Shawn — who got a cease-and-desist from his ISP, 1and1, for hosting his own movies on his site using BitTorrent — says,
"I just wanted to drop you a line letting you know that 1and1 have apparently revised their Bit Torrent policy, and absolved me of infringing on myself as long as I keep "mindful of the traffic that the sharing of this file can generate." I will do all I can to keep my server bandwidth low. (And no, they never minded before when I paid bandwidth overage charges…)
"The even better news is that 1and1 has released an official statement that says legitimate Bit Torrent usage is OK on 1and1 servers, and they are currently revising their Q&A section to state as much. w00t!"
w00t indeed! Unfortunately, the update 1and1's posted strongly implies that this was a tech-support rep with bad information. This is a little implausible given that at least four different reps gave the same info to 1and1 customers who forwarded it on to us.
It's a weird that 1and1 decided to blame its wayward employees for this. I think 1and1 would get a much bigger PR win out of this if they said, "We had a dumb policy and it was pointed out to us so we fixed it," than saying, "Our tech support people are the kind of people who uniformly, repeatedly misinterpret our policy, to the point of sending out threatening legal-sounding letters to our customers."
In recent days a 1&1 Internet support agent incorrectly informed a
customer that the use of BitTorrent(c) on certain 1&1 systems is not
permitted. The support agent's statement was based on a
misinterpretation of company policy and an incorrect analysis of
available data. When it was determined that the customer was
erroneously advised, the situation was rectified and the customer was
notified that the use of BitTorrent is allowed.1&1 deeply regrets any confusion this mistake has caused. To better
address customer concerns on this matter in the future, we are in the
process of updating the "Q&A" section of our Website to include
detailed information clarifying the use of BitTorrent with our
various
Link to Shawn's celebratory message, Link to 1and1 press-room
