July 17, 2009

Bluehost vs. the Lesbians

Or: A Funny Thing Happened While Investigating the Lesbian Web Site That Ran Up Against the Mormon Web Host: I Stumbled Across an International Incident.

First things first: There are only five hard-and-fast rules I follow in life, without exception:

1. Keep your marriage vows.

2. Be nice to people until they give you a reason not to be.

3. Give money to homeless people, and never question what they’re going to do with it.

4. Never bluff. If you don’t know, say “I don’t know,” and then shut up, listen, and learn.

5. RTFM.

An implied corollary to #5 is: Always read the TOS. Especially if you’re about to agree to a TOS with a Web hosting company.

That said, there’s no excusing a Web host with a vague, wishy-washy, and/or selectively-enforced TOS, and while a Web host is well within its rights to apply a TOS as it sees fit — a private company is a private company, not a democracy bound by the inviolable right to free speech — it’s just plain crummy for a Web host to shut you down without notice for violating the TOS (especially when when that TOS is selectively enforced).

Sure, there can and should be exceptions. If I were running Sapph’s Super High-Speed Web Hosting Business, and a customer’s site promoted violence or racism or homophobia or illegal activity or the like, I’d shut it down faster than you could say “White Stormfront.” But if I saw a word that grossly offended me (there aren’t many; in fact, only the c-word comes to mind, but I wouldn’t shut down a whole site over it), and if its usage violated a clearly-defined TOS (which, if I wrote it, would be obsessively detailed), what I wouldn’t do is shut down the site, especially without giving the site owner a chance to clean up whatever it was at issue. If the site owner and I couldn’t come to an agreement about appropriate content, then the only reasonable thing to do would be to give the site owner a reasonable amount of time (and access) to back up, pack up, and move to another host.

Yes, I’d also shut down any site with explicit sexual content (I said explicit — not just nipples and butts), not because I’d care one way or the other, but because I wouldn’t want to put my company at risk of violating the many varied and maddeningly vague obscenity laws throughout the United States. I also wouldn’t want to trigger every Net Nanny-type filter on the planet, nor be blocked by search engines; that would kill my business. (If you want to host adult sites, host adult sites — there’s always a market — but if you don’t want to be relegated to the back rooms of the Intertubes, then don’t host adult sites.)

Of course, Sapph’s Super High-Speed Web Hosting Business wouldn’t host any sites I’d deem offensive in the first place (racist, homophobic, Republican) — but that would be spelled out clearly to begin with. In the TOS. And if a customer failed to read the TOS, well, tough noogies.

But what if Sapph’s Super High-Speed Web Hosting Business had a TOS that was vague, wishy-washy, and/or selectively-enforced — and shut down sites, and locked site owners out of all access — without warning, and without a chance to fix whatever’s bugging Sapph?

And what if I made incredible promises I couldn’t keep, had rotten customer service, always blamed you for problems I was causing, and was only interested in dipping my hand in your pocket?

That’d be lousy business, that’s what. And not only would I be a lousy businessperson — I’d be a complete and total jerk.

That said…

A few days ago, I stumble across the title of a blog post that piques my interest. I’ve never heard of the site before, but it looks very cool, smart, interesting, well-designed, and put together by lesbians younger, hipper, and probably even cuter than I am.

So, I click the link to the article, but I can’t read it, because it’s password-protected. So I drop a note to the admin, saying I’d really like to read the piece, and probably blog it, because the title alone concerns something that interests me intensely: Businesses owned by members of a certain church, which has a long, proven, and most ugly record of Not Being Nice to Homos.

I get a reply, and the password, and a heads-up that further exposure of the subject would be most welcome, but that the site in question is in the process of moving — because, you see, this certain business, owned by members of this certain church, is the site’s Web host.

Between the time I reply to the reply and click back to the password-protected article, the article has disappeared. In fact, the entire site has disappeared.

And then, as suddenly as it had disappeared, it was back.

Hiccup? Fluke? Maybe. But when a site goes down, you get a 404 error, not a blank screen. Generally.

In any case, I quickly head to the article I want to read, enter the password, and voila!

And that’s when I learn that this site has been having mysterious… for lack of a better word, disappearance problems all along.

The author of the blog post reproduces the back-and-forth between the site and the host (which ends with the most unprofessional, nastiest, snottiest missive I’ve ever seen from a company to a customer) — with the host initially blaming the problems on “DNS issues,” a legitimate excuse in most cases — but not in this case.

The “problem” — in the opinion of the host’s tech-support guy — is that the site has “adult content” of a “sexual nature” all over it.

So I click over to a particular post cited as presumably offensive, skim it, and find nothing more explicit than anything you’d see on AfterEllen.com, or Queerty, or any number of LGBT sites discussing sex and/or popular culture.

So, what is is the real problem?

Bluehost.

It’s a Mormon company, operating out of Provo, Utah. Before you roll your eyes and go, “Oh, Sapph! Not the Mormon thing again!” consider the kind of company Bluehost (along with sister sites Hostmonster.com and FastDomain.com) keeps — or rather, hosts — and then consider the kinds of customers whose experience with Bluehost has been less than fabulous.

For starters, Chino suggests that “Provo, Utah’s bluehost.com must be offering the best deals in the country when it comes to wingnut web hosting,” citing such rabidly right-wing organizations as “New Yorkers for Constitutional Freedoms” and “New Yorkers Family Research Foundation,” (presumably satisfied) Bluehost customers.

