Policy Clarification: Personal storage & back-ups…
This is a clarification regarding existing DreamHost policies on the use of services for personal storage/back-up purposes. No service policy has been changed.
Please note that DreamHost services are intended for the purpose of hosting web sites (item #6, Material Products), and files uploaded to your accounts should be provided with the intent of distributing them to others from your hosted sites. With exception of our Files Forever service, we do not support the use of our hosting services for personal file storage or back-up purposes and the use of your hosting account for that purpose is prohibited.
For those concerned about data integrity of site content, we do maintain back-ups of all customer site and email data through our snapshot back-up system. As an added precaution, we also recommend maintaining localized back-ups of any especially important files on your own computer.
If you have any questions about this or any of our other policies, please do not hesitate to contact technical support for further clarification.
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October 17th, 2007 at 1:24 pm
Does this also include the Bandwagon service you promote under the partner offers?
October 17th, 2007 at 1:39 pm
Good question.
October 17th, 2007 at 1:41 pm
This is confusing: once I was instructed by Dreamhost support to use my web hosting account for personal backup, when I asked a question about using files forever for personal backup purposes.
October 17th, 2007 at 1:46 pm
Yeah, I immediately thought about Dreamhost’s promotion with Bandwagon for backing up personal iTunes music files - which are obviously NOT uploaded “with the intent of distributing them to others from your hosted sites”. Why go from encouraging users to use their vast amount of storage with Dreamhost to backup non-distributed files to saying they can’t?
October 17th, 2007 at 1:50 pm
If this is the policy, then the Wiki page about Rsync Backups should be modified to reflect that: http://wiki.dreamhost.com/Rsync_Backup because having instructions on how to back up your personal files onto DreamHost on the official Wiki seems to be condoning (or even supporting) the practice.
October 17th, 2007 at 1:55 pm
I recall speaking with a DreamHost tech support person who told me that he had his substantial iTunes library backed up to his DH account. I wonder if he is going to be forced to delete all those files.
October 17th, 2007 at 2:06 pm
Well, that’s a way to reduce the disk space usage on the filers
October 17th, 2007 at 2:09 pm
Joshua -
We are “grandfathering in” existing users of Bandwagon, but the cross-promotion with Bandwagon will not be extended.
Charlie -
I updated that wiki article. Thanks for the heads-up!
- Jeff @ DreamHost
October 17th, 2007 at 2:13 pm
When were the TOS changed on this? This was not in the TOS originally…
Also, stating that the primary purpose is for a website does not by itself exclude backing up files.
There are some obvious exceptions for backup when the primary purpose is still for a website.
what is the definition of “primary” vs. things put as “secondary” purpose. What if I have a website, and I also put some files for backup regardless? If the website is primary, is that alright? What does primary means here, and where is the border?
“Websites” can be private for personal use. User access and control is something that is perfectly valid on a website. What is the purpose of one of the websites hosted is to backup some data? And what if a website is not freely world-accessible but has control for a limited amount of users? For one user, the DreamHost customer?
And, err, item #6 on the Material Products now also deals with exceeding transfer bandwidth. How is that related, why is it the same item?
Is it that the objection for “Backup” does not mean DreamHost care if their customers backup some files on their hosted disk space, but it is just a concern that customers won’t expect 100% access to files and won’t consider it a reliable backup?
So is backing up files fine as long as we know we may sometime not be able to access the backup, so it’s just good as a conceptual backup and not critical backup?
Or does DreamHost at some point change the TOS meaning to say that customers can’t take advantage of the hosted disk space in order to just back up some non-critical files that will be accessible from the Internet?
October 17th, 2007 at 2:15 pm
This is disappointing. Are there really enough customers doing this to cause a problem? And is that problem worse than the goodwill generated by not enforcing (or getting rid of) this policy?
October 17th, 2007 at 2:15 pm
what if you want to put all your personal documents on a website ? An intranet shared with just some friends for example .. Is someone going to be policing this now ?
A dreamhost personal file robot ?
For me this was a big selling point of all the space on dreamhost..
October 17th, 2007 at 2:20 pm
My question is simple. Why not?
Why cannot I upload what I wish to my paid space?
October 17th, 2007 at 2:26 pm
Jeff, thanks for the clarifications. There is still at least one service that does not seem clear: what about Subversion repositories that are marked private? There is an explicit option for these (and it defaults to private) when installing Subversion via the Panel, and also documentation on the Wiki how to use svn+ssh. Quite obviously these are not meant for public website hosting.
