Policy Clarification: Personal storage & back-ups…
Posted (October 17th, 2007 at 1:21 pm PST) by JeffThis 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.
165 Responses to “Policy Clarification: Personal storage & back-ups…”
Good question.
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.
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?
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.
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.
Well, that’s a way to reduce the disk space usage on the filers 
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
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?
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?
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..
My question is simple. Why not?
Why cannot I upload what I wish to my paid space?
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.
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.
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.
^ I agree with u
I’ve been traveling out of town recently, and sometimes I use my webspace for that purpose
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 
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.
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.
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.
^ (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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
and by internet, i meant INTRAnet :-/
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.
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
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…)
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
Can someone please clarify whether SVN is considered “backup”. Is this service being discontinued?
GAH… bit late posting apparentl 
thanks Jeff…good to hear!
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.
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.
@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.
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?
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.
@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.
> 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
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
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.
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!
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…
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
@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.
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.
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
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.
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
@Abe - “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…”
He he he - Yeah .. that’s exactly what I was talking about when I mentioned “selective” reading (interpretation) of the TOS. If you can justify your “working music” and your “inspirational movies” as part of the process of “hosting a website”, you can probably “justify” (at least to yourself) a bunc of other stuff that *could* get you in trouble with a TOS. (grin)
I’ll continue to use the bandwidth, storage and access I paid for to store files that are legally mine. If you would like to disable my account and refund my money, you are welcome to. Either way, I’m out of here come next renewal.
Jeff,
It seems completely ridiculous for you to define “primarily” as “what you use the most storage for.” Just admit that you’re pissed users are actually using the storage provided to them and that you don’t want them to do this anymore. Then we can all move on.
Jeff,
One of my clients has a ded with you which we do use to backup her important files via rsync (yes, primary purpose is still web hosting). Are dedicated servers exempt since all machine bandwidth is counted and we pay for disk space that doesn’t grow to insane levels?
The weenies that are whining probably add a LOT to overall costs anyway, through not only resource abuse, but constantly bothering support with endless nitpicks. Cast them out, force their souls into the swine, then drive them into the ocean of truly shitty hosting where they will be booted left and right!
When you say that uploaded files have to be for the purpose of hosting a website, does it have to be for the purpose of hosting a website on this account, what if it’s not hosted here, i.e. off-site backups from a different - not hosted here - server?
I’m not sure what you guys are all worrying about, 99% of the users posting are clearly not in violation of the terms, just blowing up over nothing. Unless you are storing tons of DVD Rips, etc… you more than likely will never be bothered. I have my own minor linux distribution (the whole point of my website) and host multiple ISOs for this and use over 250 Gigs of bandwidth a month and I have no fears of irrational behavior on Dreamhost’s part.
If you get a letter, then you can start whining, until then its just move on, nothing to see here.
Jeff-
Earlier this year via DH support email I had made in inquiry about suggestions for getting a 30gb encypted disk image of my boot drive uploaded to my DH server. You, or another DH employee named Jeffrey had this to say:
————————
Hello Barry,
I’m sorry man…I have NO idea. Coming from someone who uploaded their
entire 130GB music collection to DH, I can tell you, patience is a
virtue. I’d say find a nice FTP client with file-resume capability, and
hunker down. Let me know if you have any other questions. On the plus
side, you’re not on dialup.
Thanks!
Jeffrey
————————
I find it kind of odd that I got this kind of help from DH seeing as it looks like it violates the TOS.
After a couple of tried I ended up realizing that uploading a 30gb file via cable was not going to happen so I just went with the stack of backup drives to rotate off site.
On a practical note, I have a client whom I’m going to be putting up a web site for that was sold on my proposal that I could create a script for them that would backup their home directory and upload it to the server. In this case we’re only talking about maybe 100mb of files and email folders in a dmg file.
Would this limited backup use be acceptable to DH?
Wow, it’s amazing how dumb people can be when they want to. As Jeff said, it’s common sense, people. If you have six pages, and 21 gigabytes of data, something might be amiss. If you have a few hundred megs of extra data, that’s one thing, but using 400 of your 500 gigs on ISOs or MP3s when your site is about your new dachshund, something’s hinkey.
I think this is about making sure everyone’s clear on the letter of the law so when they enforce the spirit of the law, people can’t claim they had no idea.
And yes, the one account per person rule HAS been around for quite a while. Buying accounts FOR YOUR CUSTOMERS isn’t a violation of that though, because those sites aren’t YOURS, they’re for YOUR CUSTOMER. so really, DH would be moronic to disallow that because it’s more money for you. But once upon a time it was cheaper to buy multiple accounts than it was to upgrade to a more robust plan, so this was put in effect to cover their butts.
Come on people, try to remember that while DH is cool and lax in enforcing the rules and pretty ok with most uses, they’re still a business, not a charity.
Listen to Grey Hodge, folks
All of you blowing up over this are just wrong. This is only for a few extreme cases where people abuse Dreamhost for piracy activity and backing up their entire computer (if you do that, rent a backup server and gtfo of Dreamhost).
This is only for a few extreme cases where people abuse Dreamhost
I’d guess that it’s more than just a few cases, or else they’d probably just deal with them and direct them to the appropriate section of the TOS… rather than make it an announcement on the status site.