And then, of course, there’s the infamous PhoneyFred.org. “Somebody,” wrote Jonathan Martin in 2007, “is scared of Fred.” Thompson, that is:

An opposition research-laden website called “phoneyfred.org” has surfaced that hammers the GOP’s newest presidential candidate for his policy positions, lobbying work, previous dating life and ties to John McCain.

There is no disclaimer on the site and the anonymous e-mailer who sent along the link declined to identify himself/herself.

The domain was secured last month from a Utah-based web-hosting provider, Bluehost.com. Reached by phone, an employee of the company declined to identify who had purchased the site.

Clearly, though, this is no amateur effort. The volume of information and the way that it’s sourced reeks of a grasstops hit-job. …

So the culprit is likely one of three parties — one of Thompson’s GOP rivals, allies of a Thompson GOP rival or the Dems.

A little digging by the Washington Post turned up the culprit:

Anti-Thompson Site Connects to Romney Camp

A top adviser to former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney appears to be behind today’s launch of a new Web site attacking GOP presidential rival Fred Thompson. …

Shortly after a Washington Post reporter made inquiries about the site to the Romney campaign, the site was taken down. …

Nowhere on the site does it indicate who is responsible for it. But a series of inquiries leads directly to the website of Under the Power Lines, the political consulting firm of Warren Tompkins, Romney’s lead consultant in South Carolina.

The website is hosted by a company called bluehost.com, a firm based in Orem, Utah. An inquiry of that website about phoneyfred.org returns the following statement: “Domain phoneyfred.org is still attached to your politicalnetroots.com account as Addon” …

The site www.politicalnetroots.com brings up the homepage for “Under the Power Lines,” which lists Tompkins as “Partner, Consultant,” along with Terry Sullivan and Welsley Donehue. …

Tompkins was the chief strategist for [then-candidate George Bush] in South Carolina… though Bush campaign officials have always denied that the campaign was responsible for [attacks on John McCain].

A spokesman for Romney’s campaign said he would look into questions about the anti-Thompson site. …

Tompkins did not return calls or emails for comment.

Now consider the sites that have been shut down, often (usually?) without warning, for a variety of spurious reasons — often mirroring the situation the above-yet-unnamed site is experiencing right now:

[Kubatana, a leading Zimbabwean NGO] supports and trains NGOs in Zimbabwe, hosting websites for prominent activist organizations like Women of Zimbabwe Arise. For the past two years, Kubatana has hosted a joint blog for a wide range of Zimbabwean citizens, some who wrote anonymously, and others who wrote under their names - it’s been one of the key sources of information and perspective for people around the world who follow Zimbabwe, and a critical outlet for Zimbabweans who have few other ways to communicate.

Earlier this week, Kubatana’s blog site, as well as a couple of sites hosted on behalf of activist organizations, went dark. Visitors to the blog received a message that the webhost, Bluehost, had disabled the account. When the folks who run Kubatana asked why their account had been suspended, they were informed that an “internal review” revealed that Kubatana was a Zimbabwean organization, and Bluehost’s regulations prohibit them from doing business with ten countries that are subject to US government trade sanctions. (More in a moment about why sanctions on Zimbabwe’s rulers don’t mean sanctions on all Zimbabweans.)

I find it very hard to believe that Bluehost spontaneously decided to review Kubatana’s account - I suspect that someone frustrated by content on Kubatanablogs contacted BlueHost, leading to an account review where Bluehost decided to terminate hosting based on their reading of a trade sanctions provision. …

Because it’s hard to know who’s “materially assisted” the government of Zimbabwe, the Treasury provides a handy list of “Specially Designated Nationals”, who US individuals and organizations are prohibited to do business with. It’s a long list, but that’s what the “Find” command is for… and you won’t find Kubatana, Women of Zimbabwe Arise, or the principals behind the projects on the list. (And rightly so - they’re fighting the regime that the US is sanctioning.)

My friends at Kubatana explained this to Bluehost. They sent them the relevant documents and asked them to check the SDN list. Bluehost insisted that they couldn’t do business with the residents of ten sanctioned nations, including Zimbabwe. Kubatana got the US embassy in Zimbabwe to write to Bluehost, explaining the situation. Blue host insisted they couldn’t make any exceptions. …

I don’t think that Bluehost is somehow opposed to civil society in Zimbabwe. I think they’re lazy, and decided that actually responding to Kubatana’s explanations wasn’t worth their time. I think they failed to escalate the situation beyond an “abuse” person who was working from a script which offered no flexibility. …

Ultimately, it took an email and phone call from the U.S. Treasury Department to convince Bluehost that Kubatana isn’t on the sanctions list. Bluehost offered to reinstate the accounts; Kubatana, to their credit, declined.

While I’m glad that Bluehost finally saw the light, I will not recommend them to individuals looking for human rights hosting - the assumption that Kubatana was in the wrong, the unwillingness to listen to their explanation and the hostility of CEO Matt Heaton to customer complaints leads me to conclude that I wouldn’t recommend their services.

Bluehost censors Zimbabwean bloggers
My Heart’s in Accra
February 13, 2009

Seems to be a pattern…

Since last week, Blue Host, the hosting service which is used for this very blog [and Kamangir as well], and the number one recommendation for Wordpress hosting by Wordpress itself, has adopted a policy of suspending its Iranian users. In some cases the bloggers have been given a short notice in order to back up their data and leave. This is despite Bluehost’s good reputation in the blogosphere.

