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Time to rebuild my host spread

wswd said:
I'd love to talk to the teacher who suggested you open a business illegally.
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Likewise. I had heard of class projects wherein you pretend to open a business and run it for a period of time, but nowhere ever does it say to actually do it especially without plastering every single marketing material with an appropriate disclaimer. BOCES or not, I went to a similar program for a time in order to get into some specialty programs not available in normal schools- I actually was a licensed fiber optic technician at age 15, and also got into precision metalwork at that time as well as proving my skills on computers.

Now if you actually were considering continuing, I'd be willing to spot you some temporary space and power while you rearrange your back end and prepare for the long haul, but at this point it sounds like you're throwing in the towel. Well done, with that ending you've managed to get an A in being a con artist like the internet has a reputation for being full of.
 
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General Question:
How is HMT a business (from a legal standpoint)? Correct me if I'm wrong, but if there was never any money made on my part, so by definition, it isn't a business. It was just a website that allotted space to Tao and myself for no cost.
I am not asking this to be disrespectful, I honestly want to know what you mean by "Illegal Business".
 
theswagbayorg said:
General Question:
How is HMT a business (from a legal standpoint)? Correct me if I'm wrong, but if there was never any money made on my part, so by definition, it isn't a business. It was just a website that allotted space to Tao and myself for no cost.
I am not asking this to be disrespectful, I honestly want to know what you mean by "Illegal Business".
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Okay, after your previous note, be prepared to endure a couple of rough posts. At least I'm not quite as sharp tongued as some guys here!

Obligatory snark: "Are you really asking us, aka you learned nothing in your class AND you can't ask your teacher?!"

In a sense you're right, that in parts of tax law it floats into "Hobby" territory so that you have no income you need to report. However, a Business is not the same as making (or losing!) money. It's about services provided and the manner they are provided. Let's look at one of your initial posts.

--------------------------
Free Application Hosting- Forums, Blogs, Podcasts, and more!

Hello Folks,
I would like to present TheSwagBay's free application hosting. If you have a forum, blog, cms site, or any other "database based" application, why not host it for free? Even if you are completely new to online applications, we still can set you up with any application! Heres what we can offer as far as applications go:

-Forums such as phpBB, SMF, XMB, MyBB, PunBB, and a slew more. If you own a Vbulletin licence, we also allow Vbulletin as well.

-Blogs including Joomla, Wordpress, necleus, Pixie and more (almost 15 more!)

-CMS of all types are allowed, as long as they comply with our TOU.

-Wikis are allowed.

-Estores are allowed

-Podcasts are allowed

-and actually, much more. There are so many open source apps out there, so to be clear, if it uses a database, and is classified as an "Web App", then we will host it! If you have questions about this, please PM us.

All hosting comes with email, domain, and managed file services (FTP, etc), as well as lots of webspace and bandwidth (we can't use the word unlimited, but we can assure you its very high).

Heres how we can offer free application hosting. Once you have our team install your web application, one of our Tech guys will contact you on where we can place an advert on your website. We offer a few different choices when It comes to adverts, such as text based ads, contextual ads, or even video based ads.

All free plans are subject to our Terms of Use (TOU), which can be viewed/read by contacting us (just PM us)


Finally, if by now you are wondering, we dont have a website (well, sort of, but not for hosting.) We have just found that most of our business comes from forums like this, and a website is not needed.

Thanks and enjoy!
-TheSwagBay Admin Team

------------------------------------

Sounds like a fledgling business to me!

So no, you can't run away now and say "Ha ha, we made no money, so it's not a business!"

How can you have a Terms of Use and not be regarded as a business?
 
TaoPhoenix said:
(Long quote)
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In that snippet you posted, the last line before the signature block.

Finally, if by now you are wondering, we dont have a website (well, sort of, but not for hosting.) We have just found that most of our business comes from forums like this, and a website is not needed.
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You claimed to be a business when you introduced yourself. Therefore although not a legally registered business you still were assumed to be one by your own words. If you were not really planning to be a serious business you should have used different wording to cover up that fact instead of claiming to be something you were not.

