Another Reminder to Choose Your Hosting Service Carefully [1]

My colleague Ethan Zuckerman just put up a disturbing post [2] about Kubatana [3], a prominent Zimbabwean NGO, which saw its site taken down because its hosting provider, Bluehost [4], got cold feet after it discovered the site contained content from (gasp!) Zimbabwe.

Kubatana, among other things, hosts websites for prominent activist organizations like Women of Zimbabwe Arise [5].  For the past two years, Kubatana has hosted a joint blog [6] for a wide range of Zimbabwean citizens that has, according to Ethan, "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."

Ethan reports [2]:

Earlier this week, Kubatana’s blog site [6], as well as a couple of sites hosted on behalf of activist organizations, went dark. Visitors to the blog received a message [7] that the webhost, Bluehost [4], 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. . . .

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.

In his typically thorough way, Ethan analyzes why Bluehost is wrong as to the applicability of trade sanctions to Kubatana.  Nevertheless, as a private hosting provider, they are free to terminate their customers' accounts for wrongheaded reasons -- as long as their terms of service permit them to do so.

As we've said several times in the past (here [8] and here [9]), if your content might be controversial, you should think about what sort of platform or service will protect your speech most strongly. If you are planning to start a blog, you should carefully consult each hosting provider's terms & conditions to see which host is the most protective of free speech. The section of our legal guide that provides advice on legal issues to consider when getting online [10] should be helpful.

Here is Ethan's recommendation:

If you run a site like Kubatana, look for a hosting provider that understands your business and has your back. There are lists out there of “free speech” webhosts [11] - I don’t know how valuable they are, and the one linked above makes the same “sanctioned nation = banned nation” error that Bluehost made. Instead, I’d suggest you look for a hosting company run by human beings, not by notebooks filled with rules and procedures.