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Protection From Online Eviction?
AOL has been shutting down its free Web services, in some cases with little or no notice to users, and they are not the only ones. This blog post on the coming "datapocalypse" makes the case that those who host Web content should be required to provide notice and access to data for a year, and be held strictly accountable the way landlords are before they can evict a tenant. Some commenters on the post argue that you get what you pay for with free Web services, and that users should be backing up their data anyway. What do you think, should there be required notice and access before online hosts take user data offline for good?
What has happened here was not eviction. If we are going to use that word correctly, that is.
Unless those people paid for a web hosting package, they have zero recourse and they cannot be evicted as they never paid a dime for anything. They should not have any either.
I am sure there was some sort of TOS agreed to that it was for free and no guarantees were going to be made to it's avaiabilbity, backups of data were the users responsibility, etc.
This seems to be some sort of insane sense of entitlement by some people. Some delusion that servers, data storage, and bandwidth are free. That once they find their place to squat that "they are owed" something by the people that actually own that space.
Huh?
That's ... ridiculous. "They've gone plaid".
It was a free service and the web hosting providers have every right to do whatever the hell they want. There is no 99.9999% uptime SLA. It's called, "It's free. So sit down, have a coke, and shut the fuck up" SLA.
The argument that there has to be some sort of socialist laws guarantying free and protected web space to the people is just nuts.
Anyone wonder why property investors avoid certain parts of the East Cost US like the plague? It's because they have those laws there that can keep a squatter in a place for 9 months WHILE THEY DON'T PAY A DIME TO THE LANDLORD. Meanwhile, the landlord is paying a mortgage, property taxes, insurance, maintenance, etc.
Those people are parasites.
What is needed are clear terms of usage. If those state the owner of the free service can take the site down with no advance warning and without providing access to the data, they can do so. The site owner in turn can decide whether he wants to deal with such a free service or not.
Required? No, AOL owns the service and can do what it wants with it
Should they give a warning anyway? Yes, there is no adequate explanation I can think of why they shouldn't.
You obviously have to have a local copy of your data at some point. Why are you deleting it?
It's free, so how can anyone complain?
Anyone who uses a free webhost and doesn't have a backup of the website is completely without my sympathy if the free webhoster decides to delete the site.
If the site is important, spend the money for a hosted site, it will probably cost less per month than your internet connection. Besides, most ISPs give you a site with your connection.
Even if you have paid for a site, you should have your own backup. At least one.
In the case of renters, we have legal protection because if you get evicted without notice you may find yourself temporarily homeless, and that is a *huge* problem. It has direct impacts on people that extend far beyond the simple financial costs of moving on short notice.
On the other hand, getting your web site shut down really only has economic impacts that are in line with the cost of moving your web site. So, if those costs are large, you should have a service level agreement with your hosting provider. The one exception is all those old links to your web site. Requiring hosting providers to provide redirects to your new site seems minimally intrusive for all concerned, and solves the problem. However, I think the size of the problem is small relative to the cost of adding yet more random crud to our legal code. If your web presence is even marginally important, buy your own domain name and then if you get evicted set it up to point to your new host.
And it goes without saying that you should have backups of your data. You should always have backups of your data.
The correct response to these things is to make a big stink about it online, so people know who to avoid (and possibly shame the companies into handling the evictions better). It is emphatically not more nanny state regulations to protect ourselves from doing things that were stupid in the first place.
You should be backing up everything that you don't want to lose anyways in case that the online service provider isn't backing stuff up.
It doesn't even have to be malicious, Journalspace is a good example of people who didn't know what a backup was and lost a bunch of data.
If I have nothing to hide, don't search me
The basic reason for the notice requirement on evictions is that evictions tend to leave a person without a home. When getting cut off from online access to relatively unimportant content has the same devastating repercussions, I guess the same requirements will begin to apply.
cb_is_cool knows where his towel is.
30 days seems reasonable to me.
sig has been sent away for a few small repairs...
I think it would be nice(and not too much trouble) for free sites like this to let there users know some time in advance so they are prepared. The law certainly has no reason to be involved here.
Now a pay service, that's completely different of course.
How about a double your money back guarantee.
Huh? As far as I can tell from the links, they gave about 6 weeks' notices for all these things. That seems to me like a very reasonable amount of advance notice, considering this is a free service. If users had a small amount of content, then they can just cut and paste it into a word processor to preserve it. If they had the world's most extensive blog, with hundreds of thousands of words scattered through thousands of posts, and six weeks isn't enough time to evacuate ... well, they shouldn't have entrusted such an important part of their life to a free service without making regular backups.
Find free books.
I'd like for web.archive.org to be more reliable.
Seriously, if your online presence is that important, its not as if it would cost much to get a paid for service.
I use some free services, google project hosting, gmail, facebook, but there is not one thing I have in any of these services which is of any value that isn't backup up, in triplicate in most cases.
I also have paid for hosting, doesn't cost much, and even the stuff I have there is backed up locally with again triple backups.
The real issue here is being inconvenienced by a free service shutting down with little notice. Well, tough, there is no such thing as a free service which is guaranteed to last for ever.
A learning experience is one of those things that say, 'You know that thing you just did? Don't do that.' - D. Adams
This is a good warning at a time when cloud computing is becoming a popular concept to both businesses and software developers. Businesses will hopefully make it a priority to invest in and expect cross-compatible solutions and keep local backups. Software developers will hopefully listen and make these options available, even though it may be in their interest to lock up that data.
In addition, it will probably affect a lot of users who store important information or contacts lists or conversation histories that may need to be referred to daily by these individuals, and serve as a warning to them as to what can happen if they start to store a lot of important data that they cannot easily backup for use in applications that may not always be available.
Twinstiq, game news
We had a paid hosting provider who was supposed to be backing up our data. One day, with no warning or even notification, our hosting provider sold out to another hosting provider. During the process all our data was lost. We couldn't even get contact information for the new company. After much scrambling around, we finally got in touch with someone at the new company only to find out they didn't have any backups at all.
This is AOL we are talking about here. A month is barely enough time to recover the text of the website, much less the images.
Yes, absolutely. There should be a law against anything that might cause even the slightest inconvenience. Nothing bad should ever happen to anybody, and if it does, someone has to pay.
In the computer room at my college, many years ago, there was the following sign:
Rule 1: Always make a backup.
Rule 2: Always make a backup. (This is a backup of Rule 1)
Just because things are now on Web 2.0 services over the internet doesn't change the fundamental dictum. If you care about the data, it is you who needs backups. If you don't make backups, obviously you don't care (enough)...
"Little does he know, but there is no 'I' in 'Idiot'!"
