New on LowEndTalk? Please Register and read our Community Rules.
All new Registrations are manually reviewed and approved, so a short delay after registration may occur before your account becomes active.
All new Registrations are manually reviewed and approved, so a short delay after registration may occur before your account becomes active.
Comments
Edit: Eric basically just posted what I was going to say
So basicly, because it is not emulated, you are also allowed to look in the private user data??
A find it a little strange, and would not be so sure that you are legally correct.
I think this will not stand in court.
So I think if you are challanged in court you will lose this battle.
But this is not up to me
@henkb - It would stand in court, actually. This argument came directly from one of our advisers with a degree in law.
And with the money we're saving by terminating people who use our services for illegal torrenting, we have far more than enough to afford defense against litigation. But with the money that the person that's torrenting saves from torrenting illegal files .. is that enough to pay for litigation?
YOU GVH_Eric AND JON ARE LYING
It is the same. You are breaking the law. If I rent a house, a room or simply a bed in a dorm, my stuff is my property. You have no right to search it, unless you call the police if you found me suspicious and have a court order. In that way, if I get a room in a hostel or a friend of mine give me a room in his house, he has no right to search my belongings.
If I return to my "public room" that I rent from you late at night, every night, with a smell of alcohol in my mouth, you maybe "flag" me ans a potential bad guy. Who do you think that gives you the right to search my bag, suitcase and parcel to find out if I do anything illegal? Is it a good example according with your thoughts saying hosting is like renting a room for a short period of time?
But you should stop comparing an apartment, a bank or an airport with hosting. Every thing has its own rules.
This is hosting. So, give me a single law that is giving you the right to snoop and spying my data. No. Not even one. You can monitor activities (like, for example, using certain ports or type of data) without spying on the data itself.
Jon said in his previous post that he has an in-house script that actually search for ILLEGAL OBDAINED FILES/CONTENT.
This is not a monitor of an activity, this is spying on files.
This is from a Jon's post in VPSboard:
Posted 02 May 2014 - 09:11 AM
If you're peaking near the point of abuse then your process may be killed as a courtesy as opposed to suspension being issued, torrent processes are not specifically targeted.
https://vpsboard.com/topic/4232-does-gvh-kill-torrent-processes/page-2
So, you clearly say you don't target specific torrent processes.
This is your TOS:
greenvaluehost.com/termsofservice.html
You don't forbid torrenting.
Also, you always say here that you allow legal torrents for personal use. Scripta manent.
So, tell me, how do you know that a torrent is illegal? How do you know, if you dont spy to your customer's data?
So, not only you lying, but you also breaking the law. Stop trying to parallelize hosting with hotels, apartments, tomatoes or potatoes. Hosting is hosting and there are certain laws you have to follow.
If you have a different law that you folloe, please, do us a favor and attach it here!
Period.
P.S. You guys, do even have any lawers in your company to give you advice or you rely on the fact that with services of 10$ per year, nobody actually will sue you for violating the law? Pathetic...
You are the one who tried to associate hosting with housing. Also, since we run the script on the host node, we are simply searching for processes/files on our hardware. I do not believe that using our own property is classified as illegal in any law I have seen. We never directly access containers without explicit permission from the client who owns it.
'top | grep ffmpeg' on the host node gives us a pretty good idea of what's being served.
Would you please clarify what you mean by searching for "files" on your hardware? Are you implying that since your client's data ( files ) are hosted on your hardware, that grants you full authority to retrieve the details related to these data?
It is not your property. It is a product you rent it. Just find the laws about hosting and, if you have not the same age and culture like Jon, you maybe understand the different that a product has from a property. There are international laws about privacy. Data is property. It is not a product, if your client do not rent or sell it to you. It is his own property.
Also, can you please tell us, do you allow torrenting or not? If you do, you simply cannot search any torrent but only abusing. If you don't, where the heck do you write it? Or, why do you always state here, in WHT and in VPSboard till you got banned that you allow it?
And, finaly, can you provide us with even a single law that gives you the right to snoop data?
P.S. I did not associate hosting with houses, other posters did and you continued it, so you agree with them.
nevermind. really no clarification required, to "search" for files that may/may not violate copyright laws, you MUST go through client's data.
Thats good to know. another + for GVH WINNING.
Who gives you the right to do it? And how do you know a file is illegal? There are a lot of tools for snooping data. I maybe host in your server or private torrenting to another computer of mine personal video while having sex with my wife. How the hell can you admit here that you spying with ffmpeg command about the video I am torrenting? Do you have a court order, or even a DMCA? You digging your hole deeper and deeper.
Very pathetic!
@MPkossen, normally I do not flag providers, but they admit that they are spying their customer for no valid reason, just a precaution. Is this allowed for providers they do advertize here?
No, you're starting to pull nonsense now because you know we've invalidated your argument.
The script is ran on the host node first. We're not snooping without suspicion. We can "snoop" with confirmed suspicion because of the argument in Eric's initial post in this thread.
Thank you for proving our point. We have our own policies. These policies do not break the law.
The laws that generally prohibit "snooping activity" do not apply in this case due to the argument we've presented.
Our ToS has changed multiple times since that post.