The current Dreamhost TOS is both inconsistent with itself and inconsistent with the posts by Dreamhost employees on this blog. The following sentence appears in this blog, but not in the TOS:
“Files uploaded to your accounts should be provided with the intent of distributing them to others from your hosted sites.”
If this is how you interpret the TOS, please be forthright with your customers and place this sentence directly in the TOS. Future customers should not be expected to read the archives of this blog to learn what is allowed and what is prohibited.
The following sentence contains the weasel word ‘primarily’. “The customer agrees to make use of DreamHost Web Hosting servers primarily for the purpose of hosting a website, and associated email functions.” Please explain in the TOS what this sentence means. Does ‘primarily’ refer to BW usage, disk space usage, my time spent using the service, or some other unknown metric? I use email all day, even though it is relatively low on BW and disk usage.
Please reconcile that last questionable sentence with the one immediately preceding it in Material Products sec. 5: “DreamHost Web Hosting will exercise no control whatsoever over the content of the information passing through the network.” That sure sounds like Dreamhost will not censor or remove any specific sequence of bits. I recognize that copyright infringement and pornography must be stopped, so this sentence from the TOS is misleading at best, deceptive at worst.
The current TOS states:
“The customer agrees to make use of DreamHost Web Hosting servers primarily for the purpose of hosting a website, and associated email functions. Data uploaded must be primarily for this purpose.. DreamHost Web Hosting servers are not intended as a data backup or archiving service. DreamHost Web Hosting reserves the right to negotiate additional charges with the Customer and/or the discontinuation of the backups/archives at their discretion.”
However, I am not bound by the current TOS. I have not renewed my service since I signed up as a Dreamhost customer. Both the current TOS and the TOS I am bound to state: “Any changes or modifications to these Terms and Conditions of Contract thereto are agreed to by the both parties upon renewal of services.” Thus I am still bound by the TOS that I agreed to upon entering into this contract. The relevant section from that TOS (thanks to archive.org) merely states:
“The customer agrees to make use of DreamHost Webhosting servers primarily for the purpose of hosting a website, and associated email functions.”
There is no prohibition or even mention of backups.
I have several suggestions for Dreamhost:
First, rewrite your TOS to be consistent and easy to understand.
Second, I assume this revision and supposed ‘clarification’ of the TOS is in response to some customers using much of the disk space allotment which you generously provide to them. Advertising 500GB of disk space, and then regulating what can and cannot be stored in that space (beyond the legal regulations against child pornography), is dishonest. I (and many others) signed up as a Dreamhost customer primarily because of the few regulations on how I use my account. If people who backup their computers, using the disk space they paid for, are putting the squeeze on your file system, then you must learn to adjust. Here is my suggestion to alleviate the problem: Create a high disk space service plan that costs more, and a low disk space service plan that costs less. Backing-up users will pay the extra money for the high disk space. Small websites will opt for the low disk space plan. Low disk space allotments have been the traditional means to stop complete system backups of multiple GB’s. Leave the bandwidth allotments as they are, since the backing-up users won’t need extra bandwidth for their private files. Judging by the number of comments on this blog, there will be many people willing to pay a little extra for unregulated and plentiful disk space. Perhaps you could make the disk space adjustable on the fly, similar to the way Dreamhost Private Servers has a sliding power meter. That would be awesome service and a cutting edge business plan!
As I see it, there are only two possible reasons that this would *need* to be enforced:
* Very large files (such as drive images) would change performance characteristics, and would certainly impact other users.
* Private files might contain mp3s, movies, etc, and it makes it difficult to “automatically” forbid copyright material from being hosted.
Other than this, any problems caused by traffic, bandwidth, or disc usage come down to overselling. It shouldn’t matter how the accounts are being use, so long as they are being used within the prescribed limits. If you don’t want us to use the space, reduce quotas or increase fees.
If this is because of large files, forbid those directly and enforce at will (through quota systems or otherwise).
If this is because of copyright material, users can encrypt the files with private keys first when making backups; problem solved.
If you want us to swallow these changes, please explain them to us.
Seems deceptive to me. Online backup is perhaps the least intensive use of a hosting account actually using the given storage and bandwidth sold. It gets uploaded once, rarely changes, and rarely is downloaded. Mass file transfers place a low load on the server, and no one is going to complain if rsync/ssh are nice’d to hell and gone as long as their backups complete eventually.
This is a move to weasel out of providing the services sold. Too many people were actually using what they were paying for. Charge a fair price, offer reasonable tiers for accounts, and don’t tell people what they can or can’t use their given storage/bandwidth for.
This policy seems reasonable, and appears to be rationally enforced.
I’m surprised to learn that DH is poking around users’ directories and examining files for compliance, though. I hadn’t given this much thought in regard to client data and information we store on our account, but now I’m wondering to what extent this information is protected. Previously I had only been concerned about safeguards against other users.
When I was looking for a hoster about a year ago, I chose dreamhost because they had nothing in the TOS that governs how I can use the webspace. I remember some phrase like: “we dont’ care what you do with the webspace”.
Whats up dreamhost?
I do backup my computers onto my Dreamhost account, specifically because of all of the previous talk on this blog and in the wiki and so on about how it was allowed, and because of the Bandwagon announcement. I’m fine (although a bit annoyed) with removing the parts of the backups which aren’t related to my sites, but like most of the commenters here I just have to wonder what changed.