Strictly speaking that could be considered false advertising, which is actually a serious criminal offense. Now I wouldn't expect you to have any experience with business ethics at your age, but what you did is definitely a very wrong thing to do and really the only saving grace about it is the fact that you at least had the decency to bluff your way out of taking on any clients that would be adversely affected by the project ending.
 
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theswagbayorg said:
General Question:
How is HMT a business (from a legal standpoint)? Correct me if I'm wrong, but if there was never any money made on my part, so by definition, it isn't a business.
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Making money isn't what determines hobby vs. business. Most businesses don't make a profit for the first couple years. Does that mean they aren't legal businesses? You also placed ads on peoples' websites. Who was making the money from that? Somebody was making money. The fact that you possibly weren't making a net income (i.e. you had losses at the end of the day) doesn't mean you weren't running a business.


My school provided me and my friends with the funds to buy hosting, a domain, and eventually a server along with template rights.
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Like I said, I would love to talk to the school/teacher who purchased the necessary materials for you to operate an illegal business. Completely unacceptable.
 
Alright, then I guess we will treat this as a business. I did have Logan1999 on my server in the beginning. I had an advert on his site. He terminated hosting with me a month later, and from there on, it was only me and Tao on the server. I can refer to our ToS, where it states FREE HOSTING CLIENTS could be terminated at ANY time WITHOUT notice, and thats what happened, is it not?

I don't know what else to say to all this. I wanted to be treated in the industry as a real host, and not an student conducting a study on the industry, so that's what I did.
 
You're wriggling, trying to have it both ways. I'll borrow a plot line from one of Tom Clancy's books. "You can't terminate a 'client' with a Terms of Service via an entity that doesn't exist." However your last line says it all. "You wanted to be treated like a real host", so now we're yelling at you like a real host using fraudulent pretenses.

Why is running a mock company with "insider knowledge that it was going to collapse" better than being a "student conducting a study"? What kind of bad treatment were you dreading?
 
Honestly, I'm going to call BS. I don't know if it was a school project or a failed business because he ran out of funds. I'm tending to lean toward the latter, to be honest.
 
wswd said:
Honestly, I'm going to call BS. I don't know if it was a school project or a failed business because he ran out of funds. I'm tending to lean toward the latter, to be honest.
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Well if THAT theory is true, then it all just becomes a hall of mirrors. I try to believe people as long as I can.

At the end of it all, my survey result is in, so he just joins all the other charismatic Alumni, free to go off and do whatever else he likes. Maybe even one day he'll run a good host.

I have my six winners, so my primary stage of the project is done for now. By now every host here knows who I am, so those that have chosen to remain silent have had their chance.
 
I wasn't dreading any mistreatment...I just didn't want to be treated differently than a...hmmm, what the word..."official" host.

This is somewhat making me uncomfortable, I guess. I thought because only Tao was on the server when my time ran out, I was okay, because Tao was a Free hosting client. From what I am hearing, that doesn't seem to be the case. Please, someone tell me what is wrong with that? Lets say I was acting as a real host, and I just "went silent, never to return", under the same circumstances (even though this was a project, lets say I just left FWS altogether, without ever saying it was a project). Wouldn't that be okay? I know it wouldn't be in my mind, but legally, whats wrong with it?
 
theswagbayorg said:
I wasn't dreading any mistreatment...I just didn't want to be treated differently than a...hmmm, what the word..."official" host.

This is somewhat making me uncomfortable, I guess. I thought because only Tao was on the server when my time ran out, I was okay, because Tao was a Free hosting client. From what I am hearing, that doesn't seem to be the case. Please, someone tell me what is wrong with that? Lets say I was acting as a real host, and I just "went silent, never to return", under the same circumstances (even though this was a project, lets say I just left FWS altogether, without ever saying it was a project). Wouldn't that be okay? I know it wouldn't be in my mind, but legally, whats wrong with it?
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I don't know, that's kind of like saying "Hey I stole this lady's purse, but I ran real fast and didn't get caught. I should be OK, right?". Sure there might not be any witnesses and you may not get convicted -- that does not make it right. If abiding by the laws is the Alpha and Omega of your morality, then please reconsider. For one, people need to look out for one another nowadays. Two, things have a way of getting back to you. I hope no one was affected by this like you say, but kinda find it hard to believe.
 
theswagbayorg said:
I wasn't dreading any mistreatment...I just didn't want to be treated differently than a...hmmm, what the word..."official" host.