It would be a shame to shut down that svn service. I am also less than thrilled to learn DH is not for personal backups (I guess I glossed over that part in the terms of service). I used it a bit, but will nuke the backups now. But I have been running well under 10% for both disk and bandwidth, so it does feel kinda unfair to not permit this.
October 17th, 2007 at 2:34 pm
Considering the storage capacity of even the smallest account @ DH I’m incredulous that there is a threatening problem with storage or bandwidth capacity. Is the issue bandwidth? That too, on even the smallest/cheapest account @ DH is quite high. Given that most people have upload bandwidth of only 384kb/sec to 512kb/sec (the % of users on a full T-1 is likely small) you can do a little math and the results are staggering. Taking the approximate number of user accounts, multiply that times the avg storage and bandwidth capacity each account promises and then see how long it would take that to fill up at an average upload bandwidth that calculates at some value between 384kb/sec and 1.5mb/sec. Best (generous) guess is that the avg upload rate is at or under 500kb/sec for DH users. We’re talking geological time before even 50% of capacity or 25% of bandwidth limit is reached - IF you use the storage and bandwidth promised to each account. Guess we’ll all just have to interpret this “policy clarification” in whatever context we can wrap our minds around.
October 17th, 2007 at 2:47 pm
Kinda silly I think, if you paid for the space and bandwith, you should be able to use it then, as long as your not doing anything illegal. Web space makes a great portable hard drive, you keep your files online and access them anywhere.
October 17th, 2007 at 2:52 pm
^ I agree with u
I’ve been traveling out of town recently, and sometimes I use my webspace for that purpose
October 17th, 2007 at 2:52 pm
And thus the “dream”, for me, just died. How incredibly lame.
I originally got a Dreamhost account because I was a web developer, both professionally and on the side. The deal was ridiculously good and I need a reliable hosting service for my personal sites as well and client projects. Well, I’ve since switched gears in my day job to .Net desktop programming, and I’m finding I have less and less time for blogging let alone side client projects. So yes I’ve tinkered with the idea of using automated rsync to backup some of my files (like my precious iPhoto library). I thought the gigs upon gigs of space I pay for monthly would be a nice place to store this. Evidently I thought wrong.
Even before that, there was a time or two I stored a document or photo from work for myself, that I only meant for myself to download later from my home computer over http. I really didn’t mean for anyone else to get to the file. How evil of me. I’ll try to hide my identity so the Dreamhost police don’t come after me.
What happens if I put htdigest authentication on a directory and don’t give anyone else the password? What happens if I turn on Webdav for a directory and don’t share the credentials with others? Will my account be closed and my IP reported to the feds?
I’d like to expound further on just how incredibly lame this move is, but I need to start my 2 hour daily commute now.
No more dream’ing for me
October 17th, 2007 at 3:01 pm
Overselling not working all that great for you anymore, DreamHost?
I bet none of the non-overselling hosts would mind their users storing non-public files. Perhaps even the opposite.
October 17th, 2007 at 3:04 pm
Lame, lame.
As Abe points out, the svn service is presumably not always intended to be made public to the world. I use Dreamhost for my hosting needs, which includes hosting development support that is not for public consumption.
October 17th, 2007 at 3:07 pm
This is sad. For some time I’ve meant to ask DH support about the best way to do backups from my PCs. I’ve seen this mentioned at other hosting companies; one even providing the software! So it is perhaps true that the vast space we’re allocated is never meant to be used. I don’t usually complain here, but this seems like going from poor service (the last few months) to less service.
October 17th, 2007 at 3:17 pm
^ (Dave) Do you recall any of those other hosting companies? Obviously many of us are going to be rethinking our choice in hostig providers now, and this is probably as good a place as any to start alternatives.
October 17th, 2007 at 3:19 pm
Wow! Man, I do hope you guys aren’t serious about this! That’s half the reason I got a DH account.
Please clarify! a) is this for real, and b) are you guys going to start enforcing this in some way now?
If so, I’m going to have to find myself another host.
October 17th, 2007 at 3:28 pm
Here is a copy of my bandwidth usage for the year. As you can see, I’m not even coming CLOSE to saturating you guys. And THAT is what you want crack down on?!?!? Unbelievable!!!
