Fasthosts does it again AGAIN!!!

First this happens:
The Register - Fasthosts admits email destruction fiasco

Then this:
The Register - Fasthosts customer? Change your password now

Davblog - Password Basics

Bloggerheads - Yet another reason to avoid Fasthosts like the plague

I'm not entirely sure, but I think I may have found a contributing factor to this and other problems...

Fasthosts does it AGAIN!

The Register - Fasthosts falls for phisherman's ruse: Anti-fraud site turfed offline after Joe Job attack

Bloggerheads - Fasthosts and UKreg: why you should look elsewhere

Chicken Yoghurt - Fasthosts: At it again

PigDogFucker - Possibly fast, definitely shit

Fasthosts take their ball and go home

I realise that British-based ISPs are behind the eight-ball with UK libel law as it stands, which is why I want to work with the local industry to effect change.

However, there are a few actions by Fasthosts that I personally find hard to forgive:

1) Their sudden and OTT closure of an entire account involving sites and servers unconnected to the complaints made by Schillings.

2) Their refusal to engage in dialogue (when this was offered, they simply closed the account and walked away).

3) The misleading statements issued to the press suggesting that we had been less than co-operative when we were in no position to call them on their bullshit.

4) Their subsequent refusal to say anything at all when we could (and did) call them on their bullshit.

I'm sure you can spot the common thread here, and Fasthosts have recently withdrawn even further.

As most of you should be aware, a weblog is more than a content management system; it is (or at the very least should be) a contract with the public that offers open dialogue.

But after pissing off most of the blogosphere and making it clear that they had no intention of defending their actions or the initial statements attempting same, Fasthosts have done something that I think is fair to describe as typical of their attitude:

Instead of facing or embracing dialogue on their weblog (which has been in operation since late 2006), Fasthosts have simply deactivated it.

The weblog used to be here. It is now gone. Kaput. No more.

Of course, it's possible that this is only a temporary technical hitch... but it's far more likely that this is a clear signal from Fasthosts that they would rather avoid contact with bloggers in future.

If you own a weblog that is currently hosted by Fasthosts, take note.

Read words

Justin has a lovely piece about the Usmanov affair to date published over at the IOC website...

Index on Censorship - Britain: Bloggers unite against intimidation: It must be emphasised that this is not about bloggers claiming the right to say whatever they like with impunity and without fear of sanction. Bloggers are, rightly so, as accountable for what they write as journalists. Craig Murray is on record as saying he wants Usmanov to sue him for libel so the allegations can be put on the record. In a statement to the Guardian newspaper, a spokesman for Schillings said that they were not about to sue Murray because ‘they did not want to give him a platform to express his views’. Instead of fighting the case in the courts, Schillings tried to make the story go away completely. The allegations may be true, they may be false, but in the absence of a libel trial testing their veracity, thousands of people have formed their own conclusions.

Fasthosts: a timeline of excellent service

THE MAIN PLAYERS

Alisher Usmanov: Uzbek billionaire, current owner of 21% of Arsenal FC.

Schillings: Lawyers for Alisher Usmanov.

Fasthosts: UK-based provider of web hosting.

Clive Summerfield: Reseller for Fasthosts and manager of two dedicated web servers provided by them.

Craig Murray: Former UK ambassador to Uzbekistan; site [www.craigmurray.co.uk] hosted by Fasthosts via Clive Summerfield.

Tim Ireland: Non-aligned political blogger; site [www.bloggerheads.com] hosted by Fasthosts via Clive Summerfield.



SUMMARY OF EVENTS
[Please advise us via email if you intend to translate the text summary to a foreign language.]

On 02 September 2007, Craig Murray (the former UK ambassador to Uzbekistan), wrote and published an article on his weblog [http://www.craigmurray.co.uk/] about Alisher Usmanov, the Uzbek-born billionaire who had just bought a 14.58% stake in the English team Arsenal Football Club and announced his intention to increase his stake to 25%

Schillings, a London law firm claiming to specialise in 'media, entertainment, internet, new media and sports legal issues, particularly defamation law', issued a legal threat to Fasthosts demanding removal of the article within 24 hours.

This action bypassed the author of the article (Craig Murray) and the reseller for Fasthosts (Clive Summerfield) who managed two dedicated webservers, including one that hosted Craig Murray's website, and a few other personal, professional and/or political websites.

