DAC Outage

Odin

Odin

Carbon Dated and Proud
Admin
DAC is down at the moment, Dark Underlord explains a little in this forum thread, here's a summary:<blockquote>They were kicked for having the fallout patches in the server, wich was in violation of...something. They`ll get back.</blockquote>Apparently they are moving to sorcerors.net again, so it will probably be up in a day or two.
 
Yup, having the Fallout patches available for download is an infringement of Interplay's (you know, that dead company) copyright which erked JJTek. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy Movie Trailer was also a big no-no.

Realistically that's true, as Interplay own Fallout and Disney (I think) own HHGTG but can you imagine anyone sueing over it? How many web-sites are we talking here?

There were some other issues though. Database problems, intermittent slowdowns we had for a while there. Basically enough that if they want to be stupid about it, stuff 'em and they can bear the full force of bad internet publicity.
 
DarkUnderlord said:
There were some other issues though. Database problems, intermittent slowdowns we had for a while there. Basically enough that if they want to be stupid about it, stuff 'em and they can bear the full force of bad internet publicity.
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I agree - ever since dac moved over there, there were nothing but troubles & slowdowns. That and their 'unlimited bandwidth, but not too much or we'll lock ya down', makes me not consider their services when looking for reliable hosting.

But I do am a bit curious about the amount of bandwidth dac uses. Anyone can shed some light ?
 
Further to your telephone call today, I am afraid we have now been advised that we would be breaking the law by allowing you to download the numerous copyrighted files you have placed on our server. This includes downloads using ftp. The files are not in one folder, but are in many different locations spread around within your site's root folder. We therefore have no alternative but to delete the whole site from our servers. We can leave your database on the server and allow you access to back it up once we have deleted the other files.
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Anyone here a lawyer? What these guys are doing is just wrong, and probably illegal.
 
King of Creation said:
Anyone here a lawyer? What these guys are doing is just wrong, and probably illegal.
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You guys do know that hosting those patches don't violate any laws, but the other files I cannot say (ie the quicktime movies and such)
 
Yeah...we know perfectly well about the patches and we've tried telling the host that - to no avail. As for the movie trailer, I don't see why it would be illegal at all, since it's just a movie preview that the companies put out to promote their films. It's basically free advertising for the film companies. I don't know why the wouldn't want it to be available for download at as many place as possible. JJTek is just being run by a bunch of incompetent morons I guess.
 
I'd seriously review the agreement provided when you sign up, and see if spells out what they do in regards to copyrighted material.

I would have though they would provide a warning, listing the offending material, then give you the right to delete it.

If they state that it's spread through out the site, then the know where it easy, and can delete it themselves, giving you the ability to retrieve what you need.

You guys have back ups somewhere local, I'm assuming?
 
Yeah..we've got backups. This is just such a pain. And it had to happen the one week where my university turned my bandwidth limiting on.

As for the JJTek user agreement: http://www.jjtek-hosting.com/terms/jjtekterms.php

I guess the section most pertinent to this disucssion is this:
8 ACCEPTABLE USE POLICY

8.1 The Website and use of the Services may be used for lawful purposes only and the Customer may not submit, publish or display any content that breaches any law, statute or regulation. In particular the Customer agrees not to:

8.1.1 use the Services or the Website in any way to send unsolicited commercial email or "spam", or any similar abuse of the Services;

8.1.2 send email or any type of electronic message with the intention or result of affecting the performance of any computer facilities;

8.1.3 publish, post, distribute or disseminate defamatory, obscene, indecent or other unlawful material or information, or any material or information which infringes any intellectual property rights (for the avoidance of doubt this includes licensed software distributed as Warez), via the Services or on the Website;

8.1.4 threaten, abuse, disrupt or otherwise violate the rights (including rights of privacy and publicity) of others;

8.1.5 engage in illegal or unlawful activities through the Services or via the Website

8.1.6 make available or upload files to the Website or to the Services that the Customer knows contain a virus, worm, trojan or corrupt data; or

8.1.7 obtain or attempt to obtain access, through whatever means, to areas of JJTEK Hosting's network or the Services which are identified as restricted or confidential. This includes leaving your home directory whilst using SSH access to servers.

8.1.8 operate or attempt to operate IRC bots or other permanent server processes.

