Shared Web eHostPros has announced that they are re-branding of the company to “FastWebHost”

Stating in a press release “As our business continues to grow, we want a brand name that is easy to say and clearly communicates what we offer to the market. We have done this by branding ourselves as FastWebHost”, says Rupi Singh.

There are no changes expected in management, name servers, control panels or settings.

FastWebHost.com should not be confused with FastWebHost.net, fastwebhosts.com, Fast Web Host, or Fasthost.

 Legal woes can add an interesting dimension to any story and the tale of Carolina Internet Ltd appears it will not disappoint. While many of the insider details are purely speculative, it appears that Carolina Internet, a Charlotte North Carolina based Co-location provider, first entered into a contract with TW Telecom Holdings Inc. (Time Warner Company) in 1999 which was then periodically renewed. For a reason yet to be definitively aired, TW Telcom filed suit against Carolina Internet in a Colorado court on July 29, 2010, citing a breach of the contract.

When Carolina Internet failed to respond to a number of pleadings in the allotted times (it does appears they never responded at all), Senior Judge Weinshienk of the United States District Court made Christmas come early for the TW Telcom legal team. On October 27, 2010, TW Telcom was awarded a default judgment.
Citing:

ORDERED that Plaintiff TW Telecom Holdings, Inc.'s Motion For Default Pursuant To FRCP 55(b)(2) (Doc. No. 14) is granted. It is
FURTHER ORDERED that Plaintiff is awarded damages in the amount of $2,850,000 under the 2009 Service Agreement and $331,533.93 under the April, May, and June 2010 invoices, for a total amount of $3,181,533.93. It is
FURTHER ORDERED that Plaintiff is awarded prejudgment interest in the amount of $124,012.70 pursuant to the terms and conditions of the parties' Agreement. It is
FURTHER ORDERED that Plaintiff is awarded post-judgment interest at the applicable statutory rate in effect on the date that Judgment is entered. It is
FURTHER ORDERED that a separate Judgment shall issue pursuant to Fed. R. Civ. P. 58. It is
"FURTHER ORDERED that Plaintiff shall be awarded its costs upon the filing of a bill of costs within ten days after entry of Judgment.

Ouch! Carolina Internet filed a request for a reconsideration of this judgment which the court then denied. Carolina Internet is appealing this ruling to the Tenth Circuit Court.

TW Telecom then brought various motions before the court to compel Carolina Internet into the judgment phrase. On March 21, 2011, Magistrate Judge Michael J. Watanabe among other things grants the Plaintiff's (TW Telcom) Motion for Writ of Execution.

Carolina Internet responds by filing a suit against TW Telcom on May 26, 2011 in a North Carolina Superior Court, alleging several contract based claims arising out of the service agreement with TW Telcom. TW Telcom, now as the defendant, claims and the court concurs, that this case is essentially the same as the case already actively playing out in Colorado. It is important to note that the court did conclude:

As the Western District of Colorado is familiar with the present dispute, it is in the interests of judicial economy for this case to be tried in our sister court in Colorado. Accordingly, Defendant's Motion to Transfer pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 1404(a) is GRANTED. The Defendant's Motion to Strike is DENIED. On an issue of this magnitude, the Court found it important to consider the Plaintiff's response; however, the Plaintiff is warned that the Court's deadlines exist for a reason and should be followed for any further proceedings in which the Plaintiff is a party.

Further appeals of this order were under taken by the plaintiff, Carolina Internet, without success with the final order being handed down on September 26, 2011.

Meanwhile on July 14,2011, TW Telcom armed with the writ of execution made a withdrawal of $23K plus from the Park Sterling Bank account of Carolina Internet. Again in mid September 2011, a hold was placed on another account of Carolina Internet at the Clover Community Bank, this one containing more than $184K

On September 23, 2011 Carolina Internet, LTD. filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. A further action seeking injunctive relief was filed on September 27, seeking recovery and turnover of the money from the seized bank accounts. The filing claims amongst other issues that:

• the funds on deposit with the banks are necessary for the continuing operation of Carolina Internet
• That it (Carolina Internet) has suffered irreparable injury by virtue that its cash flow has been severely compromised threatening its continued operations
• a shortened and expedited process... speed is of the essence.

Outsiders watching what appears to be a train wreck in slow motion for Carolina Internet may wish to consider that there are certain legal advantages that can only be garnered under Chapter 11 (consider the airlines and auto industry recent woes and return to black ink minus the encumberance of all those pension liabilities). Assuming Carolina Internet has “competent” legal counsel, one can expect this drama to continue playing out in the North Carolina court room. (wasn't there a motion to have the case heard in NC that was denied earlier?)

An anonymous source with inside knowledge of the company has stated “we fully expect matters to be resolved in due time”. A web search on Carolina Internet shows a number of prior legal action involving Carolina Internet.

For the average hosting clients whose web host may be utilizing Carolina Internet as a Co-location and network provider, there is little in the way of protection that can, or should be done, beyond keeping a recent off-site back up of your site. But isn't that just good advice for everyone with a web presence!

We will continue to update this story has it unfolds

The British House of Commons and House of Lords is seeking to procure a contract for the provision of strategic web hosting for the Parliamentary website (http://www.parliament.uk),

Parliament fancies itself, and its online channels as "high profile" and increasingly "business critical". In the last 12 months the site has received 16,000,000 visits, from 10,000,000 unique visitors, with daily visitor traffic varying from a ebb of 6,000 visits to a peak of 158,000.

Editor Note "Lets Put this in Perspective"
Social network giant Facebook (doubtless, many see FB as business critical) has the most unique number of visitors in the realm, but its page view numbers – 570 billion – are what really dwarf every other site on the Web, including Yahoo, which Facebook tops by 500 billion page views . Facebook is followed by Yahoo and Microsoft's Live online services in the two and three spots, with 70 billion and 39 billion, respectively. In number of unique visitors, the competition is a bit closer, showing Facebook with 540 million users, Yahoo with 490 million, and Microsoft Live with 370 million.

