(WEB HOST INDUSTRY REVIEW) — Late last week, a variety of websites began reporting on the sudden disappearance of a free blog hosting service, Blogetery, with information based largely on a message thread on the WebHosting Talk discussion board.
The poster, who appeared to be the operator of Blogetery, said the server hosting the service had been taken offline by his hosting provider BurstNET, following a vaguely-described notification from a law enforcement agency.
Partly because of the limited amount of information available, the notification seemed to be assumed to be a DMCA request, and the story appeared to be interpreted in many places as a freedom of speech issue.
On Monday, BurstNET released a statement on its website, revealing that the request from the FBI had been related to “a link to terrorist material, including bomb-making instructions and an al-Qaeda ‘hit list,’” that had been posted to the site.
After a flurry of attention based partly on incomplete information, BurstNET’s chief technology officer Joe Marr offered some more insight into the suspension of the Blogetery service in an email interview with the WHIR, in which he outlines the company’s justification for taking the customer server offline, including details of the “history of abuse” alluded to in BurstNET’s original email to the customer.
The story is an interesting illustration of the potential for an abuse situation at a service provider to become a matter of public discussion, as well as (in Blogetery’s case) the need for an effective system for responding to abuse notices when relying on the services of an upstream hosting provider when offering a service (like a free blog hosting service) likely to attract illegal material.
WHIR: The impression I got from the statement BurstNET published on its website was that, while you were contacted by law enforcement about the site, you weren’t directly ordered to take the site offline. That was a choice you made, based on public safety concerns and a pretty clear violation of your AUP. Do I have that right?
Joe Marr: We received a letter for Voluntary Emergency Disclosure of Information Request (18 U.S.C 2702) from a law enforcement agency for the owner of blogetery.com. The letter included information on why a request was being made. Upon review of this request, subsequent review of the owner’s account history, and review of the specific content we chose to terminate his service based on multiple violations of our terms of service and acceptable use policy.
WHIR: It seems interesting that your AUP (you quote it in the statement) has a line that directly references “terrorist propaganda” and “bomb/weapon instructions.” Is that something that, as a service provider, you deal with regularly? Have you had to use that clause to suspend service before?
JM: I wouldn’t say regularly, but it has been an issue with some customers in the past.
WHIR: Is this kind of abuse and suspension situation more common than people realize?
JM: Yes, we see our fair share of abuse and suspension issues. We give our customers the benefit of the doubt. However, we have a strict zero tolerance when it comes to abuse issues. If we receive a complaint, we verify that the complaint is valid. If the complaint is valid, we issue an abuse notification and give the customer 24 hours to respond. If, after 24 hours, we do not receive a response, we issue a second notification and charge the customer an abuse violation fee. If, after that second notification, the customer does not respond, we suspend (take offline) the server in question. The intent of the violation fee is not to profit from such behavior; its intent is to bring to their attention that they are in violation of our TOS/AUP policies.
WHIR: My understanding is that it was one server, and that the customer’s blog hosting service was the only thing on the server. Is that right?
JM: I believe so. That’s what he stated in a webhostingtalk.com thread.
WHIR: Do you know if, or do you think, there’s likely to be more required of you, or of your customer from the law enforcement standpoint?
JM: We are not anticipating any further involvement with this particular issue.
WHIR: I get the sense that while the customer was definitely in violation of the AUP, he wasn’t willfully in violation (as might be the case with, say, a piracy-oriented message board). Do you have a feeling about that? Does it matter?
JM: We don’t believe he was actively promoting his service for that purpose.
WHIR: What’s it going to take for the customer to get the service back online? Is that possible?
JM: Not with us, no. The site’s owner hasn’t been very forthcoming with the full story regarding his abuse issues. He received five DCMA notices since moving his site to our network. Of those, three required second notices. Of the three, the last one resulted in a suspension lasting four days. Only after he noticed his site down did he respond to the issue.
WHIR: I think the criticism, at this point, might be “well, why did all the other blogs have to come down too?” Presumably you didn’t have the capacity to go into the service and pull the plug on specific blogs. And, of course, there was the possibility that there was other similar (terrorist-related) content on there. Can you talk about the process there a bit? Is there more than one way to suspend a server?
JM: Our contractual obligation is with the owner of the site, not his users. It’s unfortunate that they were impacted by this.
WHIR: The other thing that seemed to get people riled up was the fact that you couldn’t disclose much about the nature of the notice from the law enforcement agency at first, prior to the statement you issued Monday. Can you talk about what might have prevented you from disclosing much?
JM: The letter states that, “due to the sensitive nature of the emergency circumstances discussed in this letter, please do not disclose the existence of this request or information contained herein except to those persons within your company who have a need to know this information in order to comply with the request.”
WHIR: It seems to me that a customer operating a free blog hosting service would fundamentally be in serious danger of unwittingly violating your AUP. Did this customer have a means in place to avoid that kind of violation? Is there an adequate way to police that?
JM: It appears he did not. As far as running afoul of our AUP, all we ask is that users promptly deal with abuse complaints. We understand that it can be difficult to monitor user generated content. However, because this user on several occasions required a second notice and was ultimately suspended, we chose to terminate his account.
WHIR: Did you have any sense, when you took the server offline, that this was something that might have to be resolved so publicly? Did you think of it as a possible PR issue at the time? Is it now?
JM: Are we surprise that he went public? No. Are we surprised that it blew up the way it did? Yes. We have had several users recently chose to go to public forums such as webhostingtalk.com to air their complaints rather than work through the issues directly with us. While we have seen tremendous growth in the last two years, we are not willing to be intimated by people going public with their complaints. Honestly, we want our customers and their users to be successful. Their success is our success. If we are wrong, we will resolve the issue and apologize. More often than not however, the user made a mistake and is hoping to strong-arm us or use us as a scapegoat.
WHIR: It seems like the story is being (perhaps incorrectly) interpreted in some places as a “free speech” issue. Do you think some of the websites reporting on the issue might not understand some of the issues of accountability and abuse affecting service providers like BurstNET?
JM: Absolutely. First and foremost, we are not into policing content. We don’t care what your religious, political or social beliefs are. If we did, it would be difficult to stay in business. If we are alerted, and we verify, that you are hosting content that violates our AUP, then you will hear from us.
About Liam Eagle
Liam Eagle has worked as a contributor to the Web Host Industry Review since its inception in 2000, and as editor since 2003. He has been editor of the WHIR's print magazine since its launch. His daily involvement in the gathering and reporting of Web hosting news and his regular interaction with Web hosting leaders gives him an uncommonly broad appreciation of the issues and tends facing the business. Through his WHIR blog, Liam spots Web hosting trends and offers opinions on the industry-wide impacts of major developments and the motivation behind big announcements. Follow him on Twitter @liameagle
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