I've had about 4 reminder emails over the past 6 months telling me that AOL pictures will be closing, even though I don't use it - I just happen to have AOL as my ISP (or used to, until they sold everything to Carphone Warehouse / TalkTalk..)
So in that particular case, I got quite a good "eviction" notice in plenty of time, even though I don't occupy the building!
...is the public housing project of the internet.
Some people (not me, you understand) might suggest that anyone who:
(a) knows what they are doing in IT, and
(b) has invested intellectual capital and some data in setting up services on a free web medium with no contractual obligations on either side, and
(c) who has *not* backed up their site/data
- needs their head examining.
Something that could help mitigate the consequences of things like this in future is something that I have been looking for for quite a while now.... a FF extension that will automatically save all the contents of all submitted forms.
FF already (mainly annoyingly) saves some of what gets entered into forms, but it won't save this rant, for instance. It'll save every possible typo varient of an email address that you might enter, and offer you the typos until the end of time, but the content you might want again in the future? Oh no.
Has anyone seen an extension like this? Or know of an extension that may have this feaure?
Car analogies break down.
If I invite you as a guest into my house, I can kick you out whenever I want. I don't have to give you 2 weeks notice. I don't have to give back the damn mashed potato sculptures you made at my house. You used my space and my mashed potato mix to make them. You used my front lawn to advertise them. You invited other people into my house to view them. I don't care that your _skills_ are in the potatoes. I said 'fine' at the time, and yes, I'm being a dick about it now, but it's _my_ goddamn house. Now get out. I'm hungry.
If you get hosting through your ISP, you should be at least offered to have a DVD of your data mailed to you for a fee, or have a week or two to download everything. Otherwise, they owe you nothing since you never invested any money into the relationship.
when a freebie web account is facing an impending shutdown for reasons other than abuse. This could be something like a banner stuck on each page of the site with a countdown in days on it, as well as an email generated to whatever the email of record is. But AOL has the right to manage its resources in whatever manner it wants. Often if the site isn't too long gone, content can be retrieved via the Wayback Machine.
"Our enemies are innovative and resourceful, and so are we. They never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people, and neither do we." GWBâ" Aug. 5, 2004, at the signing ceremony for a defense spending bill.
I paid for it as part of my contract with AOL. Push has come to shove. See you later AOL.
Read the fine print people. It's provided AS-IS, WITHOUT WARRANTY, and NO FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.
Basically, if it's "FREE", they provide it at their pleasure, and can remove it at same.
IF you pay for it, read the fine print AGAIN, it's basically the same as above.
If you value you data or web stuff [and face it, most web stuff is 100% crap], BACK IT UP.
I can't wait for cloud services. clueless people putting all their stuff online, paying 'small monthly fees' and thinking that gets them 99.999% availability and backups.
I remember MP3.com around the year 2000, when it was actually cool. Indie bands could post their music in any of zillions of genres, and you could listen with a click. I fell in love with one particular genre, the New Age genre, which consists of lots of trance tracks. But when MP3.com started down the "we host your CD library for you!" I knew that the game was about up and that they were about to be sued into oblivion (which happened), and wrote a bash/wget script to download everything I could of the MP3s. I still have this collection of MP3s today, almost 10 years later. In fact, I'm listening to it right now.
Aren't backups great?
If you care, take a look at the SLA. And if it's free, don't cry about not getting what you didn't pay for in the first place.
I have no problem with your religion until you decide it's reason to deprive others of the truth.
I'd agree that a year is pushing it to the extreme. It'd be nice to get 2 weeks to a month of ahead notice. And that's usually all anyone would need in regards to a web site. (Unless it's ridiculously huge, however the majority of the free ones are on the fairly small side.)
And it's not just convienient notice for making backups of a site if you haven't done so already (which some people think it is), but also so you can provide timely info about the shutdown to your site's visitors. If you're site is relocating, it's good to have some time to get the word out so your audience knows where to go next. Besides you want them to go to your site, not some domain squatter B.S. or a false lead redirect that tries to fool people.
Maybe they didn't pay directly, but the users are paying by having AOL advertising on their webpages. It's not like AOL was offering this service out of the kindness of their hearts. The users are paying for hosting by driving traffic to AOL's services, and with that in mind, they are just as much paying customers as those who pay with cash. Maybe AOL won't be legally responsible, but they will likely pay for it in traffic and reputation. The thing with free services is that there is nothing stopping users from moving else where.
I own a few servers, and both sell hosting to paying customers, and give free hosting to some friends.
I try to always keep everyone informed on what's going on. Last time I upgraded one server to a newer model, I gave everyone on that server 4 months notice and kept the old server running for 2 more months after the new server was up and in regular service. And I keep meticulous daily backups, and have been known to mail DVDs of their own data to those who ask for them, even for those who host on my servers for free.
But on a free service, people, you don't have "rights" to "demand" jack shit. If you don't like my terms for free hosting, then shuffle your cheap ass off to another host. Web hosting is one of those services where you get what you pay for. If you want guarantees and a formal policy, then you're going to give me some of those little American government generated pictures of dead presidents in return.
It never ceases to amaze me how people with no financial investment or payments at stake are so readily willing to tell equipment owners what to do. And because of them, I'm just as readily willing to tell freeloaders to kiss my web hosting ass.
I want a new quote. One that won't spill. One that don't cost too much. Or come in a pill.
Hard drive crashes are unannounced, so any company can simply have one of those in lieu of providing access to data for a year.
IMO it depends on whether you're paying and have a contract or not. If you're not paying (in cash or in some other form), then the host should be entitled to terminate without warning. They should be required to provide a way for you to back up your content, but if you haven't been using it they shouldn't be obliged to do anything. You get what you pay for.
If you are paying, then at least 30 days' warning should be required and the host should be obliged to provide some way for you to transfer your data off. If they're taking money, they don't get to simply disregard their customers. A caveat to that should be that if there's a written contract then the terms of that contract should apply. If the contract lets the host terminate with no warning and no opportunity for you to recover your data, and you were dumb enough to sign it, then you should suffer the consequences. If there wasn't a written, signed contract (eg. all there was was the host's standard ToS that you didn't have to explicitly sign), then minimum requirements should apply regardless.
Give me a break. if you want some sort of TOS, buy an account.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
In New York City, the tenants' rights are pretty strong. It's almost impossible for a landlord to evict a tenant who pays the rent, and it takes 6 months to evict a tenant who doesn't pay the rent. My landlord has to renew my yearly lease, at an increase regulated by law. After living here several years, I'm paying about half as much as the people who are now moving in paying what we call "market rent."