Today is day #26 (of 30) of your current billing cycle (ends on 2007-10-21).
Currently Showing:
2007-01-01
to
2007-10-16
Total Bandwidth Provided: 5152 GB ($0.1/GB over)
Total Used So Far: 0.308 GB
Estimated Average Usage: 0.032 GB (at end of billing period)
Estimated Overage Charges: $0.00
This information is only updated once per day!
Note: 1 MB = 1,048,576 Bytes; 1 GB = 1,024 MB.
Bandwidth usage by Plan:
Plan Starting Growth Rate Growth So Far Currently Provided
My Crazy Domain Insane 4096 GB 40 GB/week +1056 GB 5152 GB
Total Account Bandwidth Provided: 4096 GB 40 GB/week +1056 GB 5152 GB
Bandwidth usage per Domain:
Domain BW Throttling Web MB MB/Day Cycle Estimate *Actions
**my.domain** (web) Disabled 11.6925 MB 0.040 MB 1.214 MB detailed report View Report
Total Bandwidth Used by Domains for these 289 days: 11.6925 MB 0.040 MB 1.214 MB
FTP Bandwidth usage per User:
User FTP MB MB/Day Cycle Estimate
**my.user** 303.5335 MB 1.050 MB 31.509 MB
Total Bandwidth Used by Users for these 289 days: 303.5335 MB 1.050 MB 31.509 MB
October 17th, 2007 at 3:33 pm
I’m pretty sure that DH staff has said on the forum before that backing up was fine when called out on it, making them stand out from all the hosts that also offer tons of space… but with the “hosting only” policy to keep people from using their space.
Unfortunately, this change, while not a big deal (since it IS the norm), causes Dreamhost to blend in with the competition, rather than stand out.
My guess would be that this won’t really be enforced except in extreme cases… but who knows.
I barely use any space anyway, so I’m not affected… but I always thought that allowing storage was one of the things that made them look more willing to back up their overselling than the competition.
October 17th, 2007 at 3:33 pm
Eh, I say good change. I use DH to host my websites and I don’t want them slowing down (DH is already slow enough) because someone wants to backup 20GB of pictures tonight, I was actually a little disappointed with the bandwagon announcement. And I think all of you that are trying to throw arguments about private/public items know the difference between an internet and a backup - give me a break.
October 17th, 2007 at 3:33 pm
Hehe, that was awesome. I tell you more, people. What happened to me. I am partly using DH hosting for http purposes and store only static content without ANY scripts, and my files are not so small (20-50 MB).
And support told me, I’m overloading server. With BIG STATIC files!
I don’t even use 200 GB and 1 GB B/W month, yet am “overloading server”.
We resolved this issue for now (looks like the case was apache rewriting rules), but imagine now.
You cannot use your supposedly great storage and b/w numbers for hosting even static files.
Now, you cannot use them for backup also.
What does that mean? Unfortunately, it means all these great Josh’s blog posts about how they are different, are simply not true.
As I do not see alternatives, I’m okay with that, but it is sad anyway. Corporations are evil and lying and we made it this way, because we believe them and work in them.
October 17th, 2007 at 3:38 pm
and by internet, i meant INTRAnet :-/
October 17th, 2007 at 3:55 pm
Did I just get on a sinking ship? Should I cancel my hosting while I still can get my money back? I head great things that made me want to host here, but this and other things make me thing again. I guess I have 90 more days to figure it out.
October 17th, 2007 at 4:03 pm
I wonder if this is related: Last night my backup cron job(*) reported that the drive was full (could not create my site backup, which is
October 17th, 2007 at 4:05 pm
I wonder if this is related: Last night my backup cron job(*) reported that the drive was full (could not create my site backup, which is less than 10MB). Maybe this was caused by someone dumping some huge amount of data onto that system. Tech support apologized that they had not caught the space issue until too late. Later today, this notice was published.
(*) Notice that my backup procedure is to create a tgz of my site contents, which is fetched and removed by a local system via sftp. I’m not a lawyer, so it’s hard to know if this violates their Terms of Service. I’m certainly not abusing the system, and I’ve had no hassles from Dreamhost.
I speculate there was an isolated case of “abuse” (under this clarification of the ToS). It’s necessary to enforce cases of clear abuse, for the stability of the system, but this public notice is troubling.
Dreamhost: More specific guidance would be appreciated.
