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blog - Coderific is back online with help from the EFF!

posted by witten on September 12, 2008

It's been a harrowing couple of weeks, but here's the big news: After shutting Coderific down last week, I had a good chat with a friendly and knowledgeable attorney from the EFF. And I've decided to bring the site back online.

First things first. The fine folks at the EFF (Electronic Frontier Foundation) are the reason Coderific is back up and running. If you enjoy the service Coderific provides, please go donate to the EFF right now:
https://secure.eff.org/site/SPageServer?pagename=DON_splash

Okay, now for the story. Let me start from the beginning.

Throughout just about the entire life of Coderific, I've been harassed by attorneys representing various companies that are discussed and rated on Coderific. Most of the time these were take-down demands for particular posts. Occasionally it was thinly veiled legal threats.

This correspondence was certainly no fun to handle, but as I understood myself to be on stable legal ground as a mere forum operator, I didn't worry about it too much. It was sort of the cost of running the site.

Then, several months ago, various Coderific users started posting in the forums about an ongoing lawsuit between two companies that happened to be listed on Coderific. I started receiving emails, calls, and snail mail from lawyers on both sides demanding that various posts be removed from the site, and also demanding the identities of the authors who wrote the posts.

Having to drive to the post office to pick up certified mail from a law firm was somewhat annoying, but I wrote a quick response and thought nothing more of it.

Then, a few weeks later, one Saturday afternoon, there was a knock on my door. It was a process server with a subpoena from the same law firm that sent the snail mail earlier. The subpoena demanded all sorts of information on the Coderific users who made posts about particular companies, plus all communications made with Coderific about these companies!

Well, having no legal representation and not realizing that the subpoena was overly broad and could probably be fought in court, I started gathering the requested information to comply with the subpoena. I went through email, log files, voicemail, postal mail, and the Coderific database. Let me assure you, this was not exactly how I had planned to spend my Saturday night.

Fortunately, the Coderific software was designed to protect users' anonymity, so even though I felt I had to send user data in response the subpoena, the data available was somewhat limited. For instance, Coderific does not correlate IP address with user accounts, and those IP addresses that are stored in the web server's log file are rotated very frequently. Also, when you create a Coderific account, entering your email address is completely optional.

Having gathered all of the requested data (or at least what was available), I sent off a burned CD to the address on the subpoena. It was then that I thought that all of this simply wasn't worth it. Here I was, running a free site and paying hosting out of my own pocket, and what do I get for it? Constant legal harassment.

Now don't get me wrong. When I originally started Coderific, I realized that a site where coders could rate their employers would upset certain companies, especially those companies that benefited from keeping word from spreading about the particular brand of dysfunction within their own software development departments.

Here was a site that aimed to make information about bad companies (and good companies) as public as possible, so there were bound to be a few organizations angry over their inability to continue business as usual, hiring developers who didn't know what they were getting themselves into.

In other words, I knew that running a site such as Coderific carried with it certain risks, and that it would not be all beer and skittles.

But the final straw was having to spend my weekend worrying about this subpoena and feeling horrible for essentially snitching on my users, all with the implied threat of jail time if I didn't.

So after I sent off the subpoena data, I took down the site. It simply didn't seem worth it to continue. And to some degree, I felt that by keeping the site up and running, I was risking the ongoing privacy and anonymity of Coderific's users, since Coderific was now a subpoena target. And that was simply not a position I wanted to be put in.

In retrospect, what I should have done as soon as I received the subpoena was to find a pro-bono attorney who was willing to at least answer some questions. But I didn't do that, perhaps because I didn't know what other options I had.

A few days later, I received an email from a senior staff attorney from the EFF who had heard about Coderific shutting down, had actually read the subpoena, and was willing to discuss the situation with me. We arranged a phone call, and the attorney walked me through some of the relevant legal issues with Coderific in general and the subpoena in particular.

He basically assured me that as a forum operator, I was not liable for the posts that Coderific users made (which I already knew). And that the subpoena could quite possibly have been fought (which I didn't know). And perhaps most importantly, he told me that the EFF has "got my back" in the case of any future subpoenas or legal issues (which is awesome). In other words, I can contact the EFF and they will either look at a subpoena for me or refer me to an external attorney.

So, with this new information, and no longer feeling quite so overwhelmed, I'm happy to be the one to tell you that Coderific is back!

And here are some changes I've made to help protect your privacy and anonymity. I've greatly expanded the privacy section of the Coderific terms of service, describing exactly what information is gathered, how it's used, and when it's disclosed. Check out http://coderific.com/about/terms_of_service

Also, I've updated the signup page with a brief mention of some of these issues and a link to the terms of service.

If you have an existing Coderific account and would like any private information (such as your email address) removed from the account, just contact me and let me know.

Thanks for all of your support, and a big thank you to the EFF.

Well, what are you waiting for? Go become an EFF member now:
https://secure.eff.org/site/SPageServer?pagename=DON_splash

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