Discovering the Impact of i2Coalition

Adam Weeks:
Hi, this is Adam Weeks from Do the Woo. We are here live at Cloudfest 2025. We are super excited to be in Roost Germany and I have with me today some incredible people who are doing some great things helping to make the world of WordPress and actually the Internet as a whole a lot better. I’m sitting here with James, Chris, Christian and David. James is here from BigScoots and Christian and David, they are from the i2Coalition James, would you mind introducing yourself real quick?

James Webb:
Hi, Adam, My name is James Webb. I’m CEO of BigScoots and we are a fully managed WordPress hosting company.

Christian Dawson:
And my name is Christian Dawson. I’m the executive director and co founder of the Internet Infrastructure Coalition, or we go by i2Coalition

David Snead:
So I’m David Snead. I’m the director of the Secure Hosting alliance and I’m also a co founder of the i2Coalition

Adam Weeks:
Thank you, gentlemen. All right, so right now I am sitting next to a pig in a carousel. This is kind of an odd situation. The pig is not moving. There’s horses, there’s teacups. What are we doing here?

Christian Dawson:
Okay, Cloud Fest takes place in a theme park. We take over this theme park called Europa park, which is the second largest theme park in Europe. The week before it opens. Euro Disney is the biggest one and this is the second biggest one. And there’s like 11,000 cloud executives descend on this place and take over this theme park the week before it opens. We do it every year. This is probably my 13th time or.

Adam Weeks:
Something like that here.

Christian Dawson:
It’s so much fun. And what’s great about CloudFest is that it’s in the middle of nowhere in the Black Forest in Germany. So it’s really hard to get to. And that’s a plus because everybody here, everybody comes here and expends the time and the money it takes to come here. There are no dabblers here. It’s everybody who’s here from the industry is here because, like, they are genuinely a part of the industry. And when you go around and talk to people, everybody you meet is going to be relevant.

Adam Weeks:
That’s very cool. All right, so we have a little context. We’re here at Cloud Fest. It’s not just a weird thing that I’m sitting in a. You know, we weren’t sure if it’s a Ferris wheel or a carousel, but this one goes around. I don’t know. But it’s an amazing venue, such a cool place. Tell me, what are some of the conversations that the i2Coalition that you guys are having here at CloudFest?

Christian Dawson:
So, first of all, some context. i2Coalition’s been around for 13 years. It just went by like that. But we started 13 years ago because we saw a need to talk to legislators and regulators about how the Internet works so they don’t do stupid stuff to mess it up. Because they were. Because we were finding that there were laws being created that were hurting, particularly the small businesses in this space and our ability to work with companies like in the WordPress space to help them achieve their dreams. Because if the more onus that’s put on us in having to deal with legislation that puts burdens on those small businesses or restricts their ability to encrypt or share the privacy details of their customers, things like that, we needed an organization that was going to be able to go out there and talk with legislators and regulators about how this stuff works so that we can protect our space and protect it for our customers. So we’ve been doing that for 13 years. This year we started this program called the Secure Hosting alliance, which David is running. And so whereas for the past 13 years we’ve been talking about policy, which a lot of people sometimes think is boring, now everybody wants to talk about the Secure Hosting alliance and what we’re doing here. So in our 13th year, it’s like we’re new again. It’s like our dance card is full. Everybody wants to talk to us and we’re all sitting down with people talking about how we’re trying to improve the hosting space as much as possible. With this new program that we’ve got going on, we are still doing all the cool policy stuff we’ve always been doing. But now with this new program, we’ve been having all sorts of conversations about trying to address the needs of the web hosting community and the WordPress hosting community and try to overcome barriers that they’re having to succeeding with their customers. And people are loving it.

Adam Weeks:
Nice. Very cool. Okay, so, David, the Secure Hosting Alliance. Why does hosting need an alliance?