(PS. A “Preview Comment” button would be nice…)
October 17th, 2007 at 4:08 pm
Simbo -
> Bunch of liars. False advertising. I want ALL my money back.
We’ve never advertised our service as being for remote back-ups of personal files. The only exception to this (to a very limited extent) was Bandwagon, which we are discontinuing and grandfathering people for.
…
Everyone else -
Our main concern, here, is with people doing rsync back-ups of their entire hard-drives, storing copies of DVD rips, their music collection, etc. If your account contains multiple gigabytes of content and you can’t honestly say that it is being used in the operation of an actual web site, this probably impacts you more than anyone else.
Anyhow, we’re not going to run around disabling/contacting people simply because they have a handful of Word documents or whatever, as long as they are primarily using the service to host actual web sites (which is what we advertise it for).
Most of you posting comments are not going to be impacted by this - certainly not those people hosting SVN repositories or whatever (most of those contain web-site/application related content and are pretty small, anyhow).
- Jeff @ DreamHost
October 17th, 2007 at 4:09 pm
Can someone please clarify whether SVN is considered “backup”. Is this service being discontinued?
October 17th, 2007 at 4:10 pm
GAH… bit late posting apparentl
thanks Jeff…good to hear!
October 17th, 2007 at 4:11 pm
Yeah, you guys are reading too much into this. This policy has been in our terms of service for many years, possibly since we first wrote them! We are encountering some of our users that are going well beyond what could be considered reasonable use of their website space without realizing we do have such a policy, so it seemed like it might be a good idea to send out this reminder. I suspect none of you will be impacted or have your service in any way affected.
October 17th, 2007 at 4:11 pm
One of the reasons I’ve not started using Amazon’s S3 service that much is because, for the last several years, Dreamhost has provided enough storage that I could safely backup essential files off-site - a “feature” I’ve become quite dependent on. This update to the TOS really concerns me and may have to look back to S3 as an affordable solution now.
October 17th, 2007 at 4:14 pm
@Dan, I’ve only been here a few months, but here’s my opinion of Dreamhost.
Technical features: Excellent.
Tech support: Excellent.
Service reliability: Spotty
Customer service: No complaints until today
Dan, I asked the same question you are when I joined. Apparently, DH has been getting slowly, steadily worse. Many say DH is good for hobby projects, but not “real” commercial sites. I’m still here because (until today), their technical features are everything I’ve ever dreamed about (at a much cheaper price than any alternative that even comes close). DH really offers something good, as long as they stay true to their tech-nirvana approach.
October 17th, 2007 at 4:17 pm
Is this item new, too?:
“The Customer agrees to hold only one (1) active web hosting service plan at any given time with DreamHost Web Hosting. Signing up for multiple plans is grounds for termination of all plans, including the first one, without warning.”
Years ago DH encouraged customers to purchase more than one service plan, which I did for various clients. Does this mean that my account, which I’ve had for years, could suddenly be canceled by Dreamhost?
October 17th, 2007 at 4:20 pm
I think one of the problems is the phrase “purpose of hosting web sites.” What does that mean? Generally, that means retrieval of information via HTTP. But standard DH features include Jabber, WebDAV (which is a different use of HTTP), RTSP, FTP, SSH, and other protocols. One could argue some if not all those other uses have nothing to do with the “purpose of hosting web sites.” I mean FTP might be used for getting files onto the site, but would I be violating the TOS if I gave someone else FTP access for the transfer of large files? FTP is better than HTTP for this, but am I supposed to stop doing that now? It’s vague.
Then of course there’s the question of private files - are we violating the TOS if we have some password-protected data on our web site? Or hidden directories? Naturally many people do this. Or even a fully password-protected site, intended only for members of a specific organization.
I don’t think of modern hosting companies as WEB hosting companies, but DATA hosting companies. The “web” (meaning a web browser working over HTTP/HTTPS) is just one legitimate way of moving data around the internet.
I hope what they mean to say is along the lines of “DreamHost is intended for the storage and/or dissemination of data to one or more persons over the internet in addition to the account holder.”
I can see where they’re coming from in prohibiting personal file backup, forgetting for a minute how they promoted this as a feature until today.
I could fill my 500GB with DV files really fast, and it would be dandy to have off-site backup too. I have lame uplink speed so that’s not really an option for me, but could be for others. But, I have uploaded multigigabyte files on occasion to get them to other people. I even split the files to be under Apache’s 2GB limit, and they were downloaded via HTTP. So that wasn’t a violation, unless I have to make all my files available to the whole world, in which case DH would lose most of its customers in a heartbeat.