Also, of the 120GB my backups take up, about half of it are the raw tracks etc. for the music I host on my sites, the master .psd files for my comics, and so on. Those ARE website-related, and very important to me since if I, say, lose all my hard drives due to a catastrophic earthquake (which is a very real possibility for me) then I’ll want to be able to still recover the data that’s necessary to rebuild my site content, for example. I guess I should just contact support, since the Dreamhost responses on this comment thread are still pretty confusing in this regard.
This is very disappointing. If this policy isn’t changed, I will not extend my business with DreamHost, nor will any of my friends. I will also stop promoting DreamHost immediately.
When you advertise 200GB of storage space, you should provide 200GB of storage space. Not “200GB if we graciously acknowledge it is for hosting purposes”, not “200GB if we deem it worthy of living on our servers”. 200GB.
Charge me for bandwidth used, if you wish to, or update the plan with GB/month charges, but don’t keep me hanging in limbo where I don’t know if my files will go away or not based on your whims.
I’m REALLY disappointed at this.
Jeff,
It is NOT a valid solution to just state you won’t enforce TOS violations unless they’re blatant and that you’ll employ judgement and common sense. In effect what you’re saying is that you leave some draconian and ambigous clause in the TOS, fully expect that almost all of your users will then violate the TOS, and just reserve the judgement to decide who to go after…
So sure, I understand that for now you won’t care I backup some small files, or even some large files as not as I’m not RSyncing whole drives. Right now, and in the foreseeable future, I’m well within the bounds of users who will not be affected by how you intend to ENFORCE this policy.
But I’m also, by definition, violating the TOS that states I shouldn’t use the service for backup. I don’t want to work with a service that practically requires me to violate the TOS under some understanding it won’t be enforced. That is not OK.
If the previous phrasing, “primarily for …” was good enough, since judgement of primarily is done by DH, then there’s no need to explicitly say we can’t backup anything. If you do put that in the TOS, your customers cannot afford not to understand that you reserve the right to cite TOS violation for any form of backup. Regardless of your comments here, which are not an ‘official’ part of the TOS and don’t bound DH.
If you’re worried by a specific behaviour, or specific amounts/quotas, then put those in the TOS. Don’t force on us terms stating we cannot do anything related to backups, and leave us hoping we’ll be good because it’s a small violation.
I don’t want to violate your TOS. But I do want reasonable and sane usage of the services I’m paying for. Right now it sounds that we’re in agreement of what ‘reasonable and sane usage’ means here, so don’t force me to break terms in order to do what we all agree I should be able to do!
If you leave these terms, I won’t renew my DH service when the time comes. Not because I’m not happy with the service, but because I cannot and will not in good faith sign an agreement I know I am fully intending to break. Any user who does, and puts any form of backup under the new terms, well, DH- you know you have users who don’t much care what they agree to, by definition.
For the past few weeks, I tried to upload all my profile data to my Dreamhost ssh account. You know, actually using some of those hundreds of gigs you advertise. I’ve been patiently rsync-ing a few hundred megs daily, and got trough a few gigs. Speed-wise, it’s no steekUP, where you get speeds close to whatever your broadband providers give you.
I’m very disappointed. Switching is a bitch, but I guess I don’t have a choice.
I’ll just note that even now clicking on the “Partner Offers” in the control panel shows this:
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v609/mithrastheprophet/dreamhost-backup.png
To follow up, note that the Bandwagon promotion states:
Bandwagon is some nifty mac software (that you have to pay $24/year for) that backs up and syncs your iTunes music library to a central data storage solution. It works great with FTP and your DreamHost account, so they’re doing a special promotion for us where DreamHost customers get a year free!
A “central data storage solution” — which many of us mistook Dreamhost to be!
Furthermore, note that this was software that automates the process of uploading; one could reasonably have assumed that if one, say, wrote one’s OWN software to perform backups, or was handy with rsync and shell scripts, Dreamhost would smile beneficently upon such behavior.
Jeff Says:
> We’ve never advertised our service as being for remote back-ups of personal files.
You never advertised your service as NOT being for remote back-ups either!
You guys advertised generous storage and generous bandwidth for a reasonable price. I became a customer based on those advertised benefits.
I’m not abusing my allotted bandwidth or storage (I’m far below the limits of each) - and even if I was, I would be paying extra for the overage.
Due to my low usage you guys are probably making WAY more money off of me than your hosting customers. In fact, the more people that use DH for backups, the more money you guys make.
So I don’t understand the problem. Why are you doing this?!?!?
First unfriendly message I’ve received from DreamHost…
Sadly, this comes across as “we oversold our space so now we’re restricting your use. If you don’t like it, TOO BAD”.
I hope that’s not how they meant it. Giving the benefit of the doubt, perhaps they meant to say “just to clarify, we do provide backup capabilities, but they’re not good enough to justify keeping your super-sensitive stuff here - we really don’t want you to lose anything (though if you do anyway, that’s certainly ok)” or possibly the still-somewhat-bad “we realize things might get hacked here and if you store sensitive stuff that gets stolen, we don’t want to get sued for it”.
I hope there will be a clarifying post later that explains the unfriendliness here. And I REALLY hope that if it happens it is the truth and not PR crap that we would see from other companies.
Seriously, what part of web hosting is so hard to understand?
Hard drives are cheap, go buy one and an external enclosure, do your PC backups locally and get over it.
