But no, that would be too straightforward.

Article #1 is going to be a rant.

Let me explain:

I've been long meaning to take Thievco to the web.  Of course, I wanted to do it with a little style... our own domain, and someplace with a decent feed, etc...  Unfortunately, in my area Pacbell doesn't have DSL ready, TCI doesn't have @Home available, ISDN is metered, and not only are 56K lines painfully slow, but they're too expensive.  I don't want to get into trying to be some local ISP to subsidize a T1.  Co-location prices are also ridiculously expensive for my modest needs.

Obviously, I needed a hosting service.  ~$20/mo. is cheap, and heck, even the Internic dropped their prices recently.  So, which service to use?  I did some web searches, and found the following web hosting comparison sites:

 http://www.hostsearch.com
 http://www.tophosts.com
 http://www.webhostlist.com

Great.  These services are pretty cool.  You can search for hoster based on price, disk space, features, etc... perfect.  So I start searching, and it looks like things may even be better than I thought.  Based on the initial criteria, it looks like some of the $10/mo. sites might meet my needs.  So I start going to the various hosting services, and looking at the plans offered.  Just to be on the safe side, given the intended content of this site, I double-check the acceptable use policies.  Problem.

Examples:

http://www.webworld.nu/hosting/

$10/mo., 10MB, pop account, unlim. traffic, own cgi-bin, real-audio, etc..  Seems reasonable.  So, check out the policy page:

 http://www.webworld.nu/hosting/policy.html

Section 7:

                7.CLIENT HEREBY AGREES THAT ALL DOMAIN NAMES AND ANY
                  MATERIAL SUBMITTED FOR PUBLICATION ON PROVIDER
                  THROUGH CLIENT'S ACCOUNT(S) WILL NOT CONTAIN ANYTHING
                  LEADING TO AN ABUSIVE OR UNETHICAL USE OF WEB HOSTING
                  PRODUCT (S) OR THE HOST SERVER(S). ABUSIVE AND
                  UNETHICAL MATERIALS AND USES INCLUDE, BUT ARE NOT
                  LIMITED TO PORNOGRAPHY, OBSCENITY, NUDITY, VIOLATIONS
                  OF PRIVACY, COMPUTER VIRUSES, HACKING, WAREZ, AND ANY
                  HARASSING AND HARMFUL MATERIALS OR USES. CLIENT
                  HEREBY A GREES TO INDEMNIFY AND HOLD HARMLESS THE
                  PROVIDER FROM ANY CLAIM RESULTING FROM YOUR
                  PUBLICATION OF MATERIALS OR YOUR USE OF THOSE
                  MATERIALS. PROVIDER MAY OR MAY NOT GIVE NOTICE BEFORE
                  DEACTIVATING THE USE OF AN ACCOUNT(S) WHICH THE
                  PROVIDER DECIDES IS AN ABUSIVE OR UNETHICAL USE OF THE
                  VIRTUAL SERVER ACCOUNT(S) OR HOST SERVER(S). PROVID ER
                  MAY CHARGE A $50 DEACTIVATION FEE IF CLIENTS VIOLATION
                  LEADS TO AN ACCOUNT DEACTIVATION OR SUSPENSION.

Uh huh... porno, illegal, offensive, nudity, warez... hacking?  Well, I guess I won't be using that service.  Next.

 http://www.trident.org/webhost/policies.htm

Content:

All services provided by Trident Internet Services may be used for lawful purposes only. Transmission, storage, or presentation of any information, data or material in violation of any United States Federal, State or City law is prohibited. this includes, but is not limited to: copyrighted material, material we judge to be threatening or obscene, or material protected by trade secret and other statute. Customer agrees that Trident Internet Service shall not be liable to Customer for any claims or damages which may be suffered by Customer. The subscriber agrees to indemnify and hold harmless Trident Internet Services from any claims resulting from the use of the service which damages the subscriber or any other party.

Note: Pornography and sex-related merchandising are prohibited on any Trident server. This includes sites that may infer sexual content, or Link to adult content elsewhere. This is also true for sites that promote any illegal activity or content that may be damaging to Trident servers or any other server on the internet. Links to such materials are also prohibited.

Examples of non-acceptable content or links:

Pirated software
Hackers programs or archives.
Warez Sites.
Pornography Sites

Ok...so why are hacker archives lumped in with illegal or pornographic material?

Any objection to hosting a white-hat hacker site?

The wording was very deliberate on my part.  Allow me to share some replies:

Dear Sir:

Thank you for asking!

Unfortunately, we cannot authorize service for this subject matter.  We
have had many problems with subject matter amongst previous users.

Thank you for your interest in A+ Net!
 

----------------
Internet Tech Support
tel:// +1 619 458.0490
email:// support@abac.com
fax:// +1 619 450.0567
http://www.abac.com - Your Total Internet Provider
http://www.websolo.com - Cost Efficient Web Hosting Solutions
http://www.fiberia.com - Free Web-Based E-mail
 
Well, at least they were more polite than most.

We do not host any adult, hacking and or warez sites.

--
                                Best Regards,
                                Josh Gratian

SpeedHosting Technical Support Department
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
SpeedHosting - Home of the $10 a month domain
---------------------------------------------------------------------
Take A Look At Our Specials:
http://www.speedhosting.com/deal.html
======================================
Telephone: 1888-243-7713
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
Online support via icq: 1337454

Again, lumped in with a particular crowd.

(from cihost.com)

no hacking sites

Ok, short and to-the-point..

> Any objection to hosting a white-hat hacker site?
>
Don't even know what it is, but if it involves hacking forget it.
 

--
Rob Penk, Web Hosting Administrator          Thread Net Inc.
Providing Low Cost Full Featured Web Space.  Boulder, Colorado
mailto:sales@threadnet.com           http://www.threadnet.com/

One of my favorites.... He doesn't know what it is, but it has the word "hacker" in it...

It's okay,
 but you must sign up for the adult plan at
http://www.dreamhost.com/signup/adult.html

Thanks,
Josh Jones

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Dreamhost Customer Support
"We host your dreams"
http://www.dreamhost.com/signup/
email: support@dreamhost.com
tel/fax: 1-213-947-1032

Finally! A positive response!  Of course.. the adult plan is $99/mo. but, on the plus side, I get to host Warez and Pr0n!!!!11!!!1!!1   Hmm... pass.

It's also important to note that many of these sites will take your money if they decide your site is inappropriate.  This ranges from a re-establishment fee to come back if you get pulled (as if) to charging you a "disconnect fee" and/or keeping any money that you've pre-paid.

Finally, after looking at probably 40 or 50 hosting companies, I run across netnation.com.  Here's their acceptable use policy:
 
                Do you place any restrictions on content?

                No. NETNATION acts as a common carrier and does not inspect, rate, or censor
                our customer's content.

                The Terms & Conditions document must be read and agreed to before your
                account is created. Basically, don't abuse the system and don't break American
                or Canadian law or your account will be immediately terminated.

Sounds clear enough.  Of course, at this point I'm not willing to take anything at face value.  So, I send them the mail.  Here's what I got back:

As it states in our policies, we do not monitor our client's web pages, so
as long as there are no legal concerns then we have no issue with your web
page.

Regards,
 Ross

NetNation Sales Team
sales@netnation.com

                                                                                                                                                                    BB

P.S.  Look for the Firewall-1 and Notes hacks in the not-too-distant future.