David Snead:
So hosting needs an alliance in order to make the Internet great for our grandkids. What we’re working on are methods that Hosts can use to make their networks better, to differentiate themselves from other hosts, and also to solve problems collectively. They’re difficult to solve individually.

Adam Weeks:
Got it. Okay, perfect. So I want to come over to you, James, real quick. James, you run. You’re part of a hosting company, Big Scoots. And recently you have. What have you. What, how have you. How are you now connected? In what way are you connected to the i2 coalition now?

James Webb:
So first of all, I think, you know, ITU coalition, I sing their praises every time someone asks because we’ve been involved with them through for multiple years, at least I have from different companies. And there’s something that, you know, when you think about the awareness that a hosting company has when it comes to things like DMCA law or other, you know, laws that are being written right now that we literally are like, it’s like there’s like an obfuscation layer. Right. I can ask anyone at my current company what those laws are and they have. They’ll look at me with like a deer in the headlights. Right. They have no idea. And not only is it obfuscated, but it’s changing from administration to administration. We’re seeing major shifts. We don’t even know what’s going to be happening in the next four months, two months, six months. Right. And so when it comes to liability, we’re kind of pawns, I guess you would say, if you don’t really have that awareness. And so getting involved with i2C or getting involved with Secure OC alliance is a way for us not to only understand what’s going on, but to protect ourselves and protect our clients in the future. There’s really just not a lot that, you know, is well known in the industry or from our clients in that space.

Adam Weeks:
All right, very cool. So. So you guys have recently, you’re now a member of the i2Coalition That means that you’re investing in that. Do you have any words of wisdom for other hosting companies that may not be in the ITW coalition? Like, why would they want to join?

James Webb:
Because it could mean the difference between hosting your client sites today and not hosting them tomorrow.

Adam Weeks:
So kind of a big deal.

James Webb:
There are laws being written, like, as we speak that could strip protections away from hosting companies and from our clients.

Christian Dawson:
Thank you. And I think that you’re. I think that you’re right. And we’ve been advocating for a long time that as many providers as possible get involved with 12Coalition because what we do is very important. I also acknowledge that joining a trade association that’s focused on helping people prevent bad outcomes. It’s sometimes like buying insurance. You don’t necessarily want to do it because. Because like, you know what, other people are going to buy insurance. You’re preventing the possibility of something maybe happening in the future. It’s extremely important, but it’s a hard sell sometimes. The thing that we’re trying to do with Secure Hosting alliance, it has the possibility of putting organizations in the hosting space in direct communication with each other, which is good for networking. It has the possibility of having operational improvements for those organizations and how they work together to maybe solve problems and anti abuse and things like that better together. And the other thing that we’re trying to do with this group that can provide real value to hosting providers that are out there is that frankly, there are a lot of providers in this space that don’t care about quality of service, that don’t care about investing in their customers. And then there are companies like BigScoots that really do. Right. And there should be an easy way to differentiate those organizations that do from the ones that don’t. And we’re trying to provide that. We’re eventually building a trust mark and we’re trying to provide that trust mark or that way of acknowledging the organizations that are really behaving responsible towards their customers. So that’s why I think we’ve gone from showing up at cloudfest and saying, hey, do you want to learn about being a member? To having everybody saying, hey, tell us about Secure Hosting alliance and how we can join. Right? So it’s been great for us.

Adam Weeks:
It’s great that people are seeing the value in it. And I’ll kind of open this question up for anybody. To me, things become real when I get examples like what is the actual threat someone experienced? And we don’t need names. But do you have any case studies, any stories where, oh, I’m so glad that this entity exists or this entity did something that made a difference? I’d love an example.

David Snead:
So the best example from the ITU coalition standpoint is one that we talk about a lot. SOPA and PIPA, that was a, a law that if it had been enacted, would have undermined the liability protections for the entire industry. Meaning that sites would have been so SOPA and PIPA, meaning that if you got an order, you would have had to take sites down and you, it would have made the Internet dark. So that’s the i2 coalition for the Secure Hosting Alliance. Here’s what we’re doing that is amazing. Immediately important for hosts. We’re Creating the ability for hosts who are working on abuse issues to get together and share information in real time about threats that they’re facing that they might not understand how to respond to, but another host actually understands how to respond to.

