I'm concerned about Opalstack's TOS and the AUP linked to it. Under "Prohibited uses of Opalstack systems and services" in Opalstack's Acceptable Use Policy, I see this point (I think it's #4):
Advertising, transmitting, or otherwise making available any software, program, product, or service that is designed to violate this AUP or the AUP of any other Internet Service Provider, which includes, but is not limited to, the facilitation of the means to send Unsolicited Bulk Email, initiation of pinging, flooding, mail-bombing, denial of service attacks
(boldface is mine).
To use Opalstack and stay clear of getting my account canceled, etc., every time I recommend or maybe even positively mention a service or software product, I have to make sure I have reviewed the policies of every ISP on earth? I think that is what the AUP says.
This seems overly broad, to put it mildly. I don't have any plans to do anything remotely illegal or to violate Opalstack's (generally very reasonable) policies. However, if I recommend or paste a link, maybe in a blog post, to the kodi project, I'm pretty sure that would violate the policies of some ISP in the world, because Kodi can be used (or so I've heard) to circumvent copyright protections. There's probably an ISP out there that bans its use, discussion, or linking to it. I sometimes use torrents to get legal (in my jurisdiction, at least) software or media. I'm guessing some ISPs ban all torrent use or linking, so posting a link to, say, a torrent of the latest Linux Mint distribution would be a violation somewhere. I'm also guessing there are ISPs in some parts of the world with policies banning discussion or linking of E2EE chat or other tools like Signal, etc. (e.g., in nations with Chat Control laws). These things are, according to Opalstack's AUP, enough to get my account here canceled.
This provision in the Opalstack AUP is disturbingly broad.
Would Opalstack consider rewording this so that I am only responsible for Opalstack's AUP? Or maybe Opalstack's plus any other AUP with basically the same provisions? A firm statement of limits on which sets of rules I'm responsible for following would be helpful, instead of an unknown set of rules of unknown size, many of which I probably can't even access.
It would be only minimally reassuring to hear "Oh, we'd never cancel your account for those reasons", because policies will eventually trump individual implementation, especially if new individuals show up to do the implementing. In other words, "Just trust us" isn't very comforting, even though I have generally trusted OpalStack so far, and the service has been very good for me.
As a side note, I didn't see a link to the AUP from the TOS. I might have missed it. If not, it would be helpful to have it in there, so users don't have to do an internet search to find the AUP. If it's there and I missed it, I apologize for the oversight.