The matter of fact is that many of these bloggers, including Arash Kamangir who blogs at kamangir.net, have no connection to the Iranian administration and have had to take use of a foreign hosting service in order to freely express their opinions.

The important factor is that Bluehost is not committing any illegal action. What is being done is exactly what article 13 in Bluehost Terms of Service mandates. The article does explicitly mention Iran among the sanctioned countries…

“Persian blogs on Bluehost will be going down”
Kamangir (Archer)
February 23, 2009

Several commenters respond:

This is not a good policy on Bluehost’s part. It is also a misreading of US sanctions, which are against governments, not individual bloggers or human rights groups in these countries. Bluehost also did this recently to a group in Zimbabwe.

Not to mention the fact that their information is extremely outdated. Liberia and Iraq should not be on that list. Taylor no longer has a regime in power and Liberia is now a strong US ally, so how is it even relevant to state this in their policy?

Apparently if you contact them, they will claim that they have no power over this and that they are simply “following the rules” of their government.

I am the webmistress of 5 Zimbabwean sites that suffered the same fate. It would be interesting to know what has prompted BlueHost to take this extreme action – especially in cases where it is clear they are not in danger of falling foul of the US govt’s targeted sanctions against some of our countries. …

4 of our websites were eventually reinstated. Before the suspension was lifted we had already moved domain names and found a new host for 2 of the websites at http://www.rimuhosting.com, so the reprieve came too late. As an organisation, Kubatana is not interested in maintaining any further relationship with a company that has so little regard for the social and political concerns of activists in Zimbabwe.

If you are able to manage the inconvenience and costs involving in shifting your websites, I recommend voting with your feet and leaving BlueHost and its rotten customer service & business practice.

As much as I know, you (and 1 Fathi) are not living in Iran and those sanctions (imposed by US government) are against countries and their current residents. So, those sanctions do not apply to any of you and applying them to you just because of your language, audience or nationality is illegal and can well be interpreted as racism.

But wait! There’s more! And this one really takes the cake:

Last Friday Bluehost, our hosting provider, blocked this web site. Bluehost promised to delete our blog within 10 days. The site had been blocked for four days until we completed migration to a new hosting earlier today.

Needless to say, I was very surprised when I learned about the blockade.There was nothing even remotely illegal on Bielar.us. So, initially I thought it was just a mistake. But it was not. Here is the story, which you would expect to happen in Cuba or North Korea, but not in the United States.

When I called the company for clarifications, a Bluehost representative told me that I “abused” their terms of service because I happened to be in Belarus when I set up my account with them. As I understood, they figured it out by tracking down my IP address.

According to Bluehost, Belarus is a “Sanctioned Country” and this is why I was not good enough to be their customer. …

As a result, although I live and work in the United States, paid for their services with my U.S. credit card, they blocked this web site and promised to delete everything within ten days. No warning had been given before they shut down Bielar.us and my personal site. They also explained that even if I were to set up my Bluehost account from the United States, I would still have been banned from using their services. Just because I am a citizen of Belarus.

Uh, isn’t that illegal? Refusing service to someone — especially someone in residence in the United States — based on national origin?

Well, I know if you won’t serve someone in your restaurant, or give them a room in your hotel, solely because of where they’re from, you’ve committed a crime.

As an international law practitioner and scholar I know that the scope of sanctions against Belarus is very narrow. …

But Bluehost’s interpretation was by no means narrow. …

The [Bluehost] definition of “Sanctioned Country” includes Belarus along with Iran, Zimbabwe and other autocratic regimes. Clearly provision 13 provides for discriminatory treatment of nationals of those countries. Such treatment violates the Equal Protection Clause of the United States Constitution, which provides that “no state shall … deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws” as well as the First Amendment which guarantees freedom of speech and press.

It is ironic, that the blog which Bluehost blocked is run by activists of Belarusian American Association, one of the oldest Belarusian pro-democracy groups in the U.S. Its Washington chapter is often instrumental in helping to formulate the U.S. policy towards Belarus.

Our blog contains several posts discussing how the US foreign policy is supposed to help promote human rights, media freedom and the rule of law in Belarus. By the way, one the purposes of Belarus Democracy Act adopted by the U.S. Congress in 2006 is “facilitating the development of independent … Internet media working … from locations outside the country.”

Clearly, these Bluehost policies undermine both the letter and the spirit of the U.S. foreign policy towards Belarus. In effect, this U.S. hosting provider effectively helps Belarusian authorities (as well as other autocratic regimes) to silence public dissent. One may even argue that the U.S. company becomes complicit in human rights violations in Belarus. …

Bielar.us Had Been Blocked… Because of Sanctions Against Belarus
Bielar.us
February 24, 2009

The OFAC [Office of Foreign Assets Control] legislation was intended to stop US companies doing business with sanctioned states such as Iran, not individuals within them who are voicing objections to the very policies that the US Government also opposes. OFAC was designed to stop enabling technology being shipped to rogue states or sponsors of terrorism, for example. It was not intended to stifle civic criticism.