Adam Weeks:
So, James, you were sharing a little bit earlier with me today about some of the things that someone can actually see. Like what are some of the, like, practical applications of, you know, if someone demands that you take your content down, what’s some of the history of why we’re in this position to begin with?

James Webb:
So Chris would probably be best to explain this, but for my knowledge here, I think you’re talking about DMCA again. All right, so DMCA was enacted in 95, 96.

Christian Dawson:
Is that sounds about right? Yeah.

James Webb:
Clinton era. And it was put out as a way to, you know, protect against this rampant copyright issues. You know, we saw as kind of a dawn of the web, Right. And I think that, you know, if you try to apply that to what’s happening now, things have changed so much. But at the same time, the language was so fuzzy, right. A lot of words are like, like reasonable in there. And there’s a lot of, you know, I, I feel like although we handle a lot of DMCA complaints, there’s still a lot of like, cloudiness around, no pun intended, cloudiness around how to handle those things.

Adam Weeks:
Right.

James Webb:
So when you look at, know, let’s say you have a website and someone takes your content, right? There’s no way to really, I mean, you can submit that individual blind could submit a counter, counter notice. Right. But the problem is that as a hosting company, we still have to take that content offline.

Christian Dawson:
Right?

James Webb:
So as long as it’s a valid DMCA complaint, we are bound by the law to take that content offline. It’s for 14 days, is that right? And there’s just, there’s no recourse unless there’s no lawsuit filed or there’s no, you know, the original complainant allows them take it, bring it back online. And so when it comes to that, those laws, again, reasonable, right?

Adam Weeks:
What does that mean?

James Webb:
Yeah. What does that mean?

Christian Dawson:
Yeah.

James Webb:
And so for us, you know, even taking the content offline, it’s a reasonable amount of time. So you could literally walk in, you know, there’s a, On Friday afternoon, the complaint comes in the door to your hosting company, right. On Monday you have a lawsuit. It could be a $2 million, it could be very expensive and very, I mean, we’ve been through those situations before. And what’s interesting about it to me is that, you know, it is a situation that’s very scary and that you must take care of it. But there are also protections in place for, I mean, it’s like safe harbor for the hosting company. We have mechanisms that we can enact even though that could be detrimental to our clients relationship with us. But at the same time, if you strip those away, which they could be stripped away in the future. Right. There may not be any protections for the hosting company. Right. So I think that when you look at i2C advocating for those positive changes that will protect everyone and then you look at, you know, Secure Hosting alliance kind of helping the hosting companies come together and band together the power of many to help show that they are responsible on the Internet. I think that’s where everything kind of comes full circle.

David Snead:
So what that’s actually what you’re saying is very much what we’re trying to do. It’s a belt and suspenders approach. Right. So you have the i2Coalition focusing on the insurance policy that Christian mentioned, but you have the Secure Hosting alliance actually getting together and putting together principles that can be actioned on now to improve businesses and differentiate hosting businesses one from another.

Adam Weeks:
Got it.

Christian Dawson:
And one of the things that I think is pretty cool, you were talking about fuzzy language and laws. Right. And that’s true. I have a dream that if the industry can come together and start talking about their definition of what terms like repeat infringer or reasonable time to response are, then let’s say that those lawsuits in the future happen and they will, and they do. And I’ve been subject to them as well. Having some sort of like industry example to point to of what we consider reasonable in those circumstances is going to help us all.

Adam Weeks:
That’s great. Yeah, yeah. I don’t, I’m not sitting here getting the feeling that there’s a bunch of hosting companies and this group is saying we don’t want any. Anybody telling us like, no, it’s not that. It’s the wild west and anybody can do whatever they want. But like, so it’s where there’s no responsibility at all. But where’s that middle ground?

