[liberationtech] Secure, inexpensive hosting of activist sites

[micah]

Eugen Leitl <eugen at leitl.org> writes:

> On Sun, Apr 21, 2013 at 03:07:35PM +0200, ilf wrote:
>
>> I can't believe this bullshit thread recommending *only* commercial  
>> services.
>
> Look, free is distinctly unaffordable. If you need a dedicated
> box somebody has got to pay for the hosting and remote hands.
> Activists donating own resources are quite nice and cool
> (heck, been there, done that) but ultimatively you can't 
> rely on them to be there if the shit hits it.

Can't rely on them to be there for what exactly? 

Where is the liberatory technological element to recommending commercial
services when they are more than happy when the "shit hits it" to bend
over backwards for law enforcement without bothering even questioning if
the request is even legal because that would cut into their profits?  I
have to say I agree with ilf, this is pretty depressing for this list.

How can anyone in good conscience recommend to activists commercial
services whose primary goal is to optimize for the bottom line? You
realize that when "the shit hits it" you can rely on them to not waste
any of their money fighting for you. Not that it matters, because they
are already deupitized data collection points for the police, building
into their money-making schemes keeping as much logs as they possibily
can to maximize profits from various advertising and surveillance
efforts.

And really, Cloudflare? Comon. After their willingness to roll over on
the subpoena for Barret Brown and prentend that they were the internet's
saviors by making up that whole thing about how they saved the internet
from the biggest DDOS ever? 
 
This is an amazing statement: "free is distinctly unaffordable" -- what
meaning of "free" are you using here?  There are other things that I'd
pay *more* money for if it meant the kind of free that I'm thinking of
was in play... But this is 'liberationtech', right? Is the only thing
you are concerned about is being liberated from your money when doing
tech things?

The cognitive dissonance here is deafening.