Shawn sez, “I just posted this defense of Bit Torrent on my personal journal after receiving a C&D letter from my webhosting service demanding I stop sharing ‘copyrighted’ material, even though it’s made very clear on my site that the files I host on my Blog Torrent install are my own creations (well, me and my friends, but they’re all cool with it). The file in question is a short documentary about Booth Babes my wife and I made and posted on our site back in 2001, and the file that tipped them off was generated by my test install of Broadcast Machine (which has been mysteriously not working on my server).”
I don’t want them to turn off my websites. And this is not any kind of civil disobedience, which would involve breaking a law. I’m just uploading my files to the Internet and trying out some technologies to facilitate this with the lowest demand on my webserver. If hosting companies apply some kind of blanket filter against .torrent files, that will seriously limit our ability to share media and content. It is completely unacceptable for web servers to do this kind of unmonitored regulation and threatening. What if I had been on vacation, couldn’t respond, and they shut down my site in a week?
The hosting company in question is 1and1. Their phone number is 1-877-GO-1AND1. The main email address is info@1and1.com.
(Thanks, Shawn!)
Update: Shawn sez, “I spoke with a very nice Indian man named “Andre” who seemed to grasp the silliness of the situation. He escalated the issue to his manager, and said I should hear back within 24 hours. So I’ve been waiting. No reply to my email either so far.
“The story has pretty much nuked elmwoodstrip.com, which is a great local Buffalo journalling site. Out of respect for my friends there, and to keep the word out, I’ve reposted the entire entry on my personal site.