Whether the intent of the web hosts is innocent or more politically motivated, the result, sadly, is a silencing of the very voices that could help drive political improvements within these rogue regimes where the US seeks policy change. The denial of hosting service has longer term ramifications for any hopes of democratic governance in these countries. …

The biggest offender in this apparently systematic free speech denial is the host of our own publication, and probably the largest provider of self-hosted Wordpress blogs, namely Utah based “Bluehost”. …

Bluehost … allegedly claims the breach of service(s) was discovered “independently”, but there is a great deal of speculation that the regimes being criticized made complaints about coverage, and the web hosts responded. If this is the case they could have responded by strengthening Web 2.0 free speech, but instead moved in the opposite direction.

For so many bloggers to be taken down at the same time and using the same inappropriate OFAC provisions could be a case of accident or coincidence, or it could have been orchestrated for political intent. How many sites have been taken down is not yet clear but the reports of more and more are emerging on the Internet at lighting speed. …

Web hosts systematically silencing
international dissident blogs
The Daily Clarity
February 27, 2009

I don’t know about you, but it seems clear to me that Bluehost welcomes right-wing, conservative Web sites, turning a blind eye to sites that violate the Bluehost TOS, while monitoring left-of-center sites for any excuse (even while knowing full well they are in some cases operating in direct opposition to U.S. foreign policy) to shut them down.

Wait, Sapph! What right-wing sites violate[d] Bluehost’s TOS? If they’re right-wing sites, there won’t be any profanity, or nekkid pictures (or free thought, for that matter), right?

Depends on how Bluehost feels like interpreting its own TOS at any given moment. Considering the ambiguity of the TOS, and much anecdotal evidence of Bluehost employees— how do I put this nicely? —appearing to make stuff up as they go along, it’s easy to tailor the TOS any way they want.

Take the PhonyFred.org site (which is long dead, although vestiges of it remain all over the Web).

Among the “Prohibited Uses” in the Bluehost TOS:

Private Information and Images. Subscribers may not post or disclose any personal or private information about or images of children or any third party without the consent of said party (or a parent’s consent in the case of a minor).

Gee, that “any third party” stuff means you can’t post any information or pictures of anybody without his or her consent. Guess that means all Bluehost-hosted sites are in violation of the TOS!

But let’s just stick with the infamous PhonyFred.org, which displayed plenty of Photoshop mock-ups like the one at right, entitled “Fancy Fred.” I wonder if Warren Tompkins obtained Fred Thompson’s permission to display that mockup, or any of the others (like the one showing Freddie surrounded by a bevy of babes)? No, actually, I don’t wonder at all.

Never mind “Fair Use”; PhonyFred.org violated Bluehost’s strict (and uncharacteristically clear) prohibition on “images of children or any third party without the consent of said party.”

As for “personal or private information,” Jonathan Martin, in a follow-up column, correctly concludes that PhonyFred.org “included a trove of personal and political opposition research on Thompson.”

It was, wrote Josh at levjoy dot com, “essentially an attempt to pillory Fred Thompson for being, well, Fred Thompson, and unlike Vote Different—” the widely-watched anti-Hillary Clinton video mashup of Apple’s 1984 Super Bowl ad, which resulted in its creator getting sacked from Democratic consultant Blue State Digital (employed by candidate Barack Obama) “—it wasn’t smart or creative in its own right. It was a classic negative attack, regardless of the medium.

“It also followed a sketchy precedent. Donehue’s boss, Warren Tompkins, is Romney’s lead consultant in South Carolina, and he was chief strategist for the Bush campaign in 2000 when rumors emerged in that same state that John McCain had fathered a black love child. This is something more sinister than framing Hillary as Big Brother.”

Remember now, PhonyFred.org wasn’t (as far as we can discern) shut down by Bluehost for any TOS violation. It was shut down, wrote Martin, “after I disclosed the anti-Thompson site.”

Could be coincidence. Could be Bluehost took a look and said, “Golly, that site violates TOS all over the darned place!” and canned it.

Do you believe that’s what happened? Or do you believe that Warren Tompkins lackey Wes Donehue, (VP of Tompkins, Thompson, and Sullivan) yanked the site — perhaps after getting smacked down by the Romney camp, which was quick to distance itself from PhonyFred.org, while Mittens himself decried the site as “juvenile and offensive“?

(We’ll come back to Martin’s follow-up column in a moment, as things definitely get juicier.)

Also prohibited:

Obscene, Defamatory, Abusive or Threatening Language. Use of the Services to store, post, transmit, display or otherwise make available obscene, defamatory, harassing, abusive or threatening language is prohibited.

Was there anything about PhonyFred.org that wasn’t “harassing” or (at least borderline) “defamatory”? Let’s see… PhoneyFred.org, wrote Jason Spencer, “blasted “Pimp Fred,” “McCain Fred” and “Playboy Fred,” among other hats it claimed the candidate has worn.”

“Pimp Fred”? Accusing somebody of being a pimp isn’t “obscene, defamatory, harassing, [and/or] abusive”?

And here’s a screencap where you can see a menu item titled “Moron Fred.”

I dislike Fred Thompson as much as the next sane person, but he’s no moron. (When somebody says “moron,” I think of George W. Bush and Sarah Palin, the latter doing what I never thought anyone could: surpassing W in the race for Supreme Moron-osity.) In fact, Fred Thompson is a very cagey, slick salesman and imagemaker. Of course he is — he’s an actor. (”Phony”? Yeah, I’d say so. But I’d never accuse him of being a moron — or a pimp.)