Christian Dawson:
So here’s the thing. When we talk to lawmakers, they’ve never even heard of us. They don’t know that our industry exists. They just know they need to solve a problem. And they’re saying somebody’s got to start doing something and they don’t realize how much we are doing. And so the first part of our education is to always walk them through what we are doing. Now, we understand that not everybody is doing what our most responsible companies are doing. So doing this work of differentiating those that are doing those actions from not doing those actions, that’s going to help us advocate for the people that are, and it’s going to help them understand the difference so that they can better figure out how to take the, you know, if 90% of the problem is actually being handled by us, but the rest of the 10% is left. And that’s the hard part. They can help us figure out how we can very carefully legislate on dealing with that hard part in ways that aren’t going to break our industry. And that’s our goal. Right. And if we can figure out how to do some of that collectively better, then maybe they don’t need to pass any onerous laws. Right. Ultimately, we want to make the Internet a better, safer place. We want to figure out how the entire machine can work better, but we also want to take credit for all the hard work that we’re doing and do so in a way that doesn’t put more burden on our back just because people don’t understand what we’re doing.

Adam Weeks:
Got it. Got it. So we’re talking about some of the things that are directly relevant to hosting companies that are based in the US with the DMCA and these different things. Is this only a US issue?

Christian Dawson:
Great question. It’s definitely not a US issue. i2Coalition is based in the United States. We employ a government advocacy team in the United States. We also have some infrastructure set up to do work in the eu, and so we have presence in Brussels and the US where we can have an actual substantive voice. In addition to that, wherever there are situations that pop up, we can interject. So we have engaged in India and Pakistan and Australia and Canada and a number of different areas over the years as situations have popped up around the world. We want to be the Internet Infrastructure Coalition writ large, not just of the United States. Right. That being said, you have to have a certain economy of scale before you can. You can do more than, like, write letters and send emails. And the fact is that where we have that infrastructure set up to do more and to build connections, it’s pretty much the US and eu.

Adam Weeks:
Got it. Okay. So no podcast would be complete unless we at least got AI in there. It’s the algorithms require it. If I don’t at least ask an AI question, I’m sure this will get taken down. Not true, but kind of true. How are you thinking about artificial intelligence and the hosting industry and what protections we might need?

Christian Dawson:
Well, that’s the multi billion dollar question, right? Because I mean, heck, when we talk to legislators now, wherever we talk to them, their interest is in AI because there is the conversation everywhere is how can we lead on AI? How can we prepare ourselves for the future? Or like is AI going to destroy us? All right, so that’s what they want to know first. When we’re trying to educate them on the blocking and tackling of how they are dealing with our industry or dealing with the kind of websites that you put up in your WordPress environments, they say, okay, great, tell me about AI, right? And the fact is that when we have to contextualize that in what it is we’re doing, when we’re doing our education and a lot of that actually starts with explaining to them that we have been using machine learning on our networks for decades, that there’s an extent to which, I mean the things that are happening with LLMs are pretty new and pretty impressive, right? But a lot of the ways that we have interacted with machines in an AI driven way are far more complex than things that we know really well. What I want to make sure of is that as legislators come in to legislate AI, they have proper definitions and understandings and taxonomies so that they don’t screw up our networks. Right? Because as just like when we’re talking to legislators about our industry, they have social media in mind and if they’re legislating to social media but it affects us, it’s a problem. So we need to say, okay, here’s where we’re not social media and how we’re different. And so you need to think about this in a different way. That same kind of thing needs to happen with AI. Right, we understand as you’re legislating this, keep these things in mind. We’ve got to bring you the nuance, we’ve got to get nerdy with you for a minute so that you don’t do things that are going to screw up everything, right?

Adam Weeks:
The moral of the story, don’t screw up everything.

Christian Dawson:
Don’t screw up everything.