That's because (1) There are more tenants in New York City than landlords (2) We had a long tradition of socialist movements in New York City that taught people how to organize into tenants' organizations and demand that our City Council pass strong laws protecting tenants. The strongest, most aggressive organization was the Metropolitan Council on Housing, whose leader, Esther Rand, openly supported the Communist Party (Lenin never liked landlords). For all their faults, those Communists knew how to organize people.
Surprisingly (for those of you who believe in the free market) it works pretty well. The landlords are still getting rich (some of them very rich). There's lots of new housing being built. And a lot of people are able to live in New York City who could never have afforded to live here otherwise. There were some houses abandoned during the economic downturn of the 80s, but that seemed to affect both rent-controlled and uncontrolled housing equally, and it happened in cities without rent control too.
In contrast, Boston had a rent control law, but a few years ago they voted it out. The last I heard, the rents have gone up, it was much harder to get an apartment in Boston, there's no building boom in affordable housing, and from a tenant's POV they're worse off than they used to be. But I'd be interested in first-hand information.
I personally don't think rent control is the ideal solution. I think people who can't afford market-rate rents should be able to live in public housing projects (which also work better than you'd think), and landlords should be allowed to get as rich they want (provided they don't do it at my expense). But rent control was part of a grand bargain that the landlords in New York City struck with the tenants' organizations.
I think the lesson is that tenants can get a much better housing market, with more affordable rents, if they organize and pass laws that benefit them, than they would if they leave it to the free market. If you want to learn how to organize, do a Google search for an MP3 of Pete Seeger's song, "Talking Union." Or search for "Howard Zinn".
I don't have to give back the damn mashed potato sculptures
But... this means something!
If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I bought a pair of binoculars.
Im sure aol is not the worst offender out there yahoo comes to mind but with data retention laws surely are not the dhs/m15/nsa upset at losing all those records ?
If you kick up a big enough stink, I'm sure they'll refund the purchase price... heck, they may even double it in this case!
The linked blog post points out that AOL Hometown was provided as part of people's monthly AOL charges. If that's true, this is more like .Mac shutting down in 10 years, after most people have lost interest, sending official notice to people's ancient email addresses, and giving them four weeks to get their data before they pull the plug. If you've accepted money for hosting data you have a lot bigger obligation to your clients. I've hesitated to add premium services to recipething.com for just that reason -- I don't want to mislead people into expecting more of the site than I'm able to provide.
You can't make a copy of your house and keep it somewhere else.
Backup your data and you should never lose more than a day or so, even if your provider disappears off the face of the earth with no warning.
From what I remember of business law 10 years ago:
Offer, Acceptance, Consideration.
Host Offers service, you Accept, and your consideration is to abide by the terms *they* set specifically because it is a form of giving up certain legal rights *as payment* to use their service. Typical is "no foreign language sites". They're too lazy to translate sites for policing purposes, so they make it a TermOfService, which you agree to for their sake.
Unfortunately, companies are learning that "free as in beer" can be an excuse to slide out of commitments. I dabble with free hosts and have solid backups, and two mirrors at any one time, so I really *expect* them to fail and operate on that premise.
But despite some (good) advice here, I have managed to avoid backing up my Yahoo Mail and I would REALLY be upset if they croaked. That's because the principle of Relied Upon has come into play.
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
The services are free, what else would you expect?
Not quite. There's a principle in law called reasonable reliance. (Wikipedia doesn't have an entry, and I can't find a good definition on the web.)
If you reasonably rely on someone else's assurances, and you get screwed, that person can be liable for your damages.
If somebody offers me free software, and I use the software to set up my business data, and the software becomes unusable (say, their copy protection goes psycho), I could argue that I relied on their assurances about their software and now I'm screwed. I might get damages. I don't know for sure because IANAL.
I remember one famous case in which a chemical company gave a science teacher a free case full of bottles labeled with different kinds of petroleum products. The teacher needed some kerosine to store sodium, so he used their bottle labeled kerosine, but it wasn't actually kerosine -- they used water. The sodium blew up, he was injured, sued the chemical company, and won, even though he got it free.
One of the elements of a contract is "consideration" -- if you use AOL's service, they have to get some "consideration" back in order to have an obligation through contract. But delivering your eyeballs to their advertisers might be consideration.
I see XDrive goes away as well on Jan. 12, 2009. Makes you wonder why AOL bought it out in the first place. While I don't claim I have rights in a free service for which the TOS state clearly that it can be ended at any time without nice, it is still a pain and raises in my mind the question others have: how much should we rely on free online services? The obvious answer based on experience seems to be, not at all, but what about something really big like Gmail? I use POP3 to backup my Gmail correspondence locally, but free or not and rights or no rights, if a service such as Gmail shut down it would really rock a lot of boats.
If I invite you as a guest into my house, I can kick you out whenever I want. I don't have to give you 2 weeks notice.
Actually, that's not always the case:
(http://www.boston.com/realestate/news/articles/2007/12/06/how_to_evict_house_guest_who_refuses_to_pay_rent/)
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
backup only what you want to keep is something everybody who uses a computer to store/ retrieve data should do; be it files on their personal computers, or their website.
Like it or not, we are each responsible for our own files.
I am open source, and Linux baby!
Of course AOL get absolutely nothing in exchange for their munificent free hosting that they provide? They're just doing it all out of the goodness of their hearts and can withdraw at any time, hey? And that's their right is it?
Wrong! "Free hosting" websites get traffic in exchange for content from their users. This traffic can be used for generating advertising revenue. I'm willing to bet that if these AOL services were as popular as Facebook, MySpace or Flickr they wouldn't be shutting them down. AOL was trying to build a valuable asset for themselves out of their users' blood, sweat and tears and when it didn't work out, coldly cut them off.
"Free" websites aren't free. It's a hosting for content type arrangement. Sure the hosting company provides free hosting, but the users provide the host free content. There's a two way street here.
Some of the comments here are so insensitive it's shocking. It's as if the company/landlord has all the rights and the users/tenants have absolutely none. Did you guys even read the comments associated with the OP? All these users, suddenly cut off, with no way to recover their data trying in desperation to get some help, all coldly ignored. AOL even ignored requests from the site developers to move the code to a non-profit organisation.
Seriously, why do you guys whinge and complain about Microsoft/Wall St/Enron/insert other ar$ehole company here when it's clear you all support a capitalist hell?
AOL offered something FREE?! Did you look for the asterisk that came after the word 'FREE'? Hmmmmm..... me thinks not.....
The TEN COMMANDMANTS OF AOL:
1) THOU SHALT NOT OFFER ANYTHING FREE, UNLESS IN CONJUNCTION WITH #3 AND/OR #4
2) THOU SHALT BONE THY CUSTOMER FOR EVERY PENNY THOU CAN GET.