Of course, I’m sure the forces behind PhoneyFred.org didn’t really mean to imply that Thompson’s IQ is literally under 70— or did they?

Hard to know, as Bluehost appears to play fast and loose with the definition of “defamation” (”a false accusation of an offense or a malicious misrepresentation of someone’s words or actions; aspersion: an abusive attack on a person’s character or good name”). That, or they don’t use the same standard English dictionary I do. As far as I’m concerned, the rabidly anti-gay “Protect Our Keiki” Web site casts the most vile aspersions (or, for you lurking Freepers, casts “asparagus”) and just, plain, downright lies at LGBT people, and Bluehost, which hosts protectourkeiki.com, doesn’t seem concerned enough to do anything about it:

Mormon Homophobes Go Hawaiian?

On [the Protect Our Keiki campaign Web site] under a banner of images of folks celebrating (in costume) at various gay Pride celebrations or other images of same sex couples kissing or exchanging vows — you’ll find the presumably rhetorical question, Is this really what you want your keiki to believe is “normal” and “natural”?? …

The ad goes on to claim that Hawaii State Senator Clarence Nishihara is forcing gay unions on our community and wants to confuse our children. …

Checking the domain registry for protectourkeiki dot com shows that the domain name was created on February 14, 2009 with Blue Host web hosting based in, wait for it.. Orem, Utah. So not only are Utah interests apparently extending to the planet’s most remote island chain, but some unique sense of entitlement is allowing carpetbagging haole’s to appropriate the local language and local interests to serve their not-so-local ends.”

Mormon Carpetbagger Politics?

[Members of the Mormon Church] have setup an [anti-gay] attack website with the very Hawaiian URL of www.protectourkieki.com. …

But a simple bit or research clearly shows where this attack is coming from. …

An intrusion into our state’s politics and culture mounted by religious interests from Utah? Not surprising after what are probably the same groups had a hand in California Proposition 8 dealing with the same issues. The website is disgusting in it’s direct attacks on a member of the Hawai’i state legislature, Clarence K. Nishihara (Dem). Also interesting in that the website uses only tiled graphics, there is no text. This means that search engines and other sites that search or archive the text can not do so. A clear sign that those who put the site together know what they are doing.

So, what else is verboten that no reasonable ISP would verbote— er, forbid?

Profanity. Profanity or profane subject matter in the site content and in the domain name are prohibited.

(Oddly, “Profanity” is a separate bullet point from “Obscene, Defamatory, Abusive or Threatening Language.”)

Well, what is “profanity”? Princeton.edu has the lengthiest definition of “profane” — and includes one definition that, while somewhat obscure, seems more apt than any other:

Verb

• (v) corrupt, pervert, subvert, demoralize, demoralise, debauch, debase, profane, vitiate, deprave, misdirect (corrupt morally or by intemperance or sensuality) “debauch the young people with wine and women”; “Socrates was accused of corrupting young men”; “Do school counselors subvert young children?”; “corrupt the morals”

• (v) desecrate, profane, outrage, violate (violate the sacred character of a place or language) “desecrate a cemetery”; “violate the sanctity of the church”; “profane the name of God”

Adjective

• (adj) blasphemous, blue, profane (characterized by profanity or cursing) “foul-mouthed and blasphemous”; “blue language”; “profane words”

• (adj) profane, secular (not concerned with or devoted to religion) “sacred and profane music”; “secular drama”; “secular architecture”, “children being brought up in an entirely profane environment”

• (adj) profane, unconsecrated, unsanctified (not holy because unconsecrated or impure or defiled)

• (adj) blasphemous, profane, sacrilegious (grossly irreverent toward what is held to be sacred) “blasphemous rites of a witches’ Sabbath”; “profane utterances against the Church”; “it is sacrilegious to enter with shoes on”

Forget the debate about which words could be considered “profane” (profanity is in the ear of the listener); I find the archaic “secular” meaning strangely satisfying, and loaded with… well, meaning.

So, does Bluehost shut down sites for using (gasp!) bad words? Words like (sensitive people, cover your eyes!) “horse’s ass”?

One poshcoffee posted to the Wordpress.org forums last year:

I had a blog hosted at bluehost.com. The company have removed the site because of the use of ‘vulgarity’ in the comments on one of the few posts. The comments include people dropping the ‘F bomb’, but the site was not porn neither was it violent or inappropriate.

I just spoke to Bluehost and they state to me that “over and above their legal obligations they adhere to their moral obligations.” …

That’s creepy. I mean, if you’ve been following along, you know Mormons at large put the church above all else — but it’s very unusual for a company to admit, publicly, that it places its own religiosity above the law.

I put it to Tom from tech support that the use of vulgarity was commonplace in a contemporary society and that individuals should be entitled to make their own judgments regarding this matter. He re-stated that the company impose a moral standard upon their customers.

For your amusement and for your awareness of religious moral standards being applied, this is the transcript of my initial web chat with Tom from tech support. It starts after I ask why the blog was removed:

[10:26]: vulgar comments need to be removed - Ticket #734230

[10:26]: Vulgar comments?
[10:27]: Please can you be a LOT more specific.

Tom [10:27]: Please submit the last 4 digits of your Credit Card for verification purposes and/or the full Cpanel password. We will activate Cpanel only for you to remove all vulgar or profanity in the account.

