Please read http://www.cobaltracksucks.com for the email that I got as webmaster for Cobalt Racks Sucks

I am expressing my 1st Amendment Rights of Free Speech. Mr Mike Bayliss states that I am using the site for "commercial finaical gain" when in fact I have never recommended any one other company for dedicated servers on the site or even in email.

This site simply states the facts of past and present customers of their services, and lets new customers know that this company can not be trusted.

Um, nothing there but crocodiles and annoying music. I was interested to read what you had too. But at least the crocs looked cool.

I clicked your link and was magically beamed away to: http://www.wild-florida-river-eco-tours.com/.

Maybe Cobalt worked a little swamp voodoo on you? ;)

I noticed. hehe

After thinking it over, I decided that the site has lasted its full life and has helped more the enough people to avoid Cobalt Racks

I will be leaving this post up for 24 hours, and after that, I will remove it.

Thanks again

Originally posted by PepsiCoke
After thinking it over, I decided that the site has lasted its full life and has helped more the enough people to avoid Cobalt Racks
Gee, that was a quick reversal of position. Too bad, I was interested in reading the letter.

Site reposted for your reading pleasure

http://www.cobaltracksucks.com

I am expressing my 1st amendment rights which I have
And if you're not willing to defend those rights, who do you think should? And how long do you think you'll have them?

By caving in to the demands of Mike Bayliss, you abrogate the responsibility you undertook to warn other potential customers away from a host with which you had a bad experience. Do you really want to do that without putting up at least some kind of a fight?

I have been threatened endlessly about my page on finding a host at http://www.forumhosts.com/hosts.htm, which includes an "avoid" list. Not one host has actually followed through on their threats. The fact is that "It's true" is all the defense you need against the threat of a lawsuit for libel.

I'd post Mike Bayliss's letter on every hosting-related BBS I could find....

Well I think he has a point with the copyright issue of cobaltracksucks.com so i think i am just going to move the site to a non-vitural domain, I think a friend who emailed me made a very good point:
-----------START----------

Sorry so long to reply ... first I am NOT a lawyer so I must recommend you
seek appropriate legal council. You use the info here at your own risk.

However, I have done extensive research into this. A company cannot sue for
slander IF statements are being made that relay specific experiences a
person has had. This is no different than telling a story and is protected
under the 1st amendment.

It is best if these statements are backed up with documentation.

You DO NOT want to permit someone to make prejudicial comments rooting in
anger and frustration. Usually these cannot be backed up with facts.
Statements of "I feel ...." or "I think ..." don't usually cut it without
some pretty intense proof. Statements of "In My Opinion ..." are a gray are
and usually cannot be grounds for a slander suit.

Lastly, if your client is considering putting up a site such as you describe
I recommend a disclaimer. The type you have seen or heard of "The statements
here are by no means the opinion of the ... yada, yada" ... I think you know
the type I mean. You're heading into an arena where CYA is paramount.

I hope this helps and, again, I recommend your client speak to a lawyer who
is from his local area.
-------------------END-------------

So basically all the "stories" on our website are from past customers, and i have never posted anything like "that site sucks" from joedoe@hotmail.com, although I did get quite a few of them

The site will be moved within 48 hours to a non-v url

Thanks again and I will keep you informed

Well I think he has a point with the copyright issue of cobaltracksucks.com
He has no point at all, as this would be a trademark infringement issue, not a copyright issue. Copyrighting the name "cobaltrack.com" does not legally protect him against someone else copyrighting or using "cobaltracksucks.com." He would have had to copyright "cobaltracksucks.com" before you used it. Your use of it copyrights it in your name. If he has trademarked "cobaltrack.com," he can sue for trademark infringement. I very much doubt Cobalt would allow him that trademark, tho.

first I am NOT a lawyer
Damn right, as s/he doesn't even know the difference between slander and libel.

A company cannot sue for slander IF statements are being made that relay specific experiences a person has had.
A company can sue for any reason, or for no reason. But if you can prove they are wrong, they will lose.

I'm not trying to be hard on you. It's just that I've gone through this so many times with so many hosts. Most of them are full of sh*t when it comes to threats like this. I wouldn't take any action at all unless/until you actually get something in writing from their attorney.

Thanks for all the info Deb, I will be leaving the website up and running for now, He says that he is going to fax over something from his laywer, but I am going to visit my laywer on Monday to see what he says.