Back to the tender...
The supplier will be tasked with providing a service which meets expectation levels around availability, support and issue management. The supplier will be expected to demonstrate flexible commercial models which ensure Parliament can get value for money and be proactive in ensuring that Parliament’s online channels are delivered in a resilient, secure and robust way. At present House hosting is provided by a range of internal and external suppliers with varying service levels and provision.

I Googled for the Lords & Ladies present IT budgetary stipend, and realized why the VAT tax needed to be increased to 20% last January. Suffice it to say the European Parliament signed a €12m (£10m) IT service agreement with Accenture recently but this included development and support of a range of applications... so the bid should come in substantially lower... (who am I kidding!)

- The site presently has a load time of 4.6 seconds using Pingdom 
- Google gives parliament.uk a pagerank of... (measure of relative importance of a site on the  web) …. zero
- Network tools show Colt Technology Services is presently hosting the servers

Taking a closer look at the tender, the lords and ladies do appear to be asking the right questions that anyone seeking a new web host should be rightly concerned with:

1.Do you have a trial period or money-back guarantee?

2.How does your customer service and technical support system work?

3.Can I view a sample site that is hosted on the same server that my web site will be on?

4.Known to come under threat from malicious attack.. any suggestions

5.Does it scale easily.

6.Will you waive set up fees or give me some other special incentives to sign up with you today... na they never, but they did have #7

7.Abilities to feature dynamic video and online games.
 
As Parliament is keen to rationalize the provision of hosting to establish a consistent service levels in line with business need as cost effectively as possible while working in partnership with the supplier to take advantage of new opportunities that technology can provide, the Lords and Ladies may wish to consider using an American cloud  hosting supplier like Amazon. In addition to direct cost savings, the indirect economic benefits derived through lower espionage costs to the US will benefit  and stimulate society as a whole.

More official details of the tender can be found here:
https://www.publictenders.net/tender/122113

The latest domain news will likely have more cyber lawyers and domain registers rubbing their hands in glee.   

Google has lost the first round to oust typo cybersquatter site “goggle.com”.  Google complaint against the domain name's current registrant David Csumrik  was dismissed by the National Arbitration Forum on a procedural technicality. Evidence presented to the panel suggested there was a prior agreement to "co-exist". The Uniform Dispute Resolution Policy was designed to give trademark owners a way to take domains from cybersquatters without resorting to expensive litigation.

The other “Goggle” tries to persuade thick fingered participants to answer some questions and divulge some personal details by offering prizes.  More ominous and with further reaching implications is the second case.

British High Court rules “No UK customers, no dispute”

The High Court has rejected claims made by the US online dating company Plentyoffish Media that it was entitled to assert rights over UK-registered trademarks because it had a high number of UK visitors to its website. The judge rejected and dismissed the US firm's claims that Plenty More LLP (plentymorefish.com) was passing itself off as belonging to the US brand.

So in the UK if you can prove that your use of a trademark has established "goodwill" in the business associated with that trademark, then this goodwill is protectable, and if another business  "passes off" their services as being yours and appears to claim that their services are yours or that you are in some way connected or have endorsed the services, then you can take action. You can claim damages or seek an injunction to prevent that use, so long as you can show that you have or are likely to suffer damage as a result of the use.

Follow the logic...

- Plentyoffish operated its own online dating service at "plentyoffish.com"
- Plentyoffish claimed that it was the second most viewed online dating website in the UK and one of the 150 most visited sites in the country in total.
- This, it claimed, entitled it to "goodwill" over its signs, according to the ruling.
- Plentyoffish was free to use, but the company asked visitors to sign up as members.
- Plentyoffish claimed that Plenty More had infringed its rights by using the trademarked sign "plentymorefish" in a website domain for its subscription-based online dating service, which had been registered in the UK in April 2007.
- Plenty More's website was confusing and caused some visitors to register with the subscription service in the mistaken belief that it was Plentyoffish's free service instead, the US company had argued, according to the ruling.
- Plenty More's use of 'plentymorefish' "would cause a misrepresentation and ... damage would be suffered or would be likely to arise," Plentyoffish had claimed.
- Plentyoffish claimed that the visitor numbers alone meant it was entitled to goodwill rights to the sign. It said that visitors of the site could be treated as "customers" because they were "exposed" to the site's advertising and even though the dating service it provided was free.

Justice Birss rejected the argument and said that only members of the site could be considered as Plentyoffish's customers.

Trade marks can be also be protected by registering the trade mark at the UK Trade Marks Registry. As I stated initially, cyber lawyers and domain registers are rubbing their hands in glee.

Surmounted.NET has revealed the acquisition of the company by GigaTux.

Quoting in part:

Marc from GigaTux has responded to HostJury inquiry and clarified that pricing will remain the same for Surmounted.Net clients when they renew their contracts.

"Yes, absolutely. The only issue is that we cannot provide WHMCS  licenses for free any more but will work out deals with each client that  currently has one." 

 On the question of possible downtime and data loss, Marc responded:

"We are not doing a physical migration because the server at Dallas was  actually rented. We will be moving each user account to the owned server  in San Jose using standard procedures (e.g. reducing TTLs for shared  accounts, setting up networking for VPSs). There is a little downtime for users, but only approximately 10 minutes per client.  Thankfully we don't have to physically drive the servers across - that  would involve a lot more downtime!

Clients can review their experiences with Surmounted.NET and GigaTux.