3) THOU SHALT DROWN THY CUSTOMER IN ADVERTISING, PROMOS, AND PRODUCT TIE-INS.
4) THOU SHALT COVER THY EARTH WITH AOL DISKS.
5) THOU SHALT PROVIDE CUSTOMER SERVICE AS HORRIBLY AS THY CAN IMAGINE.
6) THOU SHALT DISAPPOINT THY STOCKHOLDERS.
7) THOU SHALT HOLD DATA FOR RANSOM.
8) THOU SHALT NOT PRACTICE BUSINESS ETHICS.
9) THOU SHALT COLLABORATE WITH BIG BROTHER FOR LIFE-SUSTAINING CASH.
10) THOU SHALT PLACE EMPHASIS ON THE MEANING OF THE PHRASE "Caveat Emptor").
If you take the bait of a 'free' (or ANY) service from AOL, then you shouldn't be using the internet. Or running a web site.
Knowing Google's lust for data collection, the Soviet Union is still alive and well inside the psyche of Sergey Brin....
This has got to be the most asinine, whiny, bitch-like thing I've heard in awhile. A free hosting service with no obligation to those who use it goes belly-up and gives six weeks notice to move on. Free hosting services for small sites are a dime a dozen on the 'net. Paid hosting services for small-to-medium sites are available for practically nothing with SLAs and take 72 hours max to take affect (if you are transferring a domain). Web hosting is a commodity these days. ... why the fuck are people complaining as if hosting their meaningless drivel for free were a guaranteed right? It's not. Not by a long shot.
If you're a business, why the hell are you depending on a free hosting service with no obligations to you or your business? If you're an individual with personal content, how hard is it (really) to move that content to another free hosting service?
Oh, you deleted your original material? Well, you're a fucking moron. You have backups? Then copy them to a new hosting service and quit your obnoxious whining.
Seriously, your whining is petty and immature.
It is quite dickish to delete the data of tons and tons of people without notice, free or not free.
But data is not the same as physical property (see the "theft is not the same as copyright infringment" argument that is so popular on Slashdot), so laws relating to eviction from physical space shouldn't apply to eviction from digital space.
The intent of an eviction notice is for humanitarian reasons. Eviction notices allow renters to make arrangements to live elsewhere without having to suffer through temporary (and frightening) homelessness. Without a place to store their property, it could be stolen or destroyed, not to mention the welfare of the individual.
Data can be backed up at relatively no charge, so "finding a new place to live" for the data isn't a problem. It can (and should) be safely stored while the owner shops for a new digital residence. While a company website might lose temporary traffic, companies also shouldn't be using a free service. Free website hosting is intended for small, personal uses, which is not a critical service (like having shelter during a storm).
Laws to prevent data loss from happening are unnecessary, as long as the company makes some effort to communicate that they cannot guarantee permanent hosting.
Just the way it is. Do they own you notice?
Free is worthless. Trust no one. Heck, you PAY for the server at work, pay people like me to keep it running, and even then you have backups, redundancy, the secret envelope with the admin password (fat lot of good that does) and off-site whatever.
Backup your Gmail. Nothing is truly free.
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
In Soviet Russia, the tenants evict the landlords...
(and, oh, there's plenty of stories from the 1920's)
Nice job, parent poster, dispelling the entitlement mentality of the article submitter. I keep hearing all of these supposed libertarian-minded /.'ers, who turn like Sinatra after two Martinis as soon as the other guy wants to exercise his own rights.
Anyone wonder why property investors avoid certain parts of the East Cost US like the plague? It's because they have those laws there that can keep a squatter in a place for 9 months WHILE THEY DON'T PAY A DIME TO THE LANDLORD. Meanwhile, the landlord is paying a mortgage, property taxes, insurance, maintenance, etc.
The People's Republic of Santa Monica is the same way. The renters' rights group there is the single-most powerful political organization in the city. So powerful, that even unrelated political groups (unions, you name it) have to align with the SMRR in Faustian bargains to get anything passed (you're either with us, or against us, as Bush says). Think about owning a building in that city! There are rent control laws, so why invest in your property? So the apartments are all dilapidated and ugly But go 5 miles east to Westwood, and the buildings are new and beautiful and have underground parking and nice workout rooms. And no rent control.
Funny how people here are afraid of the government actually doing what it is supposed to do, the whole reason we formed the social compact: Protect me and my shit from other people and other countries. Can't eavesdrop on terrorists outside the country or get DNA from a mosquito or demand a convicted rapist's e-mail account. But tell me what I can do with my own goddamn property? Sure! Redistribute wealth? Awesome!
It's not libertarian if you only want the government to stay out of your life. As I used to have in my sig: Slashdot, libertarian for me, statist for the other guy.
Slashdot "libertarians": Small government for me, big government for those I disagree with. -1, I disagree with you
If something has been advertised for free, the payment is still there, it's just zero. In this case, the users are not squatters, they have been offered a service, and have accepted the service. Whether the payment is $0.00 or $0.01 shouldn't fundamentally change the basic rights
So I guess if something happens to my data when running Linux I should have legal recourse against the developers and companies like Red Hat? Or do we only go after companies you don't like?
Slashdot "libertarians": Small government for me, big government for those I disagree with. -1, I disagree with you
That's it really.
Anybody that has enough invested in a free service to feel some pain when it's gone, has already demonstrated it's value, so pay up, or backup.
Blogging because I can...