This was the first in a series of four complaints involving Craig Murray's website and the website of Tim Ireland [http://www.bloggerheads.com/]. Correspondence from Schillings was only shared with the reseller on that first occasion. From the second (minor) complaint onwards, Clive Summerfield and the clients involved had little to no idea exactly what content Schillings objected to and/or on what legal grounds they were making their complaint.

On the third complaint, relating to a post made by Tim Ireland on Bloggerheads.com that included a heavily-censored excerpt from Craig Murray's article, Clive was given a mere 15 minutes in which to remove the article in question. This deadline was met.

Upon the fourth complaint from Schillings (on 20 September 2007), which related not to any new articles written by Craig Murray, but to two older articles in his archives (one of which was almost two years old), Clive Summerfield immediately deactivated Craig Murray's website and told Fasthosts of his intention to begin a dialogue between Schillings, Murray and himself. Fasthosts were invited to take part in that dialogue.

Fasthosts responded by closing down not just Craig Murray's website, but the entire account. Both servers managed by Clive were removed from service resulting in the closure of the websites of Craig Murray, Tim Ireland, Clive Summerfield, Bob Piper (Labour Councillor for Sandwell), Boris Johnson (Conservative MP for Henley), and many other bystanders. Only two of the dozen or so websites involved published anything about Alisher Usmanov.

A backlash began amongst bloggers, starting at the website of Justin McKeating [http://www.chickyog.net/] and soon spread to the news media. It was at this time that Fasthosts issued a statement to the press saying:

"There were certain statements on one individual site which we asked were removed because they were potentially defamatory. The customer was repeatedly advised of the breach and upon failing to permanently remove the content in question their customer account was terminated, the unfortunate result being the possible downtime of other unrelated websites of which we understand boris-johnson.com was one."

In reality, Clive Summerfield had done everything within his power to meet with demands that often came without explanation or documentation. Further, the fourth and final complaint not only appears to be on very shaky ground, it could in no way be construed as a failure by Clive Summerfield to meet with previous demands.

Since then, Clive Summerfield and Tim Ireland have issued a request to Fasthosts for all relevant Schillings correspondence, a retraction and/or correction of the above statement, an apology, plus a fair offer of compensation for all parties concerned:
http://b-heads.blogspot.com/2007/09/requesting-response-from-fasthosts.html

Fasthosts did not reply to that request, and, at the time of writing, have also stopped taking questions from the press regarding this matter.

In effect, Schillings had a number of articles removed or edited with only the threat of legal action (as opposed to legal action itself).

The constant barrage of threats (of varying substance) was certainly a contributing factor to Fasthosts deciding that they were better off out of it... and it was this decision that led to the sudden and unexpected closure of the sites of Craig Murray, Tim Ireland, Clive Summerfield, Bob Piper, Boris Johnson and others.



THE TIMELINE


Thursday 06 Sep 2007 (am) - Fasthosts receive takedown request from Schillings for a recent post by Craig Murray [Craig Murray - 02 Sep 2007: Alisher Usmanov, potential Arsenal chairman is a....]. Clive Summerfield, is given 24 hours to remove the item.

Thursday 06 Sep 2007 (pm) - Post removed and covering post put up [Craig Murray - 06 Sep 2007: Usmanov redux]. Immediate request made for a copy of the relevant correspondence from Schillings, which was later shared with Clive Summerfield.

Friday 07 Sep 2007 (am) - Schillings contact Fasthosts to request removal of phrase "less than salubrious" from covering post [Craig Murray - 06 Sep 2007: Usmanov redux]. Fasthosts contact Clive Summerfield by phone, amendment made within minutes. No relevant correspondence from Schillings is disclosed beyond this simple instruction.

Wednesday 13 Sep 2007 (am) - Fasthosts receive takedown request from Schillings regarding a post at Bloggerheads (a separate website hosted under same reseller account); [Tim Ireland - 06 Sep 2007: Alisher Usmanov: how will bloggers and Arsenal fans react as the screws tighten?]. This post includes highly censored passages from Murray's article, but the exact content that offended has yet to be determined (see below). Fasthosts email Clive Summerfield, and phone at 8:45am, giving 9:00am deadline!!! Tim Ireland strips post of all content before deadline, pending details and/or legal advice (sadly, no relevant correspondence from Schillings was disclosed beyond the demand for removal). Fasthosts mention their terms and conditions of service to Clive Summerfield, who confirms that his terms are in line with theirs and that his clients will be reminded of their responsibilities.

