HOST - dreamhost.com / Liberality (Hosting, Basic Requirement)
Ilias Lazaridis
followup not applicable.
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I am currently selecting a Hosting Provider / Project Host...
http://case.lazaridis.com/multi/wiki/Host
For this larger scale project...
http://case.lazaridis.com/multi
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An incident within usenet has reminded me to include a very Basic
Requirement, which is "Terms of Service / Liberality".
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The incident:
http://xahlee.org/Periodic_dosage_dir/t2/harassment.html
It _seems_ that Mr. Xah Les's account was terminated by dreamhost.com
because of
a) the inability of several people to detect the interconnections within
writings which lead to perfectly valid cross-posts within the usenet.
b) the non-liberal and essentially non-professional way of how
dreamhost.com deals with abuse complaints.
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The accusations of "dreamhost.com" are simply wrong.
The behaviour of dreamhost.com looks like a case of "selective ruling",
whilst using a right defined within the "Terms of Service" to terminate
accounts essentially at free will.
Can someone trust his business or even his private activities to a
hosting company, which cancels accounts in such a way?
I do not:
http://case.lazaridis.com/multi/wiki/DreamhostAudit
But possibly I am wrong, and all this is just a missunderstanding.
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To dreamhost.com:
You should install an autoresponder to your abuse email, which reminds
people that it is
* nearly inpossible to rate the content posted to usenet
* neally inpossible to detect validity of cross-posts
especially within complex analytical/philosophical writings
* other important facts
People can then decide if they still wish to send the abuse complain
(e.g. can follow a link within the autoresponder).
You should additionally make a clear statement, that you do _not_ have
the right to cancel acounts _without_ any reason, and that you do _not_
intervene into a persons right to speek within the usenet, without a
clear and undoubtable proof of abuse (e.g. court decision, or at least
verfication of independend entities or mediators).
Additionally, it would be gentle if your company would make a _public_
statement subjecting this case, thus any interested party can verify the
validity of the statements.
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To Mr. Xah Lee:
You should change to a more liberal services provider, one which
plays in the "Major League" and which respects free speech. Such a
provider would just reject such ridiculous abuse complaints.
If, for any reason, you are not able to switch to another hosting
provider, please let me know.
I will see what I can do for you to keep your free speech up.
Additionally, I would like to suggest you to not invest too much time
into all this. Better use this time to find people and to react in an
organized manner.
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To the complaining people:
To which 'species' do you belong?
http://lazaridis.com/core/eval/species.html
Setting up an thread filter:
http://lazaridis.com/core/eval/filter.html
I have seldom seen a more ridiculous argumentation-line than then
"spam/abuse" one.
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To anyone:
Any form of censorship and "suppression of freedom of expression" should
be kept out of from open-source projects and from usenet.
It is the within the responsibility of every entity (including
commercial companies) to act against it.
http://dev.lazaridis.com/base/wiki/LiberalProjectDefinition
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Joachim Durchholz
> crossposted to 5 groups, which are affected by this case.
>
> followup not applicable.
Actually, in this case, yes.
> It _seems_ that Mr. Xah Les's account was terminated by dreamhost.com
> because of
>
> a) the inability of several people to detect the interconnections within
> writings which lead to perfectly valid cross-posts within the usenet.
Actually, his posts are mostly off-topic.
> b) the non-liberal and essentially non-professional way of how
> dreamhost.com deals with abuse complaints.
Unless you give some concrete facts, this is simply slander.
URLs don't count.
> To dreamhost.com:
>
> You should install an autoresponder to your abuse email, which reminds
> people that it is
>
> * nearly inpossible to rate the content posted to usenet
> * neally inpossible to detect validity of cross-posts
> especially within complex analytical/philosophical writings
> * other important facts
Why are you wasting our mental bandwidth with that?
Besides, it's utter nonsense. There's an infinity of invalid reasons, so
you can't rule them out with an autoresponder.
> People can then decide if they still wish to send the abuse complain
> (e.g. can follow a link within the autoresponder).
Nope. Finding out the provider is enough of a barrier. Additional
barriers are not really necessary.
Xah Lee has been irritating people for months.
I do share your concerns. Complaint handling often is unprofessional.
However, in Xah Lee's case, he's indeed been irritating too many people
for a too long time that *some* sanction is in fact appropriate.
I routinely kill his threads, but I'm reading a specific newsgroup for a
purpose, and Xah Lee requires me to kill his. He's essentially doing
semantic spam - analytical and philosophical writings may be well and
fine, but they aren't appropriate on the newsgroups that I frequent (or
only in very specific ways that Xah Lee doesn't address).
> To anyone:
>
> Any form of censorship and "suppression of freedom of expression" should
> be kept out of from open-source projects and from usenet.
>
> It is the within the responsibility of every entity (including
> commercial companies) to act against it.
>
> http://dev.lazaridis.com/base/wiki/LiberalProjectDefinition
There are many important goals. Free speech is indeed very high on the
list. On the other hand, I'm pretty sure that Xah Lee will find another
provider.
Tim X
I think the other point here is that everyone *assumes* Xah's account
was cancelled simply because of a campaign to report him for spamming
multiple newsgroups. I suspect there were other factors involved. for
all anyone knows, the provider might have been getting complaints from
people about Xah's account, website, e-mail and newsgorup posting for
ages and just decided it was more trouble than it was worth to keep
him as a customer.