Why would I want my hosting rates to go up because people are using the server space for personal or business PC backups? I even back up my sites to my local PC which is also backed up, no need to use my DH space even for that.
For those that treat the space as an intranet give your head a shake. You obviously don’t know the difference between an intranet and the internet.
Listening to DH stored music or watching DH stored movies? Please, you’re being childish in your twisted justifications. Get a thumb drive, mini external hard drive or even use a DVD to store close to 1,000 MP3 files or a movie!
Yes, I’ve had problems with DH too, but on this one I have to say they’re right and should be enforcing this completely. For those that disagree, open up your hard drives to the rest of us so we can store data on them and see how fast you have to keep adding space and drives.
So why does DH supply so much space and bandwidth you ask? Let’s see… unlimited domains and subs and unlimited email accounts might give you the first clue. Those of us with message boards know how quickly that space and bandwidth can be eaten up too, legitimately! I’ll let you figure out the rest.
What is the definition of personal files here? I have svn set up on my account that is used to deploy most of my sites. There are repositories in there that aren’t currently deployed, are those personal or within the “intended as webseit” guidelines?
Greg, it’s pretty simple. You think, “hey, I really need to back all of this stuff up somewhere off-site”, and then you think, “hey, I’ve got that DreamHost account with a squillion gigabytes of space”. The issue is that they were told they had a bajillion squeejibytes of available storage and had the temerity to try and actually use it.
Never got around to it, personally, but now I’m fighting the temptation to upload an encrypted disk image split into a million tiny files and steganographically hidden in lolcat images. All of which will be publicly available, of course.
One other thing that extends my question above. I run a multi-stage deployment on most of my sites, even personal ones as a good habit is hard to break. So I have domains and directories in my home that are purely personal in that I use them as a QA - environment before deploying to the live site. Are these types of directories a problem?
# Greg Says:
> Seriously, what part of web hosting is so hard to understand?
Umm … the part where they tell me to stop doing what I’m doing when it makes them MORE money than their core business!
>Hard drives are cheap, go buy one and an external enclosure, do your PC backups locally and get over it.
Hmmm …. looks like there’s a large part of data backup that’s hard for you to understand.
I do back up to a local disk. However, I also backup offsite. Can you say “fire”, “flood”, “earthquake”, “hurricane”, etc.? Man, glad you’re not my sysadmin!
> Why would I want my hosting rates to go up because people are using the server space for personal or business PC backups?
Umm … actually your hosting rates don’t go up at all. I use less bandwidth than you, use less customer support time (I’ve contacted DH cust. support maybe 3 times in the 2 years I’ve been using it), and yet pay the same price as you. Sounds to me like *I’m* subsidizing *your* cheap hosting.
Hosting rates is not why they’re doing this, from what I can gather reading between the lines of their comments. Sounds like what they’re really concerned about is their potential liability from people backing up (illegally downloaded) music and such. It’s impossible to know for sure, though BECAUSE THEY’RE NOT SAYING WHAT THEIR ISSUE IS WITH THIS!
> Yes, I’ve had problems with DH too, but on this one I have to say they’re right and should be enforcing this completely. For those that disagree, open up your hard drives to the rest of us so we can store data on them and see how fast you have to keep adding space and drives.
Dude - get a clue! I am PAYING for the space. They are allotting me a generous amount of space, of which I’m not even using a small fraction. I am not abusing space. And if I was, they’d make me pay extra. Sheesh - get a clue!
> So why does DH supply so much space and bandwidth you ask? Let’s see… unlimited domains and subs and unlimited email accounts might give you the first clue. Those of us with message boards know how quickly that space and bandwidth can be eaten up too, legitimately! I’ll let you figure out the rest.
K. And you using your space for your storage needs (message board data) is different than me using it for my storage needs … how, exactly? Storage is storage. The disk doesn’t care what’s sitting on it.
Jeff,
I guess this isn’t really open for discussion, and if you don’t want me to backup my files here (even though you’re earning FAR more money off of me than your hosting customers) then I’ll have to find a different service. However, as I see it, you guys have essentially changed your minds on what constitutes acceptable use on DH.
I’ve prepaid for a year of service. Given that you’re forcing me to cancel because you’ve changed your rules in the middle of that year, I think that you should be willing to refund my money for the remaining portion of the year. I assume you guys are willing to do this, yes?
I think Jim Lipsey is asking a very good question in a previous comment and I would very much like to know the answer. The various answers that we are getting from the Dreamhost people on this thread all clearly imply that Dreamhost admins feel entitled to snoop around all our files and examine exactly what we are storing. For example, to assert that someone stores an archive of an entire hard drive, you need to not just notice a very large archive file but also to uncompress it and look at the content. Can we have more clarity about how many people at Dreamhost look at user files and exactly what rules they impose on themselves (if any) about what is appropriate administrative oversight and what is snooping on user content? Or should we assume that all our Dreamhost-hosted content is fair game for being projected on the large screen at Dreamhost company parties?