-

Note from Tim #1: I still don't know exactly what it was about my article that Schillings objected to, because Fasthosts failed to share the relevant Schillings correspondence with Clive or myself and - with this complaint (complete with a 15 minute deadline) - even failed to give us the scant details required to avoid making the same mistake again. In my view, the article was pretty benign and, ironically, primarily discussed the effect of blogs on search engines and the dangerous territory Schillings had come barging into. Here's what I had to say at the time:

I'm not sure what Usmanov expected when he took on this high-profile investment. Judging by the pre-emptive strike on mainstream media (as outlined in the extract above), Usmanov did expect some unwanted attention, but I'm sensing a distinct lack of awareness about the way crowds behave in this country.

The post also included this screen capture, which is published here exactly as it was in the 'offending' post [Tim Ireland - 06 Sep 2007: Alisher Usmanov: how will bloggers and Arsenal fans react as the screws tighten?]. The following screen capture shows the top search result for 'alisher usmanov' on 06 Sep 2007:

Please note that this screen capture does not contain any sensitive material from Craig's recent article. A grab of the Yahoo result was also published at this time with sensitive information removed. Please also note that, while Google is responding to the recent inbound link to Craig Murray's latest article, it also chooses to display a much earlier article by Murray [Craig Murray - 30 Oct 2005: Craig Murray - Opposition leader tortured with drugs] as a potential result. To make this point clear; this search result was visible to most UK web users on 06 Sep 2007.

At some stage between the 6th and 20th of September, Google re-indexed Craig Murray's site in full. This meant that it no longer presented Murray's recent article [Craig Murray - 02 Sep 2007: Alisher Usmanov, potential Arsenal chairman is a....] in its cache; according to Google, the recent article they considered to be one of the most relevant to the query 'alisher usmanov' was gone, but the site many web users regarded to be relevant was still there. The algorithm chose to display the much earlier article by Murray [Craig Murray - 30 Oct 2005: Craig Murray - Opposition leader tortured with drugs] on its own instead.

It may have escaped Schillings attention early on, but as the lone result it could not be missed. The following is a screen capture of the top search result for 'alisher usmanov' from 20 Sep 2007:

There was no deliberate attempt by Craig Murray to publish a new article about Usmanov at this stage; Google simply chose to present an old one as a relevant search result... and not for the first time. Anybody looking at the page in question would be able to see the 30 Oct 2005 time-stamp quite clearly. If they were any doubt about the authenticity of its stated vintage, the main page of Craig Murray's weblog was actually captured and stored by the Web Archive project on the very day it was published (see URL for time stamp; 20051030 = 30 Oct 2005).

This article was later extended by 6 paragraphs, but probably almost immediately and certainly no later than 02 Sep 2006 and none of the additional content mentions Alisher Usmanov by name anyway.

The evidence clearly shows that this was a very old article by Craig Murray, and that no effort was made to republish it or even retro moderate it in a way designed to outmanoeuvre Usmanov's lawyers.

Keener minds with more expertise may want to cast an eye over this, but it was my understanding that you lose your chance to sue over libel or slander after a year; in this example, we're talking about nearly two years. Back to the timeline...

-

Thursday 20 Sep 2007 (am) - Email received from Fasthosts. They have suspended one of two servers managed by Clive Summerfield in response to a further takedown request from Schillings regarding two more of Craig Murray's articles/posts, one from June 2007 [Craig Murray - 01 Jun 2007: Russian Journalist Murders, and Gazprom], the other from Oct 2005 [Craig Murray - 30 Oct 2005: Craig Murray - Opposition leader tortured with drugs]. Neither of these articles had been mentioned in any previous correspondence that we were aware of. On the suspended server were the websites of Craig Murray and Tim Ireland. On the same server were the websites of Clive Summerfield and Bob Piper (Labour Councillor for Sandwell), who hadn't published a single word about Alisher Usmanov. The server is unsuspended following contact between Fasthosts and Clive Summerfield, who is unable to get hold of Craig Murray or anybody with editing access to the weblog; Clive instead uses his upper admin access to the now-functional server to halt Craig's site and Craig's site alone. Anyone trying to visit Craig Murray's website sees an Apache default page indicating that the server is up but that there is a problem with Craig's site.

