We’ve blogged before about ‘Professor Dr’ Joseph Chikelue Obi’s rather silly legal threats against the Quackometer’s hosting company Netcetera. Amazingly, Netcetera have taken these claims seriously – and now taken down the Quackometer as a results. The blog should be up again soon – with Netcetera’s cowardice having hasn’t the decision to move it to a host with some guts – but Netcetera have behaved horrendously here. It sounds as if they are acknowledging their willingness to take down any site they host, following any legal threat: they just “do not wish to be in a position where we could be taken to court, and incur the loss of time and expense that would involve.”
As one of a number of people who have been driven to take sanctuary with Positive Internet, Andy Lewis says:
Exerting pressure on Obi is futile. He is not the story. The story is about ISPs, web hosts and their duty to their clients.
Web Hosting for blogs like mine is not a lucrative business. It is a commodity. Little profit and little incentive for hosts to keep business or do anything rather different. Netcetera took 10 quid off me a month and I ran about half a dozen web sites from them. The profit for hosts is elsewhere – corporate, services etc. But this leaves simple punters like me very vulnerable. The law needs examining. Would WHSMiths be liable if a newspaper printed something libelous. Would a library? Or are they just conduits? Should they inspect every page on their sites? The government appears to think that is reasonable.
Personally, I think we should all contact Netcetera – and threaten to sue for one million dollars a day (muhahahaha) for the loss of the Quackometer blog. I is off to call mah lawyurrz.
Update: Zdnet is carrying the story: If you fancy running a controversial website.
Quackometer is no more. Its web hosting company, Netcetera, has thrown it off. Has Andy Lewis, aka Le Canard Noir, proprietor of the Quackometer, committed some terrible sin, some libel, slander or other inappropriate act?
Not as far as I can see.
Quite. In fact, Netcetera might take a look at Metal Vortex if they are ever in search of a new logo.
Further updated: The Register now has the story: Shamed ‘alternative medicine’ quack silences web critic. A rattling good read with a nice summary, “Jelly spine cure urgently needed by ISP”.
Update 21 Feb: the Quackometer blog is back online although other features may take a little longer.
Update 26.2.2007: worth an update all to itself, read the LOLQuacks modern-day fairy tale about Professor Dr Obi.
Related reading
We have trackbacked most of the related posts, however, here are the links for easier browsing (lifted from shpalman of What the hell is this?)..
- What the hell is this?
- Gimpy
- jdc325
- Away from the bench
- Thinking is Dangerous
- Orac from Respectful Insolence
- JQH
- Bad Chemist
- Apathy Sketchpad
- 20__
- Hawk/Handsaw
- Dr. Aust
- Procrastor
- The Bronze Blog
- Mythusmage Opines and Pontificates
- A day at the pharmacy
- Blue Collar Scientist
- ZDNet
- Google Search
- Google Blog Search
- badscience.net thread
- JREF thread
- White Coat Underground
- Bob O’Hara
- Thoughts in a haystack
- Flammable Flower
- The Register
- SL Universe forums
- Archaeporn
- Metal Vortex
- I Speak of Dreams
- The Flax
- Paul Hutch
- A canna’ change the laws of physics
- Lay Scientist
Chemobrain
li>Bloggerheads
9 Comments
February 19, 2008 at 3:53 pm
[...] Feel free to ignore this. I just want to link to this blog post about netcetera who have shamefully bowed to groundless legal threats and suspended Andy Lewis’s excellent [...]
February 20, 2008 at 1:31 am
Netcetera sucks.
February 20, 2008 at 12:43 pm
Hopefully the response to all this will change their ways. Internet justice is swift and sure.
February 20, 2008 at 5:55 pm
[...] Holfordwatch [...]
February 22, 2008 at 12:39 am
I’m confused. Mr Obi’s RCAM site is registered to an address in Dublin, but his other domain, obi.me.uk, is based in Tyne & Wear. Does he commute?
February 22, 2008 at 8:32 pm
The answer may well lie in his astonishing car.
If it spans the UK – what’s a little stretch to Dublin.
April 23, 2008 at 1:07 am
I heard Netcetera are in a spot of financial bother – Quackometer is better off having nothing to do with them.
August 21, 2008 at 10:09 pm
[...] In addition, or alternatively, it could be that the point was simply to get Singh’s article removed from the Guardian website in the meantime. In which case, the BCA have probably shot themselves in the foot spectacularly, as the ”Spartacus effect”, a.k.a. the Streisand effect” (or even ”Obi Wan Effect”) will mean that the Singh article is likely to be intensively discussed in the Blogosphere, not to mention being rapidly republished on tens or even hundreds of online sites –think The Quackometer vs. The Society of Homeopaths, or The Quackometer and gutless webhosts Netcetera. [...]
March 4, 2009 at 7:44 pm
It’s good there are people like Positive Internet who care about free speech and are willing to offer a safe haven for bloggers in increasingly litigious and difficult times.