For the past few weeks I’ve been looking around for some bigger and more serious hosting and created a bit of a shortlist for myself to examine more closely when I have some more time. However, one of those hosts on the list WorldStream is now scratched off the list. I need to offload some of the local server tasks to something hosted outside of my office.
The reason for this? Because the host has shown themselves to be a company I would never wish to do any business with. Today I learned that WorldStream rolls over and plays “happy puppy” when a private organization with zero legal mandate requests the confiscation of *private property* that WorldStream is getting paid for to take care of.
For those who haven’t heard, there’s this private organization called BREIN. They’re often referred to by their opponents as an organization that operates a bit like a terrorist organization and lives off intimidation and anti-piracy activities they undertake for the members that they represent. Now, if they were doing a decent job and sticking within the confines of the law I have very little problem with it but it seems this slick operation of BREIN has grown to believe it is above the law.
Instead of doing the traditional takedown notices and going through the legal system to ask the courts to confiscate and seize material and equipment that might or might not have been used by those involved in the piracy of movies and music they decided, based on a very liberal and broad interpretation of the law, to head for WorldStream and confiscate 8 servers from a South American hosting company that had its physical servers hosted there. As if the hosting company was suddenly responsible for what one or more of their customers had been using server capacity for, without even being provided fair warning by this despicable organization called BREIN.
Without a court order, WorldStream cooperated and handed over these servers. It even appears that this privately owned extortionist operation called BREIN only wanted to return the servers to its rightful owners after discussing a financial settlement. Call it what you want but I call that theft and extortion.
But what is clearly more important in this evolving story (which is now getting BREIN into trouble for various forms of privacy violations) is that WorldStream rolled over for a privately owned organization without any legal mandate or powers to provide access to and physical confiscation of servers a client paid them to host.
That, dear WorldStream, is what got you knocked off my shortlist. You have shown that you can’t be trusted to host anything, much less the important corporate data and development systems I might have otherwise chosen you to host for me.
Needless to say, I am recommending to everyone else not to use this company for any hosting activities because it should be clear that your data and continuation of business might be at risk if a company is this negligent about its responsibilities towards its customers.
Oh, and BREIN, thank you for breaking the law and showing yourself as ordinary criminals. If you had not done so I would have potentially picked StreamWorld as my new host.
Let us know what YOU think!