Adam Weeks:
And I think that partnerships like this, where companies like Big Scoots are saying, yep, this is important to us, we need to support the work that i2Coalition is doing, the Secure Hosting Alliance. I think that’s fantastic. As we wrap up, just any last thoughts about specifically why WordPress? Why is WordPress important to the work you’re doing?

Christian Dawson:
WordPress is essential to the work that we’re doing because when we Take a look at the way that the type of, the type of traditional web hosting that we are interested in, the type of web hosting that is driven by small to medium businesses that is setting up the shops around the world, individuals with dreams that want to create their businesses and get their word out there into the world, they’re using WordPress to do it. That’s what’s happening at scale, right? And so these WordPress based businesses, they’re the ones that are, that are driving the individual customer experiences, but they’re also the ones that if there are problems with old versioning and things like that end up having cybersecurity issues. If certain things are handled the wrong way, they end up creating scenarios where cybersecurity incidents happen and then the fingers start coming out and wagging. Right? And that’s when we get calls from legislators saying, hey, we need to legislate. Right? So contextualizing the things that we’re doing and the stories of things that are happening in the WordPress community are very important to us. And learning how to collaborate with providers to make sure that we’re dealing with those things at scale is super important so that we have that messaging back to the legislators.

Adam Weeks:
That’s very cool. Thank you for sharing that. Thank you for taking the time with me today. I know I’m cutting into your roller coaster riding time. There’s a lot of roller coasters that are not going to ride themselves. Anything that you’re looking forward to doing for the rest of cloudfest? We’ve only got a couple of days left or it’s about one more day. Anything that you’re looking forward to doing here at Cloud Fest before it wraps up?

Christian Dawson:
The closing party is called Beerfest.

Adam Weeks:
Okay.

Christian Dawson:
And when we are finally done talking with a million people, when we’re finally. I’m on stage eight times this week.

Adam Weeks:
Wow.

Christian Dawson:
When we’re finally done with all that, just let loose with a whole bunch of beer and German pretzels and German sausages and literally like, I think that they’ve got people in lederhose and dirndls and stuff like that walking around. It’s very old school and very fun, very cool.

Adam Weeks:
And James, for you, I would say.

James Webb:
Yes to everything that Christian said. But in addition to that, go out and ride Voltron.

Adam Weeks:
Oh goodness.

Christian Dawson:
Nice.

James Webb:
If you’re into tech that I don’t, there’s no other roller coaster like it on Earth. I was blown away by. I won’t even ruin it. But look it up online. Maybe that’s a better way to do it. But whatever you don’t drink first, make sure you do that before the big party. But yeah, it’s been a great experience. Just it’s been great, you know, networking with individuals and this is my first time out. I’ve been part of the hosting industry for about 25 years now, but first time in Europe for a Cloud fest and I definitely coming back.

Adam Weeks:
You recommend it? Okay, absolutely. There is a CloudFest USA coming.

James Webb:
Up into that as well.

Adam Weeks:
All right.

James Webb:
There in Miami. Yeah, of course this year as well. So looking forward to that and yeah, just great time.

Adam Weeks:
All right, thank you gentlemen. I appreciate your time. I’ll see you guys out there on the roller coasters or, you know, at the beer fest or wherever we end up meeting. But yeah, what an incredible opportunity to spend this time with you today as we wrap up. Where can someone find you? We’ll start with you, James. Someone wants to find you on the Internet. How do they connect? Really easy.

James Webb:
Just go to that strange name on the Internet, bigscoots.com and you can find us there.

Adam Weeks:
Great.

Christian Dawson:
And i2Coalition.com find out all about the work that we’re doing. You can also you’ll find a big link on that site to hostingsecure.net, which is the site we set up for the secure hosting alliance as well. And the work we’re doing there is really incredible and taking things to the next level, particularly for the WordPress community.

Adam Weeks:
Great. Thank you gentlemen so much. I appreciate your time. And for do the woo. That is it. And we’re gonna go ride some roller coasters or not. I really don’t want.