Webmaster [10:27]: No, before I do that I would like you do be VERY VERY specific as to your definition of vulgarity

[10:28]: and I am stunned that a blog host would seek to censor bloggers in this way.

Tom [10:28]: That is our policy.

[10:33]: http:// [Link to Bluehost help page that isn’t there anymore]

[10:34]: OH MY GOD, foul language is prohibited?
[10:34]: Wait a second….
[10:34]: I just noticed, you guys appear to be in Utah

Tom [10:34]: Yes

[10:35]: Mormans?

[10:35]: I only conclude this because are you really serious about the profanity thing?
[10:35]: Freedom of speech isn’t important in the United States then I suppose?

Tom [10:35]: Religion is not a factor, it is our moral.

[10:35]: That is our policy.

[10:35]: your moral?
[10:36]: Okay Tom, what if I post a blog post saying I think President Bush is a “horses ass”, you would take my site down?

Tom [10:36]: That is a policy, you can take it up with our Abuse Department if you want; but botton line is, we do not allow those.
[10:37]: Yes we would take that site down for doing that. …

[10:39]: I’ll be reporting 6 bluehost sites that I have found via your users forum in the last 3 minutes which use profanity
[10:39]: can I expect these all to be removed too
[10:39]: I mean heck, the world might fall into moral decay if we don’t get on top of this!

[10:39]: Yes of course, that’s good, we will take action on those too.

[10:40]: Oh damn, just looking at the bluehost forum I see that you actually link to several abuse ridden sites from your own sites, and they are all hosted by you guys!
[10:40]: Tom, I am worried for you, moral decay looks like it is running ride there at bluehost!
[10:40]: I’m about to start praying for you!

Tom [10:42]: Thank y ou, I’ll pray for you too. Thank you for changing your moral views today. Start by saying something good about a person, that is a step towards peace. Have a nice day.

[10:42]: YIKES!!!!! Tom, it’s worse than I thought, there are girls in bikinis on Bluehosted sites!!!!
[10:42]: This is really awful!

Tom [10:43]: Ok You can report those to abuse too.
[10:43]: Thank you

So, “horse’s ass” is out. And bikinis. I guess bikinis fall under:

Prohibited Offerings. No Subscriber may utilize the Services to provide, sell or offer to sell the following: controlled substances; illegal drugs and drug contraband; weapons; pirated materials; instructions on making, assembling or obtaining illegal goods or weapons to attack others; information used to violate the copyright(s) of, violate the trademark(s) of or to destroy others’ intellectual property or information; information used to illegally harm any people or animals; pornography, nudity, sexual products, programs or services; escort services or other content deemed adult related.

Nope, nothing there about bikinis, but “pornography, nudity, sexual products, programs or services; escort services or other content deemed adult related” is about as close as it comes.

Speaking of illegal activities, do you notice anything in the entire TOS about gambling? Me neither. But they’ll get you for that, too — not running a gambling site, mind you, but for writing about gambling. And then they’ll tell you the real reason was that your scripts were slowing down their servers (this, apparently, is a very common Bluehost excuse, as well as blaming you for too much traffic, and blaming “outdated” versions of Wordpress; see “Further Reading,” below)… even though you really got nailed for having a “gambling site.”

Confused? You should be. And so was this dude:

mdocea: Welcome to our real-time support chat. How can I help you today?

brian: Hi, I was just looking over the TOS
brian: http://www.bluehost.com/terms_of_service.html
brian: is this the current version

mdocea: Yes it is

brian: ok
brian: i was just told my site got suspended for having “gambling content” on it
brian: i dont see the TOS mention gambling
brian: am i just missing it?

mdocea: I like to look at this one:
mdocea: http://helpdesk.bluehost.com/kb/index.php…
mdocea: better formatting

brian: do you see anything in regards to gambling?
brian: it’s not even like i’m running an online casino, apparently talking about poker is against the TOS?

mdocea: I’m not seeing anything in the TOS that would prevent you to speak about poker on your website

brian: Ok, so why was my web site shut down

mdocea: let me take a look
mdocea: what is your domain name?

brian: the domain is XXXXXX.com

mdocea: ToS violation for gambling site. Postgres queries also consuming 100% of each CPU
mdocea: It looks like your account was consuming an extreme amount of system resources….

brian: so basically because my postgres querys are taking up too much CPU, they are tagging me as a gambling violation?
brian: that doesn’t seem fair

mdocea: It is not fair to the other users on the server either. You have to remember you are in a shared hosting
environment.

Shared (according to a few end users who say they’ve figured this out) with 600 to 1,200 other sites on a single server.

. . .

mdocea: I understand let me check if gambling is against TOS and why it’s not in there

. . .

brian: First, would also have to protest and say that “poker” is not gambling, its a skill game

. . .

mdocea: I’m sorry sir but it dose seem like in UT gambling is illegal It looks like that is something that they will add to the TOS shortly and you would have to remove the poker content

brian: in UT?
brian: Ok, well, if you wouldnt mind could you re-enable my account for a day so I can backup everything

mdocea: Utah
mdocea: yes that is what I’m trying to do right now

brian: poker isn’t illegal in Utah
brian: there’s even casinos in Utah

mdocea: Ok I’ve managed to get you reactivated. You are still suspended but your account has been reactivated so you will have access to backup your files…

. . .

brian: how long will I have until my acount gets deactivated again

mdocea: You will stay in the suspended status until you contact us again and let us know that you either have removed all of the poker related content and fixed your queries or contact us and request a refund…

brian: so, I guess i’m a little confused here
brian: so anyone hosted on bluehost.com cannot mention playing poker
brian: or their accounts will get suspended?

mdocea: Sir I believe you understand the situation as do I and I will let you contact us again when you have cleaned up your queries or decided to get a refund.

