Host: Big Traffic, Not Big Media Responsible for Bugmenot Shutdown

Claims that media pressure spurred the shutdown of the controversial Bugmenot site are utterly false, according to a spokesman for Hostgator, the site’s former host.

Bugmenot, an online service that allows users to bypass compulsory registration by providing shared username-password combinations for many popular content sites, was unavailable for most of last week, and the anonymous owner of the site has implied that media pressure was behind it.

“Our stinkin’ host pulled the plug on us without notice (pretty obvious they were pressured somehow). But everything is sweet again. I’ve been in talk with our new hosts nearlyfreespeech.net — they are very sympathetic to the cause and won’t be pulling the plug on us again. Thanks for your support and concern but they are going to have to pry this site from my cold, dead hands,” the site’s anonymous owner told BoingBoing, a popular blog that has chronicled Bugmenot’s fortunes.

Online media companies, especially newspaper sites, have increasingly come to rely on registration data to better target online advertising. Given this trend, the Bugmenot site in recent weeks has attracted a wide variety of media attention, which included coverage of its abrupt disappearance.

“This freedom of speech conspiracy story is far from the truth,” said Brent Oxley, spokesman for Hostgator. “Nobody approached us, we had no idea what the site even did, nor had we heard of it before.”

According to Oxley, the Bugmenot site began crashing the host’s Apache Web server multiple times, and that is the reason it was deactivated.

“I guarantee we weren’t pressured. It seems everyone’s trying to turn it into something it’s not,” he said.

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BugMeNot mit neuem Hoster wieder am Netz

In einer juristischen und moralischen Grauzone bewegt sich der Internet-Dienst BugMeNot – er ermöglicht nämlich (sogar sehr komfortabel über Browser-Plug-ins für Internet Explorer und die Mozilla-Familie) den Besuch von Websites, die eigentlich eine Registrierung des Benutzers erfordern. Zu einer solchen gehen immer mehr Anbieter über – meist muss man dabei auch noch ein mehr oder weniger umfangreiches Profil hinterlegen. So etwas machen die Site-Betreiber natürlich nicht zum Spaß – sie benötigen möglichst viele Daten Ihrer Kunden, wenn sie erfolgreich Werbung verkaufen wollen, auf die sie zur Finanzierung ihrer Angebote angewiesen sind.

BugMeNot unterläuft die Registrierung, indem es in einer Datenbank hinterlegte, funktionierende Logins (natürlich von fiktiven “Personen”) und Passwörter an die besuchten Seiten weiterreicht – über 22.000 Angebote, beispielsweise die Netzpräsenzen der “New York Times” oder der “Washington Post”, hat der australische Betreiber des Dienstes auf diese Weise bereits “befreit”. Er möchte übrigens aus Angst vor rechtlicher Verfolgung lieber anonym bleiben.

Ende vergangener Woche war BugMeNot für einige Tage offline. Der bisherige Hoster Host Gator hatte den Service abgeschaltet, angeblich nachdem dieser einen seiner Server zwei Mal an einem Tag lahm gelegt hatte. “Mr. BugMeNot” vermutet allerdings, dass wohl eher externer Druck auf Host Gator ausgeübt wurde. Inzwischen ist BugMeNot mit neuem Hoster wieder am Netz – fragt sich nur wie lange? (tc)

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Hostgator Review by yumanoid – Very bad experience

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Registration Dodger BugMeNot Back After Outage

BugMeNot, a site that helps readers circumvent required logins for online content, is back in operation after going dark for several days. The site, created by an Australian programmer who assiduously guards his identity, was offline last week due to server hosting issues, fueling speculation that the host may have been pressured by news sites.

In a statement on the BugMeNot site, the founder — using the moniker Mr. BugMeNot — addressed the site outage noting that the site’s previous host, Host Gator, had pulled the plug, intimating, but not substantiating, that the host had been pressured to pull the plug. The new site host is NearlyFreeSpeech.net.

BugMeNot was crashing Host Gator servers several times per day, according to the previous host. Host Gator citied performance issues as the reason for ending its relationship with BugMeNot rather than pressure for news organizations.

Readers can use BugMeNot to generate login names and passwords for sites requiring registration and thus avoid providing personal information in exchange for access.

The BugMeNot.com service has “liberated” almost 23,000 sites from what they term “registration bondage,” according to a statement on their site. The most actively requested sites are:

1. www.nytimes.com
2. www.washingtonpost.com
3. www.latimes.com
4. www.ajc.com
5. www.chicagotribune.com

BugMeNot works with Mozilla and Internet Explorer. The site also offers a toolbar that users can install by dragging to their browser. As usage of the registration dodging service grows, some news sites that require registration have begun using scripts to auto-disable BugMeNot accounts.

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Hostgator Review by e3sixty – Expectations Surpassed and then some

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Hostgator Review by BradCis – Live Chat Support

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