And how will they police this policy? Will they scan my directory and compare with Apache access logs? Will I get an email someday when they see I have a 2K orphaned GIF in my web site’s image directory? Nobody’s ever accessed it, so it must be for personal backup. Shame shame.
I suspect this is a case of a poorly thought reaction to one or two cases of users filling their space for the sake of filling their space. I hope they think this through and revisit this soon. I mean if Apple can announce an iPhone SDK (!!!) DH can get this right.
October 17th, 2007 at 4:24 pm
@Joshua Rudd: You are not in any danger of having your account closed. When that policy was changed any pre-existing account was grandfathered in. We wouldn’t just randomly start closing existing accounts.
October 17th, 2007 at 4:33 pm
> And how will they police this policy?
(snip)
> Will I get an email someday when they see I have a 2K orphaned GIF in my web site’s image
> directory? Nobody’s ever accessed it, so it must be for personal backup. Shame shame.
We’ll police it like people, not like robots.
We know full-well the difference between someone who happens to have a few files that are password protected or otherwise inaccessible versus someone who is using us as a file drop for their DVD collection, music collection, daily back-ups of their home computer’s hard-drive, etc.
Obviously this will require some judgment and discretion on the part of our administrative staff as to what is and isn’t a “blatant” violation of the policy, but we trust that our customers are smart enough to know whether or not they are really using the service for its intended purpose of hosting web sites.
While this policy isn’t new it does seem that a lot of people weren’t aware of it (in part because we have historically been pretty lenient), so we’re not going to be overly obnoxious about enforcement (ie. it’s not like a spam policy or copyright violation where you risk immediate disablement without refund - in most cases we’ll probably just ask that people clean up their home directories).
- Jeff @ DreamHost
October 17th, 2007 at 4:41 pm
simbo -
If you are using the music files as a part of your web site (ie. streaming them from a page using Flash or something), that still counts as being “for the purpose of hosting a web site.” We’re not saying that every single file needs to be directly downloadable via HTTP, just that the files should be in some way related to the hosting of the site. Files located in a non-web-accessible location but used by a script, Flash, whatever are fine.
That said, please also check that you have permission from the copyright holders to distribute those songs, whether streamed or direct download. If not, that may be a much more serious TOS violation (copyright infringement). Please be careful.
- Jeff @ DreamHost
October 17th, 2007 at 4:59 pm
A big reason I signed up for dreamhost is the use of subversion to back up files on my computer. Since you offer subversion, and since the default is (as someone points out) for a private subversion repo, I do hope you’ll grandfather customers who have been using subversion to back things up for a while now. It would be a real pain in the ass to go hunting for another host now that I’ve got everything set up, and taking away my repo would leave me a very unhappy customer.
October 17th, 2007 at 5:00 pm
The only people who this should even impact are those who *are* using the DH servers as personal backup devices.
I think the DH staff members posting here have adequately clarified that things like svn, “dev” sites, tarballs of web applications, etc. - in short, anything reasonably involved with the hosting of a website, and the development of same, won’t be a problem. I think it is a good clarification, that maybe should have been made sooner.
Those actually affected by this were choosing to read the TOS “selectively” in the first place - using DH servers as a filedump of “personal”, “owned”, etc. copyrighted material that a user may, or may not, have a right to “copy” under fair use (and all the argument that entails) is not what shared hosting servers are for in the first place.
This is a complete “non-event” for *any other use* than that - rsync *still* has a valid use for a web developer (keeping a dev environment backed up), and all the “documents” you need for your business can easily be justified being stored “for hosting a website” - just wrap them in a document repository (a web service?), password protect it, and you’re golden. - meh.
It’s only a big deal for those that were pushing the limits of the (currently, seriously screwed up) law anyway, and it’s nothing “new”. This is only a clarification of a policy that has been in the TOS as long as I have hosted here (since 1998).
Rock ON!
