[hect0r]

All DO are asking the blog author to do is to just honour the Terms of Service that he himself agreed to. I don't see any controversy here; it is all very simple.

Maybe, the blog author is attention-seeking and trying to manufacture outrage by trying to cast himself as a "victim". The real victim, if there is one, is the Googler who has had his conversations in a closed forum relayed to the world and editorialised by someone who obviously didn't explain his true intents. Anyway, if the blog author disagrees and doesn't feel that he wants to honour his contract then he can just move his blog or, as DO suggest, launch legal action and get an injunction. I suspect though he will just skulk off and look for some other controversy to rant about.

[jasonlotito]

Replace DO with AWS and the Googler with Jeff Bezos, and the blog format with the NYTimes.

[Sidis]

...and it wouldn't make any difference.

If the NY Times signed an agreement with AWS that stated that they couldn't do X against anyone and, at a later date, they did X against Jeff Bezos then AWS would be well within their rights to demand that either NYT adhere to their agreement or leave.

I note that you use the example of two related entities (AWS and Jeff Bezos). Are you implying that there is a relationship between DO and the Googler equivalent to that between Jeff and AWS?

[jasonlotito]

No one is suggesting DO shouldn't enforce their ToS. Rather, it's their ToS that is at issue. The use of AWS and NYTimes was too look at it another way. Everything the NYTimes prints would fall afoul of the ruling from DO.

More importantly, NYTimes wouldn't agree to such a stipulation from their provider precisely because of an issue like this. That should be a warning sign.

As for the use of Jeff Bezos, it was because I had mentioned AWS. Replace Bezos with anyone. It was merely the first name that popped into my head.

Here, I'll make it easy: AWS is the hosting provider, NYTimes is the site, and a member of the NSA is mentioned in the article.