Sunday, November 23, 2008

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Keywords: file manager cpanel, wordpress, plugin HELP ME! 2008 11 21 18 22 46

Added: November 22, 2008

Happy Birthday DMCA

Thu, 13 Nov 2008 14:12:00 -0600

The DMCA has been around for 10 years now. It remains as controversial as it has ever been. The most controversial aspects of the Act, the anti-circumvention provisions, don't generally apply to hosts. The "notice and takedown" aspects of the Act do.

In spades.The DMCA, for all its flaws,has made life a bit easier for hosts. Prior to the DMCA, hosts were often faced with lawsuits arguing that they were liable as third party infringers for the content of their customers. With the DMCA, as long as you comply with the Act, you fall within a "Safe Harbor," insulating you from liability.
The predictability of the DMCA has not come without costs. Primary in my mind is the flawed process of "shoot first - ask questions later." Each year I see at least 10 instances where a copyright owner simply ignores basic copyright law when sending a notice and takedown letter and suffers no penalty. The host's customer, however, has likely had their site shut down and sustained at least a week of downtime.I have also encountered my fair share of notice and takedown complaints that were harassment pure and simple.

A business sends a notice and takedown letter and has his competitor's site shut down. Even if the site is down for a week, for an Internet business, that can be the difference between life and death.Copyright owners argue that unfairly targeted entites can sue complainants for false notice and takedown letters.

While this argument works well in theory, in practice, a lawsuit typically runs about $40,000. That's money most businesses don't have to spend. In addition, Federal courts remain split on the issue of whether the phrase "under penalty of perjury" applies only to the authorization to make the claim of infringement, or to the truth of the claim of infringement itself. I am sure I am not the only person who has had to parse murky sentence structure that was specifically drafted to make sure that the signatory of the letter was *not* stating that the claim of infringement was in fact truthful.The DMCA, however, has been a good thing for hosts. Whether it is good for society, is a question for the pundits.





What Websites are Hosted on this IP?

Fear - Reading Alpha Red

Fri, 10 Oct 2008 13:16:00 -0500

If you have not heard it looks like Alpha Red is down, possibly out for the count, but apparantly not at this hour.

What we do know:

  • Washington State has filed anti-scareware suit against two businesses including Alpha Red. There are also complaints against Alpha Red's CEO James McCreary alleging violations of the Consumer Protection Act and/or Washington State's Computer Spyware Act.
  • A few days ago it was announced that CWIE Holdings was purchasing Alpha Red.
  • A few days later the word came out that the CWIE/Alpha Red deal was basically dead.
  • Earlier this AM the Alpha Red web site was down, now it is up.

The first CWIE release was about 9 days after the legal news. That is fast and probably intended to stop an eroding client base. The deal is dead notice was four days later.

I am reading fire sale, I am smelling fear.

The question is why or how did the deal tank. I have a few guesses; CWIE did some due-diligence, did not like something out there and pulled out. Deal points were disputed, probably price. James McCreary decided the sale was a kneejerk reaction and that he was selling way too cheap, and lastly although CWIE was purchasing assets, then decided they did not want to get close to those assets. All of these have one thing in common, money...almost all deals, especially announced deals, fall apart because of a money factor.

Fear by the way is not a bad thing. My gut is that CWIE walked away. Probably for a good reason.

Owners of dedicated hosting firms have told me they are getting numerous calls from Alpha Red customers that are jumping ship. Some if not many Alpha Red customers are concerned about accessing or losing data (Which may or may not be actually true).

Lets admit it, for the customer this in an odd situation. The type of error that will not readily replicate itself. But lets think of the long term, something I will attack in my next blog.

More about Tom:

NCC - the Hosting Business Broker

E-Mail Tom Direct



Are We Running Out of Storage Space? IDC is Concerned, but Maxell Says Never Fear

Tue, 13 Mar 2007 14:15:00 -0500

I learned about the IDC storage paradox on Zoli Erdos' blog. Zoli mentions this Associated Press article, which cites IDC's estimate that "the world had 185 exabytes of storage available last year and will have 601 exabytes in 2010. But the amount of stuff generated is expected to jump from 161 exabytes last year to 988 exabytes in 2010".



Even more alarmingly, Dan Farber over at ZDNet reports that according to IBM, "the world's information base will be doubling in size every 11 hours" by 2010. Does this mean that on Jan 1, 2011, our 988 exabytes of data will double to 1,976 exabytes by 11am, and 3,952 exabytes by 10pm?



Fortunately, we don't need permanent storage for all the data we generate. For instance, spam accounted for just 8% of all emails in 2001 (said CNet); its volume rose to 36% by 2002 and 66% by 2004 (MSNBC), and is expected to exceed 90% by the end of this year (IT News). That's a huge amount of data that isn't being saved.



Still, Rich D'Ambrise from Maxell says he expects significant growth in data archiving requirements: in 2007, we will back up 75% more data than we did in 2006. But unlike IDC analyst John Gantz, he's not concerned that we'll run out of space. The storage industry is not standing still. Maxell, for instance, is beta testing 300 GB holographic disks that are no bigger than a DVD, but offer 63x more capacity. 800 GB second generation disks should be on the market by next year, and a 1.6 TB version is planned for 2010. And let's not forget stacked volumetric optical discs (SVOD); each 92-micrometer layer stores up to 9.4 GB. Available storage capacity will absolutely keep up with demand; no question about that!



The real issue is, will we store our zettabytes of data on- or offline? Rich is betting on removable media; he'd rather have mission critical data in his own possession than depend on any service provider. Zoli, on the other hand, says online is more efficient. By sharing/linking to files, we won't each need space for our own copies of the same content. Sun CEO Jonathan Schwartz says offline storage is greener ("when data's at rest, it consumes no electricity") - and easier to transport on a large scale. (As the New Yorker points out, if you made tiny chariots with DVD wheels and hitched them to snails, you'd get faster data transfer speeds than DSL.)



So, what's this got to do with web hosting? For one, you should probably monitor your oversold disk space closely. At the moment, I'm sure hardly any of GoDaddy's $7 hosting customers are using their entire 100 GB quota. But if you consider Rich's 75% growth projection, the number of customers that same 100 GB is allocated to may have to come down.



PS - Here's a GigaOM post on a 10 more fun storage facts.






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