Slashdot Mirror
Censoring The Net With A Hotmail Account
Alex Bradbury writes "Members of the Bits of Freedom group conducted a test to see how much it would take for a service provider to take down a website hosting public domain material, and have published their results. They signed up with 10 providers and put online a work by Dutch author Multatuli, who died over 100 years ago. They stated that the work was in the public domain, and that it was written in 1871. They then set up a fake society to claim to be the copyright holders of the work. From a Hotmail address, they sent out complaints to all 10 of the providers. 7 out of 10 complied and removed the site, one within just 3 hours. Only one ISP actually pointed out that the copyright on the work expired many years ago. The conclusion of the investigation is definitely worth reading. The three providers who didn't take down the material are XS4ALL, UPC and Freeler. The company that came out the worst was iFast, who forwarded all the personal details of the site owner to the sender of the fake takedown notice without even being asked to do so."
I am, unfortunately they have more items explaining when they can stop providing services due to some 'legal' issue than due to not paying. Below is a summary of what I found to be relevant. Mind you, it's a loose translation of their general conditions. Saying they'll cut you off if:
- you distribute information that's in conflict with (inter)national laws
- you distribute information that's in conflict with general accepted values
- you distribute information that's discriminating (in any way), including (?) adultpages/MP3/warez/video
Disallowed:- no chatrooms, no irc or irc bots
- their servers may not be the source/mediator for spam, flames or mailbombs
- no form of destabilizing their servers is allowed, including any other type of abuse
"IFast is allowed to decide which kind of actions are in violations of these condition."As is said somewhere else, they don't have a privacy statement, at least not on their frontpage. In my opinion the last remark says it all, it is their decision wether something might be illegal or in violation.
Anyway, they seem to be a small and possibly quite new company, probably not able to handle a big case of copyright problems. Not that it's a valid defense but probably the truth anyway.
Disclaimer: I'm an XS4ALL customer, and happy with them: expensive but quality
This signature is intentionally left blank.
2 of the 4 founders of XS4ALL were editors at HackTic ; a paperprinted Slashdot at the time;) http://www.hacktic.nl/
They were succesfull from the first day that they started selling internet access to the consumer ; and kinda set first foot in that area, dragging alot of new ISP's into the market over the years.
Currently they are one of the more expensive ISP's around ; but the whole company radiates the Google-vision : 'do no evil'.
Their customer service was one of the best i -ever- had ; I only found out later that most of their helpdesk are actually screened for -really- knowing about computers ; instead of reading from an autocue all day long.
Most of the providers mentioned in the survey, aren't free, but paid hosting providers. Also the survey was trying to prove a flaw in the current system. Currently an ISP risk paying a huge fine under the European Guideline for Electronic Trade if they don`t remove copyrighted materials (if they can reasonably know it's copyrighted). Providers don`t risk a fine for pulling the plug on a website, so in most cases they will do just that. Seems like right now the burden of prove doesn`t rests with the copyrightholder, but with the person publishing the materials.
Not only should it be illegal, but the people from the ISPs should go to prison. Yeah, it might be easier and cheaper for the justice department to do away with all trials and just play jury/judge/executioner but that's not the way it works. The ISP should be required to actually investigate it and have real, solid evidence before they go and do something. On a sidenote, I wonder what we could "copyright" on the RIAA's site...
/. and other techie forums. There is this "I'M GONNA EMAIL MY ISP AND FIXOR THIS NOW" mentality. The bulk really comes from morons who get mad at someone on IRC or AIM and just want a third party to scare someone. It is a real shame, actually. I would come to work and find 4000 emails from customers, other ISPs customers, police departments, copyright holders, etc and 99.9999% of them were complete bullshit.
Being a former employee of a major ISP, I can tell you first hand that you are not going to see this reality. Think of this:
You have 6.8 million subscribers, the staff is bare-bones in order to keep the business afloat. It matters not how fiscally responsibe you are, there is little profit in being a service provider when your competitors pay Indians $2/hour for their labor.
Even further, people complain non-stop on the Internet. Just take a gander at a few
So, the only way to effectively survive in this type of enviroment is to assume if something looks legit, take the first steps and let the two third parties deal with it on their own. Plus, if you post some garbage on the web, assume it will get deleted at some point. Keep backups. I repeat KEEP BACKUPS. This way, when the differences are settled, you can just upload you junk again and life will be back to normal.
The direction you should focus you anger towards is the DMCA. I know it sounds cliche, but bombard your congressman and other gov offices with letters and faxes with reasonable explanations as to why you think the DMCA is a bunch of crockery. Sending some $30k a year, over worked, ISP employee who's not got a lot of options for jobs to jail because he was just doing his job is pretty stupid to say the least.
Anyway, go read an ISP's terms of service. They are pretty much immune to anything short of calling you racist names or having sex with your handicapped sister.