There are people out there like Cory Doctorow who foresee huge conspiracies about National or corporate takeovers of the Internet. I just don’t see that as being realistic. I think their conspiracy theories are useful to some extent, because fear of the possibility of the further corporatization of the Internet does help keep it from happening, but at the end of the day it simply won’t. We’re a country who often lets unpopular things happen because we’re not mobilized en masse against it, but when we are we have an unstoppable power. It’s why there’s no military draft in America, and it’s why the Internet will never be swallowed whole by ‘big business’ or the US Government.

I firmly believe that America does a good job right now upholding the rights of free speech and open access, and I just dont see that changing for the worse. I can’t speak for the UK, but I can say ‘don’t believe the hype’ when it comes to Internet legislation in America.

In the UK this is made vastly worse by the internet surveillance they are pushing through – disconnection without trial + mass surveillance is a very efficient state censorship mechanism.

I blame the DMCA because it places web hosts, like yourself, in the awkward position of having to suddenly become copyright lawyers in the midst of running a web hosting service. It’s understandable if many hosts err on the side of caution because it takes them completely out of their field of expertise and confronts them with the dreaded consequences of a potential lawsuit which could make the loss of a single customer look trivial. Customers are normally assets, but a DMCA takedown order can quickly turn any one of them into a liability.

I’ve found a Canadian host. If Benjamin Franklin was alive today, I think he’d be doing all his publishing from a Canadian web server too. I’m glad, however that ServInt customers don’t have to run for the border like I have.

I still think you’re looking for the wrong thing. You see the DMCA as an inherently bad thing, and you’re looking to Canadian hosts who say they don’t follow it. Well no, they wouldn’t, they’d follow Copyright Reform Bill C-61 instead. They have laws in Canada too and they need to follow them there just like we do here. If you’re looking for a U.S. host or a Canadian one who is willing to ignore the law completely then you’re looking for a fundamentally irresponsible host and I think that’s a bad business decision. What you want is a host, no matter where they are based, who won’t ‘shoot first and ask questions later’ and who doesn’t try to be judge, jury and executioner versus its own clients when it gets a complaint. You get that when you pay for good commercial hosting. You don’t get that from a place like Blogspot but why should you? Why would they have a vested interest in protecting your rights to free speech? A good commercial host is like a business partner, who DOES have those interests in seeing you succeed.

But that only works to a point no matter where you go. Unless you really do want to host on the ‘bulletproof’ fringes along with the spammers and child pornographers, any responsible host is going to keep you from doing illegal things on their network. The difference is that with a host like ServInt if we get a complaint we don’t automatically assume you’re guilty. And we assume it’s worth our time to look into it. You don’t need to go offshore to find that.

I’ve found several web hosts in Canada who advertise on their home pages that they offer exemption from both the DMCA and the Patriot Act. I’m just looking for a similar kind of policy statement or some sort of indication from US hosts.

My bad experience was with Blogspot (Blogger). A free host, yes, but a very big free host and one operated by Google who surely has more resources than smaller hosts do to deal with fraudulent and harassing DMCA compliants. But I suspect that the DMCA is too much for even the biggest US based hosts.

But then, why should web hosts care about protecting bloggers when they’re only a small fraction of their total business? Perhaps blogging clients like them really do need a special kind of hosting package that takes into account the extra demands that the DMCA puts on their web hosts? A kind of “legal bandwidth” fee? The same as some web hosts charge for other kinds of help and troubleshooting?

Who?

Of course, I assume you ServInt is one of those good hosts, but who are the others? As a blogger, my experience so far (limited to Blogger) makes me think that free speech is not important to web hosts. I’m willing to pay (and I have paid hosting in addition to free Blogger hosting) for a host that will not allow themself to be used as a pawn in the DMCA-masked censorship game but after many hours of searching can’t find a single one with a reputation for having any backbone in protecting the right to free speech of their clients (except for BoingBoing’s, but maybe BoingBoing gets more respect than the little guys do?)

Where can I host a visual art blog that engages is serious criticism and commentary and observes the fair use provisions of the copyright act that won’t get censored by it’s webhost everytime some disgruntled reader files a ridiculous claim of copyright infringement in retaliation for my opinions?

I need some help.