Protection From Online Eviction? 296
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?
No, there shouldn't be (Score:4, Insightful)
What is needed are clear terms of usage. If those state the owner of the free service can take the site down with no advance warning and without providing access to the data, they can do so. The site owner in turn can decide whether he wants to deal with such a free service or not.
Why is this even an issue (Score:5, Insightful)
See Journalspace (Score:3, Insightful)
You should be backing up everything that you don't want to lose anyways in case that the online service provider isn't backing stuff up.
It doesn't even have to be malicious, Journalspace is a good example of people who didn't know what a backup was and lost a bunch of data.
Online account != Residence (Score:2, Insightful)
6 weeks isn't "little or no notice" (Score:5, Insightful)
Good warning (Score:5, Insightful)
In addition, it will probably affect a lot of users who store important information or contacts lists or conversation histories that may need to be referred to daily by these individuals, and serve as a warning to them as to what can happen if they start to store a lot of important data that they cannot easily backup for use in applications that may not always be available.
Re:Nuts (Score:5, Insightful)
Okay, politeness is nice and all. As long as we can agree it's not actually legally required.
This is not so much about AOL as it about and it is more about what the author of the article is stating. From the article, the gentleman makes it sound like a call to arms for the oppressed and downtrodden. He is making into some sort of social injustice issue and that only laws will force the web hosting providers into doing the "right thing".
So it would be in the best interest of those providing free services to treat their subscribers nicely since they get plenty of ad revenue from it. That's fine and dandy. It's just not legally required.
Re:Nuts (Score:2, Insightful)
I would delete those posts (and the poster) from any forum I have moderator/sysop rights to. Without notice. A mandatory two-weeks notice would be wonderful for spammers, warez uploaders, trolls, hate-groups, etc.
The author of the blog post hasn't thought this through. But then, that's indicative of most blogs.
Re:Nuts (Score:5, Insightful)
Okay, politeness is nice and all. As long as we can agree it's not actually legally required.
Correct. As stated many times, there is no law against being a dick.
Remember MP3.com? (Score:5, Insightful)
I remember MP3.com around the year 2000, when it was actually cool. Indie bands could post their music in any of zillions of genres, and you could listen with a click. I fell in love with one particular genre, the New Age genre, which consists of lots of trance tracks. But when MP3.com started down the "we host your CD library for you!" I knew that the game was about up and that they were about to be sued into oblivion (which happened), and wrote a bash/wget script to download everything I could of the MP3s. I still have this collection of MP3s today, almost 10 years later. In fact, I'm listening to it right now.
Aren't backups great?
If you care, take a look at the SLA. And if it's free, don't cry about not getting what you didn't pay for in the first place.
Re:Nuts (Score:4, Insightful)
Uhhh, Sorry but a "payment" must be non-zero by it's very definition. What you are trying to say is that you can construct a contractual agreement (TOS) without any sort of compensation. "Free" and "Payment" are mutually exclusive in any language on Earth.
May be a nice solution and a polite one, but it should never be a legal requirement in a contract for web hosting providers that offer free service.
The law is clear. If you are staying someplace without any contractual agreement or non-zero form of compensation the property owner can have the police forcibly remove you at will. No judge will support your claims for damages either. They will throw your case out of court since you never paid anything.
There is a big difference between the law (various contract laws which govern contracts) and what is the "nice and warm fuzzy" way of doing things. It is often in companies best interests to get as close to possible as the "nice and warm fuzzy" way of doing things since it increases customer satisfaction, but it is not required by law.
As someone who owns some servers... (Score:5, Insightful)
I own a few servers, and both sell hosting to paying customers, and give free hosting to some friends.
I try to always keep everyone informed on what's going on. Last time I upgraded one server to a newer model, I gave everyone on that server 4 months notice and kept the old server running for 2 more months after the new server was up and in regular service. And I keep meticulous daily backups, and have been known to mail DVDs of their own data to those who ask for them, even for those who host on my servers for free.
But on a free service, people, you don't have "rights" to "demand" jack shit. If you don't like my terms for free hosting, then shuffle your cheap ass off to another host. Web hosting is one of those services where you get what you pay for. If you want guarantees and a formal policy, then you're going to give me some of those little American government generated pictures of dead presidents in return.
It never ceases to amaze me how people with no financial investment or payments at stake are so readily willing to tell equipment owners what to do. And because of them, I'm just as readily willing to tell freeloaders to kiss my web hosting ass.
Depends on whether you've paid or not (Score:3, Insightful)
IMO it depends on whether you're paying and have a contract or not. If you're not paying (in cash or in some other form), then the host should be entitled to terminate without warning. They should be required to provide a way for you to back up your content, but if you haven't been using it they shouldn't be obliged to do anything. You get what you pay for.
If you are paying, then at least 30 days' warning should be required and the host should be obliged to provide some way for you to transfer your data off. If they're taking money, they don't get to simply disregard their customers. A caveat to that should be that if there's a written contract then the terms of that contract should apply. If the contract lets the host terminate with no warning and no opportunity for you to recover your data, and you were dumb enough to sign it, then you should suffer the consequences. If there wasn't a written, signed contract (eg. all there was was the host's standard ToS that you didn't have to explicitly sign), then minimum requirements should apply regardless.
Free Services? (Score:3, Insightful)
Give me a break. if you want some sort of TOS, buy an account.
Re:Nuts (Score:4, Insightful)
Violation of TOS is pretty different than a site closing itself down. Still, I agree, it's kind of silly to require them to keep it up. We'd just see
1) Free hosting services stop because of liability
2) Use of loopholes to circumvent this ill-conceived law
3) Legal challenges (unlikely)
Re:Nuts (Score:4, Insightful)
GMail is a good example - I can't help thinking that if Google decided to delete all the GMail accounts without warning, there'd be an uproar on Slashdot. I wonder how many of the "It's free, and they should've backed up" commenters here have full backups of their GMail accounts?
Re:What renters rights are in other cities/states (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Nuts (Score:3, Insightful)
Like a turkey drawn with a child's hand or a collection of snow globes collected from a life well-lived, these sites were hand-made, done by real people, with no agenda or business plan or knowledge, exactly, of how everything under the webservers worked.
Now, the key part here is "no knowledge . . . of how everything under the webservers worked." They presume that it's someone else's problem when the content is gone, but they:
They expected to receive value despite giving nothing, and then not to have to think at all about what could go wrong if that value were taken away, but instead, that they were entitled to it. ...and we wonder why we have problems.
Re:Yes, there should be (Score:2, Insightful)
if the terms of service say they can cancel it at anytime it's not reasonable to rely on it. dont' you think? or do you advocate a tyranny of the masses where people can happily ignore the terms on which anything is provided and enforce their uninformed assumptions later?