(reposting w/o the URL to Jim’s original comment since that seems to flag this post as spam)
I specifically signed up with DH less than a week ago a) for a good central mail repository and b) for personal/professional backups. I did not fully read the ToS. My bad. I was (and still am) relying on the 90-day escape clause to sort out such details as these. I have a couple of questions:
a) (a curiosity) why does it matter what the use of bandwidth/disk is “for”? Everybody keeps saying “DH is _for_ web hosting”. If I use the same number of bytes on disk, bytes on wire, and cpu cycles as a straight-up web-hoster, why do you care what i’m using them for? Is it as others have suggested, that you oversell the disk/bandwidth and use your TOS to statistically ensure that people don’t use them?
b) I expect to use FAR less than my 500+ GB storage and 1+ TB bandwidth for backups. (I’m guessing less by a factor of 10 or more). It will not be copyright-infringing (no .mp3, .avi, or DVD images) You’re going to enforce your prohibition on that? I’m asking you to tell me now so I can get out before my 90 days are up if we can’t find a reasonable solution. No hard feelings. I’m not pissed off (a little grumpy perhaps). I like the services and would prefer to stay. You’re humans? Good, me too. Lets figure something out. I’m happy to move the discussion to support emails if you prefer.
Note to the hecklers: do not be so presumptuous as to think that the way you do things works well for everyone. Port 80 isn’t the only port that matters. If an external hard drive works for you, then great, but I travel with a laptop A LOT and want a network-based off-site backup solution (theft concerns). Sure, I could use other services, but the advertised storage and bandwidth are more than enough for me and it honestly didn’t occur to me that anyone would care what port the data comes out on. As far as I can tell, you (the hecklers) are motivated simply by the desire to reduce the resources others use so there’s more for you. Masquerading such motives as technical or ethical is not persuasive.
I think the above post from Michael makes excellent points, particularly in reference to the “hecklers” decrying that any other use of the Intarweb save from websites is not welcome here.
In reality, this probably does come down pretty much to the fact that Dreamhost way oversells and now it has the potential to come back and bite them since rsync backups are getting more popular. Nevermind the fact that, as mentioned above, backups done this way really *aren’t* eating much into the technical costs. Rsync backups are incremental so after the initial upload we’re talking maybe a few hundred megabytes a month for a lot of people — WAY under the advertised bandwidth allotment.
It’s sad, really. On the one hand, Dreamhost has this “yo, we’re the bro next door” attitude. But then blog posts like this show it’s really business as usual. Reality catches up with their blatant over-selling tactics, and now their business plan is at risk. It makes you sound no different than my local insurance agent.
Jeff, if you’re really only concerned about people storing gigabytes of MP3s, etc, then why don’t you change the policy to something like “no more than 1% of your total available storage may be used for personal backup”. I think that would be a good compromise.
Maybe I’m being obtuse here, but I just want to make sure. I have set up multiple ftp accounts with no web sites for exchange of files with my clients. These are generally image files or Quicktime files for proofing and discussion with clients. Am I violating the TOS with this use am I since it’s not specifically web serving? FWIW, I’m nowhere near even 50 percent into my storage and bandwidth limits.
Oh no! I will have 175 websites to move away from this sinking ship……………
Hmm, after some more thoughts, I’ve seriously started to consider moving elsewhere. I don’t actually want to, I’ve been happy with Dreamhost so far. But some of the main reasons I chose Dreamhost (besides all my friends raving about it) was that it seemed like a no-hassles hosting with everything I would want, with shell access and everything. Many other hosting solutions I looked at were purely for primitive web sites hosting with no shell access etc. Want to do a site? Sure, build it on your home system and upload the files with http://FTP. Ugh.
Ideally this could be resolved to something like this (already mentioned by many others before):
* DH should not care what I use the service for, as long as I am paying for the storage and bandwith.
* If there are technical limitations, like very large file sizes, or max upload bandwith, or bandwidth within a time period, spell them out in the TOS. Maybe you can set up your systems to automatically delete files too large etc. as well. If it was spelled in the TOS, I’d be fine with this.
Hosting child porn, or any content you don’t have the rights for, is clearly illegal. Nothing new here. Business as usual. But backing up your hard drive with legitimate content is not illegal.
And like others, I also do local backups. But remote backups have valid reasons as well.
As for people being concerned about DH employees or other people snooping your data, there are solutions that encrypt everything.
I still have a few months left before time for renewal comes. Hopefull this will be solved to everyone’s satisfaction by then. Like yaron and others above says, I cannot strictly agree to the TOS anymore because it is too vague, regardless of how it is enforced (or not), as this thread has shown. I want to be able to do the right thing.
Seriously, Jeff, this blows.
Even my local telephone company(!!) offers unlimited backups for a few bucks a month. And it comes with backup and restore software that does encryption etc.
Online backup is arguably the easiest service to offer. I mean, my phone company can do it! There are online backup software vendors that just ship you instructions on how to setup your servers, and you’re in business..
I’ve not used dreamhost for backups, specifically because I’m too worried about dreamhost getting all pissy about some MP3 - since that was in the TOS as well. Even so, apparently some people *are* using it in this way, and are now getting KHITBASHed for it. I thought overselling was a great thing to get more customers? What gives?
How about you tell us what we can do with the space we pay for when your service allows our websites to be up for more than 24 hours in a row without going down, only to not get any answers from you as to why.
I need better clarification. I have a Creative Writing website and some of the works archived there - have to be kept private - and backed up. Do I now have to worry about my own and my members losing their work that they have invested so much time and effort into???
I barely use 30% of my overall bandwidth and less than 50% of my hard disk space. Are you saying I can’t even use it now??
Please please please clarify - let me know now if I need to start looking into other other options before I make the mistake of feeling safe and then losing all our data!
