The 'New' Righthaven Offers Discount To Techdirt Readers Who Want 'Spineful' Hosting

from the enjoy dept

Remember Righthaven? No, not that Righthaven who sued tons of people and companies on questionable claims in order to get them to cough up settlements. We're talking about the other Righthaven... the Swiss company that bought the Righthaven.com domain that was auctioned off after the old Righthaven failed to pay the attorneys' fees it owed. The new Righthaven is all about being the anti-Righthaven in many ways: it's about setting up an ISP that provides "spineful" hosting, that will stand up to questionable takedown attempts. This does not mean that they're offering "no questions asked" type hosting that spammers and malware providers love. Quite different. They're simply looking to host those who often have their free speech rights challenged, and who won't fold under questionable pressure without a valid legal basis. As the company explains:

There are many hosting providers who maintain a "no questions asked" policy with respect to their clients and use this approach and lax, evasive or non-existent abuse handling infrastructure to effectively provide a safe-harbor for bad actors. That is not our business model.

Instead, we focus on hosting expression that has traditionally been subjected to frivolous legal threats based on its content. Our approach focuses on our team's wealth of expertise in dealing with high tech abuse and legal issues and our willingness to zealously defend our clients from frivolous, manipulative, abusive or outright fraudulent litigation. Our experience and expertise in issues ranging from fair-use to libel and whistle-blowing protections means we can often gently (and sometimes firmly) remind third parties about the many protections afforded legitimate publishers in these areas.

Often a proactive, responsive and competent abuse management team engaging in an open dialogue and discussion with copyright holders or their legal counsel is all it takes to close what might otherwise escalate into a frivolous suit.

But dialogue isn't always enough. Against this unfortunate possibility we have a second level of defense: In cooperation with our upstream providers in Switzerland we have some of the best free speech counsel in the world on retainer.

The folks behind the company, which is based in Switzerland, admit that they're a bit more expensive than other hosting companies, but that's to cover the cost of actually having people who will take the time to understand legal threats made against you.

Either way, the kind folks over at this new Righthaven are offering a 15% discount to Techdirt readers on everything except their bandwidth upgrades as a "thank you" for speaking out on various issues lately:

Remember us? The upstarts over at Righthaven.com? Providers of "spineful" shared, virtual private server and dedicated server hosting services from the copyright-sane environs of Switzerland?

We've enjoyed your coverage of SOPA, PIPA, ACTA (and us) and since we're launching this coming week, we'd like to give your readers the first bite at the jellyfish (so to speak).

So for the next 14 days new accounts opened by Techdirt readers get 15% off of everything except bandwidth upgrades. Readers who sign up for 3 or 6 months can lock that discount in for the duration.

Just browse on over to our order page at https://plutus.righthaven.com/ and type "dirtlaunch" when prompted for a promotion code.

Just our way of saying "Thank you" for increasing digital rights awareness.

We certainly cannot vouch for these guys, but we absolutely appreciate the need for more ISPs that have a spine in protecting their customers' free speech rights. Hopefully more ISPs will realize that that's a good selling point to potential customers.

Filed Under: free speech, hosting, spineful
Companies: righthaven