Hosting.com has announced the acquisition of Dallas-based managed hosting company NeoSpire. The acquisition both expands the physical footprint of Hosting.com and adds additional expertise to the company’s portfolio of services.

"NeoSpire is excited about the opportunities this acquisition will provide for our customers," said Mitch Gervis, CEO and co-founder of NeoSpire. “We started NeoSpire with the vision of providing the best customer service in the managed hosting industry. Hosting.com shares this commitment and will also bring an expanded product line to enhance our current offerings.” Derek Wilson, chairman and co-founder of NeoSpire stated, “We have worked very hard to start and successfully build our business. This transaction with an industry leader creates a winning combination for our customers and the NeoSpire team."

NeoSpire was founded in 1999 by Mitch Gervis and Derek Wilson. Hosting.com is backed by private equity firm Pamlico Capital.

A couple of legal suits making news center on domain registrars concealing terms in the fine print to the detriment of their customers... allegedly of course!

The first case has web host and domain registrar GoDaddy in hot water for parking ads on undeveloped domain names without the permission of the domain owner.

In this particular case, GoDaddy claims it told registrants about the ad parking in its "Universal Terms of Service," which purported to incorporate by reference to a "Parked Page Service Agreement." However, the cross-reference in the TOS said the parking agreement applied "only to customers who have purchased those referenced Services." 

But the registrants didn't "purchase" the ad parking service; rather, GoDaddy imposed it on them for free. With the botched cross-reference, the contracts the registrants actually agreed to didn't adequately disclose the ad parking. As a result, GoDaddy can't claim the registrants contractually authorized the parking.

IT IS THEREFORE ORDERED that “Plaintiffs’ Motion for Partial Summary Judgment on GoDaddy’s Lack of Contractual Authority” (Doc. 163) is granted.IT IS FURTHER ORDERED that Go Daddy’s “Cross-Motion for PartialSummary Judgment” (Doc. 167) is denied.

The second involves a client of domain name registrar Moniker. Mainstream Advertising, Inc. has filed suit against Moniker and its parent company Oversee.net, claiming breach of contract, conversion, unjust enrichment, and unfair competition over alleged high jinks with expired domain names. Allegedly of course.

Mainstream started using Moniker in 2005 and claims that it has registered, hosted and/or maintained approximately 120,000 domain names through Moniker’s registration and hosting services. Allegedly Moniker did not notify Mainstream appropriately about expiring domain names,then took over the domain names once they expired.

According to the suit:

Defendants engaged in practices that increased the likelihood that these domain names would lapse and fall outside the control and ownership of Mainstream. These practices included, but are not limited to, failing to provide appropriate expiration notices to Mainstream regarding these various domain names.
Moniker sends weekly notices to clients of expiring domains that are not set to auto-renew starting 75 days before the domains expire and continuing 21 days after the domains expire, according to the suit.

But Mainstream claims:

Upon information and belief, the weekly email notices regarding expiration which were required to be sent during the 99-day (sic) period were either never sent, or transmitted in a deliberate and capricious manner so that they would be blocked by Mainstream’s e-mail computer systems, including through their reasonable and standard spam filters.

Mainstream attached Moniker’s Domain Name Deletion and Auto-Renew Policy as an exhibit in the suit. It states: that the registrant should take action to whitelist Moniker’s email addresses to make sure it receives expiration notices.

Mainstream alleges that the defendants have converted about 83,000 domain names it previously owned. They also submitted evidence to substaniate a claim that they paid Moniker’s price of $132,965.00 to secure the return of 3,652 domain name registrations.... and got nothing.

Mainstream Advertising likely should have cut their loss. Viewing the domain names Moniker allegedly "acquired", the big question in this suit will be: Why would Moniker pay to renew this sh!t without having the money upfront?

Uk web host Lumison (edNET from 1996 to 2004) announced that it has acquired DediPower Managed Hosting Ltd, a Reading-based managed hosting and colocation provider. The acquisition brings Lumison’s combined turnover to £27.5million, and continues its business expansion strategy, which has seen the company’s revenues grow from £6.4m to £27.5m over the last three years.

This is Lumison’s second acquisition since it received investment funding from Bridgepoint Development Capital in October 2010. In March 2011, Lumison acquired Blue Square Data for £22 million.

Lumison offers colocation, managed hosting and cloud services to UK ‘mid market’ companies hosting their online operations, business applications and development environments. DediPower brings experience in colocation and managed hosting services with 70% of their revenue coming from managed services. This complements Lumison’s existing capabilities and the combined business will provide customers with enhanced managed IT services (dedicated and shared), managed network and colocation services across eight UK datacentres.

Lumison Group CEO Mark Howling said: “The addition of DediPower to the business is a strong strategic and cultural fit and will consolidate our position as a leading player in the IT Managed Services sector. The Group will remain focused on providing practical, cost-effective solutions to customer business IT issues. Customers increasingly demand reliable IT infrastructure-as-a-service as the need for a scalable and flexible way of working grows; with DediPower’s expertise, Lumison is even better placed to deliver this.”

There has been no word on any changes that may affect clients data as a result of the acquisition.

Shared hosting clients of Canadian web host and hosting infrastructures provider iWeb have received notice that the company intends to spin off all shared hosting related business including domain names registration to iWeb “sister” company Funio. The newsletter states that iWeb will continue handling support and billing in the near term although Funio is slated to eventually become the only contact point.

While the Funio.com website is still redirecting to iWeb.com, Sylvain Leclair of Funio.com (still has an iWeb email) states that a new website will be unveiled in the next few days. We asked Sylvain a number of questioned concerning the coming changes, and he was quick to respond:

1)Can you share some of the reasoning that has gone into the decision to migrate iWeb shared hosting clients to a separate brand.

iWeb decided to take this decision because during the last couple of years we have put all our efforts into our dedicated server and smart server line. Accordingly so, we spent less time on shared hosting services. We still believe in the shared hosting services' potential and this is the best way we found to improve our product and services.

