ABUSE: Violators will be violated....

[Skylark King]

It's very simple:

There are rules. These rules are there for a number of very specific reasons. Nowhere on those list of reasons, which include such things as "so we don't go bankrupt while still maintaining free webcomic hosting to all who need it " and "so we can can maintain some sort of fairness between comic A and comic B," will you find "becuse the admins feel like being dicks."

Once saying that it's important to realize that there's the letter of the law and the spirit of the law. Is it abusing the rules to consistantly have a 85kb pageload? I don't think so. Not if the reasons for the 85kb pageloads are directly related to your comic. Is it abusing the rules to use keenspace as a file dump? Does this question even need to be asked? Keenspace is designed around hosting webcomics, not all the other shite you may feel like dumping here. I'm not sure what's so hard to understand about this.

So a few abusers here and there won't kill this place, but how many blind eyes need to be turned before KeenSpace NEEDS to charge for its hosting. Keep Space Free.

[Warren]

Amen.

Hosting is cheap. For the kids who think 11M is small (and trust me, it isn't) please go to Google and search for "Cheap Web Hosting". Get a site for $30 a year. Host you files there.

I do. You should to.

And if that's too expensive, don't go to McDonalds for a few days. Then you can afford it.

[Phalanx]

They might have just copied it verbaitum, change the templates to not have your site in it and just use the relative links.

I think they were confused. I have a sample version of the code (to demonstrate how it works) and a workspace version of the code to copy to their sites. I think they didn't read the instructions properly and copied the wrong thing, the mucked around blindly with it.

I see it in the first one, but the second just has a link to you site.

The dailytemplate of the second one is linking to my story_start.gif. It's on the top of the page.

I don't think any of it is malicious, just done out of ignorance. It's just the irritating fact I can't find a way to contact them and ask them nicely to stop.

I'm a lot more blunt about abuse problems on keenspace, I'm not going to sugar-coat them unlike the call center I work at. I get dinged on quality for being tactless and sounding uninterested. Well yeah. I'm not going to freaking coddle them and say it's not their fault if it's their fault.

http://www.queenofwands.net/d/20031208.html

There's another QoW strip that I can't find that's the perfect example how to answer a phone call from an idiot.

[Superlance]

Unfortunately, we're thinking that webcomics are just one flat strip a-la Schlock Mercenary. I'll have to poke Kisai about it.

However, if your page load is under 500kb, and you don't have any ZIP, RAR, etc files of programs on your account, you should be ok.

So, I can't have some of my comic-schemed WMA and WMZ (Windows Media Player and WinAMP) skins on my site, but I can have them on my Xepher account, and just send them out from there, and it'll be alright?
Those skins are initialy stored in ZIP files that can be up to 1MB; but most of my skins are simple and small- I think my silver FireBird skin is 220- something KB.


(yes, is clueless)
(learned HTML in two days just for this comic)
(knows nothing else)
(forgiveness?)

[STrRedWolf]

Skins to a player shouldn't be a problem, because they're more comic related than just music. I can see folks randomly pulling skins over a month period. Check to see if Winamp and Microsoft can host them on your servers too.

With just music (and some video), well... there's a few reasons why we're banning it.

First is the copyright issue. Even if you supposedly own the copyrights to it, if you put it on your KeenSpace account, the RIAA will demand us to take it down. There's alot of loopholes in current US law about that, so you'll have to be careful. We'd like to not have to involve a laywer, which costs money... (Hint from just me: Research it and lobby your congresscritters to return ownership rights to the singers.)

Second is the bandwith issue. Folks are going to be pulling it, and even though bandwidth is getting cheap, it's not cheap enough yet to go willy-nilly with it. So we're running in a bit of conservative bandwith, and our TOS reflects that.

[Faub]

The RIAA can demand that you take down MP3s they don't own the copyright to? My faith in the human race just dropped another notch. I'm running out of notches, people.

[Skylark King]

The RIAA can demand that you take down MP3s they don't own the copyright to? My faith in the human race just dropped another notch. I'm running out of notches, people.

I found a cool pair of sunglasses at work today. I put them in the Lost and Found

[Ghastly]

It's a pitty that a few jerks had to ruin it for the rest of us. Way to jerk it up, Jerky McGee!