Please be more specific - what EXACTLY can we use these accounts for then?
Now I’m concerned about my two accounts. I opened a second account for my Ecomm company just so I WOULDN’T strain my original account. How do I know if I’m one of the “grandfathered” accounts?
And, guys, I normally love you, but you really opened this can of worms yourself by partnering up with Bandwagon. It was like an invitation for everyone to backup files.
It all boils down to enforcement. This rule can’t be enforced. People will do it anyway.
Who has a website that contains 1TB of data for their website? CNN? Reuters? Why not actually advertise the “real” amount of web space we have instead of grossly inflated numbers? I feel bad for referring others here.
I have to wholeheartedly agree with both Michael and WRB, Thank you both for providing insightful commentary here that isn’t just flamebait.
This is really a large disappointment for me, personally. I am a new joiner to dreamhost (2 months ago!) and, like most people, I signed up with dreamhost for the cost-effective hosting, a *great* community (seriously the wiki is just fantastic), and VERY generous storage/bandwith space, or so I thought…
At best this reeks of false advertising, at the worst, it’s exposing a failed business model. Dreamhost has revealed the worst of overselling. They make outrageous offers of space and bandwith to their customers, but cannot back them up. What they are selling are lies! I’m sorry but when you start telling customers what they can and cannot store on the space they are rightfully paying for, your going to end the day with a lot of unhappy people. The fundamental problem here is who makes the call on what data is okay and what is not. What if my website’s sole purpose is to provide full/authenticated access for myself to my entire music library. If I stay within my agreed limits of space/bandwith, am I wrong to do this? Where is the line drawn between what is right & what is wrong? Who makes those decisions?
Honestly, you are going down a slippery slope here. There is nothing wrong with using the space that we, as happy customers, are paying for. We are not breaking the law by choosing to use the space provided in our contract for backups. The problem here is that you’ve made a promise that you cannot keep, and now must make consessions.
If we can’t use the space that we signed up for in the manner we choose, then please, DO NOT ADVERTISE IT! Burying a one line sentence in the TOS that nobody reads does not cut it here! I would be happy with lower space quota’s w/o the restrictions you are starting to enforce. Please be honest in your contract with your customers.
Thank you for taking the time to read this,
–Dennis
There are only two reasons for this policy to exist from DH’s perspective:
1) To *help* protect DH from copyright lawsuits - If this is the reason, then you don’t need the policy… You simply say, if you upload any copyright material to our machines that isn’t your copyright, we reserve the right to remove it from our system
2) To try to reduce the number of large files on your system.
If it’s #2, I am seriously scared. Our primary purpose is to server very large videos to a group of people. If you were having ‘overselling’ issues with people who were using your service for backups, how long until you have problems with the people running youtube like sites?
Combine this with the continued downtime that you guys have been having, I would strongly recommend doing the following before a group of your customers figures out they have a class action lawsuit worth going after:
1) Remove this clause from your TOS — If a file get’s served once, that is web hosting… Even if it’s just someone downloading their backup. There is no black and white to it, and because of that, any court will error on the side of the consumer.
2) IF your having trouble with overselling - Stop doing it… Your large enough now that there is probably a bigger marketing impact by people who are happy with your service (and tell others) than there is by your storage size… Heck, if you could solve your problems and deliver 1TB without all this crap, it wouldn’t be long until you lost your status a sicking ship.
3) Start doing things for your consumer, not against them: It goes alot further than finding ways to cut costs. This policy does not sound like it’s in their best interest at all… In fact, it sounds solely like your getting ready to start cutting services 1 by 1 because of lack of resources.
“Sounds like what they’re really concerned about is their potential liability from people backing up (illegally downloaded) music and such. It’s impossible to know for sure, though”
Their concern with copyrighted material should only extend to enabling dissemination of it. Oddly enough, this new policy encourages distribution of more files in an account. Beyond that, Safe Harbor laws should exempt them from being targeted for copyright violations. By assuming any responsibility (beyond that of illegal material like child pornography), they actually open themselves up to greater vulnerability, by weakening their Safe Harbor protections.
My guess is this is more related to hard drive quantities and capacities. Drives are cheap, but they consume more power and produce more heat than almost any part of a system, and are more prone to failure.
The good news is that my server never actually stays operational long enough for me to use it as a backup!
@Jeff,
It seems like the underlying cause for the general outcry here is reasonably simple - whether or not they’re using the resources, many customers signed up because the features, space and bandwidth offered are enticing. Even though I don’t use my hosting account for backups, it’s disheartening to be told that I can’t leverage the resources I’m paying for.
If the purpose of these accounts is to host typical websites for typical shared host users, there’s absolutely no reason to provide 500GB of disk space and 1TB of monthly bandwidth. The overwhelming, 99%+ majority of users do not host websites that require dozens of GB, much less hundreds. If you don’t want people actually using the space, don’t offer it. To use it as a selling point and then restrict usage to a degree that makes it nearly impossible for us to take advantage is disingenuous, at best. Personally, I’d be fine with a whole lot less space, as opposed to feeling like I got suckered by a big number that I can’t realistically use.
Perhaps this is a discussion better initiated in a blog entry, rather than a status message? Maybe then a broader group of the customer base could get a better understanding of how exactly we’re expected to leverage the disk space that we’re told we have.
Correction: 5TB of monthly bandwidth
David sums it up really well. Lower the disk space and bandwidth to something you can manage and let us do what we want with it.
