Good Intentions Never Go Unpunished

Sigh.

I've been running the www.salsa-merengue.co.uk site for a number of years, and keeping it has not been easy. It's evolved over time to become a resource for people who wanted to learn more about latin music and dance; the intent was for it to be an adjunct to the many commercially driven sites. And in that, it has garnered tremendous succeess.

This morning, I logged in to find that PowWeb (who currently host the site) have suspended the site. No warnings beforehand, zilch. The first thing that I checked was the billing section - and it's paid up no problem. Turns out, it's been listed under "bandwidth abuse". Not alleged bandwidth abuse, but the rather accusatory "bandwidth abuse".

When I come onto the package a few years ago, there was a 5GB per day limit over which I would pay an excess. Nothing said about denial of service.

I can only assume that they disabled the service to protect me from a third party bandwidth thief. Then surely "bandwidth abuse" could have been replaced with a more customer-friendly subject header?

The website does generate a few headaches because it doesn't fit the 'standard' model: it has a large-ish volume of media files which can be downloaded for free (alarm bells), and as such it takes up more than the usual amount of bandwidth (more alarm bells). I'm constantly having to reassure some techie or paper-pusher or bean-counter that I own the copyright to the materials, and that the bandwith being consumed is within the original agreement. I think one day, some bright spark will say it's now unlimited use with a fair use policy (despite my not signing up for a modern package), and that the current bandwidth is no longer within their definition of 'fair use'. Perhaps today is that day.

This is the first time PowWeb has tried to shut it off, so I'll give more than what PowWeb gave to me, and that's "benefit of the doubt".

Perhaps this is the last piece of punishment this Good Intention can take.

We'll see.

Loo Yeo