[Gllug] Hosting recommendation

[Matthew J Smith]

Alain Williams wrote:
> On Wed, Jun 10, 2009 at 07:14:27PM +0100, James Laver wrote:
>> On 10 Jun 2009, at 18:47, Martin A. Brooks wrote:
>>> I would get a Bytemark or Bitfolk VPS.
>> Bitfolk are still out of capacity in London (which is why I am now a  
>> slicehost customer).
>>
>> If you don't care about it being in London, by all means go with them.  
>> As it happens, slicehost is in St. Louis anyway.
> 
> If you are to keep data about people on it, you need to think very carefully before
> putting it on a machine in the USA (think: data protection act).
> 

If you are to write *about* people, you need to think very carefully
before putting it on a machine in the UK.

In the UK, anyone aggrieved by something you write about them can have
their lawyers contact your hosting provider, which is liable for the
content you write and they host, and it will simply get pulled down.
This happened a few years ago when Craig Murray blogged about a
particular Russian oligarch with interests in London, and a whole load
of other blogs went down at the same time.

In the USA, the DMCA can sometimes be used for this purpose, but unlike
here, you can issue a "counter-notice" which means you take sole
responsibility.  I know someone who has been involved in a dispute with
a religious organisation and has used this method to stop them having
his videos pulled down.

(However, if you plan on recruiting for any fighters in any non-regular
armed force anywhere, particularly anywhere the US armed forces are
engaged right now, hosting your site in the USA is a bad idea.)

Regards,

Matt

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