8.2 The Customer has full responsibility for the content of the Website. For the avoidance of doubt, JJTEK Hosting is not obliged to monitor, and will have no liability for, the content of any communications transmitted by virtue of the Services.

8.3 If the Customer fails to comply with the Acceptable Use Policy outlined in Clause 8.1 JJTEK Hosting shall be entitled to withdraw the Services and terminate the Customer's account without notice.
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The only angle I could see taking is to go to the "owners" of the material (where you'll be screwed because of IP's current situation), and see if you can get a definition of their current policy regarding usage of the "offensive" files.

If you've got backups, I just say screw it, and go on.

JJTek doesn't sound like a place you want to deal with longterm, except maybe to get your hosting money back, but then you're going to have to get the aforementioned "policies" defined.

Definitely a pain in the ass situation, my sympathies, too bad DAC couldn't have gotten on a decent host, especially with the "comeback" you guys have been attempting.
 
Heh. How's this for an answer?

This is an account of what's happened so far:
  1. I have a LOCK TABLES problem backing up the database and e-mail JJTek.
  2. They respond giving me the commands to backup the database without LOCK TABLES. (It took two e-mails actually).
  3. I run it but then get a MYSQL_SET_BIG_SELECTS problem. I e-mail JJTek again (3rd time).
  4. In response, I get an e-mail from JJTek about "copyright infringment". This is the e-mail I posted in this thread.
  5. Acces to the downloads directory is removed and we can't get into the directory to delete the "offending content".
  6. We decide this is pretty much the last straw. We've had some other problems (slowdowns etc) with them and them complaining about copyright is being pathetic.
  7. A few hours after I made the post about this in the management forum, all FTP and other access to the site is removed. DAC goes offline.
  8. I respond to the e-mail asking if they've received any specific complaints about the "copyrighted material" and what the exact issue is.
  9. I get this in response:
    JJTek said:
    I apologise for not making the issue clear to you.

    The issue is that you have been breaking our terms and conditions by using your site for file distribution. File distribution is not permitted with our Enterprise account and this is clearly stated on our website. Please see http://www.jjtek-hosting.com/hosting/enterprisepackage.php under 'Unlimited Data Transfer'.
    Click to expand...
  10. At the same time, Mr Teatime e-mails them and receives a similar response that it is the "file downloads" which breaches their terms of service.
  11. Mr Teatime asks for FTP access so that we can move the site from JJTek to sorcerers.net
  12. JJTek respond saying:
    JJTek said:
    Further to your telephone call today, I am afraid we have now been advised that we would be breaking the law by allowing you to download the numerous copyrighted files you have placed on our server. This includes downloads using ftp. The files are not in one folder, but are in many different locations spread around within your site's root folder. We therefore have no alternative but to delete the whole site from our servers.
    Click to expand...
  13. JJTek delete everything bar the /wiki and /forums directories.
I've got the code and a database backup done right before we were taken offline. Most of the gallery and other things are backed up in various places and can easily be re-uploaded. I'm concerned about the last wiki database backup as it's two weeks old so my apologies but we may have lost some stuff there.

I'm currently getting DAC back online again at sorcerers.net and hope to have most things up (baring any problems - God I hope there aren't any problems) by the end of today (12 or so hours from now).
 
Wow that is very lame. Unbelievable that they won't allow you access to your own files. Also, seems they didn't give you a warning nor a chance to fix the problem. Jagged Jimmy Tek isn't worth bothering with. There are plenty of other ISPs who wouldn't pull stunts like this.
 
Some tool must have read a trade rag and concluded that copywrited material = MPAA/RIAA lawsuit. You may want to contact others hosted by JJtek and see if they have had the same thing happen to them. Perhaps you can all team up, so to speak, threatening a lawsuit unless you are compensated for lost business and information due to some corporate cockroach getting a stick stuck up their ass.
 
If they're a UK business and go by UK law, then should they not adhere to the data protection act? I'm not a legal expert, but I'm sure it says that you're entitled to your own data :P - Why can't they just delete the copyrighted material from their "network" and give you your data?