Thursday 20 Sep 2007 (midday) - Email sent to Fasthosts by Clive Summerfield. Informs them that Craig's site is down and will remain down until the end of the day at least. Clive also states that he intends to try and get a dialog going with himself, Schillings and Craig. He asks Fasthosts if they wish to be included and makes mention of the BT/AOL case.

Thursday 20 Sep 2007 (pm) - Email from Fasthosts. States that they no longer wish to be involved and have terminated Clive's account with them. Both servers managed by Clive are now down resulting in the closure of the websites of Craig Murray, Tim Ireland, Clive Summerfield, Bob Piper, Boris Johnson (Conservative MP for Henley), and many other bystanders. At 2pm, Fasthosts inform Clive that he has 48 hours to get everything off the two servers.

Thursday 20 Sep 2007 (pm) - Clive given access to servers via "lights-out" console in order to perform backups.

-

Note from Tim #2 - For those who don't know, this is the equivalent of transferring a tanker load of water with the aid of a single teaspoon. Cheers, Fasthosts.

-

Thursday 20 Sep 2007 (pm) - Clive sends request to Fasthosts pointing out that it is impossible to download backups via "lights-out" within the 48-hour 'off the servers' deadline they have issued.

Thursday 20 Sep 2007 (pm) - Justin McKeating publishes the post that informs users of these websites of recent developments. Bloggers from the left, right, middle and basement begin to express their disapproval in notable numbers.

Friday 21 Sep 2007 (midday) - Fasthosts bring both servers back and re-enable Clive's account to allow him to backup content. At the same time they unwittingly bring up Craig's website, complete with offending posts!!! As Clive has already started backups and DNS propagation, and so stops all sites on both servers; this saves Fasthosts from the embarrassment of Craig's posts reappearing.

Friday 21 Sep 2007 (pm) - The Guardian reports:

Fasthosts Internet confirmed that Mr Johnson's site was disabled as part of a clampdown on a separate web address. "Where concerns are raised to us about a website, such as in this case, in accordance with our normal procedures, we will investigate the website content," (Fasthosts) said in a statement. "In this case, we examined a website for potentially defamatory material and communicated to the customer that they had indeed breached the terms and conditions for Fasthosts Internet hosting. The customer was repeatedly advised of the breach and upon failing to permanently remove the content in question. Their customer account was terminated, the unfortunate result being the possible downtime of other unrelated websites ... of which we understand boris-johnson.com was one." Responsibility for the content of websites lay solely with their owners and publishers, the company added. A spokesman for Mr Usmanov said he was not aware of any reason why Mr Johnson's website should have been taken down. "We only requested the removal of specific statements and postings with regard to one individual site" he said.

-

Note from Tim #3 - The person who issued the statement for Fasthosts really should take a close look at our timeline and see if he/she wants to revise it. Also... *possible* downtime? Try very real downtime; they should know... they flipped the switch. Schillings also appear to be confused about he number of sites involved, but perhaps it's because they're busy calling "Your ball!"

Meanwhile, Clive and I were in no position to counter what Fasthosts had to say, as we were at their mercy until we retrieved the data. Fasthosts' statement appeared again the next day, and Schillings again called the ball for Fasthosts (albeit in a gentle manner)...

-

Saturday 22 Sep 2007 (am) - The Times reports:

Mr Usmanov’s spokesman blamed a technical glitch by the web host. “There were certain statements on one individual site which we asked were removed because they were potentially defamatory.” Fasthosts Internet said: “The customer was repeatedly advised of the breach and upon failing to permanently remove the content in question their customer account was terminated, the unfortunate result being the possible downtime of other unrelated websites of which we understand boris-johnson.com was one.”

Saturday 22 Sep 2007 (am) - Data recovery complete.

Saturday 22 Sep 2007 (4pm) - The deadline for server closure has passed. Clive notes that both Fasthosts servers are still live.

-

Note from Tim #4 - An error, or were we getting slack for the initial delay in providing a decent transfer facility, or because of the online attention and/or press we were receiving? One can't be sure A slightly different and tight-lipped line emerges from Fasthosts from Monday onwards, but this could easily have a lot to do with them speaking with a journalist who knows a thing or two about IT...

-

Monday 24 Sep 2007 (pm) - The Register reports:

Fasthosts said Murray's account had been terminated according to industry standard practice. It refused to say why unrelated websites had been hit by the takedown...