Regards
Gary

I am definitely not a fan of RAQ's either. They are cheap (price wise) and you get what you pay for (cheap server). They also do not leave much room for upgrading. They are good for starters though, but would not use them for serious hosting.

Not by me of course (now where is that angel face icon?)

:angel: ?

still down too. Wonder wassup? ;-)

Originally posted by mysitehost
still down too. Wonder wassup? ;-)
Maybe they're using themselves for Web hosting?

Yikes... I smell a lawsuit! :bawling:

Do you have an answer to the "why is cobaltracks.com alwayse accessible while my site isn't?" question?

http://www.cobaltracksucks.com/storys/4.htm

"We put our website on a older network that was not in place when we began offering dedicated hosting"

As of 72 hours ago: "Is your so called UUNet connection installed?"

"Yes, but we are just using it for a backup"

"Well why did you bother bragging about it to everyone?"

"Umm..Well I dont have a answer for you on that, Can you hold please?"

interesting... thanks :-)

You know, I rent a virtual server from a hosting provider who uses a RaQ3 from CobaltRacks.com

Well, my site is "under construction", so I don't bother that much.

Recent weeks I haven't even worked on it, so I cannot tell if it's up all time.

I used to work daily in November and indeed there were some connectivity problems, sometimes had to wait some 30 sec. for a telnet prompt, my FTP client timing out, or I could simply not reach the server for an hour or so.

I was also asking myself why CobaltRack.com is alwayse up while my own site wasn't - thanks for the answer..

I wont name my hosting provider, since he doesn't want to make public they're hosted with CobaltRacks.com. I'll respect that because they're ok folks I think, and they give us very cheap hosting.

When I asked about the connectivity issues they told me it was a routing problem in the Cable&Wireless network, not something CobaltRacks.com could do anything about. They also mentioned UUNet connection being installed next month :-)

Now, as I said, I haven't had my hands on the server recently, but when I load my site from time to time see if it's still there ;-) it alwayse loads quickly, so maybe they have improved the thing recently?

Try telnet'n to your machine, and doing a simple ftp server-server

I was moving a 300 mb file for a client of mine who was tired of CobaltRacks, what normally takes about 15-20 minutes, it took over 3 hours!

If that doesnt show some sort of bandwidth limit or terrible connection, I dont know what does.

Well, so far Cobalt Racks haven't emailed me or anything...humm...all bark...No bite?

Originally posted by PepsiCoke
Well, so far Cobalt Racks haven't emailed me or anything...humm...all bark...No bite?
Just speculation here, but they might have actually talked to a lawyer who told them cobaltracksucks.com was perfectly legal.

Either that or it's the calm before the storm...

Yup, I pretty much came up with those two conclusions as well.

If they dont, Sun Microsystems is going to stomp you.

I doubt Sun has anything to do with the services preformed by Cobalt Racks.

All I am letting doing is letting everyone know my experiences with them, which last time I checked, and pretty much my lawyer and alot of people on this board say its perfectly legal.

If they were going to send anything to me, it would have been done already, just like Deb and everyone says...If they do send the letter, I will let you know

Sun will get you for having cobalt rack in your domain name if nothing else. They just bought cobalt a few weeks ago which is probably why they are slow to react.

Well if they come knocking, I can simply move the web to a non-virtual domain or another url without cobalt racks in the domain.

I think the domain has already served a great tool for alot of people, in 1 week, it had over 1,000 unique visits. Now that's 1,000 people that have seen the stories of me and other clients that were screwed by Cobalt Racks.

They claim so much, yet they screw you over by giving you a crappy, unreliable connection to the internet and don't have the guts to tell you the truth about their network or operations.

If I persuaded at least one person not to signup with Cobalt Racks. The site has served its purpose and I am satisfied with that.

I would not sweat it if I were you. They can't do anything with ICANN unless they have the actual term "CobaltRack Sucks" trademarked. Secondly, you are allowed by the full extent of the law to talk about the company, thats what makes the constitution great =).


James R. Clark II
Nethosters Inc.
http://www.nethosters.com

Besides, isn't there supposed to be a new TLD coming out, .sucks? How is that going to work then? Companies will be falling over themselves to register it before some disgruntled consumer can. Wish I had that market...

I highly doubt Sun would do much, if anything....