Absolutely not! There should NOT be such a law because when you make it a pain in the ass for people to provide a service, like free web space, then many people will say it's simply not worth it and won't do it. Laws ALWAYS have unintended consequences. To extend the rental house analogy, in areas where there is rent control (laws designed to prevent people's rent from going up too much in a short amount of time) the rents are higher. Simply because every landlord knows that because they won't be able to raise the rent more than 3% per year, they have to stick a high rent on the place from the beginning. Not because they're the big bad landlord and the renter is the poor proletariat, but because there are costs and risks involved with bring a landlord, costs like insurance, repairs during and between tenants, legal costs every so often, taxes, local fees, etc. and risks such as someone horsing around inside the house falls and breaks their skull and then the landlord gets sued. When these costs go up 10% every year and you can only raise the rent 3%, you have to stick a 25% higher rent price on the place before a tenant moves in at all. Let's continue talking about rent control because it is appropriate to this topic. Some areas have a law that if you have a renter over 65 living in property you own, you MUST continue allowing them to rent indefinitely, or else you must provide them with notice a huge amount of time in advance and pay them huge amounts of money to compensate for the costs they'll incur in looking for a new place and moving there. Laws like this are designed to protect the elderly because it is very difficult for such a person to make a move. Correct. However, because landlords know that they won't be able to kick a tenant (say, if they later decide to occupy the unit themselves), many landlords simply do not rent to people over, say, age 50. They'll choose a younger tenant. So the law designed to protect the elderly ends up harming the elderly. And because the government finds out about this new problem (a problem that never existed before) they now have to create new rules, regulations, bureaucracies, and investigations to find out which landlord may have turned down an elderly person in favor of a younger person. All of which increases landlords' costs and risks, hence increases rents, and hence makes the problem of expensive rents yet even more expensive. All you had to do is never make up these laws in the first place and everything would have been fine. Rents too high? That means some smart landlord will figure out that he can make money by offering cheaper rents. It's called the free market system, and except in the case of powerful monopolies that buy everyone out and charge exorbitant prices, a problem which does need to be addressed by the law, the free market system will win every time with better quality and cheaper prices. I can go on forever about the unintended consequences of laws that seem like such good ideas. But we now stray from the topic. Back to online service providers, let each provider make up its own terms of use. People should be reading the terms of use when they sign up for things anyway, not just clicking "I agree." That's akin to just signing some piece of paper without looking at it. If you want to know why doing so is incredibly dangerous, rent The Spanish Prisoner (or see Wikipedia article about what the term Spanish Prisoner means here). If the terms of use say "we can kick you and your webpage at any time for any reason" and you agreed to it, fine. As the article says, people should not store things on other peoples' servers and simply "expect" it to stay there forever, just as you should not put a treasure chest full of gold and jewels on the street and simply "expect" it to stay there forever. People need to get used to the concept of keeping a copy of any data they produce AND keeping at least one backup copy, preferably at a different site. If
Also, in contract law there is the notion of unconscionability, specifically that where one party to the contract is grossly more powerful than the other, the court can make decisions in favour of the less powerful party that would otherwise run afoul of contract law. True bargaining only occurs between equals, and the law has long recognized that.
There are actually two elements of unconscionability: Procedural and substantive. Procedural means that the process was unfair in some way; in this case, that the end user had no reasonable alternative but to sign a contract of adhesion. O rly? There aren't 100's of free Web hosts out there besides AOL? Not to mention the cheap-ass Web hosts out there. I have a great one with a free domain name for $7/month with phenomenal service that has backups in a different state! So I doubt there is procedural unconscionability.
As for substantive, were there grossly unfair - not just unfair, but so unfair as to "shock the conscience of the court" - or surprise terms in the contract? Or were AOL's TOS in line with what most free Web hosts offer? Substantive unconscionability is a very high burden to meet, and the vast majority of contracts of adhesion are upheld for this reason. Almost certainly this substantive element would fail as well.
It's this principle that is the source of the renter's protection laws that you despise so much.
No, the principle is that there are more renters than apartment owners, and therefore politicians pander to the tyranny of the majority (and those who feel sorry for them) while trampling on the property rights of the minority. Votes over principle. Just please don't call it "renters' rights." There are no such rights, only cynical politicians willing to rob from Peter to pay Paul; and the politician who does that will always have the support of Paul.
And lastly, if the cut-off of service wasn't mentioned at all in the TOS, the customers may have a remedy in tort for damages. The TOS would have to explicitly waive liability on cessation of service to exclude recovery in tort.
Dude, first off, stop trying to sound like a lawyer - it's like when a white guy tries to speak urban lingo - he just sounds lame. "A remedy in tort" - LOL.
Secondly, obviously the biggest ISP in the world has an indemnity clause in its TOS. More importantly, AOL is based in Virginia - a UCITA state - and its choice of forum and law clauses dictate all disputes are to be litigated there under VA law. So even without an indemnity clause, it's unlikely end users would win a lot of court cases in VA.
IAALBNYLATINLA (I Am A Lawyer But Not Your Lawyer And This Is Not Legal Advice). And I have taught business law for ten years, so I am not totally talking out of my arse.
Slashdot "libertarians": Small government for me, big government for those I disagree with. -1, I disagree with you
To boil the essesce of your commen: RTFTOS when you sign up for something free, not just click ok.
they can make the simple argument that they pay for it in their payments to AOL for whatever other services are provided. Your argument of 'if they don't pay for it they don't have recource' is utter garbage. I'm not going to waste anyone's time pointing out how flawed that logic is.
the fact that it is really crappy hosting, and is overrun by AOL ad's (which probably fund most of it)
also it strikes me as immaterial whatever aol or anyone puts into their shrinkwrap TOS because those are always trumped by your rights.
Why do you waste our time talking about 4 9's? It's irrelavant to the conversation. No one is arguing anywhere at any shape or form that they are to be guarenteed FREE hosting. You miss the entire point of this because you are so dissallusioned by some obvious angst and hostility in regards to actual real estate.
The REAL point isn't that they losing the hosting; its that they are doing so with ZERO notice and with no ability to retrieve anything. As long as I have to give a 'apartment leasing office' notice that I am leaving of more than 60 days when I am month to month (because I'm planning on leaving); its beyond reasonable nay negligent of someone to not tell you they are pulling the plug.
hell my employer has to give me notice before termination and they pay me.
whether you pay directly $0 or $100 you have the same fundamental rights; such as notice.
This also gets to my other irritant of late. Ever notice how every advertisement has a disclaimer saying that every single one of their 'major features' and 'competitive advantages' and even price are subject to change, be discontinued, etc at any point without any notice? Anyone else think its absolutely absurd they are allowed to write such blather when it is obviously utter BS?
here's an example, if you buy an xbox360 and M$ cancels xbox live tomorrow, do you really think they arent going to be littered with lawsuits regarding misleading/false/fraudulent advertising and promises of features. None of these companies can guarentee anything anymore but except us to guarentee everything and be held responsible for everything.. consumer rights have been shot in the head repeatedly if you ask me.
and for the other side of the coin; I'd say most of the 'real estate' investors are just as much if not more parasitic. and it doesnt look the east coast is suffering too much. And frankly if no one had abandoned the building in the first place it wouldnt be a problem now would it? But rather than blame the group that started the problem you blame those that took shelter in unused rotting buildings.
and furthermore to alleviate your idiocy; if no one is actually looking at the webpages of these people from AOL... they aren't using any bandwidth at all. And storage isn't exactly expensive either; 1TB drives are about 120 bucks.
"Jazz isn't dead, it just smells funny" ~Frank Zappa
EdelFactor
its been said, and it seems fitting to say it again. Someone, somewhere is funding your free lunch. Just because you don't pay for it; or don't know how its being 'paid' for doesnt mean it isnt. Gmail is a business venture that makes money, much like facebook and myspace and name your free blogsite.
sometimes you just dont pay for something with money.