Personally, I didn't report Xah to his provider, but I do believe he
was a troll (which he himself admits) and which is confirmed by the
fact he never hangs around to defend or debate his posts which seem
more often than not deliberately designed to start a flamewar.
Bottom line is everyone seems to have just accepted Xah's claims and
now we have lots of outraged netters screaming about free speech.
Given Xah's desire to provoke emotion etc, its even possible Xah
created this whole thing just for entertainment!
On usernet, I think the secret is "believe nothing, question
everything" and remember, on the net, nobody knows your a dog!
--
tcross (at) rapttech dot com dot au
Tim X
My apologies for not trimming the long list of crossposted groups. I
hit 'y' when thinking 'n'!
Tim
Vincenzo Ciancia
>> People can then decide if they still wish to send the abuse complain
>> (e.g. can follow a link within the autoresponder).
>
> Nope. Finding out the provider is enough of a barrier. Additional
> barriers are not really necessary.
> Xah Lee has been irritating people for months.
Come on! What does it cost to ignore a thread compared to what it costs to
allow arbitrary censorship? Also, what would it cost to this guy to get
another account and irritate people again for many years until termination
of the new account? The only difference here is that someone legally
decided that he could not express himself for a while. This will not
prevent him coming back. There are lots of people that irritate me in
italian politics for example, telling bullshit all the time :) but I do not
hope they will be censored :) Again, in kmail I press the "i" key when I
see Xah Lee and I live happier.
Bye
Vincenzo
--
Please note that I do not read the e-mail address used in the from field but
I read vincenzo_ml at yahoo dot it
Attenzione: non leggo l'indirizzo di posta usato nel campo from, ma leggo
vincenzo_ml at yahoo dot it
Ilias Lazaridis
[...]
> I think the other point here is that everyone *assumes* Xah's account
> was cancelled simply because of a campaign to report him for spamming
> multiple newsgroups. I suspect there were other factors involved. for
> all anyone knows, the provider might have been getting complaints from
> people about Xah's account, website, e-mail and newsgorup posting for
> ages and just decided it was more trouble than it was worth to keep
> him as a customer.
> On usernet, I think the secret is "believe nothing, question
> everything" and remember, on the net, nobody knows your a dog!
I understand what you mean.
I've written in my message:
"It _seems_ that Mr. Xah Les's account was terminated by dreamhost.com
because of "
"
To dreamhost.com:
[...]
Additionally, it would be gentle if your company would make a _public_
statement subjecting this case, thus any interested party can verify the
validity of the statements. "
.
Lad
I do not reccomend Dreamhost.com not because they are not liberal but
because their service is not reliable.
I also have a webhosting with them but their server has a lot of
downtimes when more visitors come to my webpage and it is not possible
to have such webhosting provider for serious projects!!!
ewf...@gmail.com
> Come on! What does it cost to ignore a thread compared to what it costs to
> allow arbitrary censorship?
I would hardly call this "arbitrary censorship." Arbitrary censorship
would be nuking people's accounts without warning and without reason.
It would be remarkable if Xah Lee wasn't aware of the negative
consequences of his posts. And by breaking rules of nettiquete, he was
giving ample reason for the consequences to be doled out as they were.
None of us here are for "arbitrary censorship." So please leave your
straw men in the fields where they belong.
Honestly, should Xah be able to cross-post his diatribes on
alt.sports.baseball.ny-yankees? And when they kick him off for doing
so, are you going to cry "censorship?" One way to look at this
situation is to say that his voice is being throttled. But that is
only one way of looking at it, and these kind of slippery-slope
arguments are disingenuous.
The rules of Usenet are what make it useful. Enforcing the
partitioning posts into the appropriate threads is not a means of
thought-control; it is a way to organize information on Usenet so that
people can find what they are looking for. No one in their right mind
goes to comp.lang.*.misc for philosophical discussions.
> Also, what would it cost to this guy to get
> another account and irritate people again for many years until termination
> of the new account? The only difference here is that someone legally
> decided that he could not express himself for a while.
You know, if Xah clicked AGREE on the TOS, then he ought not be
surprised that this happened to him. Underhanded business practice?
Sure, I wouldn't sign up with that kind of ISP if it were the last
choice on earth. However, if Mr. Lee is half as intelligent as he
purports to be, he would have seen the inevitiability of this.
Besides, there are plenty of places on Usenet where his rants are
perfectly on-topic.
>This will not prevent him coming back.
Sadly, you are probably right. I don't want Xah to have to go back to
the 19th century. I just want him to respect the rules of the game.
If we want to read his blatherings, we already know where to find them.
>There are lots of people that irritate me in
> italian politics for example, telling bullshit all the time :) but I do not
> hope they will be censored :)
This is a last resort. If Xah had bothered to stick around in the
threads he began, he would have been appraised of this situation long
ago. And that's giving him the benefit of assuming that he isn't a
troll.
>Again, in kmail I press the "i" key when I
> see Xah Lee and I live happier.
Good for you, we're all very proud. Your medal is in the mail.
Jürgen Exner
> crossposted to 5 groups, which are affected by this case.
>
And your article has exactly what relationship to Perl?
*PLONK*
jue