Startups Stack Exchange Archive

Should I allow adult content to be hosted?

• posted by: William D. Edwards on 2014-10-12
• tagged: sales
• score: 2

I am in the process of setting up a hosting company and there’s one more thing I need to decide.
Should I allow clients to buy hosting space to host adult content on it?

Answer 963

• posted by: Nick Wilde on 2014-10-12
• score: 3

There are two totally seperate facets to this question; moral/ethical and legal.

Moral/ethical is mostly your own business; there is one major problem: public opinion. For a hosting situation the potential of damage to your public reputation is somewhat manageable depending on your hosting setup. If there is no backlinks/mention of your hosting on the client sites (and it isn’t something like xxx.examplehostservices.com) then unless someone resorts to (simple) digging it won’t be noticed probably. If you make a moral/ethical choice to ban adult content you have to carefully define what that content is - and you will probably lose some business.

Legal:

• If you are not allowing adult content, you just need that clear in a TOS (Terms of Service) that any clients have to agree to.
• If you are allowing adult content you still should make it a clause that any clients have to follow all laws applicable both in their own location and your hosting location and that they accept all liability and you reserve the right to block their content without notice if the breach laws. To adequately cover your legal ass you will probably want to at least get a lawyer to look over your TOS/contracts.

Answer 999

• posted by: Alexander Temerev on 2014-10-15
• score: 2

No.

In my opinion, there is nothing wrong with adult content, and there is a place for it (a lot of it) in the Internet. However, adult hosting requires lots of things to plan and handle beforehand (abuse/complaints management, traffic planning, DDoS protection etc.) So it’s better to leave it to specialized providers, and not mix with non-adult content.

Answer 965

• posted by: Adam on 2014-10-13
• score: 1

You could make some extra income depending on how you charge. Adult websites tend to have a lot of multimedia content which can take a decent amount of bandwidth and disk space.

If you do decide to allow it make sure you involve an attorney or the like to help look at your legal documents. The adult entertainment world has a lot of regulations and ways to get in trouble. But if you cover your bases it’s not that bad.

The problem is that the US legal system is very broad with their definitions when dealing with the subject matter. For example, one of the main legal concerns with people that distribute adult content is the adult record keeping requirements by the US Government. http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/2257

It seems like a few of the hosting companies that I found that allow adult content to be hosted put a really broad scope in their acceptable use policy.

No Illegal, Harmful, or Offensive Use or Content

Offensive Content. Content that is defamatory, obscene, abusive, invasive of privacy, or otherwise objectionable, including content that constitutes child pornography, relates to bestiality, or depicts non-consensual sex acts.

It doesn’t specifically say you can’t host adult content. However, they could close your account for it. Defamatory and obscene could be anything depending on who you ask.

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