On 14 March 2007, Karl of DreamHost specifically told me:
“As long as you have a legal right to possess the material (such as you purchased the original media and this is a backup copy; rather than downloading the material off the internet) it is fine to store these backups in a private area of your web hosting account (non-web accessible) for your own retrieval.”
That is in direct opposition to the claims made in this blog post.
I’m using less than 10% of my allotted storage space. Surely, that can’t be considered abusing the system. DreamHost, if you tell me to keep my backups elsewhere, I will take my business elsewhere as well.
I use DreamHost because of the feature set, not because of the ridiculous disk and bandwidth “allocations.” I’ll be sad if I’m forced to leave.
Hmmm, this is a bit concerning. If the servers are not able to handle the bandwidth/storage for my account regardless of purpose then there is a problem.
I think this is a serious admission of overselling. If you offer me xGB of storage with xGB of transfer, then your servers should be able to handle this, *regardless* of what it is being used for.
I just paid for another year is advance, was almost going to pay a few years at once, but I might start fishing around for a replacement.
As some[one]people have already pointed out… for DH customers of at least two years the explicit citation in the post is in fact NEW language. Thank goodness for the Internet Archive. I don’t care to add to the speculation about DH’s motives here, announcing this *change* here(ahem, some have the balls to pass it off as a clarification) communicates a certain meekness that I choose not to tweak at the moment. However, I will have to load my servers a bit as I take a finer grained hedge against DH volatility(aka more frequent backups of all DH data).
This was a disappoint to see. As soon as Bandwagon became a partner, I thought: “Cool! I can back up my iTunes library (20 gigs or so) someplace safe via rsync. Oh, and my photo library (20 gigs), too.
When I first signed up, I switched over because I was maxing out my old host in terms of disk space and bandwidth at a similar cost. Then DreamHost kept upping my space and bandwidth to unimaginable levels. Really, who uses 500 GB if site space? Maybe that .1% of the users they say need to be on private servers.
With all I’d hoped to back up, it was less than 10% of my allocated space, and it puts no load on the server. I can see DH’s side in that they’re a web host, but with this crazy amount of disk space, why not add an online backup service feature? I could never fill up 500 gigs, let alone upload that amount of data, without making it a full time job for me to do so.
Now those who scream about DH overselling their capacity have some documented ammo that implies that DH is unwilling to provide the resources (disk space) specified in their hosting plans. I hope DH can offer some sort of middle ground on this issue.
I honestly believe that a large portion of the people complaining here don’t even have backups on the servers.
People whine just to be heard. DH brings up a topic and people hop on that “what about me” wagon for no good reason.
Keep bitching and I wouldn’t blame DH if they slashed allocated space to 150MB per account.
Heh… if they pushed it down to 150mb, I’d definitely have to switch. That’s nothing these days.
Food for thought.
1 AND 1 TOS:
1&1 shall provide to you a non-transferable, revocable, non-sublicensable, non-exclusive and limited license to use the amount of Web Site Space allocated to Your Services for your non-exclusive use for the exclusive purpose of storing Your Web Site data and disseminating said data via the Internet through the use of 1&1’s Equipment for purposes consistent with this Agreement.
MediaTemple AUP:
Customer is not permitted to knowingly allow another website or hosting server to link to content files stored on Provider’s servers. Customer may not use hosting account as a remote storage server only. 75% of customer’s content files stored on Provider’s server must have associated HTML, or PHP files inside the account linking to the content stored on that account.
(Additionally, MediaTemple explicitly disallows pornographic, sexually explicit, or violent content.)
LunarPages AUP:
You understand and agree that shared server space is for business and personal website operations purposes only and not for unrelated data storage.
GoDaddy Hosting TOS:
[...] You shall not use the Services as a repository or instrument for placing or storing archived files and/or material that can be downloaded through other web sites.
^ I’m just curious how often “1 AND 1″, MediaTemple, and LunarPages have outright contradicted their own TOS by recommending customers to use their account for personal backup, in some cases including instructions on using rsync. How often have they partnered with a service like Bandwagon that contradicts their TOS? How often have they led their customers on only to turn a complete 180 in “clarification”?
@Anonymous
Yep, I was familiar with other Service Provider’s TOS language around this issue when I signed up with Dreamhost. At the time #6 clause was unrelated and the #7 clause could be fairly interpreted to allow archive/backup use. Now it seems their TOS has been rewritten and is more in line with their competitors/mates.
So, yes, this appears to be common practice. I’d greatly appreciate names of SPs that don’t carry this restriction and allow SSH/SFTP access. My research will begin in earnest this weekend.
I just farted.
Even after this, I doubt you’ll find anyone as lenient as Dreamhost in this area.
Want storage? Go with a backup service? Want hosting AND storage? Get a dedicated server and do whatever you want with the disk space.
Who farted?
Simple fix, Dreamhost…stop over selling your product. I would agree that to sell a product like this - 5TB of monthly bandwidth and 500GB of storage is a considerable amount of space. And you probably don’t have enough to go around - but that’s okay, because most people won’t use it all.
But now someone got their feelings hurt and raised a ruckus. Now you post a more locked down TOS and threaten users that you’ll whack their accounts if they’re using their space. So let’s revisit this argument…
If you can name three websites that are using > 200GB of storage space AND not breaking a single TOS, I’ll shut up and pay for another year of your service. And storing 200GB of email doesn’t count - that’s also against the TOS as a personal backup.
