Looks like Dreamhost is changing it’s tune (or it’s enforcement) on customers who run BitTorrent trackers.

From the comments on my previous post:

Hi,

I posted the below comment on your site. I am emailing it to you because I want to make sure that you get to see it.

Dreamhost shut down my bittorrent set-up before I even got a chance to use it. I have 3 personal videos that I made and was planning to distribute. I installed broadcast machine and was in the middle of uploading the torrents when dreamhost shut me down. Apparently, they have not changed their policy – they only made an exception for you due to the bad publicity. If this is not the case, then why shut me down? My torrents were not illegal and they certainly did not cause trouble using bandwidth or cpu time – they couldn’t have because I had not even posted the links online yet. yeah, I’m a little PO’D. I wrote them and told them that I knew they were letting you use it – so why couldn’t I? This was yesterday morn and I have not received an answer yet. Is it possible you could get me mentioned on boing boing so I can be treated reasonably too?

Followup: Could you tell me who the technician was that told you bit torrent was allowed?

Best Regards,

Frank
RCG Webmaster
http://RoseColoredGlasses.ORG

I don’t want to threaten my own hosting situation – and I’m not running a BitTorrent Tracker – but this blows!

If I create a video and I want to serve it should I have to use YouTube/Revver/et al? Shouldn’t I be able to disseminate content on my site how I wish?

Granted, DreamHost should remove or cap big bandwidth hogs but summarily shutting down services which don’t interfere with operations on the basis of their underlying technology seems anathema to what a good host would do.

Thoughts?

Oh, and I don’t have a recipe for talking to BitTorrent or getting featured on BoingBoing. Make your noise, see what happens.