Dreamhost Back to Blocking BitTorrent?

Written by Smaran on September 28, 2006 

It turns out that the popular hosting company Dreamhost is shutting down any BitTorrent trackers hosted on its servers. In a letter to a customer, a representative of Dreamhost said “BitTorrent is strictly forbidden, both as a client and as a server right now.”

Dreamhost's LogoA little more a year ago Boing Boing blogged about how Dreamhost was apparently shutting down its customers’ BitTorrent trackers. It was later discovered that Dreamhost wasn’t intent on blocking all BitTorrent trackers hosted on their servers, only those infringing on copyright.

A comment posted on Mostly Muppet yesterday (the 27th) has brought up the issue once again:

Dreamhost shut down my BitTorrent set-up before I even got a chance to use it. I have 3 personal videos that I made and was planning to distribute. I installed broadcast machine and was in the middle of uploading the torrents when dreamhost shut me down.

Frank, the commenter tried to run the EFF’s Broadcast Machine, a tool many podcasters use to distribute their content over BitTorrent, on his server. A huge benefit of offering media files for download over BitTorrent is that it takes the load off your server and decreases the chance of your site becomming inaccessible due to excessive bandwidth consumption. It can become quite a costly affair if you surpass the bandwidth limit set by your host.

He contacted Dreamhost’s support with his problem. Here’s an excerpt of their reply:

BitTorrent is strictly forbidden, both as a client and as a server right now. Although we are looking into it, it’s forbidden. I believe the misunderstanding, was that what you just pasted hinted at a policy of “If we don’t notice, go what you want.” Although some people can get away with that, it is still something that is not allowed.

It seems like there’s a lot of confusion over at Dreamhost HQ on whether running a BitTorrent tracker is or isn’t allowed. After the whole escapade last year, Dreamhost said it would update its Terms Of Service to accomodate the technology, sadly the agreement still says that the use of “BitTorrent software [is] not encouraged.”

Previously: BitTorrent Movie Download Chart (wk38)

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3 Responses

1 Sep 28, 2006 at 19:16 by Mike Wills

When I signed up for DreamHost last year, I asked about BitTorrent. They told me then that I couldn’t use it. I could host the .torrent file and file to download, but couldn’t run a server. I think they have been having a bunch of server problems with too many people running them that they decided to crack down on them to eliminate some problems.

2 Sep 30, 2006 at 16:39 by Frank

Hi, I am the “Frank” in this article. First, thank you for bringing attention to this important issue.

I want to say that I am disappointed with Dreamhost’s Silly & “Backwards” Bit Torrent Policy. I understand their concerns but all they need to do in order to address them is to add torrent use bandwidth tracking and to make a list of approved Bit Torrent Clients. However, I want to add that I still think they are one awesome host. I still think very highly of them. I plan to stay with them for all but my bit torrent use.

I searched for another host that would allow bit torrent. I contacted 1and1.com by phone and by email – asking about bit torrent and broadcast machine. Over-the-phone, I was told no problem. By email, I was told no way. LOL I then wrote back and asked the email support to get together with the phone support and to please give me a unanimous answer before I signed-up. I got back the below positive response.

Dear Frank,

Thank you for contacting us.

A bit torrent tracker would be fine, so long as the information posted
is not a copyrighted work. However, the previous agent looked at the
software and though it may have been a video streaming application. I
looked further and saw it is not, its like a gathering of RSS feeds for
video feeds, which would work fine. It says it only needs PHP and
doesn’t mention any special requirements, so I can confirm with Tony
that this would work on our shared hosting packages in the US.

If you have any further questions please do not hesitate to contact us.

–
Sincerely,
Micah Magruder
Technical Support
1&1 Internet

3 Jan 29, 2007 at 05:08 by Florian

Hi,
I found your blog via google by accident and have to admit that youve a really interesting blog :-)
Just saved your feed in my reader, have a nice day :)

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