June 11, 2004 -- (WEB HOST INDUSTRY REVIEW) -- This week's Web hosting industry news included a great deal of variety, and some very big news, but it?s most notable feature was the heavy emphasis on questionable, controversial and even illegal practices, and their impact on the hosting business.

On Moday, content delivery network operator Mirror Image announced that it had filed a lawsuit against competitor Speedera Networks, alleging patent infringement. Filed in US district court in Delaware, the lawsuit alleges that Speedera infringed on US patents 6,480,893 and 6,581,090, which Mirror Image says cover technologies used for content delivery from multiple servers by the use of embedded object references in Web pages. The case is scheduled to go to trial in July of 2005.

On Tuesday, it was reported that British Telecom had successfully deployed technology designed to block its customers from viewing child pornography sites, a move that many service providers had originally argued would be impossible, or too expensive, to see through. The system, called Cleanfeed, is expected to be operational next month, and will offer users attempting to view the material "page not found" messages instead. The system works by blocking both URLs and numeric IP addresses, which has raised concerns that it could potentially block sites stored on the same servers as offensive material.

Also on Tuesday, reports said US Justices had let stand a ruling that a listserve and Web site operator who posted an email from a third party was immune from a defamation claim under the Communications Decency Act. The case involved Tom Cremers, operator of a museum security Web site, who posted an email from Robert Smith, who was hired to paint the home of North Carolina attorney Ellen Batzel. Smith believed artwork in Batzel?s home was Nazi-looted art, and sent the email, which contained Batzel?s home address. Batzel sued Cremers and Smith for defamation, but the 9th circuit ruled, on appeal, that Cremers was immune from liability as a provider of interactive computer services.

In his Thursday feature, Web Hosts Reject Rip-Offs, Scams, Jay Lyman discusses some of the popular opinions among Web hosts regarding some of the less-than-experienced, or less-than-scrupulous operators in the industry, many of them trying to attract customers with rates and services they simply are not equipped to provide in the long run. Unscrupulous, or ill-advised hosting practices, most providers agree, have a larger impact on the credibility of hosting operators in general.

Also on Thursday, it was reported that Canadian telecommunications carrier Aliant had suffered an attack of vandalism against its network. Fiber optic cables were reportedly cut, leaving thousands of users in Nova Scotia and Newfoundland without phone and Internet service. The outage, occurring at about 10:30 p.m. on Tuesday, affected roughly 125,000 people in Newfoundland and 5,000 in Nova Scotia, and lasted until 7:00 a.m. Aliant says the cables were cut in two locations, targeting the main network and backup, indicating extensive knowledge of telecommunications networks by the vandals. Several reports noted the possible link between the attack and the labor dispute in which Aliant is currently engaged.

While legal disputes and ethics-related controversy are ongoing issues in the Web hosting business, this week?s flood of news was unusual in both size and variety, even offering a broad cross-section of the wide spectrum of matters that threaten to arise on an ongoing basis.