OT: Isn't this ridiculous??

[Jack Simth]

Oh, it gets worse than that.

You see, all the backups are subpenaed as well (the one little itty bitty thing they are looking for might have been deleted at some point, but still be on one of the backups). As is the equipment itself. Hard to restore from backups when the backups are in an evidence locker. Hard to restore from a remote backup when the server is in an evidence locker. In order for a smallish webhosting company to survive the police getting annoyed, it needs to have backups in a sufficiently foreign location that they can't be siezed as part of an investigation AND be able to replace all their equipment within a timeframe that means they still have customers (they have to buy the equipment, or have it out of country, otherwise, the police can sieze it). The giants (Google, Yahoo, MS, et cetera) are international already - they do their own backups in foreign countries, and have servers in foreign countries ready to go on-line at a moments' notice (not specifically because of police actions - usually, although it does work for that very well - but because of local disaster possiblities).