August 04, 2008 by sharky
Once revered to be an affordable safe-haven for torrenting, OVH is beginning to crack down on anyone caught using P2P/BitTorrent on their servers. This also includes the thousands of renters who are using the cheap Kimsufi package as a makeshift seedbox - indeed, this is sad news for seedbox owners and resellers alike. OVH - longtime regarded as a seedbox provider that "turns a blind eye" to illegal activities, is now complying with copyright-infringement letters that are being forwarded to them in regards to torrents being found on their servers.
The most memorable OVH shutdown has been Vortex Network, which was hosted there. Fortunately for them they were given a 48-hour grace period, instead of having the rug pulled out from under them unbeknownst and without warning, as was the case for all those trackers hosted in Malaysia. However, we can’t help but feel somewhat personally responsible for OVH’s decision, since the original OVH complaint had our FileShareFreak article included as proof that it is, "indeed a warez site":
“We have received a complaint regarding copywrite (sic) infringement on the website vortexnetwork.org hosted on your server ns358589.ovh.net. This link demonstrates that this is indeed a warez site:
http://filesharefreak.com/2008/07/14…w-mac-tracker/
You need to close this website within 48 hours or we will have to take further action. Regards, Folarin.”
Why OVH had to use our link to demonstrate the proof of allegations, we don’t know. Couldn’t they just sign up or find an invite and check it out for themselves? Regardless, Vortex is better off being hosted somewhere else anyways, somewhere much safer. The tracker has since resurfaced and is back online at this time.
OVH - Kill Two Birds with One Stone
Obviously OVH is not criminally liable for what’s happening on their servers - just as if you chose to download child pr0n from the Internet, the police are not going to kick down the door of your ISP - it’ll be yours. So the issue isn’t liability - they’re just sick and tired of trundling through hundreds of daily infringement notices from various IFPI affiliates such as BayTSP. But the real motive is probably a financial one:
It’s estimated that somewhere between 10% - 15% of their servers are being used in relation to torrents (most of them being seedboxes), and while unverified, it’s a safe bet to suggest that these 10 percenters are consuming more than half of OVH’s overall bandwidth. So OVH stands to lose a little revenue on lost clients, but gain it back by saving on network traffic throughput. Not to mention that OVH is set to expand towards a more global marketplace starting next month, instead of just providing service to a few select countries in Europe and to French colonies.
The New Rules
There’s been no new amendments to their ToS (last edited on May 30/08), as expected there already is a clause that stipulates the non-use of their servers for immoral, illegal, copyrighted, etc. material. But it’s only up until now that they’ve decided to enforce it. Here’s a warning we found in the OVH forums:
"Seedboxes/Torrenting breach of copyright material- Forget it…
If you are here to buy a server to use as a ’seedbox’ to torrent breach of copyright material, forget it. OVH is not the place for you and your server will be shut down within minutes of torrenting breach of copyright material."
Check out this forum thread for user comments and addition info:
http://forum.ovh.co.uk/showthread.php?t=634
And here’s a recent comment found on TrackeReactor forums, and there are many more that are similar:
Aug 2/08:
This is not a scare tactic.
My seedbox was shut down. Both of them.I noticed the speed for my 1st seedbox was really bad in the morning and i thought i was being DDosed. Me and my partners installed firewalls, Av’s and still the problem persist. Hours later seedbox went completely. My other box which was working fine, dissappeared as well. MY reseller had alot of complaints regarding this from his customers.. Looks like i gotta hunt for another provider.. Lucky i have only a few more days on that server. But the data lost is just :S
Am planning to get either from hosting Ie or vectoral..
Last words: We hope OVH isn’t starting a trend for hosting companies to try and stymie BitTorrent, but it does appear that more and more are joining the list all the time. If you use OVH, get out while you can.
UPDATE: August 4/08
Good morning,
Following our message of Friday about P2P on our network,
we can say it was read. Certainly understood half, deformed
by discussing parties who are passionate in every sense,
who often have nothing to do with the subject.Now we are listening here are the details concerning the management
the abuse of P2P.Our network has no vocation to become the dustbin of the Internet
where one can freely exchange any sort of illegal file. This is
the main message we wish to convey. According to our estimates,
Only 300/400 dedicated servers of 40000 exchange files
in a different way. It is little, but the trend is to take a
dedicated server, cheap (low risk) to exchange
faster because the file servers use 100Mbps or
1Gbps bandwidth! We want to break this trend and reduce
as much as possible the number of servers used for this activity. Hence
Friday’s message, which has obviously been read and heard. [...]
Follow the new thread here.
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