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Ask Slashdot: Good Hosting Service For a Parody Site?
An anonymous reader writes "Ok, bear with me now. I know this is not PC Mag 2014 review of hosting services. I am thinking of getting a parody website up. I am mildly concerned about potential reaction of the parodee, who has been known to be a little heavy handed when it comes to things like that. In short, I want to make sure that the hosting company won't flake out just because of potential complaints. I checked some companies and their TOS and AUPs all seem to have weird-ass restrictions (Arvixe, for example, has a list of unacceptable material that happens to list RPGs and MUDS ). I live in U.S.; parodee in Poland. What would you recommend?"
iPage
I run a small ISP. I can host it for you. Let me know how much bandwidth you expect to pull and we can work something out. brock at the domain blackmesawireless daht net.
Gee, who woulda guessed? Are Polish jokes still in vogue?
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
What is parodee, and what relationship does it have with Poland? Are you trying to do a parody of Poland or Poland's culture? Can you clear up the confusion? Thanks.
nearlyfreespeech.net
I think justhost.com should be ok as long you don't host anything illegal.
I would also use some monitoring solution like netumo.com to check that there is no downtime.
Well, since you are Polish and making fun of President Putin, you might want to consider that you have more to worry about than the ISP taking you down.
https://www.bahnhof.net/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bahnhof
Swedish hoster. They have a credible commitment to freedom of speech. They have secretly recorded and leaked conversations with the SIGINT pressuring them to share data. They have provided hosting for WikiLeaks in the past. Also, they have been hosting a controversial Swedish serivce named Lexbase, essentially publishing the names of all persons occurring in Swedish court documents. They refused to shut it down for several days, until it was hacked and shut down due to security issues.
Based on this
I am mildly concerned about potential reaction of the parodee, who has been known to be a little heavy handed when it comes to things like that.
I recommend a good lawyer.
See Beck v. Eiland-Hall as to why.
I am Slashdot. Are you Slashdot as well?
Get a lawyer
Jack of all trades,master of none
https://1984hosting.com/ - they have defended their customers freedom of speech all the way up to the highest court in Iceland numerous times.
Can't go wrong with dreamhost. Unless its a DMCA claim, which most of your parody targets will likely issue first. Even then, Dreamhost does a good job of making sure its a legitimate challenge under the DMCA.
Good people go to bed earlier.
rent a cheap vps off a sketchy dealer that takes btc, job done.
SomethingAwful is over at Steadfast.net, who has a rather first-amendment heavy interpretation of most laws. I know first-hand how their abuse desk works, and they'll allow practically anything that's not explicitly illegal.
Any organization attacking your published site will send DMCA emails to the hosting / bandwidth provider, but will also attack the DNS registrar for copyright violation. That's going to be the more difficult one to choose because there are a finite number of registrars and they all want to cover-their-ass against ICAAN violations.
$5 / month hosted VPS on linux = awesome!
They do a helluva parody of a news site. The parodies of editing there are over the top hilarious.
What you are looking for is a technical solution for a social problem.
First you must look at what they will most likely try to charge you with. Is it copyright related or rather defamation. Second is to look who they are related to and estimate how far they are willing to go.
You can look worldwide, not only in the US. Look where Torrent sites are hosted. That would be a good start. Also look where similar sites are hosted.
And be prepared that things will go down at one point, so have a backup plan available. e.g. a running mirror that is not visible, but will be the moment your main site goes down. You can even have a 'site went down because of ...' prepared already to handle the Streisant effect.
I would look also carefully into the TLD you are going to pick. com, net and org might seem fine, but might also be easy to delete.
Last but not least, look if it is realy worth the trouble. Will they make life hard for people you have contact with in Poland? Also: Don't be disapointed if nobade cares.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
Places like that.
Have you considered running the parody website as a Tor hidden service?
How about not posting it. Lets see here. You want to post parody about someone that you already know that they won't find funny. Parody is typically done in good humor with the rather major exception of when public figures are involved. If you're not willing to state who the person is on slashdot and you know the person isn't going to be amused, you probably shouldn't be doing it at all.
I'm not arguing if you're allowed to, I'm just arguing the "don't be an asshole" argument.
Make sure to check out xmission.com . They are US based, but they have a great track record of supporting free speech and customer privacy. If they're willing to host maddox and his "best page in the universe" I'm sure that they can handle a parody site that might not be popular with the parodied person/company.
Here is their transparency page: http://xmission.com/transparen...
Fox?
What are your bandwidth and storage requirements? What platform are you looking to build on? Shoot me an email with some details, I might be able to help you out on this one.
APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
If you're technically inclined, just setup your own server on AWS.
I'm not sure about their policies, but given the nature of AWS, you'd probably have to host something outright illegal for them to care.
Danish law explicitly protects parody, so if you can get a host with offices and servers both in Denmark you should be pretty good.
Host it on Freenet or through Tor. Do not claim authorship.
Or
Host on nearlyfreespeech and prepare money for the lawsuit.
Or
Keep your mouth shut.
[Ducking and running]
Have gnu, will travel.
Your first defense is to be absolutely certain that you are on the right side of the law (that it's clearly parody, etc.)
Your second defense is anonymity; don't use your name or other readily identifiable information in a publicly accessible place (ie. use 'privacy' options with your domain registration.) If you want to truly go all-in, consider ways to mask your trail (such as using a false name and looking for service providers that accept bitcoin or some other untraceable payment, like a mailed money order.)
Your third defense is to be jurisdictionally inconvenient. Host your site in a place that the target of your parody can't easily legally access, such as an overseas hosting company (or at the very least, not a company that has a physical presence in the same state/province.)