FWIW that was an amazing issue; aside from the aforementioned hideous cover
"Jazz isn't dead, it just smells funny" ~Frank Zappa
EdelFactor
If those people did not "pay" anything, the service could not have sustained itself for a second and would have collapsed. They paid something alright, but what they paid/pay changes with the type and provider of a service.
and of course, if they did "pay" (in a non-traditional way) something for that property for a temporary period, they became renters. In this case, following your own logic, they have either been unlawfully evicted or dispossessed.
"Backups are for wimps. Real men upload their data to an FTP site and have everyone else mirror it." - L. Torvalds
But if he sleeps at his house every night it's very different. He just comes over to build potato sculptures. Deleting free websites doesn't deny people any of the 3 basic needs "shelter, food, or clothing". It simply denies them of their potato sculptures. Potato sculptures =/= shelter. Free websites =/= shelter. That's the point.
This is pure "word spinning" to make websites sound like shelter and it's absurd.
I expect that Google will shut down some of their money-losers in 2009. Google pulled the plug on Answers some time back. Google has Google Sites, their free hosting offering. It's probably not a moneymaker, even with ads, and it's not really related to their core business. That might get cut.
While there is no legal reason to expect anything, a simple email notification would be cheap and common courtesy. If I didn't get a notice, my perception of the company would grow substantially more negative. I would not expect any continued access to data (other than the time provided by the notice) - because that is much more expensive and goes beyond common courtesy.
Seriously though, it's a free service. They're not required to back it up, they're not required to maintain your data. I'm pretty sure the terms of service consist of a list of restrictions for the user and a whole lot of "we're not responsible for anything!" on the part of the provider. So there you go. They're not responsible for anything, including warning you that your data is about to be purged. Keep a local backup if you want it saved for a year.
-Restil
Play with my webcams and lights here
My contract for free services specifically says that I can delete the tenant's data or put them off the web or both at any time I want for any reason or no reason and without any kind of notification, and that it is their responsibility to backup their data, and that I can turn offline the server at any time I want for as long as I want for any reason or no reason. In short I make it clear that free stuff is given as a gift and does not grant any rights at all, only responsibilities.
However, in the majority of cases, when I had to evict some people off my free web services servers I did sent them one or two emails providing them with a notification as a courtesy and offering them the option to compress and send them their data, and in the majority of cases the users didn't reply probably because they had changed email address. Perhaps this is explained by the fact that I usually evict people who were inactive and did not used their free resources for some time, or who have never used their free account after they opened it. In some cases where the user had some data, even though I could delete them if I wanted, I just put them off the public network and kept them for some time in a secure location just in case the user asked for them later (in no case this happened).
If there was a law interfering with my services by requiring me to provide notification or backup the free account holder's data I would never provide any free service again.
If my servers have some unused capacity I consider it a courtesy to share it with others for free. For example whenever I have lots of spare room, I enable free/open-source developers to get free services for their personal web presence, imap/web email, software development (svn etc), and source/tarball distribution. There are no ads or other income, I just provide the service in low numbers only as a means to say thanks to the free/opensource community collectivelly for their great software (after all the servers themselves are built on 100% free software, so my motto is that 10% of the server's resources should be given as a gift to free software people who need free services, since without them I could not run the servers on free software at all!), but if they like the service I expect them to donate something so that they contribute towards the server expenses, just as I sometimes donate money to free/opensource projects/communities/developers I appreciate.
It is important to realise that when I provide someone with some free services, I do take some risks: for example, what if they try to hack into my server or what if they put online something which is not okay? What if someone who claimed to be an opensource developer turns out to use their free online space for hosting something bad? For this reason, I usually ask in Freenode for people who know the guy or gal who asks for a free account or ask to see their existing web presence if any to get a feeling of their personality and whether they can be trusted. But still, I cannot easily know whether the free software developer's pet project violates an obscure US patent from the 1980s, and whether in today's lawfare paranoia someone would prefer to sue the service provider instead of the person who is actually responsible (whether fair or unfair).
There are already a myriad of laws that could cause trouble to a provider of free services, and surely I don't want one more law to interfere with what is essentially my gift-giving. Corporations or people who shut down thousands of free sites with little notification perhaps could try to be more kind, but a law trying to force them to behave in any other way would be disastruous for any free service providers.
It is the user's responsibility to choose a good provider. If the contract says I can delete your stuff anytime I want and I do so, you should perhaps ask yourself why you didn't take backups or chose me as your provider. My free services are gifts given under the condition that you have no rights associated with them, so it's your responsibility to decide whether you want the gift under that condition.
There's nothing wrong with eviction -- or whatever you want to call it. Deciding to stop providing a service is something you should have no problems doing. You should never be forced to continue to provide a service. What if it isn't profitable anymore? Or you suddenly lack the resources, or the health, to continue?
There is a grand exception made for land-lords. That exception is, quite simply, to ensure that people don't become homeless on the street at a whim. That's a far cry different than losing your stupid web-site. And here, we're not even talking about a real business web-site doing real things. We're not even talking about a real personal web-site doing real personal things. I'm sorry my geocities web-site from when I was sixteen isn't around anymore. But I don't blame geocities.
This, again, is yet another case where consumers think they have some kind of entitlement to someone else's service -- and in this case, it isn't even paid-for.
In high-school, I had a car when many of my friends did not. With many social parties and gatherings, I always offered rides to and from parties, even in distant directions. I said things like "I'm not carrying you, I'm just flexing my right ankle a few more times; it's not a problem.". Well, one day I simply didn't have the time; so I said that I had to go, and couldn't give a good friend a lift home because I was in a hurry. He was horribly upset because without asking me at all he had assumed that I'd be his personal taxi. He made such a big deal of it that I refused to ever drive him again.
Anyone who isn't happy with the service they've received, enough to accept no longer receiving it, never deserved that service in the first place.
It's like winning three days in a row at a casino, not winning anything additional on the fourth day, and then suing the casino because you expected the money-train to continue. Get lost.
If those people did not "pay" anything, the service could not have sustained itself for a second and would have collapsed.
Oh really? So when someone starts a company with an initial investment of one million dollars and plans for expenses and hopes the business plan works out, there is no cash burn? You're saying every viable business is immediately profitable - and of course, you are dead wrong.