October 17th, 2007 at 5:02 pm
Well, this is getting to hair splitting, but that policy is the reason for this. So I was backing up my browser bookmarks, email, some settings files to various programs. I can certainly find a way to describe how each of the things I was backing up was “for the purpose hosting web sites”, because let’s face it, things don’t exist in a vacuum. Like this:
I have bookmarks to my sites, to dreamhost main page, the Panel, various resources on website management etc. Dreamhost contacts me by email when I do changes to the site, I communicate with other people about my websites in email. I also use various chat programs and VOIP clients and use them to communicate about “hosting web sites”. The various pieces of editing software I use to write web pages, manipulate images and movies each have settings files that were backed up, and obviously these programs are being used for the purpose of hosting web sites. I also use calendars to remind me when I need to do work on the websites and these were also backed up.
So, can I get an official clarification if backing up these things to Dreamhost via rsync is ok or not?
PS. I wasn’t actually backing up media files I wasn’t hosting, but I do listen to MP3 files while working on my web sites, so I could justify that even backing up my mp3 collection would be for the purpose of hosting websites. Sometimes I get inspirations for my web sites from movies, so maybe I should be allowed to back those up as well, eh…
October 17th, 2007 at 5:03 pm
simbo -
That’s fine. We’re seriously not going to be worried about a few image files hotlinked from elsewhere. That happens already even when people don’t intend for it to. The main idea is to keep people from using our service as a large-scale back-up service, which (unlike your example) directly impacts our ability to provide the service we advertise at the prices we advertise.
Were we to integrate online back-up service into our offerings, the way in which we deploy our servers/filers - and, by extension, our pricing structure - would have to change considerably.
- Jeff @ DreamHost
October 17th, 2007 at 5:09 pm
@Jeff (et al. Dreamhost staff): Thank you very much for actually following this thread and responding to further clarify the situation, even though this is “not an official way to contact Dreamhost.” Dreamhost customer relations/support are excellent.
Suggestion: Offer a file backup service. It’s obviously a sought-after feature.
October 17th, 2007 at 5:12 pm
Was this aspect of the ToS brought into question somewhere? I’m just wondering because the title says “clarification”, implying (in my mind anyway) that a lot of people were confused about this.
October 17th, 2007 at 5:20 pm
All -
While I’m generally more than happy to clarify this stuff in more detail, a lot of this really comes down to common sense. Those who are going to hear from us about this will almost certainly be hosting gigabytes of material under their accounts, most of which has nothing to do with hosting a web site. Entire music collections DVD rips are a popular example, as are tarballed back-ups of entire hard-drives. I can’t honestly imagine someone trying to justify this as being okay per our policies, though I don’t doubt that some people will try.
Those of you who are worried about edge cases like the ones being mentioned here shouldn’t worry - this isn’t aimed at you. Even in those more egregious cases described above we’ll just be contacting people and asking them to clean their directories up. We won’t be doing systematic and widespread disables without warning, nor will Ted be awoken from his slumber.
If you’re really worried that you might fall into the relatively small group that will be impacted, please contact support. Odds are you’ll be fine.
- Jeff @ DreamHost
October 17th, 2007 at 5:36 pm
Well, my original post got eaten by the spam filter and it won’t let me repost an altered version because it looks like a duplicate, so here’s the executive summary.
If you look on the Internet Archive, Dreamhost changed their Terms of Service sometime since June to add an explicit prohibition against backups. The old TOS did not include this prohibition and a reasonable interpretation of the old ones would be to allow it so long as it was not your “primary” activity. The new TOS removes a bunch of stuff about BitTorrent and IRC and replaces it with an explicit backup prohibition. To claim that there has been no policy change is at best misleading.
October 17th, 2007 at 6:16 pm
I offered to pull it out of CVS, but it looks like the Internet Archive Project does have a copy.
We did add some clarifying language to the clause fairly recently (in anticipation of this announcement), but the original version already specified that the purpose of the service was for hosting web sites:
From May of 2007:
“The customer agrees to make use of DreamHost Web Hosting servers primarily for the purpose of hosting a website, and associated email functions.”
The text added in the current version made it more clear that the above meant that back-ups, etc. specifically are not officially supported. It was a clarification of the policy, not a change.
I suppose one could quibble as to what the meaning of “primary purpose” is, but if we see someone with a 200 MB web site and a half dozen DVD rips clocking in at over 4 GB apiece, that seems like a pretty egregious case to me - and exactly the sort of thing we’re interested in stopping.
Note: The above section of text exists verbatim in the oldest version of the TOS I could find, from December of 2000. The clause number has changed since then, but that’s about it.
- Jeff @ DreamHost