This is somewhat making me uncomfortable, I guess. I thought because only Tao was on the server when my time ran out, I was okay, because Tao was a Free hosting client. From what I am hearing, that doesn't seem to be the case. Please, someone tell me what is wrong with that? Lets say I was acting as a real host, and I just "went silent, never to return", under the same circumstances (even though this was a project, lets say I just left FWS altogether, without ever saying it was a project). Wouldn't that be okay? I know it wouldn't be in my mind, but legally, whats wrong with it?
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Only one snarky line this time: "If you feel uncomfortable, good! Welcome to being treated like a real host when that host can't stay in business!"

If you had just vanished without a trace, believe me, we'd be EVEN MORE upset! The reason is that unless declared as a Learning Hosts (or Private Hobbies not guaranteeing uptime), All Hosts Are Businesses, even if it is a Non-Cash operating model. So if you advertise officially offering a service, and a client signs up, basically a contract forms. (You really can't thunder "I have the right to delete your account at any time for no reason" in a TOS because the entire rest of your presentation is all marketing "I'm number one! Sign with me!")

So "just vanishing" basically gets into the realm of "breach of contract" which is pretty nasty business.
 
Christmas Update

Okay, Christmas Eve is a nice time to mark a milestone. Without fussing over days, this little adventure ran about 27 months.

Here is the Sunset Board. That means that I am satisfied with this round of hosts, and now they just collect time on the clock. Here is the address again for easy reference. http://www.freevoteusa.com/index.html

This is my updated FAQ. I still need to tune up the language, but I removed the last faded hosts. http://www.freevoteusa.com/WebHostFAQ.html

So as a summary, I set out to ignore raucous advertising, and find some hosts with strong stability and, when possible, decent service.

Now I'll be moving to more page development activities. JJW says he hopes to contribute some materials to improve the visuals, while I'll work on my articles.

I'll still post a note or two here with news.
 
So Swag went out of business since it was only a school project? I came in way late as I usually do not read this topic.

If that is the case, then why on earth would you actually host people? To me that is just screwing people, and I am sure they did not know it was a school project.
 
Sain Cai said:
So Swag went out of business since it was only a school project? I came in way late as I usually do not read this topic.

If that is the case, then why on earth would you actually host people? To me that is just screwing people, and I am sure they did not know it was a school project.
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He said that I was the only client, so I was the only one "at risk" when he played out the endgame. So I said my piece above, in a couple lengthy posts, and now I am moving on. Now I'm going to work on the page itself, with what modest talents I have. I have six good hosts, so I'm set for years, and I can recommend them all to Potential Clients here.
 
Final Board

Happy New Year!

New Years Day is a nice marker to use for the end date of the active part of my project. Using a new article template, I cleaned up the study results all into a single page. The active monitoring has been turned off because the host selection is now complete. Even if a host subsequently folds, that does not invalidate the selection of quality hosts from the project itself.

Minor change in the lineup - Seraphim is back in front, because he is the most active here of the Round 1 winners for support. I believe the other hosts are available from their own site contacts, but FWS is a meeting place, and provides the context for this selection of hosts, so that is how I have handled the "tiebreaker".

The board is at a new URL here: http://www.freevoteusa.com/FreeHostStudy.html

Now that I actually am beginning to write my articles, and because it's no longer a fluidly changing work in progress, the dashboard is coming off the front page of my site, especially because I am exploring new layouts. It will instead be "one link in" from the front page. If I may be permitted some cynical humor, we are seeing the effects of low grade potential clients here lately - that proves exhausting for the hosts. So in my site design, many resources will be a click or two off the front page. This means the visitor *has to read and click a link* to see the hosts I have presented! Such simple measures will shave off the worst of the Lowest Common Denominator visitors.

Congratulations to the winning hosts!
 
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