Originally posted by Brendan at HostRocket
Sun will get you for having cobalt rack in your domain name if nothing else. They just bought cobalt a few weeks ago which is probably why they are slow to react.
I don't think so. My understanding of trademark law is that names like "pepsisucks.com" or "cokesucks.com" are perfectly legal, as long as you're not using those domains to sell your own brand of soft drinks. I could start a plumbing company named "McDonald's Plubming," but I couldn't sell hamburgers under the name McDonald's (unless I owned a franchise, of course).

They dont have to go through ICANN. They could sue you for defamation or a number of other things, and even if they dont have a decent foot to stand on you still would have to get a lawyer and go through all of the nonsense, or do what they asked which would probably just be shut down the site.

-Brendan

<<ADMIN EDIT>>
Please don't pepper the forum with this question inside other threads. I understand you want an answer, but you started a thread for this purpose.
<</ADMIN EDIT>>

[Edited by Chicken on 01-20-2001 at 12:12 PM]

Would you puh-leeeeeze just give it a rest?

Hvaing had the unfortunate experience of having to summarily terminate people who can't be bothered to read our TOS and then wonder why we had to take their site down, I am sure Brendan had a very good reason.

What was your site about anyway? Hmm?

Please continue the thread topic discussion. -Thank you.

Hmm... I notice CobaltRackSucks.com has a "taken down" message... what's the latest?

I have taken down the site. I did parcially agree to give the domain to Mark, on the sole agreement he would not use the domain to his advantage such as forwarding to cobaltracks.com or using it in any other way.

In 2 days, he didnt not give me an answer, but heres what he sent me today


------------
Heres what Mark Baliss said:

Gary,

Wasting more time on this. Just finished a 2 hour meeting with my legal
department. Not FUN! But here is the out come the lawyers are hungry and
they smell blood. What they say is that the fact that you had the domain
name under a false name or company. That the first amendment dose not provide
you any protection. If you would have used your real name on the domain registrationration it would have. And the fact that you are your own domain registrar and are an expert in this field you knew that you were breaking the law by not using your real Name or company name on the domain Cobaltracks.com.

(I got a email from Registrars which stated to put my name on, which at when i registerd it, did show my real name etc...the *ONLY* think that i changed was the name but it did show my addy, phone, email etc)

this leaves you liable for your covert actions. Their is also enough to add www-hosting.com as well as TERA-BYTE INTERNET to this suite as well.

(I have no idea how he thinks Tera-byte is involved in this)

This will be in federal court and will be on the fast docket system in Virginia. This will cost me about $5000.00 dollars and about 4 trips to the federal court. I would like to solve this now before this gets out of my control. The ball is in your court, transfer the domain now.

(I emailed him now 3 times with such confirmation with just these senseless emails)

That would be a good start and will leave me in control of this process. If
you do not do this it will be the last email from me and any emails from you to me will go to legal. At that time it is out of my hands and the lawyers take over. I don't like dealing with lawyers or spending any more time on this matter.

Mark Bayliss
mark@virtuallink.com

I sent:
I still am waiting for confirmation from you that once you have control over the domain, it will not be used as a forward url, host any html or images and will not be pointing to an active dns server or homepage



**********************************
PAST EMAILS FROM MARK

Gary,

Noticed that put your real name on the cobaltracksucks.com domain.
The web site that you had up before we notified you. Is what we will take
you to court with. You made no statements or disclosures for your protection
you hid your identity.

(I didnt think you had to show your identity with anyone which does still protect me under the 1st amendment)

And posted information in your forum from your self
and made it look like different people sent in trace routes.

(Not true, i used "Past Customer" "CobaltRackSucks" "Gary" "Pepsicoke")

But you are
our only customers from AK. We also have records were you used fake names
to post about the site and tell of problems with cobaltracks.com and
to promote the cobaltracksucks.com web site, Then you would post with your
real
name and promote your web Hosting company. I guess that you

(Always recommeded at least 2 companies, including 4webspace.com, hispeed.com)

forgot that
they keep a record of your IP's when you post.


(IPS on cobaltracksucks.com forum were never shown unlike on forums such as webhostingtalk)

Now that you have put your
name on the form
this give me the missing proof that I needed to start this case.