The shared hosting and dedicated server markets are different. We believe that we will be able to better target our customers' requirements by providing our shared hosting customers a whole company who will take care of delivering the best out of the service.

2) The newsletter sent to shared hosting clients states that for the moment iWeb will continue to handle billing and support matters. Is there a projected time frame for Funio becoming the single point of contact?

The "transition period" is planned to end at the beginning of 2012, which means when all the operations, customer service, infrastructure management, product development, and every other activity related to this business, will all be handled by Funio's team. We are planning on changing many things like our help desk software, billing system, domain reservation system, and adding other tools that will help us building strong foundations for future growth.

3) Will there be a migration of clients data to new servers that may result in scheduled or unexpected downtime?

No, we have no plan of migrating data to new servers.  iWeb's network is rock solid and our shared hosting infrastructures are stable and reliable. This being said, we know that there is some operational improvement to be done and we will work on those within the next few months.

4) iWeb has acquired a number of brands over the years. Why was Funio chosen as the "new" brand over some of these other company names?

Funio is a simple and easy name to remember which can be pronounced "Fun" + " I / O".  "I / O", as you surely know, represents data transfer: In / Out, such as bandwidth and data on hard drives. It ultimately respresents the technical stuff found in web hosting.  "Fun" represents the way we think web hosting should be: not a pain, but something simple and easy for our customers to control.  The objective would be to build a "fun" customer experience.  We are not there yet, but this is the vision we want to build over time and the direction we are taking.

We also want to apply "Fun" and "I / O" to our working environment.   We know technology matters and that we need an efficient team with strong technical skills (in one word: Geeks!).  At the same time, the Funio team has to enjoy what it accomplishes; motivated and happy employees will be more creative, and they will provide a better customer service and overall experience.  We still have to work on that too.

5)Many clients traditionally use shared hosting and upgrade as their needs grow. Will Funio also include offerings such as dedicated servers and VPS?

We are keeping a close relationship with iWeb, therefore, if customers need to grow to a dedicated server, we could easily transfer from Funio to iWeb. Also, on both sides (iWeb and Funio), we have projects concerning VPS, but this will not come into the roadmap before a couple of months.

And finally in these times of consolidations and acquisitions can we expect to see a press release in the future discussing Funio impending acquisition by one of the hosting giants?

A couple of months ago, iWeb took the decision to continue investing efforts on shared hosting services by building Funio, so we are not planning to be acquired. We will build strong foundations for Funio during the next month and begin our growth phase thereafter.

As has been seen so often in the tech revolution, a willingness to morph and adapt to meet evolving market conditions is key to staying relevant to your clients needs. Having "fun" while your doing it is just a lot more gratifying!

About iWeb: iWeb is one of the largest web hosts and Internet hosting infrastructures provider in Canada. iWeb's operations centers shelter a total of more than 90,000 square feet of latest generation data center and office floor space in Montreal and offers a wide variety of first class web hosting and server management services. IWeb is recognized for the quality of its customer service and its highly competitive prices. In January 2010, iWeb announced the addition of the new 31,000 square feet data center, in the LaSalle borough (western part of Montreal), with the capacity to host 20,000 dedicated servers. This new facility will bring the total dedicated server capacity of iWeb to nearly 35,000 servers.

This past weekend Go Daddy topped the 50 million domain name mark when the domain “dbakit.com” was registered.. Go Daddy's closest competitor is eNom recently reported that it had 11.9 million domains under management at the end of June.

Go Daddy says that it registers, renews or transfers a domain name every second and since it began registering domain names it has registered more than 225 million years worth of domain names. (domains registered for one year and then dropped are one year, if it’s renewed for a year then it becomes two years and so on). Since January 2010, Go Daddy has grown by 10 million domains, while the entire domain market has grown by 23 million.

Go-Daddy in a deal reportedly worth more than $2bn, sold more than half of its shares to a group of private investors including KKR, Silver Lake and Technology Crossover Ventures, which made former CEO, founder Bob Parsons a billionaire as well as “the great white hunter of elephants”!

There have been other consolidations in the industry with Network Solutions being picked up by smaller rival Web.com for $561m and UK Group NBT going private in a £153m deal.

With ICANN posed to massively liberalize the top-level domain market, many domain holders will be forced into registering numerous extra domains to protect their brand, a fact that probably wasn't overlooked by investors of these acquisitions!

For many people researching prospective web hosting companies for their projects, the Better Business Bureau insignia or accreditation has traditionally been a consideration in their endeavor to shortlist a chosen few. It appears that some recent scrutiny of the BBB vetting and verification process has invoked an unusual retaliatory response.

FeeFighters, a comparison shopping website for credit card processing that prides itself on being "financial ninjas who fight to help business owners keep more of their money" wrote a very provocative piece entitled "The BBB is a F*(;#ing Scam."

FeeFighters likened the BBB to the mafia of old, shaking down businesses for “protection money”,and alleging that consumers are in the dark when it comes to one category particularly riddled with fraud — credit cards processing. They found that BBB ratings in these areas suspect at best, and categorically stated that consumers “should not put ANY credence whatsoever in the BBB’s ratings. It is NOT a valid data point.

Naturally one would expect some form of measured response after writing such a scathing post that cuts to the heart of the Better Business Bureau financial bedrock. The BBB has responded in triplicate! (email, snail mail, and certified mail).

Quoting Stella from FeeFighters:

Ouch. It looks like if you say anything that the BBB deems “aversely affects (their) public image” you’re out. Not much of a fair system.

