Following the wikileaks case

Hello,

As you know one of our customers, by renting a dedicated server,
has become one of the hosts of the site wikileaks. This site
asks many questions about its legality in
French territory.

OVH is neither the host nor the publisher site.
OVH is neither for nor against wikileaks.

OVH is contractually responsible for the technical service provider
hosts ie providing a server, electricity,
cooling, buildings for physical security and
Internet connection. And to ensure service availability
24 hours 24. Turnkey. In 1 hour.

The political world deemed OVH as responsible
the hosting of this site. Usually, the law LCEN
provides for notification of clearly
unlawful contents with a legal basis. We get 3 to 5
notifications per day for different pages from the
6'500'000 sites hosted on our network (racist,
xenophobia, etc.) and we pass the hosts involved.
Thus, the host becomes aware the pages are clearly
illegal and asks the publisher to remove them. 99%
Notifications are processed within hours and all
functioning perfectly. We also have customers in
Europe and we comply with the national contract in each country
that OVH is installed.

On the site Wikileaks, to date we have received
no notification to be sent to our customer. May be it,
has he received a directive. That we do not know.
In any case, OVH received nothing.

Given the accusations and the delicate position in which OVH
ended up, we decided to seek the advice of the
Justice as to whether the site or specific pages within the site are
manifestly unlawful. For this, we decided to use
proceedings on application which allows you to request the opinion of a judge
quickly and without contradictory discussion. We did not
make interlocutory proceedings, because it requires that a party assigns
another party to justice. Result in only debate
contradiction may be made and the judge can decide.
As OVH is neither for nor against this site, we do not
assign the customer.

So Friday at 16h, we have applied very fast
with the TGI Lille. It was rejected with the reasons
following: "Let us reject the request, the company OVH does not justify
of the need for her to obtain judicial authorization
to suspend the hosting of the website. "This is because only 1 hour
to prepare the statement is little and so we
simplified the application up by stating that OVH was the host
site (which is not the case, but it allowed us to do
this as of Friday). The judge ruled to 17.30 ...
http://demo.ovh.net/download/7a0c424...ks_lille_1.pdf

So, our lawyers have worked all weekend to prepare
an application complete with all necessary parts. This
application was submitted today and pleaded with a judge
at TGI de Lille in Paris and another at the same time. The judge
in Lille has confirmed its decision of Friday. We have not yet
the document signed by him with the exact motivations.
It will be tomorrow and we'll connect.

The Paris judge said the case was complex and
argued that the request be upwind of the First Vice-President
of TGI of Paris. It was done. He felt that our request
should be rejected but requested the opinion of the President of TGI
Paris that he was not of that opinion, and referred the
case to the first judge who dismissed him after our
application on the grounds that such a case required an adversarial hearing.
We have not yet signed the document in his hand, we have
tomorrow and we'll publish it.
Here are the queries:
http://demo.ovh.net/download/7a0c424...ks_lille_2.pdf
http://demo.ovh.net/download/7a0c424...eaks_paris.pdf

These decisions are consistent with what we expected ...

In the present state of things, there are several scenarios:

- LCEN accordance with the law requires that "someone"
make a notification of clearly illegal content
with the hosting with legal foundations
for the latter to withdraw any such content.

- Otherwise it is necessary that "someone" assigned by our client referred
(The host and it will eventually assign the client
wikileaks in his capacity as editor). A adversarial discussion can
take place and the judge can decide.

- Otherwise it is necessary that "someone" seize the judges referred
and calls to censor the site in French territory.
It is a truly exceptional procedure. There is a
precedent in the history of justice with the case concerning
site "aaargh". With sites on the games, this procedure
begins to be used.

OVH, the technical service provider, believe we
have made every effort to clarify the legal position
of the site. Anyway, we tried to be as transparent as possible.

OVH will execute any legal decision that will be
communicated.

To journalists: we are sorry that we do not answer directly to your requests.
This issue which is a big thing for governments is too complicated
to be handled directly by OVH. It is necessary for OVH to communicate
in a very functional way to control each word in our mails.
One day (maybe), we'll control our communication enough to be able
to do so in a more emotional way.
Anyway, today we are not ready to do it that way.

Regards
Octave

for information and understanding of the issues: who is OVH?
OVH, with its 85,000 dedicated servers, is No. 1 in
Europe in renting dedicated servers. OVH is also
No. 2 in Europe and No. 6 in the world in the number of hosted sites.
OVH is also a telephone operator and has 30,000
phones used in France. OVH is historically
a French company but has 15 subsidiaries, including
12 in Europe. Its 350 employees work 24/7 for the satisfaction of its 400,000
1,500,000 direct clients and indirect clients. A family company.

Hello,

As promised, here are the exact orders signed by judges with the exact text we received yesterday evening (lille) and this morning (paris) from the queries we did Monday.

http://demo.ovh.net/download/7e16478...ance_paris.pdf
http://demo.ovh.net/download/7e16478...ce_lille_2.pdf

Regards
Octave