Blue Host Not for Me

I’ve heard so many good things about Blue Host that I finally decided I would switch my domains and sites to them.

Several weeks ago I started the registration process to open an account. I got to the end of one form and there sat the empty checkbox in front of a statement saying I’d read and accept their various terms of service.

I hadn’t.

So I put the process on hold and started wading through their long TOS. So many convoluted sentences to struggle through! I took days at it because too much of that kind of tedious, complicated reading at one time is just too much at one time.

Eventually I came to this:

Subscribers may not post or disclose any personal or private information about or images of children or any third party without the consent of said party or a parent’s consent in the case of a minor.

I thought some version of, “Wow! It surely can’t mean exactly that!” So I launched a chat session to ask. And she dumped me! 🙁 Apparently I asked the wrong question.

Maybe it was a fluke or an accident or something likewise unintentional. (FYI, the only thing I doctored in the image was her name.)

So, over the course of the next 11 days, I kept reading.

This evening I finally arrived triumphantly to the end of the biggest page of their TOS.

So I opened another chat session to ask my question again.

So if I take pictures at a family reunion and post one such photo on my site, I must first secure permission from everyone on that photo?

Yes

How about if I’m a tourist in New Orleans and take a photo of my wife…and in the background are other people. I can’t post that photo without getting permission from the other tourists?

Yes if your photo contains a clear shot of a person that did not give you consent to post there photo or child you can be suspended for it.

It actually means exactly what it says. Incredible! 😯 I don’t see how they can police that very well. At all.

I had a third question, pertaining to text descriptions of people. Alas, in my haste, I made the mistake of using a rather famous politician as an example. 😳

Allow me one more question, please. This one has to do with text content. If my post includes the observation that Mitt Romney’s hair is turning gray (personal information), is that a violation of your TOS since I didn’t secure Mr. Romney’s permission to say that?

[ChatClosedByStaff]

I got cut off again! 🙄

I should have asked about posting that my friend Joe has started wearing suspenders. I think their TOS would forbid my doing that without Joe’s consent.

Wow!

So…no Blue Host for me. I can’t meet such a stringent provision in their terms of service.

That’s a big disappointment. 🙁

Now what?

I guess I could just host my own Web server. That sounds like a lot of bother and headache and expense. An alternative would be to jump in/on/through the cloud and use the Amazon EC2 service. 😯 Forget that!

Closed Circuit to Grammar Grumps: Don’t mock him for using there incorrectly. Thanks.

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