If you can read this... 01110101 01110010 00100000 01100001 00100000 01100111 01100101 01100101 01101011
Have you ever been removed from an online group or forum by some megalomaniacal or otherwise disturbed individual in a position of authority? I was summarily removed from a Meetup.com group by the organizer: a woman I had once rejected had a friendship (or more) with the man, and declared to him that she wouldn't be involved with the group if I was. She also invented a few false justifications having nothing to do with my spurning her. He was too delusional to even question her, and his reaction was to remove me from the group and advise me to "get therapy".
It's disturbing to live in an alleged macro-democratic society where on a micro scale such totalitarian things still happen.
The creators of sites in "free" Web spaces should indeed have legal protections, because in fact there IS AN EXCHANGE OF VALUE even though no money changes hands directly. The host uses those sites as vehicles for advertising, from which it does make money; in offering the free hosting, it is banking on the ability of the sites thus created to draw in traffic and thus generate them revenue. Could the host have hired people and created sites themselves? Sure, BUT THAT WOULD COST MONEY. They're getting CONTENT WHICH DRAWS IN TRAFFIC for free, in exchange for free hosting for those sites.
That, my dear boy, is a contractual agreement, one which should engender legal protections for BOTH parties. This corporate practice of getting consumers to agree to terms which "may be revised or retracted at any time without notice" is, in my opinion, flatly illegal by traditional civil and business law. Credit card companies are another horrid example of the practice.
This is just one more example of what I recently described as the perversion of law by the "victors", who not only get to rewrite history but also remake the laws to benefit themselves just a bit more than everyone else. The victors, in this case, are corporations and the extremely wealthy.
This is exactly the sort of conditions and behavior that in other times and places has led to revolutions. Americans are so pussy-whipped by consumerism that they don't even seem to notice, much less revolt.
I access my *PAID* Gmail accounts (GMail managed domain email) via IMAP, and I make sure that all emails read are stored locally!!!
What the hell are people with free email accounts thinking if they do not back them up? Most of my life I've used "free" email accounts (ISP, school, free web based, etc. etc. etc.) and every account I ever cared about was backed up. Paid or not, it doesn't matter - in the end any company or service can fail (or think mirrored RAID is backup) and in the end it's YOU WHO ARE TRULY RESPONSIBLE for protecting your own data. Expecting a free service will go to any degree to protect your data or even exist tomorrow is sheerest madness in my mind.
GMail is a good example - I can't help thinking that if Google decided to delete all the GMail accounts without warning, there'd be an uproar on Slashdot.
No, there'd be two or three people like you and the rest of us laughing so hard your slashdot UID would grow by three digits from shame.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I would mod up if i could. but that's exactly the point... in a nutshell every EULA or TOS these days reads as "you have no rights whatsoever in any circumstance, we aren't liable for anything... blah blah blah (detailing numerous ways in which they aren't liable which may or MAY NOT be valid)." and then finally "except where prohibited by law, blah blah defer to federal,state,municipal rights"
the problem is that they have thus basically wasted time and just misled the consumer, when all it really could have said is that you are afforded no rights other than those guarenteed by law... and god forbid list a couple or where you can expect to find them. Its a riot.
"Jazz isn't dead, it just smells funny" ~Frank Zappa
EdelFactor
While renters don't have rights in the Bill of Rights, they certainly have some in law. And, correctly so. Renters need some rights so that those landlords who happen to be idiots, greedy, or insensitive cannot do too much damage.
Evictions and foreclosures, for instance, break and waste stuff. They cause damage, and (in the short term) reduce everyone's wealth. So, legislation tries to balance these short-term costs against the long-term social advantage of having property used efficiently.
None of this has much to do with free web sites, though. The human costs of the one are so much different from the costs of the other.
IMAPSize is an application for IMAP account management (unlike an email client that would sync with your IMAP account, possibly instructing the server to delete things, IMAPSize backup function only copies and backups. Backups can be incremental, of course. And there's other functionality too, like Attachment removal or header modification).
I know it works with Gmail (used it) though I use it mainly with my fastmail.fm account.
I have no sympathy for people who don't back up. Every electronic device whether it's a server farm or just a simple calculator goes down for various reason. Whether it be the business shutdown or something died. There is no excuse for not backing up important data
AT&T is upgrading their network and in the wake the older hardware is performing as well? Big deal. This is the same approach Apple has taken with backwards compatibility and its made their operating system state of the art. If only one carrier in this country could achieve 100+mbps connections because they ignored the masses cries for legacy support I would be a happy camper. In fact everyone on /. would be switching to AT&T if they had a budget cellular data 100+mbps plan that worked nearly everywhere in the country.
I work for a sizable hosting firm (over 10k clients). Our entry level plans will set you back about 50 euro/yr. If you want some kind of yearlong data guarantee, add another 50 quid there to pay for the storage. Not to mention the writing of, or modification of the system that will keep these for you.
That 50 euro buys you 10GB of storage ; that's a lot of storage that these people seem to want providers to pony up for free. And the bandwidth to download the data from the held backup.
There is no free lunch in this game; the margains are small enough to begin with.
the actual problem with that phrase? Google returns "about 11,800" hits for it. Since you use the word "arse" you presumably use British English, so maybe it's an American expression with which you are not familiar.
I am an American law-talking guy.
Every lawsuit in America needs to include both of the following: 1) a cause of action (in this case, a tort and/or breach of contract) and 2) a remedy sought from the court (damages, injunction, etc) should that COA be proven in court.
So to call a tort a "remedy" is legally inaccurate, and lawyers don't really talk that way; although, it in lay terms, I guess one could use "remedy" in that fashion. But GGP was trying to sound like Joe Lawyer, so I had to say something. Call me law Nazi guy, but if I missed a single character in some Linux coding example here, guys would be on my ass like flies on shit.
Slashdot "libertarians": Small government for me, big government for those I disagree with. -1, I disagree with you
Nice.
Slashdot "libertarians": Small government for me, big government for those I disagree with. -1, I disagree with you
I've got two servers in my broom closet (no really, that's what it held before it had servers in it) that belong to my friends. My ISP is pleased to have me host servers on my line. They are pleased to have me do whatever I want. I pay more for a higher class connection and thus there are no filters or restrictions. They aren't they only ones who will sell me that sort of service either, just the one I happen to use.
This idea that you can't host servers in your home is quite false. The companies don't care, they just want you to pay more since you use more. Get a business class account. Almost all ISPs offer them.
Imagine seeing walking to work and seeing a sign saying "Free Meal at our restaurant!". The sign is for a restaurant that is 5 blocks away. So you take your lunch to walk over there, and the restaurant is great - all sorts of gourmet foods and great drinks. The free lunch, though, is a small salad with croutons. I suppose you'd better be ready to pay for anything you want for free. I gave up my mail.com account when I couldn't use it for the reason I got it for.
