Singapore Web Hosting Blog

according to report of straits times, a web host was sued and has been found liable for copyright infringement after pictures of two models were posted in a forum that the hosting provider hosts.

the ruling was truly a landmark decision that had far-reaching implications for other web sites and worse, web hosts.

‘No longer can a host claim that he has no control over what is posted on the website and is therefore not liable for copyright infringement or libel because these were committed by third parties.

‘Hosts have to either continuously check what is on their websites or face repercussions. This judgment makes that very clear.’

if this is how similar cases would be handled in the future, too bad, anybody can easily destroy any innocent hosting provider any time.

1)why a web host is resiposible for contents that do not belong to them? a web site belongs to web site owner, not the hosting provider. this is very critical difference. if web host is liable simply because the content sit on the host’s server, then all ISPs including singtel, starhub, pacnet, are liable because the illegal content did go through their facilities as well.

2)it’s impossible for web host to check all material on their servers. how can anybody go through millions of posts which is normal for a forum? even if hosts spend money/manpower to do this, how can we know which picture is copyright infringement? how to know who owns copyright to any image? how to know it’s copyright infringement even before the pic is posted (as the report indicates, once it’s posted, your in trouble)? following logic, the rulling leads to, no singaporean or singapore business is qualified to provide web hosting service.

3)all serious web hosts have terms of service, acceptable usage policy, that clients have to agree before signing up, which indicates clearly the web site owner is resposible for any and all web site content. this serves as contract between web hosts and their clients. why it’s not valid/legal?

i fully understand IP is valuable assets, sometimes extreamely valuable, and we honor that. if we find any of our clients uses material that he has no rights to use, we send warning to him, and take the site down if needed.

but the problem is, we have to know the issue before taking action. how can we know?

and why we’re resposible for something that we did not touch, that does not belong to us, that we have never seen, that we have never heard of, that was not generated by us… ?!

quite a lot of people, including some of our clients, are rather confused by the difference between a domain name and a hosting account (be it web hosting or email hosting account).

it’s understandable, although words such as domain name, web site, hosting, DNS… are everywhere to see nowadays, every business, every boy next door, seems have a web site. however, they are still very new. most people did not learn the proper definition of them in school. i for one did not know anything about domain name or web site when i was in university.

many times, i have been asked by client: why i still can’t access my web site now, 3 days after i ordered hosting plan from you? when i check, i find the client has yet registered the domain name. so i reply saying so and point them to difinition of domain name and hosting account. some times, some clients reply: so? i still cannot see my web site?

so let me explain a bit here, in layman’s words. forgive me if the explanation here sounds not so accurate to tech savvy people, this is not technical guide.

domain name is an address on the web. for example, “yahoo.com” , “singaporewebhosting.com” . when you add “http://www.” before the domain name, it becomes a URL that you may visit via browser - the web site, for example “http://www.singaporewebhosting.com“.

however, please note, domain name is just ownership, it does NOT do anything by itself. after you buy a domain name for, say, 5 years, you own it for 5 year, nobody can get the same domain name in this 5 years, unless you sell it.

you can buy domain name from any domain registrar, including us.

to have a web site at ” http://www.yourdomainname.com” you need to have a web hosting account as well. the web hosting account is a user’s account on a web server (just a computer that’s suitable to serve web pages with high speed Internet connection) where you store all web pages and emails.

hosting account itself does NOT do much by itself either without a domain name pointing to it. you can store web pages or files in the account, that’s about it, without domain name pointing to it, the hosting account is not accessable by visitors.

although domain name and hosting account are associated most of the time, but they ARE two different things. you may buy domain name and hosting account from different service poviders.

you can buy domain name only without hosting account, in this case, you will see “page not found” error or something similar when you go to “http:www.yourdomain.com”.

you can also buy a hosting account without registering domain name, in this case, the hosting account exists on a server, nobody can visit it though.

our hosting plans do not include domain name registration, unless you choose the “register the domain name for me” option, what you order from us is hosting account only. you have to own the domain already (this is very common) or register the domain seperately, from us or from any registrar.

now, next step is to link the domain with the hosting account, or say it more technically, change domain DNS to proper (our) nameservers.

how to move my web site to your service? this question has been asked many time.

often, client has an existing web site and would like to move to a new hosting provider. if planned properly, the migration is smooth, no downtime will occur.

here’s how.

1)first, make a full backup. if your web pages are all static, you, or your web designer, should have a complete copy, but just in case, make a backup no matter what. if yours is dynamic, such as forum or blog, you have to do a backup. to backup, either download everything on current server to your local computer, or make use of backup feature of your hosting account control panel. or better, do both.

2)sign up for new/our hosting account. once we receive payment, we’ll activate account and email you order confirmation together with account information on the same day.

3)login to our hosting account control panel, create email accounts, restore backup if your previous provider uses cpanel as well, or upload web pages mannually. please note this is done on our server while the old account is still running. so before you do anything to domain name, the same content exist on both server, ours and previous provider’s.

4)go to domain management control panel, update DNS to our nameservers. this is not hosting account control panel, it’s domain management control panel. where you bought domain name may or may not be the same as where you bought hosting account. you may need to ask your current hosting provider to change DNS for you if they registered domain on behalf of you but didn’t give you access info.

5)wait for up to 72 hours ( in theory, in reality 24 hours is all it takes in most cases.) so that new DNS can be propogated all over the world. during this period, some visitors will hit new/our server, some will hit previous server, but since you have exactly same copy on both server, visitors won’t notice it. for .com .net .org domain names, this process takes only a few minutes nowadays.

of course, sometimes it’s more complicated. for example, if you run a forum, you need to close it while migration, otherwise content on your site keep changing, you won’t have a final version to move.

if you would like to transfer the domain name to new host as well, you’d better ask new host to initiate transfer process after site migration is complete.