Bluehost’s Servile Response to Koch Industries Shows It Is an Unreliable Hosting Company

by Paul Alan Levy

Deepak Gupta has just posted about an excellent decision firmly rejecting both Koch Industries’ trademark and other claims over a satirical press release making fun of the Koch brothers’ funding of climate change denial, as well as Koch’s effort to obtain information identifying the critics.  But there is an important consumer issue in the case that has received much less attention than it should — the disgraceful reaction on the part of Bluehost, the company whose services were used to obtain the domain name and host the satirical web site.

Even before Koch Industries filed its lawsuit, it complained to Bluehost about the web site; and after it filed suit and used an ex party motion to get leave for discovery to identify the climate change activist that had obtained the domain name and reserved the server space to host the site, it served a subpoena on Bluehost.  Bluehost knew that the registrar of the name wanted to remain anonymous – because it had sold him anonymous registration. And most major ISP’s and name registrars know that the standard procedure for identifying anonymous Internet users is to give notice of the subpoena and then wait for a few weeks to give the anonymous user an opportunity to come to court to show that the lawsuit does not have a substantial chance of success, and hence that there is no compelling interest that warrants overriding the First Amendment right to speak anonymously.  I know for a fact that Bluehost knows about these cases, because I myself have told its owner about them in the course of past representation of Doe clients who had used its services, trying to persuade it not to reveal their identities without giving them a chance to object.

Bluehost Truckles to Koch

But Bluehost did not give its customer the benefit of the doubt.  It immediately shut down the satiric web site – thus depriving the customer of the ability to post the “reveal” that is crucial to a satire.  And it turned over identifying information without any notice or opportunity to object, with its vice-president Dan Ashworth telling an AP reporter that its customers were just common criminals  —

"He said the firm deals with this type of thing on a very regular basis, and its policy is to fully comply when served with a legitimate subpoena. He said the information Koch sought has already been delivered.

“'We are not in the business of harboring, you know, felons and crooks. We are not about that. This isn't WikiLeaks,' Ashworth said. 'We comply with the law here.'”

Reminder to Bluehost — "the law" gives your customers the right to object to subpoenas, but your customers depend on you to hold off when you first get a subpoena so that the objection can be heard by a judge!

In fact, District Judge Dale Kimball has not only declared that Bluehost’s customers not “felons or crooks,” he decided they were Americans legitimately exercising their First Amendment rights.  Judge Kimball also ruled that Koch’s complaint couldn’t withstand a motion to dismiss.  Judge Kimball ordered Koch not to reveal the information about Bluehost's customer that Bluehost should never have revealed in the first place, had it met its obligations to the customer to give him the chance to protect his anonymity.

The Lesson to Be Learned About Bluehost

Those who are thinking of registering a web site to speak out against corporate or political malefactors would do wise to look at the track records of the companies they are considering for domain name registration and hostings. As we have discussed here in the past, some companies are much less reliable than others about standing up to bogus claims. 

Regrettably, this is not the first time we have encountered such studied disinterest on the part of Bluehost in protecting the First Amendment rights of its users.  Consumers should beware Bluehost.

Comments

[Bradleylbar]

I don't really care what you think of the Koch Brothers, the issue is both net neutrality (what right does Blue Host have to censor content?), Fair Use (satire is the classic fair use case) and, of course, free speech. Sheesh!