LiteSpeed License is making it impossible to run user generated / web2.0 websites

[MichaelB]

Hi LiteSpeed folks!

I've been testing a demo of LiteSpeed on our server alongside 3 other webservers and LS came out as a winner! Performance was top notch and I recommended management to buy the license.

However, LS failed miserably in the licensing department. Our lawyer vetoed the deal because of this line in your licensing agreement:

You can not use the SOFTWARE for a Warez site or a Porn site. This includes sexual content, or direct links to adult content elsewhere. This is also true for sites that promote any illegal activity.

You see, we run a user generated content site. It's a site where anyone can post any document they want and you can then download it. A paid account gives you SSL support and your files never get deleted. We simply cannot police what users do since in some cases, we don't even know what they share with their clients!

I have no idea what your policy would be in this case but it simply is not worth the risk of switching to another server if someone complains to you guys or you just decide to pull the plug on us.

Anyway, I'd like to see some clarification on this issue. You're really shooting yourselves in the foot by trying to police the morality of others.


PS: This should serve as a warning to other who are in the similar situation as us... beware of the license agreement (some free legal advice).

[mistwang]

If your site is not targeting porn content, we will not trouble you.
For example, there is no problem for flickr or photobucket to use our product, even though, there might be users who uploads porn pictures occasionally, we won't revoke our license because of that.
However, there are picture hosting site targeting porn audience, we won't let them to take advantage of our product for sure.

[rubyjuice]

How is this portion of your license enforced? Do you review installation sites for violations of this policy?

Any hosting company using Litespeed that does not actively review all of it's hosted content could easily be in violation of this part of the license. This is a serious legal concern for anyone hosting a large number of sites on Litespeed. Especially considering that in certain cases, reviewing customer content for compliance is itself illegal. Which, puts the hosting provider in a very difficult position.

I think it is important that more people are made aware of this license detail. It would be good to see a note about this on the license page.

[rubyjuice]

Also, MichaelB should be careful about using Litespeed with his content, being that it may contain sexual content. The license clearly prohibits sexual content, which will probably be uploaded at some point.

[viettechorg]

So how are you gonna check the site?

Like before selling the liecence?

[QuantumNet]

Well for our own sites and for some of our customers we will be purchasing litespeed VPS editions.

But just FYI mistwang

We had planned to purchase enterprise edition for our shared web hosting servers as well as purchase a license for each of our VPS customers

but because of your policy you have lost out on possibly $1000's because there is no way we could monitor each and every customer and besides it would cause severe legal and moral issues to snoop on customers.

I personally know several shared hosting companies in a few different datacenters that were planning on making the switch but you make it legally impossible for this to happen and I will be sure to let them know about it before they waste money on your product just to have their licenses stripped because a customer hosts what they choose to host.

I am surprised you chose to support hosting control panels with a policy like this it makes absolutely no sense you might as well remove your support for the control panels which I am sure those communities will find this policy to be unacceptable as well.

[mistwang]

We understood your concern, and policy is really targeting server dedicate for hosting porn. Like what I mentioned before, we will not shut your site down just because one user upload a porn picture.

For hosting company not targeting porn, just generic web hosting, there should not much to worry about. Even in case that our EULA do being violated, we will contact you first to have it resolved in stead of revoking the license immediately. We do appreciate the opportunity to have your business, but we do not like some other companies who can do anything regardless just for making money.

For shared hosting, if you want to take customer who want to host adult content, you can put them on an server using Apache.

[robdiablo]

Some of our clients include dating sites where they don't regulate the images uploaded by the members unless it's illegal content as well as some members could post profiles looking for sexual relationships with others which cannot be regulated as well. However, they don't allow any form of commercialized members such as fake profiles trying to get members to look at amateur porn sites, etc... Would this violate your policies?

We also have some stores that sell lingerie, etc... would this violate your policies?

[mistwang]

That's fine.

[nathanc]

mistwang, bravo guys. That is a refreashing policy IMHO.