And finally, be prepared (mentally, if nothing else) for the possibility that there will be a legal fight. If you aren't prepared to stand in the fire, maybe this isn't the fight for you.
1) find a host in Russia or one of the countries that doesn't care about take down notices
2) secure domain and hosting package with bitcoin
3) roll with the laughs!
The host is important and has been covered extensively, but you should also put your site behind CloudFlare. They'll protect against DDOS attacks, and it makes it harder for the parodied party to determine who the host even is if the entire site is behind CloudFlare. They have a long history of not taking things down just because somebody finds it objectionable. And, you get free SSL with CloudFlare too.
The official servers of the United States Government.
last I checked parody != harassment. I know some celebrities and politicians would LOVE for that to be true, but so far, its not
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
I think I know what I need to do. Prepare for the worst, hope for the best, don't be disappointed when/if people don't care:P
Thank you everyone,
I can provide hosting. I am not a big host like some others, but am located in USA and I do not cave to threats.
The last guy, Robert Smolely, who threatened me with a libel claim for posting my lawsuit accusing him of illegal spamming spent 40 months in prison. I had an ex employer threaten me with a libel claim which when we went to court, they wrote me a 6 figure check.
Contact me through my web site.
Fight Spammers!
I recommend https://www.syseleven.de/ for a number of reasons:
* Technically highly sophisticated staff whose motto is "Hosting done right"
* Located in Germany (Berlin) with laws applicable in the EU
* Motivated staff in terms of looking at content from a data protection POV
* Staff is known not to budge from unsubstantiated threats
* They will tell you whether your content is legally acceptable
Won't get any better than that.
From the story about "Ralph Lauren Opens a Store in the Uncanny Valley":
However, Ralph Lauren's marketing arm and its law firm don't see it that way. According to them, this is an "infringing image," and they thoughtfully took the time to send a DMCA takedown notice to our awesome ISP, Canada's Priority Colo. One of the things that makes Priority Colo so awesome is that they don't automatically act on DMCA takedowns. Instead, they pass them on to us and we talk about whether they pass the giggle-test.
This one doesn't.
They will feed you to zombie Walt.
I wonder if NearlyFreeSpeech had the old saying, "The sun never sets on the British empire," in mind when creating figure A?
Unfortunately an awful lot of so-called "parody" posts and sites are just people being mean-spirited and cruel and using the age old bully's line when called on it -- "Can't you take a joke?"
So before you go hunting for an ISP, do a little soul searching and above all else, ask yourself if anyone but you is going to find it funny.
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
Doesn't surprise me at all, and hardly seems a fair criticism. I would expect most hosting services would prohibit sites that are likely to cause disproportionate load, unless they have a charging model that allows for it.
Sure, I'll host it in the cloud.
See http://BuildingHosting.com
Two plnas, both competitively priced.
Self Managed or Fully Managed
Unlimited tech support by phone (USA based).
Google is a parody of a web services site and internet communications company and venture capitalists company!
Ice cream man wins!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n7U1e4B_iI8
Ha ha
Even jurisdictions that protect the freedom of speech will provide a means for individuals and groups to protect themselves from malicious speech. While those jurisdictions may eventually rule in favor of the defendant it will usually be a costly process (in terms of time and money).
Host it in Freenet (at least a mirror), that way it can never be taken down by ANYONE :)
Make it a Tor hidden service.
It can still be accessed through the clear net via proxy sies such as https://tor2web.org/
My recommentdation is https://www.seeweb.it/ because:
1. My sites has been hosted with them for more than a decade without any glitches or security holes.
2. They have very competent and responsive technical staff (I deal with a gentleman, Mr. Fabio).
3. You can choose among multiple datacentres in different geographic locations in Italy for redundancy.
4. I chose them when they were chosen as the securest webhost by netcraft when the Internet was innundated with attacks.
5. They do not mess until and unless your contents do not comply by EU laws.
What else can you expect beyond this? A very reliable host, imho.
They used to have hosting, and have been very active in the past
Some reasons for RPGs and MUDs being banned are that traditional MUDs are server systems rather than web apps, RPGs for the web tend to be heavy applications, they tend to be heavily trafficked, they tend to be poorly written and become security issues, the gamers tend to complain to the hosting company when things go wrong, they tend to get very spammy in their chat systems, and they tend to turn into command and control systems for malware if the people running them aren't careful and skilled. If you want to do something like an RPG, a dedicated server is really more appropriate than shared hosting.
As for parody, any decent US ISP understands the DMCA and copyright law. The DMCA forces them to forward the complaint and to take things down after a certain amount of time if there's no response. Parody protects you in the courts. The DMCA makes pre-court demands of the hosting provider. They can lose their immunity from copyright suits if they don't cooperate lawfully. Just be prepared to challenge takedown notices.
Other than a conforming DMCA takedown notice, any decent hosting provider shouldn't care as long as you're not a DDoS target and the content is lawful.
You seem to be more concerned about defamation than DMCA. HostGator for one won't do anything about defamation claims until there's a court order. They'll shut your account down if you are a frequently repeated DDoS target on a shared server, though. They'll do what the law says they have to do when the DMCA is involved, though.
Seriously, why not do it yourself? You can get a pretty cheap virtual host from any number of providers and just do it. You don't even have to manage the entire server, plenty of virtual hosting services too... but personally I'd recommend doing the entire server. My Linode is cheap as hell and provides a great place to host my mail and web host, as well as providing a hub for my VPN network. Yes, I have to manage it as well, but apart from the occasion patches I don't really do much with it once it was all set up except use it.
https://www.reddit.com/subreddits/create
Casteism