Also, you always say here that you allow legal torrents for personal use.
Correct, we don't. We allow legal torrents. 99% of the time, torrenting activity is illegal.
It's more than obvious that a customer is illegally torrenting.
Who are you (a citizen of a foreign country?) to argue against someone in the U.S with a U.S law degree .. about U.S law?
Your TOS is still today not forbid torrent.
How? You have to see the data. If you spy on data, you are breaking the law. Because the data maybe are illegal, maybe personal legal stuff your client do not want you to see them.
You gives you that right? What are you? Law West of the Pecos?
Who are you that, being a 17 year old boy, gives you the right to say to me that I cannot search and learn about US laws? Do you know me? Do you know if I have study law or I am a lawyer myself? No. Do you have US law degree? In the age of... 17? Just post it to the Guinness Record Book!
You have learned nothing all those years here! You are still lying!
You are trying to say to me that in US does not have privacy laws? Read those laws and open your eyes.
http://www.informationshield.com/usprivacylaws.html
If someone is suspicious for doing illegal activities, then, public authorities (Police, Court, FBI etc.) have the right to search him. Not you, a school boy with a big ego.
Your policies do not break the law. Your actions do.
TL;DR
I think readers can make their own colclusions on if their data are safe in your company.
It’s a pity (your behaviour) because your service is getting better and more stable…
P.S. You still do not give us any law that is allowing a provider to spy on customer's data.
And to make things clear, I have a lawyer's degree, even if I didn't ever practice because my profession is a journalist.
You don't need a law to tell you that you can do something when there isn't an applicable law that tells you that you can't.
For example, is there a law that says I can drink coffee at 5AM in the morning? No, but there isn't an applicable law that says I can't. Therefore I can. Get the idea?
Brilliant.
Your country's laws do not apply here in the United States, and you are trying to pretend that they do. I'm telling you that we went to legitimate legal advisers with U.S law degrees who told us that our actions are lawful.
Please retake your English speaking course. You misunderstood me completely. What I was trying to say that your word doesn't have more merit than the word of a U.S lawyer.
Stop bringing up age. You're only doing that because you know that you're losing the argument here. Just because I'm younger than you doesn't mean what you say is automatically right. I think that we're having some miscommunication here, especially because of your incapability to comprehend the advanced level of English that I am writing.
Here's a TL;DR for you:
There are two easy options. If you don't want to read our AUP and abide by it, you can:
a. Send us a court notice
or
b. Leave
This argument we're having right now is useless. If you want to take action, go for it. If you expect me to cower in fear in the corner someplace because of your wrongful assumptions, that's not happening. I stand my ground and I have legal counsel and the funds to back me up.
This is a perfect example of your poor comprehension of the English language. This sentence makes no sense, as like your arguments.
Wrong! The reason is to improve customer experiences. As Zen said, if you were our customer, would you be complaining about the benefits you receive from the shady customer next to you being kicked off the node? No!
An in-house developed automated script is ran to track down illegal torrents, ToR processes, and the like. Abusers will be removed after we conduct further investigation into their activities. The accuracy of our automated script so far now has been 100%, meaning that no innocent customer has had their data looked into by human eyes.
FWIW, before Jon gets totally thrown under the bus here, other hosts have stated they undertake similar kinds of checks in the past.
How does a thread about two good providers become about GVH? Seriously LET community, the madness has to stop.
You can scan for the process names. I don't think there is a host that don't do that. And it's perfectly understandable.
However, the problem here is that they look at what files their customers have downloaded.
Only after we have a legitimately confirmed suspicion of illegal or prohibited activity. Our detection rate thus far has been 100%. Not a single innocent customer has been accidentally penalized.
I'm sorry Jon but that's silly. If you are going to disallow torrents, go ahead and disallow all torrent activity and do it by searching for the process names.
You can't simply justify looking at customer files when they break your AUP. When someone breaks your AUP, they don't lose their privacy rights.
Yep, definitely some hosts have mentioned they scan for the presence of particular file names in the past, so they're not digging through your files per se, but looking to see if you have anything known to be copyright infringing.
Then we'll insert a line in our ToS mentioning that the customer agrees to waive any and all data privacy 'rights and claims' if an AUP violation has occurred.
I know very little about international laws but I don't think that's how it works
A person has the right to certain things but also has the right to waive their right. Does that make sense?
I don't think we should disallow torrents altogether. Even though I said 99% of torrenting activity is illegal, I don't want to punish the innocent 1%.
And before anyone asks, Yes, I know it's common in my age group not to but I do pay for my own movies and music.
You don't have the authority to void their privacy rights. That's what I'm saying.
A person has the authority to waive their own rights. If they agree to our ToS which qualifies as a legal contract, they agree to the waiver.
Privacy rights and laws are stronger than any TOS or AUP. You should knot that.
Also, changing daily your TOS or AUP is a prefect example of your professionalism. It's like a dictatorship: If a law is going against their willings, they just erase it and write a new one...
Because I do not speak native English, does mean anything. You are trying to argue with me without having even one legit argument.
Anyway, people can see what you do and can decide if they will use you for anything critical or not.
I will not take part further to this conversation.
(I rest my case :-| )