I know Chris has always tolerated my MP3 of the Month section because I wasn't being a jerk about it. Only had one MP3 instead of an archive and as a percentage of my total bandwidth draw it was well under 1%. It was a nice bonus feature for my readers and a good way to draw in new readers from search engines. Ain't it always the way that it only takes a few bad eggs abusing a system to ruin it for those who play nice.

Oh well, thanks to bandwidth being peanuts now adays (I think I even have a free 10gb/month hosting somewhere still, I'll have to look into it) I'll just set up another site for that.

As for the RIAA sending out Cease and Desist orders to sites demanding they take down MP3s that the RIAA doesn't even own the copyrights to. Yes indeed they have done that. However there is something important you always have to remember when it comes to C&D orders. A C&D order is absolutely 100% legally meaningless. They're the equivalent of a dog barking. The barking won't hurt you in the least. C&Ds have no legal weight to them at all. They mean nothing. They arn't issued by a judge and you are under absolutely no legal obligation to comply with them what-so-ever.

Anyone who is a professional in the entertainments industry is well familiar with the meaningless nature of C&D orders. All C&Ds are good for is scarying laymen. They look all spooky and official and legal-like and sometimes they might even be sent by a lawyer (although usually they're just a form-order sent by a low-level clerk in the legal department). On the internet it is most likely that the C&D is sent by a bot. No actual person even knows the C&D has been sent to you until you reply back telling them you're complying.

As a person who makes his living in the music industry I can't even begin to tell you how many C&D orders I have received over the many years. C&Ds all get the same treatment. Crumpled up and tossed in the garbarge and then gone completely unacknowledged.

If you receive a C&D order remember:

A) Don't panic - C&Ds are completely harmless. You will not be arrested, thrown in jail, or found libel for ignoring a C&D.
B) If you're doing something you know is 100% wrong, then stop doing it. The C&D (if sent through the mail) means there's a pretty good chance someone at the company you're wronging knows you're doing it. If you get one through e-mail chances are it was a bot and nobody at the company is really aware of what's going on but hey, if you know you're doing something wrong then don't do it.
C) If you know what you're doing is perfectly legal ignore the C&D and keep doing what you're doing.
D) If you're in a grey area and you're not sure if the law can be interpreted on your side or not, ignore the C&D and keep doing what you're doing, or comply with the C&D is you want.
E) Don't answer the C&D, don't explain your side, don't acknowledge ever receiving it. Don't don't don't. Even if you're 100% right never answer the C&D.

A C&D is mostly used to intimidate and bully people into backing down. Usually they're a lot of hot air and corporations will issue C&Ds over issues they know for fact they will never win were it to go to court. They'll even issue them in cases they know for fact would never even make it to court.

At the most a C&D could be considered a shot across the bow. Just a little something to get your attention. If you're well armoured and have them outgunned (ie. the law is clearly on your side) then it's full speed ahead. If you're not sure which way it goes then it's your call what you want to do about it. If you know they've got you dead-to-rights and you're the one outgunned well then stand down and prepair to be boarded.

Keep in mind corporations do not want it to get to court. There's a lot of negative publicity generated anytime it looks like a corporation is stomping on the rights of a private citizen. They'll try to do everything they can to get you to resolve out of court. The C&D is just the very first step and it's a very effective one since most people have no experience with them and back down right away.

As for the RIAA actually sueing people over distributing MP3s the RIAA does not hold the copyright to. That has happened. Needless to say those cases never actually get to court and for the RIAA to claim copyright over matterial they don't in fact own is actionable.

Depending on where you live you may be able to sue the RIAA at that point for barratry (filing a frivolous lawsuit / wrongful legal harrassment). It can even be a criminal offence in some areas too, so if the RIAA ever actually does issue you a summons (and a summons is different from a C&D, you can't ignore them) for matterial which you, yourself do infact own the rights to then check your local laws. You may be able to sue them back or at least get them busted with a criminal fine.

So remember gang. Don't let C&Ds needlessly scare you. They don't actually mean anything.

[Kisai]

By your own calculation of bandwidth to dollar, that's FIVE CENTS.

Okay, so your site costs the keenspace 5 cents to host.
Since you're not popular you probably don't bring more than 1c of revenue, so keenspace loses 4 cents every month by hosting you.

That's a poor deal for keenspace.
Of course, you can, and you do say "It's freakin 4 cents! What's the problem???"
What are the odds your site will become 10 times as popular in a couple of months? Especially after it gets listed on websearch engines, RPG maker fansites, ect. ect.? I'd say the chances are big.
Then your site would cost 40-50 cents.
Beginning to see the problem?