Not Exactly a Scientific Study

HostJury used our own Reviewed Hosts List of providers for an indication of how well the Better Business Bureau rated various web hosting entities. (an automated list generated from all reviews to give a cross section of best to worst hosts... not exactly scientific but we picked the 3 hosts from the top... and 3 found at the bottom)

SingleHop pulls off an A... BBB Accredited Business since 04/01/2008
Fused Networks rates an A- but they are not BBB Accredited
HostGator  gets an A+ ...BBB Accredited Business since 4/28/2008

Hosting Zoom (DBA ResellerZoom) gets A- Also not BBB accredited
Netfirms  gets A+ BBB Accredited Business since 27/09/2004
WebServe gets a C+ This Business is not BBB Accredited..

As the preceding list shows, there is no conclusive trends or patterns that substantiate FeeFighters allegations in regards to the web hosting industry, (there does appear to be a slight advantage to being accredited). So I searched the BBB database for a company that has attracted more criticism in the past than a lightening rod on a golf course in Florida …

GISOL... aka Global Internet Solutions, Best Internet Services, and G I S, Inc.: They are not accredited and did "manage to squeeze out an F" (emphesis is mine)

The BBB site also states under Complaint Experience

Complainants allege billing disputes due to unclear website disclosures, unauthorized credit card charges, and inability to cancel services or obtain refunds. Other complainants allege high pressure sales tactics are used by company representatives when attempting to solicit upgrades, renew accounts or collect on accounts receivable. Some customers allege false advertising, or that the company misrepresents the terms and conditions of services. In some cases complainants allege that services were stopped by the company without notice, and the company failed to communicate reasons or refund eligibility. The company responds to complaints by denying most allegations, and referring complainants to specific sections of their service agreement which supported the company's position.

In conclusion, while there does appear to be some very small value in utilizing the BBB database as another resource in researching a web hosting company, it is likely that the Better Business Bureau will provide no worthwhile information on uptime, support responses, features, and pricing. It may help you avoid companies such as GISOL... that is unless they suddenly get BBB Accredited... and an A+ rating!

Domain name squatters hold a special place in society. Love them or hate them, most of our resentment lies in the idea that we never first thought of registering a popular name in those early gold rush days of the tech revolution. Its little consolation that who could have foreseen the popularity of names like Facebook, Google, Wikipedia, and the Tea Party! Yes.. the Teaparty.

The American political movement is generally recognized for its conservative and libertarian ideals, and sponsoring numerous protests and political candidates. The term Tea party became synonymous with an earlier revolt of tea sipping Americans in 1773 (before there was an America and American Beer), and the modern day version hopes to capatilize and fan the flames of their ancestors success.

Speaking of capatilizing, the Canadian rock band “The Tea Party” could see its biggest residual payment since its 1990s heyday if it cashes in on U.S. political interest in its website. The Windsor, Ontario based band, best known for its song Heaven Coming Down (its on you-tube) holds the rights to the teaparty.com web domain, which some say could be worth more than $1 million.

Currently, the site acknowledges the confusion between the band and the U.S. conservative movement on its front page: "No politics . just Rock and Roll." The website is hosted by BlueHost

Warren Adelman, president of GoDaddy told Bloomberg BusinessWeek “Barack Obama raised $500 million online. If you look at the money being talked about this time around - campaigns raising $1 billion - it's easy to expect teaparty.com to go for well over $1 million." Then others would say that people sometimes overestimate just how valuable things can be. It's only worth what someone is willing to pay for it.

Tea Party bassist Stuart Chatwood told BusinessWeek that since their own beliefs are at odds with the movement it “would be ideal to sell the domain to an opponent of Tea Party politics”.

Should the Tea Party worry about an opponent willing to pony up with a higher bid?

Maybe if they consider the dilemma faced by Netflix. 

Neflix changed the name of its DVD mailing service to "Qwikster" this past week, and while the company snagged the domain names correctly, it apparently forgot to consider social media giant Twitter. Jason Castillo has been happily tweeting with @Qwikster for months and hasn't mentioned Netflix once. A quick glance at Jason tweets suggest a fixation with sex, smoking drugs, and the shock value of vulgar statements!

The Political Tea Party of America may want to take notice as there was also a Tea Party in Alice's Adventures in Wonderland ... attended by the Mad Hatter

Michael Wogan, CEO and founder of web hosting and design firm Yes Hosting was among the nine people killed in the Reno air show crash. The young Phoenix-area man who overcame a disability to earn a college degree and start his own tech company was sitting Friday with his father in an area for wheelchairs at the air show VIP boxes near where investigators say the World War II-era plane crashed. Michael father, Bill Wogan was critically injured.

Micheal, the youngest of four brothers was born with muscular dystrophy. His younger brother James told the Arizona Republic: We just got each other. We liked all the same things. We did everything together. He was my best friend.

Michael liked for people to know his titles: "Magna cum laude" and "Chief Executive Officer" - of myself,he'd say proudly, or "Vice President", Arizona Helping Hands,a non-profit that works with families and children in need. He ended each of his e-mails with the title.

He only let you call him Mikey if you knew him long enough to love him.

Donations are being accepted to the family in the care of the Michael Wogan Memorial Fund by going to any Wells Fargo branch. Read more about Michael and his family 

HostJury wrote earlier about egregious ToS/ AuP clauses but it appears that Sony is seeking honorable mention for the list! After getting sued for security breaches that exposed personal information connected to more than 100 million online accounts, Sony is now requiring subscribers to waive their right to wage class-action lawsuits for almost any reason.

Sony is requiring people with accounts on Sony's PlayStation to agree to Sony 21 pages of  updated terms of service and user agreement (PDF)   the next time they sign into their accounts if they want to continue using the online services.

