Verio Terminates Cryptome’s Web Hosting Service
April 29th, 2007NOTE: Cryptome’s hosting service is being terminated, not Cryptogon’s. Several readers are emailing me about this. READ CAREFULLY. While this could happen to me at any time, it hasn’t happened yet.
Via: Cryptome:
Dear Mr. Young,
This letter is to notify you that we are terminating your service for violation of our Acceptable Use Policy, effective Friday May 4, 2007. We are providing you with two week notice to locate another service provider.
Sincerely,
VERIO INC.
an NTT Communications Company
[Signed]
Danna Thompson
Legal Department
Verio Inc.
8005 S. Chester Street
Suite 200
Englewood, CO 80112
www.verio.com
Cryptome note:
This notice of termination is surprising for Verio has been consistently supportive of freedom of information against those who wish to suppress it. Since 1999 Cryptome has received a number of e-mailed notices from Verio’s legal department in response to complaints from a variety of parties, ranging from British intelligence to alleged copyright holders to persons angry that their vices have been exposed (see below). In every case Verio has heretofore accepted Cryptome’s explanation for publishing material, and in some cases removal of the material, and service has continued.
In this latest instance there was no notice received from Verio describing the violation of acceptable use to justify termination of service prior to receipt of the certified letter, thus no opportunity to understand or respond to the basis for termination.
It may be wondered if Verio was threatened by an undisclosable means, say by an National Security Letter or by a confidential legal document or by a novel attack not yet aired.
as i type this, cryptome does not load 🙁
post your new site then…i read your blog almost daily and enjoy it bunches.
sorry to hear that kevin. good luck in the long term.
This is a real shame. As an intelligence source cryptome.org was a real asset to the online research community.
maybe about time to clearify that cryptogon.com we are looking at is not cryptome.org which is being shut down 🙂
Wow, at least the RSS feed still works, well sorta.
I loved Cryptome, especially the eyeball series. But I’m honestly not surprised this didn’t happen sooner with all the stuff John was posting towards the end.
A sad day for armchair spooks everywhere…
I worked at an ISP in the late 90s and people would call us to complain about a (widely known at the time) skinhead site. We would patiently tell them that in the US people have freedom of speech and that under no circumstances would we take down any site without specific legal injunction.
I noticed a few years later that the guy running the site had gone to federal prison. What a difference a few years can make.
Well, it’s obvious that whoever owns the means of media production or communication becomes the choke-point to be targeted. Since it makes little to sense to go after individuals, especially because of the First Amendment implications, authorities go after people who own ISPs and lean on them. They do the same thing with the mainstream media. It used to be that people would stand up to bullying, but, let’s face it, the media culture is predominated by weaklings and cowards who only care about preserving their own skin for the short-term. We’ve all seen this before. It’s one thing to work “with” people, it’s another thing to cave in like a little bitch at every prompting of an authority figure.
Rather than try to shut down cryptome, they could have tried to reason with Young about certain things. They could have tried to establish a relationship. But no. That would require common sense and respect for human dignity. Much better to go after him indirectly by leaning on his ISP. No matter. Young could probably by an ISP if he wanted to. Or he could hire engineers to build some.
Which leads me to my next point. Rather than be dependent on THEIR technology, why not just make your own? Why pay for an ISP service when you could just be the ISP. Who cares about the money. Do it as a public service.
Seriously, there are more than enough ISPs out there, globally. If one messes up, go to another. Or, perhaps Young could put pressure on the ISP. I mean, people should ban together to preserve free speech on the Internet.
Preaching to the choir.
I wonder if this has to do anything with the TEMPEST run-up the Cryptome was running at their site? Anyways why not to use non-US sites, like move whole thing to Sweden – like they have the piratebay there.
I wish I would have own hosting service so that I could offer services for Mr Young.
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