Tuesday 25 Sep 2007 (am) - Clive informs Fasthosts that all backups are finished, and receives the following reply:

----- Original Message -----
From: Abuse Support Team [abuseteam@fasthosts.co.uk]
To: Clive Summerfield
Sent: Tue, 25 Sep 2007 12:10:00 +0100
Subject: 1408052#[snip] Your email enquiry (PLEASE DO NOT CHANGE SUBJECT)

Dear Mr Summerfield,

Account Number: [snip]
Ticket Reference Number: [snip]

As you've completed retrieval of the data you require could you now instruct as us to how you would like to proceed with your account?

Best Regards
Misuse Team
Fasthosts Internet Ltd

Tuesday 25 Sep 2007 (pm) - Clive informs Fasthosts that as all sites are moved, they can close the account.

Tuesday 25 Sep 2007 (pm) - We issue a request for a response to several issues, statements and developments that we considered unfair, unacceptable or untrue. Fasthosts are given 24 hours to respond.

Tuesday 25 Sep 2007 (pm) - The Register reports:

Fasthosts says it acted according to standard industry practice and has declined to answer Reg questions.

Wednesday 25 Sep 2007 (pm) - The deadline passes, with no response from Fasthosts.

-

Note from Tim #5 – Which, to me, seems odd, because they were awfully mouthy when they held all the cards.

-

[Fasthosts will be given a further 12 hours to respond to the above timeline and submit any corrections or clarifications they wish to make.]

High Noon (and a bit)

Fasthosts have not responded to this. At all.

Requesting a response from Fasthosts

But since the request was issued, they appear to have made a statement... of sorts:

The Register - Downed blogger Murray vows to continue Usmanov attacks: Fasthosts says it acted according to standard industry practice and has declined to answer Reg questions.

They picked a hell of a time to go quiet, didn't they? And yet they had no much to say about it only a few short days ago.

I now know that I have to make do with some blank spaces in the timeline.

With you shortly... we have to a dot an I or T or two.

UPDATE - Timeline is now live.

Immediate plans for this website

Fasthosts

We're still missing some key facts from the case, primarily due to Fasthosts' reluctance to share the relevant Schillings correspondence with us.

Fasthosts should take note of the following while considering their options:

We were extremely reluctant to have the role played by Fasthosts highlighted until we had the chance to retrieve our data from their servers (we're not entirely sure why; perhaps they struck us as the panicky sort). Regardless of this, several key bloggers and assorted web publishers have already identified Fasthosts independently and questioned their actions in an entirely spontaneous fashion. We expect these people and those who are as yet unaware of the role played by Fasthosts to be even less impressed when we publish the timeline (hopefully later today).

Fastshosts' response (or lack thereof) is also likely to have a significant impact in and on the wider UK web hosting industry. We urge Fasthosts to take this matter seriously and to accept responsibility for where they went wrong; the alternative is a genuine risk that popular feeling will swing against hosting in the UK in general.

Summary

This site is badly in need of a summary as the audience shifts from those in the know to those who are just now finding out about all of this. A summary is planned to coincide with the timeline. (If we're forced to leave some unknowns in place because Fasthosts choose to suddenly go quiet, then so be it.)

Foreign Languages

A foreign language hub is planned for the sidebar, with external links to translations of the summary. Spanish is covered, and any offer to translate the summary into other languages would be welcome. Offers via email or under comments, please.

Blogroll

A blogroll will follow; this will primarily involve links to the relevant *category* pages of key supporters; i.e. bloggers who are actually generating new content regarding this matter (but if you are generating new content and categories/labels are a problem for you, do let us know). Link support is equally appreciated, and a centralised page of link supporters (that allows for rolling updates) will follow the blogroll.

Banners and Buttons

When the facts are in, or we are as close to the facts as we are going to get, we will then look at the use and promotion of new and existing banners and buttons.

Video

Ditto. A soundtrack has already been selected, and permission has been granted for its use; all that needs to be addressed before editing is a few pesky gaps in the script.

Over to you, Fasthosts. We'd love to hear from you before 12:30pm today.

Latest article in The Register

(The first is here for those who missed it.)

The Register - Downed blogger Murray vows to continue Usmanov attacks: Former UK ambassador to Uzbekistan Craig Murray has vowed to carry on making allegations against billionaire Arsenal shareholder Alisher Usmanov, despite attempts to silence him and his supporters. Murray told The Reg: "If the man believes he was libelled then he should take me to court."