. . .

mdocea: The queries caused us to take a closer look at your account and when we did we noticed the Poker content either way you will have to remove the poker content. … unfortunately now that we have noticed the Poker content you will have to remove it

Brian then decided he wanted a refund, and the tech-support person assured him that “if it’s under 30 days which it is you will get a full refund … All you have to say is: ‘I would like a refund for domain: xxxxx.com” and we will comply no questions asked.’”

Ultimately (although not until after another nearly equally confusing chat), Brian got his full refund.

Brian was lucky.

In reply to a short, positive review of Bluehost at HostingFu.com, one commenter claims that this was the response “from the CEO of bluehost” after posting a similarly confusing chat log to the CEO’s blog:

No where does it say we will give you a full refund, and you most CERTAINLY were not down anywhere near 40 hours. Give me a break! Take your $$$ and go find a different host.

We never say anywhere we will give you your money back after 30 days, so for you to expect that is assinine.

Thanks, Matt Heaton / Bluehost.com

My reply back: Check your facts Matt, a few days ago I was on box 126 which was down for over over 26 hours! Unacceptable! I did take my money elsewhere, to lunarpages!

*blink*

I can’t say for sure Matt Heaton wrote that, but, frankly, from what I’ve read on his blog (www.mattheaton.com), it sounds like him.

Oh, and by the way, if you read his blog, you might want to ask him why calling George W. Bush a “horse’s ass” would be a violation of TOS, but calling Steve Ballmer a “jackass” — which Heaton did on his own blog (April 8, 2008) — isn’t.

So, who is Matt Heaton, and what’s his problem?

Let’s go back to Jonathan Martin’s September 10, 2007, follow-up column:

Host of anti-Thompson site is Romney donor

The owner of the web-host provider used to launch an anti-Fred Thompson website is a donor to Mitt Romney’s campaign.

Matt Heaton, President and CEO of Utah-based bluehost.com, gave $500 to Romney in June.

Until earlier today, his company hosted the domain “phoneyfred.org” that included a trove of personal and political opposition research on Thompson. But after I disclosed the anti-Thompson site just after Noon, the site came down. …

Asked if anybody from the Romney campaign contacted him today about the site, Heaton said he was “not personally aware of anyone from his campaign that has called to talk to us.”

But he cautioned that his company has many clients and customers and said he is “rarely involved personally in these type of matters.”

“Rarely involved personally in these type of matters,” eh? Let’s see.

Getting back to the site that prompted me to learn all about Bluehost: The site admin and I had a most interesting email exchange, during which I promised to dig into Bluehost’s record of service, particularly the way it’s handled hosting LGBT sites (and making a mental note to see who, if anyone, at Bluehost has donated to California’s Prop 8, Arizona’s Prop 102, and/or Florida’s Amendment 2). I made a few notes for this post you’re reading right now, thinking about how describe the situation without identifying the site in question and bringing more heat down on it before the owners can move it to another host.

Turns out I don’t have to worry about that anymore. I got a heads-up from one of the site admins that, as of today, password protection is off the post, spurred no doubt in part by the site’s readers urging the site to go public with the issue — and no doubt pushed over the top by a comment from Matt Heaton hisownbadself, who in essence tells the site owners they’re full of malarkey, and includes this priceless line:

“I am far too busy, far too disinterested, and value my time far too much to concern myself with the personal views of customers. I just don’t care.”

Funny, but he seems to care enough to spend some of his valuable time on a comment to the blog of one of his customers.

By now, you’re probably ready to scream, “Are ya ever gonna tell us which site you’re on about, Sapph?!”

Yep, right now. I just wanted you to hear all this Bluehost history first, to give more weight to the blog post you’re about to read. Without hearing the same thing from such a wide variety of unhappy customers — from Iranians stripped of their ability to communicate with the outside world, to the guy who got canned for mentioning poker — you might think The New Lesbian Bloggers on the Block were making stuff up.

They’re not.

So, sit back and take in…

Bluehost Sucks or “How Mormon-Owned Bluehost
Tried to Shut Down Autostraddle.”

A few very short excerpts in a lengthy, highly revealing post with lots of links (some of which I’ve quoted here, and many I haven’t):

“WHOA!” Tom [the Bluehost tech-support guy] exclaimed, suddenly. “Whoa whoa whoa, I’m looking at your ‘other site’ here and this is not okay. We do not host adult websites. I’m gonna have to go speak to my supervisor –”

That’s the tip of the iceberg, he told me. “Top 15 L Word Sex Scenes” is the least of my worries (that is true for Ilene Chaiken but not true for me!). Tom rattled off his disgust regarding the plethora of seemingly adult websites we link to all over the front page — he said he saw sex and things of a ’sexual nature’ all over the website. He then went on to say that not only were we prohibited to feature “adult content,” but we were prohibited to link to sites that contain nudity or “adult content” (their own definition of adult content, that is). Adult content includes WORDS ABOUT SEXUALITY as well as photos.

Whaa?

