[tisme]

Fortunately hosting is a commodity and you can get what rackspace sells from any number of providers. Don't like the terms? Don't do business with Rackspace. Vote with your feet and your dollars and make sure you tell them you're leaving because you don't like their terms of service. If enough of their customers do that they'll get the message eventually.

And if they don't get that particular message they'll have to move on some other metric (perhaps price) to get people to continue to host with them in spite of their terms of service.

Personally I wouldn't have a problem hosting with them under these terms, I'd simply ignore the terms and factor in the risk of being kicked out by spreading whatever I was hosting there across multiple providers. That's a good strategy anyway, even when you think you're in compliance with the terms of service where ever you host your stuff.

[goodside]

If your content is such that Rackspace closes your account, reliable hosting probably isn't nearly as much a commodity as you describe. All hosts have clauses in their TOS to let them close your account if you become an inconvenience.

[tisme]

Yes, but hosts typically respond to outside pressure and it could very well be that someone else's stuff gets taken down with your stuff being collateral damage.

In that case it pays off handily if you have your content spread. Of course, if you're going to do something that is illegal then it doesn't really matter where you host, then you are basically just counting down until you get booted.

[Dobbs]

You can often approach hosting providers out of band and arrange deals for sites that are normally against their TOS. I've seen it happen on multiple occasions.