Well said.

The above article also contains some juicy hints of what you can expect from the upcoming timeline (including one of my favourite bits; the out-of-the-blue Google scoop) and a rather muted response from Fasthosts.

Here's hoping they do better tomorrow.

Requesting a response from Fasthosts

1) First things first...

Cheers to:

Craig Murray - for the moral courage that triggered this latest difficulty
Clive Summerfield - for handling this and many other technical difficulties
Justin McKeating - for handling the response to this latest difficulty
200+ other bloggers - for that response

Apologies to:

The many bystanders who were affected by a nuclear response to a pissweak threat.


2) Schillings used a combination of misdirection, intimidation and character assassination to silence and undermine Craig Murray instead of properly addressing the substance of what he had to say about their client Alisher Usmanov or challenging it through the courts. While the exact abuse(s) of power and inappropriate use(s) of media, law, and money differ, this is otherwise indistinguishable from Jack Straw's approach to the former ambassador to Uzbekistan (1, 2). It's comforting to know that Iain Dale considers this type of assault on free speech to be wrong but, in an effort to maintain the remarkable level of cross-spectrum support we've seen in recent days, I'm going to draw this observation to a close at that point and say no more.


3) Seeing the extraordinary level of support, it's hard not to collapse into a blubbering heap a'la Sally Field, but the reality of it is that this matters to bloggers because it could happen to any one of us. Nevertheless, Clive and I do have a responsibility to finally make clear exactly what has happened and attempt to see that some general good comes of this manifestation of absolute absurdity.


4) But before we proceed, I have a quick personal message for those representatives of the mainstream media who only regarded this to be newsworthy because of the collateral damage done to Boris Johnson and/or took people like Schillings and Fasthosts at their word without even bothering to speak to us:

*Thbbbt!*

Now, onwards...


To ensure we broadcast as clear a picture as possible, Clive and I need to deal with this matter by addressing the parties/issues involved in the following order:

- Fasthosts
- Schillings
- Alisher Usmanov
- UK libel law

Today, we begin with Fasthosts. A small part of their response will be vital to our subsequent response to Schillings, but if we have to proceed without their co-operation, then so be it:


Fasthosts

Shortly, Clive and I will be publishing a timeline of the events that led up the closure of the account, and the events that followed. However, we would like to offer Fasthosts 24 hours in which to deliver the following before we do so:

- All Schillings correspondence that Fasthosts have so far failed to show us, and an apology for the delay in disclosure.

- A retraction and/or correction of any false or misleading statements issued/relayed by Fasthosts to the press regarding the account closure, and an apology for same.

- A fair offer of compensation for all parties inconvenienced by that closure.

- An additional fair offer of compensation for the inconvenience and stress caused to myself, Clive Summerfield and Craig Murray and for the damage done to our reputations by the action (and inaction) of Fasthosts *and* for any false or misleading statements made regarding the account closure and this matter in general.

In the interests of transparency, we request that all of the above (with the exception of the Schillings correspondence itself) be addressed via a public statement to be published in this section of Fasthosts' website:
http://www.fasthosts.co.uk/companyinfo/PressReleases/

On that final request for compensation, a lot of detail will have to wait until the timeline is published, but for now we can say that we felt greatly restricted in what we could say on this matter at the time due the removal of our primary communication devices and the further complication of Fasthosts still being in possession of a large amount of our data (and their initial insistence that we move it with the equivalent of a bloody teaspoon). Fasthosts either sought to take advantage of this situation, or failed to fully communicate the exact nature of some aspects of this case to/via their PR department for reasons unknown. Either way, the message quickly spread in some quarters that we had repeatedly refused or failed to co-operate with Fasthosts over the relevant legal threats, and this simply isn't true.

We expect the response to be fairly widely-read by many opinion-makers in the field of personal web publishing, so it would also be in Fasthosts' interests to take this opportunity to also reassure current and future resellers and end-users by donning a a full-body cilice *and* outlining any changes or improvements they plan to make to their procedures when handling threats of legal action. Currently, the most popular line of thinking is that the safest way to handle matters is to host outside of the UK; therefore, we feel that Fasthosts have a unique opportunity here to help not only themselves, but the UK web hosting industry in general.

[UPDATE (26 Sep) - The deadline passed with no response from Fasthosts. The timeline had to be published with some gaps, and you can read all about it right here.]