The terms include:

ANY DISPUTE RESOLUTION PROCEEDINGS, WHETHER IN ARBITRATION OR COURT, WILL BE CONDUCTED ONLY ON AN INDIVIDUAL BASIS AND NOT IN A CLASS OR REPRESENTATIVE ACTION OR AS A NAMED OR UNNAMED MEMBER IN A CLASS, CONSOLIDATED, REPRESENTATIVE OR PRIVATE ATTORNEY GENERAL LEGAL ACTION, UNLESS BOTH YOU AND THE SONY ENTITY WITH WHICH YOU HAVE A DISPUTE SPECIFICALLY AGREE TO DO SO IN WRITING FOLLOWING INITIATION OF THE ARBITRATION.

The changes come months after an attack on the PlayStation Network exposed names, addresses, email addresses, passwords, and other sensitive data for 77 million accounts. A closer look later revealed user data for another 25M clients had been compromised! In July Sony's insurance company filed a lawsuit that argued its policy didn't apply to a raft of class-action lawsuits filed in response to the high-profile security breaches.

The terms of service does give subscribers the ability of opt out of the class action require, but it will require them to write a letter on paper and send it to an address using the postal service.

YOUR WRITTEN NOTIFICATION MUST BE MAILED TO 6080 CENTER DRIVE, 10TH FLOOR, LOS ANGELES, CA 90045, ATTN: LEGAL DEPARTMENT/ARBITRATION AND MUST INCLUDE: (1) YOUR NAME, (2) YOUR ADDRESS, (3) YOUR PSN ACCOUNT NUMBER, IF YOU HAVE ONE, AND (4) A CLEAR STATEMENT THAT YOU DO NOT WISH TO RESOLVE DISPUTES WITH ANY SONY ENTITY THROUGH ARBITRATION.

Really... snail mail!

Jon Eichler of Sharkspace web hosting in an email to Sharkspace clients, revealed that the company has now merged with Eleven2 web hosting. The announcement states that for current Sharkspace clients the merger will only bring positive changes with access to more features and a more responsive support team. Eichler also states that no disruption of service is expected, and the pricing structure currently paid with SharkSpace will remain the same at Eleven2.

In a quick response to HostJury's query about the announcement on the Eleven2 company forum, Rodney Giles, CEO of Eleven2 confirmed that the merger would be a painless process for the Sharkspace clientèle:

That is correct, we are leaving all the servers in place. Both companies use WHMCS, and WHMCS provides a nice seamless merge tool, which we will be performing on the 21st, this will merge all the client details, which we have already tested and works perfect. After the 21st all Sharkspace clients will be able to login to custom designed Eleven2 Brain, which is our client billing control panel.”

Glancing at Eleven2 reviews on HostJury, many of the reviews suggest that support has been slow and there appears to be a number of references alleging support has been "rude on occasion". Can I conclude that your statements on the Eleven2 forum thread is an acknowledgement, that on occasion support could have been better, and that "a more personal level of live chat" translates into more "niceness" on the support team?

There is no doubt that there have been few incidents where myself or another team member could have conducted themselves in a better manner, however those days are simply done and I can assure you since about a year and half ago, there are none of those incidents that we regret the way we have handled things. Our support is top notch now and I stand behind everything we do and are very proud of our support team.

Normally when companies complete a merger the size of our deal, they could easily drop off 25% of their staff just due to scale. That is not the case here, we actually have done the opposite and hired more staff members over the last month or so to ensure support is even faster and maintains our high quality. We also have retained every single Sharkspace staff member including all Sharkspace management. They are not going anywhere.

As the hosting industry becomes more consolidated, what do you see as the major challenges faced by smaller hosts?

We look at potential acquisitions all the time for hosting companies in the range of $25,000 a year to multi-million dollar companies. We notice a few scary things and that is their profitability and lack of efficiency in running their organization.
We feel that we are a rare breed being that we are very profitable and being ran very efficient at the same time. We are able to keep our cost down by keeping our customers happy. When we keep our customers happy, they in-turn buy more services from us and stay much longer increasing our profits.

Historically, many hosts have endeavored to increase their numbers to make themselves more attractive (and expensive) to those conglomerates with an insatiable appetite for acquisitions. Any plans to sell the merged Sharkspace/Eleven2 company?

Eleven2 has no plans to sell our business at this time. We are actively on the other side of the M&A table and looking to acquire like minded hosting companies. We have resources available to complete deals very quickly and that is our focus right now. We do not see that focus changing for quite some time.

It has been claimed that "Recognizing strengths and compensating for weaknesses represents the first step in achieving positive self regard." It appears that Eleven2 may be heeding this advice. The future, and the reviews will tell the tale. As Rodney Giles stated, the merging of accounts is expected to happen on September 21.

A legal suit has been filed in Californa against Netfirms, Inc., the Canadian web hosting company recently acquired by Endurance International. The suit,filed on on August 24, 2011, alleges that Netfirms released personal information to the Thai government, which then allowed Thai officials to identify, detain, and interrogate the plaintiff, Mr. Anthony Chai, both in Thailand and on U.S. soil.

Mr. Chai alleges that these disclosures by Netfirms resulted in the Thai government charging Mr. Chai with violating a Thai law that restricts free speech – ironically, for comments he wrote online criticizing that very law.  

The suit, filed in U.S. District Court for the Central District of California by the World Organization for Human Rights USA and the Law Office of Snell & Wilmer, alleges that Netfirms conduct violated California state law, as well as Constitutional and international human rights law.  "This case lies at the intersection of privacy guarantees, freedom of expression, international human rights law and the Internet. I am honored to work with Human Rights USA on this important case," said M.C. Sungaila, Partner with Snell & Wilmer. 