You got my email address, and you got my challenge…
If that doesn’t work for you - then give users the option of not getting their files backed up so often. Like a personal storage area that is restricted to a realistic size (10-20GB?) and is only backed up daily with two versions.
What does rsync have do do with it? You guys are as bad as those that argue there is no use for P2P technology other than copyright violation.
Rsync is “how you do it”, and is distinct and separate from “what you do”. You can rsync stuff without being in violation of the TOS. Unless, of course, you are really stupid.
All hosts oversell, idiot. Hosts with small plans don’t want you using their servers for storage either.
@Bspiral
Why do ask for three websites? I’m sure there are a number of people hosting many sites on a single account and using a fair chunk of the drive space. Which by the way is the way it’s supposed to be done.
I have three on my account and will be adding more over the next year. With unlimited domains and emaill addresses why wouldn’t I make use of the space for what it was intended to be used for?
It’s easy to think all the complainers are crazy, when you yourself only use your account to host websites, and nothing else. But that doesn’t mean it’s still a little short-sighted.
I will admit, signing up for Dreamhost with only the explicit intention of backing up your hard drive seems out of place, because there are better options for just that sort of thing (Amazon S3 for example).
But if you already have an account, your looking at that drive space number thinking wow, I have that much free space left? Really? Gosh I’ve taken a lot of digital photography lately, I’d hate it if a fire or storm happened and took out my laptop, along with my file server and it’s 3 disk RAID-5 array, and the external backup drive I keep in a separate room. I think I’ll just make a 4GB zip of my photos and throw them up on DH for good measure.
DH saying no, is NO different than your local ISP saying “Hey, your service is *intended* for web browsing only. You’ve used too much data this month (nevermind we said it’s unlimited), watching too much YouTube and downloading too many free, open-source Linux distribution dvd images. Stop doing that now, please. Go back to just reading CNN.com, m’kay?”
Background: I’ve been with Dreamhost for 8 years, and have recommended them to loads of people. My website hosting is (as far as I’m aware) very minimal by any standards. Very little bandwidth, very little storage.
I’ve managed to amass 260GB of storage space, so when I was recently reading about how people were using their spare space to store files using rsync backup, I wrote a few scripts to do similar but using duplicity to encrypt the files. I store less than 2GB - just emails and personal documents - nothing copyright or dodgy. All backups are done as diffs so I’m probably backing up no more than a couple of MB per week.
I don’t believe Dreamhost are under any obligations to let me continue doing this, so I can’t complain if they ask me to stop. But, I hope the clarification/change is just to enable them to ask people to remove files if it becomes a problem (200GB of music or DVD rips), rather than as an excuse to clamp down any any minor infraction. It sounds from their comments as though they’ll use some common sense and discretion.
If they ask me to remove my files, I’ll do so, and move my backups to S3 or Mozy or somewhere. I’ll still probably continue with DH for hosting and domains as I’ve never had any problems with them before. But it’d definitely leave a sour taste in my mouth.
Ok, here I am. I am personally annoyed at the ridiculous overselling “hype” that is then followed by a “but don’t use it!” clause. If they don’t want us to use a TB of bandwidth and 500G of disk space, then don’t keep advertising it!
I agree, it is like an ISP saying you can only use your connection for certain things. (Actually, cell phone data plans have such restrictions and many satellite internet plans have them too. My father-in-law is on a satellite connection, and every month, about half way through, they throttle him down to nearly dial-up speeds due to use “excessive use.” What a rip, but it is all he can get.)
Most of us just see services. If you give me a pipe, let me do what I want with it (legally). If you give me disk space and bandwidth, let me do what I want with it.
I understand DH’s point, but, honestly, they really can’t keep hyping 500G of space and then slap our hands for using it.
Finally, it keeps being pointed out that the complainers don’t actually do what is forbidden.
I use about 3G of space for my web sites.
I use about 100G of space for backups.
There it is. I do it. I was encouraged to do it, first by the HUGE disk space allotments, and second, by receiving information on how to do it from what seemed to be DH official channels.
I’m kind of not sure what to do now. No one from DH has contacted me, so should I:
A. Just keep doing it.
B. Stop backup up daily, but leave my current backup there.
C. Stop backing up daily and delete all backup content.
Right now I am doing B, while considering whether to go on to A or C.
Every time I start to delete my backups, my stomach knots up and I think, “Hey, they said I have 500G of disk space, why shouldn’t I use some of it?”
As for those of you “in between,” I really wouldn’t think about it. I fully intend to continue running private FTP sites where I share files with only friends and family (NON-copyrighted stuff, just personal). That won’t amount to over 5G though, and it is stuff I actually “share.”
I think I am obviously who they are aiming at, with 100G of backup data on their server.
I just hate to nuke it, because knowing DH, they will either totally ignore me, even though they said they wouldn’t, or in two weeks they will announce a policy change and totally allow PC backups to the given space. I hate to start paying a monthly fee for an actual on-line backup service, if I can keep using what I am already paying for at DH.
Anyone from DH care to comment on this?
It’s easy to think all the complainers are crazy, when you yourself only use your account to host websites, and nothing else. But that doesn’t mean it’s still a little short-sighted.
Does this also include the Bandwagon service you promote under the partner offers?