Free Speech Hosting

From time to time, we receive a complaint about content hosted at Modwest. So far, we haven't had any politicians request that content be removed (like what happened to Google recently), but we have heard from various individuals and companies over the years that find something uploaded by one of our customers to be unacceptable, and want us to do something about it.

While our Terms of Service mention that hosted content must be legal (e.g., child porn may not be hosted at Modwest), our policy is necessarily more nuanced, due to the varied nature of complaints we receive.

Aside from blatantly illegal content, we've received a couple other types of content complaints.

Copyright Infringement. This is a big, complex issue, and lawyers have built whole careers on the topic of copyright law.  The short story is that authors and artists have a right to control where their stuff is posted, and web hosting companies have a legal duty to review copyright infringement complaints. If a complaint meets certain criteria, the host legally must do something about it. (For more details, read this Wikipedia article.)

For example, one of our customers was re-posting articles from a popular technology news site on his blog. He'd automated the process via the source site's RSS feeds, and the articles were presented in their entirety. The source site contacted Modwest with a takedown request, which we reviewed and concluded it met all the criteria for us to act. We contacted our customer, explained the situation, and gave them 24 hours to "fix it". The customer removed the infringing content. If he hadn't, we'd have been required by law to remove or disable access to it.

Harassment/Libel. These complaints allege that a Modwest customer is spreading lies, saying nasty things, or posting objectionable content. Modwest isn't responsible for the speech or actions of our customers or their visitors, and so we don't intervene in these cases. Sometimes, we'll advise the complainant that if they believe a crime is being committed, they should contact law enforcement. We'll also pass along the complaint to the customer hosting it. But we're not going to get into the business of being an arbiter of disputes, or otherwise declare what is or isn't polite and appropriate.

An example: Last year we received a harassment complaint about messages on a customer's forum. The forum was dedicated to acerbic discussion across a range of issues. The complainant, a forum member, reported that other members had conducted internet searches to figure out her real name, and then posted embarrassing lies about her personal life. While this may have been mean-spirited and in poor taste, we declined to take any editorial action. We reported the complaint to the forum owner to give them the opportunity to remove the content; they also declined to take any action. (These were the sort of fireworks which fueled the site's irreverent dynamic.)

A summary of our policy regarding "acceptable content" is that we'll take action to disable or remove customer content when we are aware of a legal obligation to do so, such as a court order or copyright violation.  (To protect our customers from spam blacklists, we also have strict bulk mail policies, and won't host online pharmacy or email marketing sites. And we might disable something that is causing a serious server problem.)

In Google's case, their "Community Guidelines" did move them to delete some but not all of the videos requested by the senator, despite the deletions probably not being legally required. In similar circumstances at Modwest, we'd review the content in question to see which type of complaint was being lodged, and remove or disable what we're legally required to act upon.

Some might call this "free speech hosting". If that means that we're ardent defenders of our customers' rights to post controversial, irreverent, and unpleasant legal content, the term is accurate.  We're just trying to do what we do best, and generally leave the jobs of law enforcement and reprimand to the police and the courts.

-JM

Comments

[jody]

Right on.

[Judy H. Wright]

Hey Guys:

Just fix whatever needs fixing and keep on giving us the great service we have come to expect.

You really went the extra mile for me when I was having so many problems with Quest and DSL and so I recommend you to any friends who are looking for a hosting site.

Judy H. Wright