As set out in the complaint, Mr. Chai, owns a computer store in Long Beach, California from which he and his patrons would access and anonymously post comments on a Thai-language pro-democracy website, Manusaya.com, hosted by Netfirms. Many of the anonymous comments expressed concern with Thailand’s lese majesté laws which prohibit any negative statements about the Thai monarchy and provide for severe punishment, including imprisonment for up to fifteen years.  

The suit alleges that Mr. Chai’s privacy rights were violated when, at the request of Thai government officials, Netfirms suspended Manusaya’s account and provided Mr. Chai's IP address and e-mail address to the Thai officials without notice and without his consent.  As a result of this release of Mr. Chai’s confidential personal information to Thai government officials, he was subsequently detained at the Bangkok airport, taken to the Department of Special Investigations, and interrogated about his postings on the website.  After finally being released from police custody in Bangkok and returning home to California, Mr. Chai was then interrogated by Thai officials over the course of two days on U.S. soil at a hotel in Hollywood, California.  Mr. Chai was later informed by Thai officials that if he returns to Thailand, he will be arrested and charged with violating lese majesté laws.  

Theresa Harris, Executive Director of Human Rights USA said, “Internet companies need to take great care before releasing confidential information to investigators, especially when those requests come from foreign governments. Information is power, and these companies have the power to place a person at peril of imprisonment for the equivalent of an anonymous letter to the editor.  Companies must be held accountable when they disregard the rights of the people who use their services.”

HostJury is seeking a comment from both Netfirms and its parent company Endurance International. HostJury is also seeking more information from Anthony Chai concerning his website Manusaya.com, which appears to remain “down”. A whois report returns little more than a domain expiration date. Googling Manusaya.com returns less!

HostJury will update this story as necessary.

Please see the complaint here.

It was recently announced that Verizon would no longer be allowing it's customers to FTP transfer into, or from their personal web spaces. The revised  terms of service are now in effect and the only way to alter your website is to use their own web based "site builder". Verizon claim that it's for "security", but the funny part.. If you pay $5.95 or more a month, you are once again allowed to FTP in.

Of course it's secure. It's securing Verizon's revenue stream!

Indeed, only users paying for the extra $5.95 or $9.95 hosting plans are now able to upload their files directly.  While its hard to complain when a feature is bundled into other services (it still is not "free"), there lots of choices in the marketplace for under ten buck hosting.

No More FTP? [Verizon Small Business Center]
Discontinued FTP service substitute [Verizon forums]

Syrian Cartoonist Ali Ferzat, who has won numerous international awards for his work, was reportedly beaten by thugs of the Syrian regime earlier this morning in Damascus. Ferzat was was abducted from his car while he was heading home from his office. Ali Ferzat was left on the airport highway where citizens rescued him and transferred him to the hospital. He had been badly beaten and his arms broken.

Ali Ferzat, an outspoken critic of the Syrian regime, website is showing an “account suspended“ holding page. HostJury is seeking more information from Samanet, Ali Ferzat Syrian web host, whether the suspended account is related to the unfortunate events that are transpiring, or possibly a bandwidth issue related to increased traffic to his website.

Ali Ferzat does have a official Fan club on Facebook.

Host Europe Group which incorporates the 123-reg, Host Europe and Webfusion web hosting brands, has announced that it has acquired UK web hosting company Heart Internet. The terms of the transaction have not been disclosed.

Heart was founded by Jonathan Brealey and Tim Beresford, who also established 123-reg and Webfusion, both of which were acquired by Host Europe in 2003. Jonathan and Tim will remain within the business, not only to cement the partnership but also to realise the vision of the shared product set that is made available to the combined customer base.... could also lessen the likihood of Host Europe needing to "aquire" their next venture a few years from now!

In the press release Thomas Vollrath, CEO of the Host Europe Group, said:

“This is a great opportunity for both businesses and our customers, who will benefit from a full suite of complementary product ranges from a one stop shop that will cater for all their hosting requirements. We have jointly developed a product integration plan for all customers, ranging from domains, value added-services, shared hosting, cloud hosting, VPS and dedicated servers to customised and managed hosting solutions which will deliver additional growth for the new combined Group. Heart has won numerous awards for its reseller programme, so combining its expertise with our infrastructure will result in a new centre of excellence within the industry, for both customers and resellers alike."

Jonathan Brealey founder of Heart Internet, added:
"I am delighted that Heart is joining the Host Europe Group. This deal effectively brings together the preferred reseller brand in the UK with the leading virtualisation player, to create a hugely complementary offering. This is certainly an exciting chapter in the history of Heart Internet, which remains fully committed to both the team in Nottingham and maintaining the highest level of customer service -”

The press releases always sound great.

HostJury want to give you, the user, the ability to recommend and review your web hosting experences to other users and to share your real hosting reviews. Start here

123-reg

Host Europe

Webfusion

Heart Internet

"Unfortunately, that day has come. I hereby resign as chief executive of Apple.

Apple founder Steve Jobs has resigned as chief executive of the technology giant and will be replaced by its chief operating officer Tim Cook.

Mr Jobs, who underwent a liver transplant following pancreatic cancer, said he could no longer meet his chief executive's duties and expectations.  Steve Jobs will become chairman of the firm.

DreamHost recently commissioned a small fleet of pedal-powered taxis to get people around the city of San Diego during HostingCon 2011.

Despite DreamHost's tongue in cheek claim of "helping to reduce the city’s carbon footprint if only for a small time", it was none the less an effective method of marketing DreamHost during HostingCon, while purveying the idea of green initiatives by web hosting companies.

Even DreamHost CEO Simon Anderson offered to demonstrate how easy going green can be!

Great job!

Modern society today dictates measured responses on the web, yet a story which is more reminiscent of earlier time, when the web was wild and ruled by hormone driven 14 year olds, appears to be unfolding. Starting publicly on twitter before spreading to reddit, which provoked more responses on twitter, and then the ThisWebHost company blog... and now us!

