Hosting Advice for Consumer Advocacy Websites?

Posted by Cliff on Tuesday February 18, 2003 @03:27PM 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."

2 of 46 comments (clear)

Min score:

Reason:

Sort:

Community Colo by smoondog · 2003-02-18 16:20 · Score: 5, Informative

Assuming you are non-profit, you might try:

Community Colo 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
Re:First of all! by abh · 2003-02-19 03:41 · Score: 4, Informative

> 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...