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?

Comments

What renters rights are in other cities/states

[nbauman]

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".

Re:6 weeks isn't "little or no notice"

[Larryish]

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 ...

Such a person needs to archive their entire website.

There is one such utility that comes to mind. It is called HTTrack and is freely available for a variety of platforms.

From the site:

HTTrack is a free (GPL, libre/free software) and easy-to-use offline browser utility.

It allows you to download a World Wide Web site from the Internet to a local directory, building recursively all directories, getting HTML, images, and other files from the server to your computer. HTTrack arranges the original site's relative link-structure. Simply open a page of the "mirrored" website in your browser, and you can browse the site from link to link, as if you were viewing it online. HTTrack can also update an existing mirrored site, and resume interrupted downloads. HTTrack is fully configurable, and has an integrated help system.

Been using it for years and it works VERY well.

Please don't play lawyer

[unassimilatible]

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.