I get the impression that most VPS providers ban BitTorrent and IRC.

That may be true for shared hosting, but not for VPS.

The entire point of having a VPS is that you're guaranteed a slice of the server to do what you want. If your provider is somehow monitoring your processes, sniffing your traffic, and setting restrictions on your applications, then I would find another one.

So does Amazon...

Where did you hear that?

Amazon Web Services does not ban BitTorrent or IRC. They actually support BT as an official delivery method from S3.

http://docs.amazonwebservices.com/AmazonS3/2006-03-01/index....

I was referring to the passage in the article which reads (emphasis mine): 'Distributes, shares, or facilitates the distribution of unauthorized data, malware, viruses, Trojan horses, spyware, worms, or other malicious or harmful code (collectively, “Harmful Components”).'

I took that to include copyrighted data, including Battlestar Galactica episodes.

Yes, but what does that have to do with prohibiting BitTorrent and IRC?

Obviously a-priori is obliquely making the point that BitTorrent is mostly used for copyright infringement.