Another thing that makes me curious... If you do a search for the A-Record of their domain name JJtek-online.com and then do a whois on the IP address that comes up with the owner of the IP addresses belong to Schlund... aka 1&1 Internet. It seems they're either using a hosting package or dedicated server with http://1and1.co.uk to host their portal website that links to all their other services... Doesn't it strike you as a bit suspicious that they won't use their own hosting company to host their own websites (jjtek-hosting.com does use their own hosting.)

I'm also amused at their talk of copyrighted material... On the frontpage of JJtek-hosting.com they have this image:



enterprise.jpg


Is this their own image, or have they stolen it from 1&1 who uses this image:

p_lx_hosting.jpg


Something tells me they look very similar and the fact that it's a picture of 1&1's datacentre and not there's makes me laugh.

Of course none of this will help your situation, I just like to point out funny things in hosts which I wish I could have pointed out earlier and you might have made a better host choice :)

It seems this is someone who's leased a dedicated server from someone elses datacentre (TeleCity Manchester Customer - Heart Internet Ltd) and installed some control panel and billing system and created packages and promises they can't sustain!

Where they have their servers: http://telecity.com/

You should post what happened at http://www.webhostingtalk.com - everyone there is very helpful and they’ll give you advice on how to deal with people such as this as many are webhosts themselves or have been through the same situation. It’s also where a lot of people go to check out hosts so it’s good to give them some negative feedback there 

Also do a search on their domain in google. Duckandcover.cx comes up more than their own site… Somgthings wrong there :P – You also seem to be there only customer that comes up too :o

Good luck with your new host!

Edit:

More Amusing Facts.
Director Details

DIRECTOR: BAXTER, JAMES GORDON
Date of Birth: 22/12/1986
Appointed: 23/12/2002
Nationality: BRITISH
No. of Company appointments: 1
Address: 25B HIGH STREET
ELGIN
MORAYSHIRE
IV30 1EE
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So you're dealing with a company with is ran by an 18 year old. Not too bad I guess, at least they're an adult... but they can't be very experience in the business world :)

Company Details:
Company Number: SC240447
Company Name: JJTEK COMPUTERS LIMITED
Registered Office:
25A HIGH STREET
ELGIN
MORAY IV30 1EE
Company Type: Private Limited Company
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The "Directors" address and the business address seem quite similar, so either they don't have an office, or he lives in it. Although it's quite common for webhosts to be in this situation, it's not the sign of someone who makes a living this way.

Oh yes, the secratarys name is BAXTER, AMANDA JANE, so they're either a sister or mother (DoB: 22/07/1957)
 
God-damn Adz. That's comedy gold. Did you get that stuff from some kind of publicly accessable directory list in the UK? Should go there and say hello...
 
It's a Private Limited Company (LTD) so you can get the information from companies house as far as the company is concerned :)

If you have the Ip address of the server you used to be hosted on, we can actually see how many customer this business really had...

:wiggle:

Edit:

Also, their terms and conditions are identical to "Heart Internets" - The company the resell through. They don't have their own servers - they only have a reseller package with Heart Internet. The server they use to host on, also hosts 938 other websites, all of which are hosted by different companies.

Now YOU can be like JJtek. £30 / month and you can how ever many people you want! http://www.heartinternet.co.uk/reseller-h.shtml
 
Adz said:
If you have the Ip address of the server you used to be hosted on, we can actually see how many customer this business really had...
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217.68.23.16
217.68.23.4
Try those two.
 
Yeah, I managed to find one :) That's how I found out they have 1 webserver that serves over 900 websites. It's the server for Heart Internet.

If you look up heart internet, they've only been around a few months and they have an extreamly bad reputation. They offer alot of webhosts that use them and they use only 1 webserver to do it.

All the websites are stored on other servers which are basically just harddrives and then their 1 webserver needs to serve the website from those. This means that if this 1 webserver goes down, everyone elses does too! It's an extreamly bad way to operate and it's just a complete and utter lie when they say they have redundancy methods etc... apparently if one webserver goes down, another immediatley takes its place. That's a bit hard to do when they only have one server :D

Reccomended reading for anyone who would be stupid enough to concider JJtek hosting or anyone else who uses Heart Internet to provide their services: http://www.webhostingtalk.com/showt...8c69&threadid=322735&highlight=heart+Internet


Oh and thankyou for bring the whole topic up - I like investigating dodgey hosts.... It's entertaining
 
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