Now, multiply it by thousands of people that sign up and think that stealing a couple of cents here and there will not hurt keenspace...

It's the same deal as with that park that had petrified trees, if each tourist taken take a small piece as a souvenir, the park would be ruined.

I want to come back to this for a second because of a ignorant comment made by a customer at work.

"Why should I pay xx.xx overage costs, the people at (companyname) are billionares!" ...

Um yeah, it makes SOOO much good business sense to just throw money away.

I'm going to draw the difference between how I handle certain comments at keenspace and versus where I work (you get me when you ask to speak to a supervisor.)

Work:
"I don't think that is fair"
Answer - "If I credit you, then I have to credit everyone, that does not make good business sense"
Keenspace:
"I don't think that is fair"
Answer - "If everyone did what you were doing, then keenspace would could not be a free service anymore."

Work:
"I want (Absurd request), NOW" (usually in loud voice)
Answer - (after lowering the volume on the phone, yelling and demanding usually gets you nothing) "You are not eligible/entitled to that, anything else I can help you with?"
Keenspace:
"I am going to put mp3s/rpgmaker/movies/etc on my site..."
Answer (removes site) - "Your account has been removed."

So, at work, I do have the authority to cancel peoples account, just like keenspace, however, the cost is different. At work, canceling someone who pays a lot into their service doesn't make good business sense.
On keenspace, it makes more sense to stop abuse before it gets to a problem stage.

One instance is the wind.keenspace.com/neopets problem, when someone hotlinked their site from neopets, it took several months for neopets to respond, and only after I tampered with the DNS on keenspace to redirect all junk traffic from their site back to them. There was only two solutions, one was to pull wind.keenspace.com , but unfortunately the wildcard DNS was causing wind to still to associate with keenspace, and pull massive amounts of bandwidth even though there was no site. 40 404 errors x a few thousand users per minute = log files larger than ghastlys site. But that wasn't so much my concern as was how that meant that 5-10% of the connection resources was being hogged by neopets users. I don't think I'd redirect DNS again, but my point was made. I'd love to be able to invoice third party sites for all the bandwidth they waste, but most third party sites waste negligible amounts of our bandwidth (forums/livejournal hotlinks are usually minimum) except when linked in a way that many people see the image (livejournal friends list, highly trafficked forums)

So this comes back to why hotlinks have a 1x1 image instead of error 403/404/410 , the 1x1 image uses a negligible amount of bandwidth (the same or less than the error page) but comic authors that realize that others are hotlinking their site can replace the nosteal.jpg with something more obtrusive, like a 64000x64000 blank gif to screw up the hotlinkers site.

And ghastlys mp3s had no impact on his pageload because the amount of bandwidth didn't bring his pageload up much/any.

The more popular your site is, the more you can get away with. A new site can not upload something large and not get noticed by the checks and balances, yet a site that has been around for 3 months and is within the top 100 or so of keenspace comics would probably not notice a short term higher page draw from a one-time flash image or mp3, yet using your site as a place to "host" distributing a large file of any time means that people are going to download it from your site and deny service to others that want to see comics.

Breakdown...

The smaller the pageload, the more sites can be hosted on the server before it either saturates the bandwidth or the connection resources.
Right now the main server has around 6000 sites and can sustain 2Mbit/sec across 400-800 connections per second. It has survived being linked by penny-arcade twice.

let's say that 2Mbit (250KB/sec) if your pageload is 50KB, 5 people can connect to your site and have everything downloaded in less than 1 second. Now when your site is 500KB, either 1 person takes 2 seconds to download it, or everyone not on broadband takes several minutes to download it, thus tying up the connection and when the server hits the limit, nobody people can access.

To be fair, it's not expected that everyone can have low pageloads, but I'm thinking from a optimization point of view. Comics are read in a burtsy manner, you load the page, it takes two seconds, you take 20 seconds to read the comic (thus allowing 10 other people to see the comic while you read it), the next page will have less of a pageload if the comic is the same size since all the extra images will aready be cached.

In reality, there are 400 people connected to keenspace at any one time, so 400 people on 56k's would be 2000 ... which is where 2Mbit came from.

[CommandantDava]

Thanks for the explanation of how you determine if something is a