Jeff C.
Title: Abuse Coordinator / DMCA Contact / International Man of Mystery
Started at DreamHost: 1999

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It was a dark and stormy night - or a reasonably sunny spring morning, it has been so long that I can't remember. Either way, I had decided to quit my previous job and started working for DreamHost Web Hosting, a very small but up and coming company based in southern California. I telecommuted from Washington State, handling technical support requests and writing the occasional bit of code. For about two and a half years I worked from home - if you're an old timer, it's quite possible that I answered your support request wearing little more than my underwear.

Times have changed! We hired many more people and I eventually put on pants and moved to California. Over the years I have moved in different directions within the company: I've done technical support, marketing, public relations, development - even security/abuse, which is what I handle now. I'm widely regarded as the company curmudgeon and resident stick-in-the-mud, grumpy and wholly intolerable.

On a day to day basis I deal with spam complaints, trademark infringement complaints, phishers, crackers, fraudsters and the occasional goofball who thinks it's okay to load up his/her account with purloined DVD rips and cracked software. I also assist law enforcement in criminal investigations, respond to subpoenas and handle any number of the various legal or TOS issues that any sizable web host has to face. When time allows, I also code tools to assist in the above tasks. In a nutshell, I am on the front lines of the seedy underside of the web hosting industry. I've read more implausible excuses for illegal and prohibited behavior than you can possibly imagine. I've seen numerous bogus legal threats, dashed apart upon the rocky coasts of what we like to call either "the law" or "reality" (take your pick!). I've handled issues involving neo-Nazis, angry dominatrices, Communists, "Concerned Citizens", digital book burners, emo kids, religious extremists, terrorists and more lawyers than I can count. I once ate some of the best cake I've ever had. As you can probably imagine, I've received death threats and regularly have to sift through copious amounts of drama involving various warring factions of angsty teenaged webloggers.

I've seen things you people wouldn't believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhauser gate. All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain. When I'm not coordinating the distribution and acquisition of abuse for DreamHost, I like to: create lousy (thus far) electronic music, play video/computer games, read, write, draw, code, watch movies, geocache and hang out with my wife. At any given time, I can usually be found listening to anything between industrial (clang clang!) to electronica (beep beep!). A few examples: Pigface, Nine Inch Nails, Pig, The Chemical Brothers, KMFDM, Unkle, Die Warzau, Sister Machine Gun, Thievery Corporation, MLWTTKK, Juno Reactor, Skinny Puppy, Micronaut, The Crystal Method, Eco-Hed, Meat Beat Manifesto, Impossible Recording Machine, etc. One might say that my tastes vary considerably in quality and breadth.