He pointed out that we link to “sex toys” (babeland), “sex dvds,” (wolfe video), “topless women” (actually, ALMOST topless women, none of them have any nip showing, but details details!) and that we regularly link to many other sites which include such images & content. [Sidenote: sites that feature nudity or discuss sex/sexuality include wikipedia, answers.com, huffpo, gawker, new york magazine, twitter … well pretty much every website ever.]

See that “other content deemed adult related“ [in the TOS]? …

I believe that this isn’t standard censorship and should be addressed in more detail in the TOS. Why don’t they make this clear? Unless Bluehost hopes to register users who eventually will violate the terms and leave without a refund?

Sidenote: Tom Tech Support was obsessed with our Babeland ad. Babeland is a classy company that sells a lot of stuff and advertises all over the place and is linked to by a number of major websites including Time Out New York, The Village Voice, Citysearch, and New York Magazine. …

Of course, what [Matt Heaton] doesn’t explain enough is that these new policies extended far beyond porn…

This policy’s language initially included “anything related to human sexuality” and promptly (ironically) shut down asexuality.org…

When I asked Tom why these redic TOS existed, he explained: “We’re in Utah.”

So, hit the link, dig in, and make sure to read the comments (including tinkerbell’s!) — and let’s see what this turns into. I have a feeling we haven’t heard the last of “Bluehost vs. the Lesbians.”

Oh, and: If you have any stories of your own about Bluehost (Mormons, Christians, and paid commenters ready to hail Bluehost as the greatest thing since sliced bread and/or nominate Matt Heaton for the presidency of the Quorum of Twelve, need not apply), leave them here, in the comments. Gay, straight, Iranian — we don’t care; if your experience with Bluehost has been eerily similar to any of those quoted above (or below, in the links for “Further Reading”), we’re listening.

Further reading:

Bluehost Sucks (”Bluehost Downtime - Bluehost Customer Support - Excessive CPU Usage - Cancelled Accounts - Bluehost E-mail Limit - MySQL Problems”)

Customer reviews for Bluehost (Real reviews — not those obviously bought-and-paid-for “review” sites that wouldn’t fool a three-year-old — albeit peppered with a few obviously paid “reviews”)
Web Hosting Geeks

Samples from PhonyFred.org
Prometheus 6, September 11, 2007

Bluehost Exposed! (“So it looks like what we found here is a rating and review factory, right in the office of Matt Heaton to promote Bluehost and Hostmonster. The reviews are written as if they were created by an unbiased third party, but in reality they appear to be written by Heaton and associates.”)
iNetIntegrity, January 15, 2008

Bluehost TOS
Crazy Penguin, April 12, 2008

un – EFFING – believable
Tokyo Damage Report, April 24, 2009

Considering Hostmonster? Dont!
Web Hosting Talk, July 2, 2008

So, Is Mike Crapo’s Son A Nasty Little Bigot?
Lavender Newswire, November 4, 2008

Web Host Uses OFAC Sanctions To Boot Dissident Bloggers
ExportLawBlog, February 24, 2009

Do-It-Yourself Censorship
Newsweek, March 7, 2009

BlueHost Customer Relations (“April 7th, the day that sweet Madeline passed away and the news was making waves around the internet, her parent’s sites were inundated with comments and visits of support from concerned people around the globe; so much so that BlueHost – their web hosting provider – couldn’t handle the amount of traffic… Their only option was to suspend the account in order to re-instate service to the other sites on the shared hosting server. … Friends of the Spohrs swooped in hoping to help out by contacting BlueHost directly and asking, pleading that something be done for their sites so people could offer their condolences. … I said to the lady, ‘Please? Anything? It’s not like they’re email spammers. They’ve lost a child and we’re trying to have the site available even just as a condolence page. Just the last post would be fine as a static page so people could still comment and leave a note for Heather and Mike. Something.’ The response was they cannot do that. Sorry. That’s the rules.”)
Craftastrophe, May, 2009

Frappe Bliss in Aberdeen Center (And What Happened To Chowtimes)
Chow Times, May 18, 2009

P.S. An interesting note from our friend keepCAblue (who also says Bluehost “suspended my business account and blocked my business emails after I posted photos to my website which had ‘no on 8′ content”):

“Here is a clue about which businesses are Mormon owned: Biz names with ‘Blue’ in them (i.e., JetBlue, Bluehost.com) - the ‘Blue’ refers to ‘true-blue Mormons’ (aka ‘TBM’, as opposed to Jack Mormons. Here is a wiki description:

“There are two types of Mormons - the hard core Mormons are generally referred to as ‘True Blue Mormons’. If you are raised Mormon, attend the secret Temple ceremonies, give 15% of your income, go on a mission as a teen, and hold a ‘Temple Card’ (without which you cannot enter the Temple), you are a True Blue Mormon. If, for whatever reason, you no longer believe and want to leave the church, you would be ostracized by all in the church, and even disowned by your family. You may even have to file suit to have your name removed from their rolls (part of the reason they are so large is because they only add people to the rolls, they don’t remove unless forced to).

“The second type of Mormon is a Jack Mormon. They go to church meetings on Sunday, and may do a little socializing and work for the church, but they do not have their temple card, weren’t married in the temple, and have no desire to get one.”

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Filed Under: Africa, Business/Economy, Former USSR, Iran, LDS/Mormons, Mitt Romney, Radical Religious Right, Random Bigotry, Republicans, Utah

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