No. The implications of piling regulations and duties on people for offering free services would be far-reaching.
"Online services that keep data" is such a vague concept that it could apply to almost any website. Anyone with a forum, user comments, display preferences, etc. If your site gets shut down (maybe because you don't care about it any more), then the users could sue you because you didn't give them notice.
And what about mistakes, errors, bugs, or break-ins? As we see in the journalspace fiasco they might not intend to "evict" anyone, but it might just sort of happen.
Social scientists are inspired by theories; scientists are humbled by facts.
This was really the only reason I still had an AOL account. (Well, that and the modem pool for super emergencies, which I am now informed is also long gone.) I was using it as a place to put pictures and stuff for inline linking that wasn't the web server on my own DSL, and had barely used it for that in years. Now I need to make sure that my mom still isn't using her sub-account for mail years after I got her to switch to using my own mail server, then I can nuke the whole account from orbit.
#naabhaprzrag, #sverubfr-000, #agi-fcbafberq, negvpyr[pynff*=' negvpyr-ary-'] { qvfcynl: abar !vzcbegnag; }
then no. when you sign up for a free account, you agree to their TOS, which, if i'm not mistaken, includes agreement that anything can change at any time. you're paying them nothing, they OWE you nothing. if we're talking about a pay web-hosting company, then yes, but we're talking about a for-profit company providing a free service as a value-add to its clients (and often strangers). they should quit bitching, spend $20 a month and get a real, cheap, web host.
and shame on anyone for not backing up anything that's important to them.
not only is time travel possible, it's irrelevant.
I just tried logging into my AOL account with the AOL client, used the "ftp" keyword, and it brought up the "NO WEB FOR YOU!" page that you see when trying to access the web files from outside. I think at least keeping the upload/download interface up for a couple of months after the fecal matter impacting the rotary impeller would have been nice.
#naabhaprzrag, #sverubfr-000, #agi-fcbafberq, negvpyr[pynff*=' negvpyr-ary-'] { qvfcynl: abar !vzcbegnag; }
That was one of my concerns when I decided to go with Gmail to take advantage of their spam filtering. I set up Thunderbird on my print/backup server. It runs continuously collecting all the messages so it won't evaporate if google pulls the plug. Yes, that machine is backed up two places, one local and one off-site.
"Do the Right Thing. It will gratify some people and astound the rest." - Mark Twain
I've been a paying member of AOL long enough to be considered a "charter" member, and was quite irritated by AOL taking away their web-hosting @ members.aol.com --- I'd had pages up since its inception and had lots of people linking to said pages and files.
While I've gotten everything backed up and moved to a new site and notified everyone I could think of --- that doesn't address print references in journals and printed documentation --- all of which are now out-of-date.
I'd've gladly paid a bit extra, instead, I demanded a refund and cut my plan back to BYOA (bring your own access) --- how can this be good for their bottom line?
William
Sphinx of black quartz, judge my vow.
What dimension are you from? New York City's rent control laws have been gutted and ignored by landlord loving judge's who are on the Real Estate industry's payroll. Entire neighborhoods have been evicted to make way for the (phoney) money train. Rents have skyrocketed out of control. Seniors have been under constant assault by landlords trying to push them out so they can quadruple the rents.
I know, I do a website about the New York housing crisis: http://rentwars.com/
And if you don't believe me just read the New York Times articles about gentrification and displacement. Or just read the articles about Rent Wars while you are at it (old though, 2001- but they have newer articles on how the Landlords simply ignore the tenant protection and repair laws yet still get evictions).
Although now that the financial industry has been exposed as a fraud the RE market has dropped. But the madness continues even now.
Regardless of the misuse of legal terms in the profession - which is extensive and it makes me laugh even more (e.g., "jury of his peers," etc) - his audience here is composed of non-lawyers. One should be clear and accurate when using legal terms with non-lawyers, or it leads to confusion. Most lawyers took a class in law school called "remedies," and will know the difference. Non-lawyers will be confused by someone misusing the term.
So when speaking to non-lawyers or teaching, one should distinguish between a COA and a remedy. They are simply two different things and there are plenty of other words to be used in place of "remedy" in this context (e.g., "action," "suit," etc). And BTW, since breach of contract, not a tort, might be a possible COA in such a matter, "tort" might be confusing as well.
Considering many here have long, passionate semantic debates about "what is an OS?", I think demanding accuracy here is reasonable.
And BTW, I went out of my way not to sound pedantic, even making references to Lionel Hutz. You, on the other hand, sound like you are competing in a pedant contest with William F Buckley and Dick Cavett, not discouraging pedantry.
Slashdot "libertarians": Small government for me, big government for those I disagree with. -1, I disagree with you
It's the entitlement mentality.
I have also provided free service, but those folk understand that you are only guaranteed to get what you pay for-- in this case, nothing.
From the other direction, I have always just run my own servers to avoid this problem. If I *were* to use a free service, I would do just as I do now- make all changes locally and then push those to the free server. This the version on the web server is the "backup".
If your site is too complex for this (requires all sorts of extra stuff you aren't capable of managing) then you really need to be paying for space.
Even if it's a paid service or not, it's just ethical to announce such things beforehand.
So, we demand that:
In exchange for being allowed to use your hardware, software, IT department and bandwidth at no cost,
You provide use with notice of when you will discontinue that permission, and maintain our ability to do so until X months after notice, regardless of your desire to spend your energy, time, money elsewhere.
That we have been notified in advance through the EULA (or other agreement) that the service might discontinue at any time should be no barrier to this requirement.
Further, it should be a crime for you to fail in this obligation.
It does beg the question...What is the obligation of the user/consumer of these services, or are the only obligations on the behalf of those who are providing things? File it under 10-289 and call it good!
Moderation : -1 Conservative Viewpoint
Um, BTW, it's "ludicrous speed"...
Anyway, in defense of a little bit about the freebee's outrage:
1. the government some decades ago gave land away for free to homesteaders, after having registered as an owner the property the owners would start to have rights though they (except a registration fee?) got the land for free from the government.
2. most of the free hosting sites post (obnoxious) advertising on the 'free' hosted web page(s) so the site is generating an income as a sort of payment of "rent", per the metaphor, so there is a sort of "right" involved, but it's still Caveat Emptore.
But I'm not whining at all but grinning. I've never trusted those free sites and keep a backup of all of them (yea, more than one!) locally. So it's no big whoop to me.
I do think that as a consumer there should be a right (and especially for businesses) for PAID hosting to have a mandatory 60 day period for "evictions" allowing a person to change hosts and maybe an additional 90 days for a forwarding link or service (paid by the host).
I'll think of a really good SIG just before I die.