(I dont understand, since his exact words were "I get cc'd all support emails, so i got all your emails)

Your email
to me was not enough proof for the court, but now you have filled out a
government document that makes you responsible for your actions. The
Changes that you later made to your page, only help to make a better case.
Only when you thought that we had found out who you were and that you could
no longer hide your identity you quickly tried to protect your self and
company from the law.

(senseless talk)


I have tried to solve this without taking you to court. But you just keep
the site up and only make this harder on your self. This is not what we
started
cobaltracks.com for. I'am the director for VISPA and we work to make better
laws and to try to help ISP's and Internet business to grow. I have advised
the Presidents commission on E-commerce. And worked with Isp,s through out
the world. I put 2 million dollars of my own money to build
cobaltracks.com. And since October of 2000 we are now the largest Cobalt
Hosting company in the world.

(Like i really care, he gave me and other customers nothing but trouble and all he can brag about is something that isnt even close to the matter at hand)

We built this company to be low cost in order to help the the
underdeveloped countries to be able to grow their E-commerce market. This
has worked with over 90% of our clients come from outside the US. And now
we have helped over 100 countries to have their voices heard. And to spark
the sprit of the Internet.

(do you really care?)

I would like to solve this now with out going to
court. Just remove the cobaltracksucks.com site and sell me the domain at
your cost. And this will be over. I await your reply.

(Offered him $70 for the domain...he approved but continutes to email senseless emails like the ones above)

Mark Bayliss
President Visual Link
Director VISPA


PS. Just to let you know that the most of the profit that I make from
my business and Tech development companys I give to charity. Last year
I gave over 1.65 million dollars to childrens homes in the USA. that is more
than 90% of what I make. I can not let this site hurt this effort.


(Now do you really give a crap about what or how this guy spends his money? In ALL emails, all he can do is brag and think his impressing me. I could care less if he gave 2 million dollars to save the ant population)


---------------
Now, if anyone wants to help out if this goes to court, please email me. I know i got a few emails as such, but due to all the email i get daily, I may have misplaced them

Pepsicoke

I would be very dissappointed if you do transfer the domain name to him, he has no legal grounds what so ever, wer had this very issue come up and wnet to court on it and won hands down.... Anyways anyone who would say they smell blood hasnt talked to a lawyer and if he has why hasnt that lawyer sent anything to you or why hasnt he provided the lawyers name, all your doing by giving that name to him IS helping him to promote his TERRIBLE services. By the way tell him to add our company to the suit too as I did say above that he has TERRIBLE SERVICE and runs a bad operation... I would like to see him try to take us to court, our lawyers would rip his legal antics apart.

I again would like to thank you for your input.

I will email him tomorrow, if he doesnt answer a bunch of questions that i ask including the ones you brought up, I will go ahead and repost the site at 100% including everything that was in there including evidence of their outages, etc...

I will keep you informed of whats going on..


Thanks
Gary

I find your threats of lawsuit highly distastefull, as well as false. You are undoubtedly not talking to legal council, or you are completely misunderstanding anything that theya re telling you. Under no circumstance do you have any grounds to walk on. It is laughable that you have been able to carry this as long as it has been.

I have no affiliation with this person of cobaltracksucks.com, but you are completely out of line. If someone made a mysitehostsucks.com website, I would not take such an action. As such an action only proves them right.

Not only that, but if there are justified ground for expressing ones opinion, then so be it. mysitehostsucks.com could have a lot of people already in there saying how bad my services are. Just because it is said doesn't mean that it's the end of the world. In fact, had this happened I would have gone a long with it and learned fom what people were saying, not go right to legal threats.

Especially if what they were saying were quite possibly true and not unfounded remarks. An unfounded remark would be like "So and so at mysitehost.net sells child porn to 'special' clients. I don't want to be a part of such a disgusting company" That is completely untrue, defamatory, and strong grounds for a lawsuit. If someone says why we suck with issues that can be true and then is reasonable with resolving the issues, then it is perfecly fine.

You have lost WAY more than $5000 here in residual buisness. Why? because you didn't keep your mouth shut. You opened it and started to blow smoke up this persons ass. Then supposedly talked to "legal council" This is a sign of a completely inept company, not from it's services, but from it's management. No one will trust you.

As I said before, either you are not talking to legal council, or you are completely misunderstanding what these "lawyers" are telling you. I am sure the webmaster of cobaltracksucks.com is simply allowing a child his way because of the rediculously obsessive situation that it has caused you.