By reading between the lines of the reddit post, one is able to deduce that thiswebhost suspended a client for a paypal dispute. (no surprise as most hosts would react similarly). When a friend of this client, (who was also a client of thiswebhost) questioned the action in a private direct message to the company twitter feed, he was told to mind his own business. Then the 'incident' escalated.

Quoting from the reddit post:

What followed was the most unbelievable thing I've ever seen a company do. He said it had nothing to do with unprofessionalism - and then suspended my account, that of my friend's, and I got an email saying I could ask for backups if I wanted, but that all of my sites were now down.

Then it got nastier!

When the 'friend' articulated his response to the suspension in a colorful manner, his data and back-ups were deleted by thiswebhost. Then the story on reddit appeared.

HostJury made an inquiry using the contact page of thiswebhost and got an interesting response:

I have no interest in providing any comments to HostJury, given your incredibly poor history of deleting our reviews and claiming they were written by the same person. You have a personal issue/vendetta against us, and I'm quite sure you'll use this story to further that.

Thiswebhost has since published a company blog post reacting to the story: (editing for brevity only)

“I'm sure you may have heard about it by now, and if not you soon will” Jules states. He continues that he is taking the opportunity to post their side of the story. Jules goes on to thank the “tens of people who felt the need to email us death threats and general profanity... we have reported them to your ip abuse departments”

Jules explanation of the events appears to factually align with the reddit account but does deviate on the point that initiated the account closure, claiming the clients stated they would be canceling their accounts. Jules then continued:

“that after more 'pushing and baiting' on Twitter, that these users also have decided to attack thiswebhost for reasons unknown, and the decision was made to end the business relationship.” (A.K.A..suspend the account.)

Jules further states that in response to a tweet that they were looking for a new webhost, @thiswebhost tweeted “Best of luck with your new host”. Jules also does admits that it could have been, and likely was interpreted as a taunt or goad. Tweeted back to @thiswebhost “go add your own expletive yourself”.

ThisWebHost terminated the account and back-ups immediately. Jules then explains how the former clients violated thiswebhost Acceptable Use Policy.... after they were no longer clients.

In fairness, the blog post by Jules does seem to admit in great detail that the situation could have been handled better. Jules may have just been having a bad day. Regardless, it has certainly been a bad day for a couple of former clients of thiswebhost

It appears despite numerous attempts to crowdsource, the British government's idea to include public input in this age of technology keeps hitting setbacks, or rather roadblocks.

One initiative set up by the Treasury was for public suggestions on cutting government spending. The “ideas for cuts” would appear on the site for other users to vote for and comment on. Soon after, a notice was posted stating "the site has been the subject to a small number of malicious attacks so we have unfortunately had to pause on the interactive features for now, but we’re still keen to hear any further ideas you have, which we may publish at a later date."

The site now shows:

The page you have requested is not available; it may no longer exist on this site or it may have a different address.

How about the coalition government's wiki-powered loony magnet - Your Freedom website - which aimed to collect the Internet's very finest ideas.... like demanding an end to the government conspiracy of silence over communication with aliens. One poster said: "Superior intelligences who exist outside of  commonly accepted reality have been observing occasionally interacting with human beings for some time now. We demand that this government stop playing silly buggers with us and tell us everything they know on the subject."

Maybe if the comments were held for moderation!

The site now shows:

The Your Freedom website is now closed.

Your Freedom has now closed. We are in the process of archiving the site content to The National Archives however you can view all the material that has already been archived. Once the archiving process is complete, the content of Your Freedom will be available.

The latest attempt is the government's epetitions site... with a promise to debate any issue which secures more than 100,000 votes. There are ten times that many people who believe Elvis is still alive! Maybe raising the bar just a little would eliminate attracting some of the kooks.

Site shows:

e-petitions– create and sign petitions online

Sorry if you're experiencing problems accessing e-petitons. There is currently a much higher level of demand than we expected

Great ideas in a modern age. With some decent site moderation, security,  and some better web hosting, true government representation of the people by the people may regain a foothold. Then again we could just send our ideas in an email.... the government is purported to read them!

Less than a year after acquiring Register.com for $135 million, Web.com apears to have inked the deal to acquire Network Solutions for $560.9 million in cash and stock. (The company is set to pay $405 million in cash plus stock, pending shareholder and regulatory approval.)

In a press release David Brown, Chairman and CEO of Web.com stated "This transaction represents a unique opportunity to dramatically expand our scale, add further momentum to Web.com's already improving top line growth, and further expand our market share as the nationally recognized go-to provider of online marketing solutions specifically tailored to small and medium-sized businesses".

“Our integration strategy will be similar to our successful acquisition of Register.com, and we will be in a strong position to cross-sell and up-sell our services to Network Solutions' approximately two million retail customers and hundreds of thousands of wholesale customers. We believe this combination will provide significant long-term shareholder value as we grow our business, capitalize on synergies, improve our margins and generate substantial cash flow to invest greater resources in growth and branding initiatives."Brown continued. 

"The acquisition of Network Solutions immediately delivers enormous scale to Web.com and better enables us to capitalize on the significant shift from traditional marketing channels to online marketing as mass adoption by SMBs continues. Small and mid-sized businesses are increasingly looking to leverage the growing adoption of online local search, social media and mobile devices to grow, and they need cost-and time-efficient help. No other company has the combination of products, services and experience to help small and medium businesses as effectively as Web.com. Our combined organization will have far greater resources to market our end-to-end suite of solutions, in addition to using the power of a national brand for the first time in our history," Mr. Brown continued. 

Anton Levy of private-equity firm Great Atlantic, the primary holder of Network Solutions, will join the Web.com board.