TRIPOD SHUTDOWN CAMPAIGN
This campaign is no longer active.

What Happened

On 18th March 2001 hundreds of sites hosted by webspace provider Tripod suddenly became inaccessible. Sites displayed messages claiming that the Tripod Terms of Service had been violated and that the site content had been removed. Foul play was suspected. Although a variety of sites were affected, many of them contained fanfic or other material which could be perceived as a violation of copyright. Rumours indicated that Tripod had recently been reviewing sites for content which breached copyright law and had pulled down these sites as a result.

The Bringers, along with protest site Just Say No to Tripod, participated in a boycott of websites within the Lycos group (e.g. Lycos, Tripod, Angelfire). Soon after, a statement was issued by Derek Bruneau, Tripod's director of engineering:

"What's happened is that a technical glitch caused a bunch of sites to be removed accidentally. They're being restored today. Believe me, it wasn't targeted at anyone's site in particular. Lots of different sites [were swept] --including many of our favorites. It was just a really bad bug. Small bug, big effect. we're working as quickly as we can to get everyone's site back online. We know how terrible this is for members, so we apologize profusely."

Tripod also sent out a form letter apologising for the incident to anyone who had e-mailed membership@tripod.com in the preceding few days, whether or not they had complained about the deleted sites and without even reading the e-mails to see if they were even Tripod members or not.

As many sites came back up, it became clear that the incident was a genuine error. However, speculation continues as to how Tripod managed to delete so many sites at once and it doesn't make Tripod the best choice for webmasters looking for a webspace provider. The main lesson to be learnt from the incident? Always back up your files.

Additionally, the Bringers have been contacted by Tripod webmasters who experienced difficulties even after their sites were resurrected. Some webmasters found that their sites took weeks to return to normal. The Bringers advise any Tripod member who experiences such problems to notify Tripod at membership@tripod.com and to notify ourselves if the problem is not swiftly corrected.

See our articles section for more information

Links

Just Say No to Tripod!
The protest site which advocated the boycott of Lycos group websites and now displays a message regarding lessons to be learnt from the incident.

Celestial Cat's Home
Contains a list of free webservers which may be useful for anyone seeking an alternative location for their site.