Please feel free to threaten me as much as you want. As you would probably be happy to continue contributing to your own undoing.

-Jason

[Edited by mysitehost on 01-30-2001 at 01:56 AM]

PepsiCoke: So far you're doing a great job. There's got to be a balance between expressing your first-amendment rights and living as lawsuit-free a life as possible. The irony here (for them) is that their poorly-worded "sue you!" e-mail messages are probably doing more to damage their name than your website itself has.

Out of curiosity, did you ever actually get a piece of paper from their "laywers," or has everything been through e-mail from the guy named Mark?

DO NOT DO ANYTHING UNTIL YOU ACTUALLY GET A LETTER, IN INK, ON PAPER, FROM HIS LAWYER!!!

I think this is nothing but smoke and mirrors. Don't be intimidated before there's a reason to be. WAIT! Be patient. Don't let yourself get stampeded into anything.

I've been through this many times before.

Here is my experience when dealing with lawyers... they tell you one thing: "Do not contact the person, let us take care of it."

Generally you'd get a threatening email from the lawyer's office on fancy paper to make it look official, warning you to surrentder the domain or face possible consequences. This is more of a scare tactic than anything and the information stated may, or may not, have any legal grounds. But the scare tactic often works in favor of the client. Often the other party just drops, or surrenders whatever and they are happy.

Message boards (such as this one), often receive threats from hosting companies, demanding that messages be removed. Ask Matt. You'd think they'd take it as a hint that *something* isn't right with the service, but *sigh* I guess not.

Putting RaQ4 software on RaQ3's and then leasing them to unsuspecting clients kinda shows you how interested this company is in making sure their clients are satisfied.

Has anyone brought this practice to Cobalt's attention? If not, you should do so immediately, PepsiCoke.

Hi Chris and Deb,

I acually have not gotten anything from this person. I requested he send me the following about 2-3 weeks ago

1. fax by his laywers stating the pending lawsuit
2. snail mail of the same

His words were "I will send that out Tuesday" I never did get it, and when i emailed and asked, he never replied...

Originally posted by Chicken
Here is my experience when dealing with lawyers... they tell you one thing: "Do not contact the person, let us take care of it."That's exactly right. If there are lawyers involved, the lawyers do the communicating; for two reasons: they know that a letter from a lawyer scares the hell out of people, and they don't want the bonehead client to screw the case up by saying something stupid (as opposed to something just silly, like Mark's referring to a domain registration as "a government document."

Of course, some people might say that they are holding off on the lawyers to avoid paying them, but this guy claims to be spending hours in meetings with his legal team on the issue. Look, once you have them on retainer, they'll fire off a letter pretty quickly and easily.

Certainly it sounds like he's blowing smoke. That doesn't mean he won't go to legal steps at some point, but secret hidden lawyers aren't much of a concern.

they say they make so much money..why does their site look like a 10 year old's imagination.

Bull Junk!

This is simply an example of how un-smart, greedy, selfish, narcisistic people can get lucky. A bad side effect of capitalism.

It is actually illegal to force you to sell a domain name like that, I have been reading through the old network solution domain registration docs on copyright and such. A company cannot own all forms of domains if it has it's name in it by default. If thats the case then everyone would own hundreds of domain names with every possible combination just to make one website.

Unless you get a court order (which is not a matter of sue and only costs money on the fool who files for a court order) you can keep the domain, state what you want to on it, and this person cannot touch you. He can harras you as much as he wants, but he cannot personaly force you to do thing.

It's a big giant farce that I find disghusting.

Gary,

I see the site is no longer up, why is this? This discussion ended in December of last year, and I'm just curious to hear the conclusion.

Thanks,
Brandon

Hi Brandon

The site is now back online :)


http://www.cobaltracksucks.com

WOW! I noticed it had been down... so what's happened in the last couple of weeks that caused you to take it down and put it back up again? Enquiring minds want to know.

1. I wanted to repost it with some fresh information (IE: ftp'ing server to server)

2. I was on a long needed vaction :) Went down to San Diego then Phoenix and then over to Las Vegas :)

Whoa... CobaltRacks.com has a new website design. At least their website doesn't suck so bad anymore. :D

Its worse now at least before people could look a t the website, see the crappy design and know that it was a crummy operation, but now novices wont get that picture, even though all in all the design still stinks.