm just a clever script.
Looks as if he may be starting up again, under a new name:
http://www.trinityhost.com/
Note that nearly all of the links are disabled at this time.
A-
Surely this is unconstitutional? Denying freedom of speech and all that? But conversely, they could also claim that any negative comments about their company would be defamatory. Where does one draw the line?
One place for any disgruntled PageCreators customers to go violate their terms of service and face a lawsuit is Epinions; they have a section for reviewing them at: http://dtobias.epinions.com/inet-Web_Hosting-All-P age_Creators
One bad review is up there already. Though, other review sites have actually yanked their entire sections about this provider in response to threats of suits by Page Creators' lawyers. Spineless bastards...
--Dan
--Dan
Web Tips
"Attention: Page Creators, INC ceased to operate, and has been moved to Trinity Host LLC since December 27, 2000. However, a back-up version of Page Creators Site can be found at http://www.pagecreators.net/secure/BACKUP_AS_OF_12 2700/"
http://www.trinityhost.com/
"Trinity Host, LLC? This site looks remarkably similar to the famous Page Creators, INC, even the Customer Raves are similar (at least one of them is the same, the author can only remember one because the same customer has joined to the authors' victims list) and both companies share the same toll-free number 1-877-336-4472 (Of course, nobody answers this phone). The author was told that PageCreators' clients now belong to this company (LLC, Page Creators probably needs this). The hosting package is also very similar. It is too early to draw any conclusion yet because this site is not even complete, but we are going to watch this company."
Maybe this one should get /.ed too. heh.
I've been wondering. Aren't parents responsible for what there children do when they are under 18? I know if a 16 year old is in a car accident and is sued, the parents are on the hook for the money. Does this mean that the parents will be responsible for the fraud before he turned 18 (if he has been running the site that long?) Did they even know he was doing this scamming?
BigCat79
BigCat79
"The dead have risen and are voting Republican!" --Bart Simpson
Yes, it does; or rather, I have very recently thought about something similar: see my article about this. I have submitted it as well, so mayhaps we'll see it on the front page soon!
Direct quote from TrinityHost.com:
;)
"You will not find a better price for the features anywhere we guarantee it or we will give you one full year of hosting completely free! We have never given out one free year. Think you've found a better deal? Send us an email consumers@trinityhost.com" Uh oh, looks like someone needs to proofread.
Do you like German cars?
If it was that at any time, it certainly isn't now. I just checked and the front page is just a single period.
Mind you, that doesn't mean it won't be changed again...
No, I never have. What would I need a car for? I don't drive & have no license, and live in a city with some of the best public transit in North America!
Interrobang, better late than never.
I'm not a geek, I'm just a clever script.
A single period? I see "/." Which, incidentally, is what has been happening to him. Of course, I bet the site is hosted on cable, so I'm not surprised. ;)
hehehe
until (succeed) try { again(); }
until (succeed) try { again(); }