This seems like a clear case of GoDaddy and Google stopping political speech they disagree with, not because of illegal activity.
"The story, which attacked Heyer for her physical appearance and referred to her using various offensive epithets, prompted GoDaddy to give Daily Stormer 24 hours to find a new host for its domain."
They'll remove your domain for insulting someone? The internet is full of personal abuse. That can't possibly be the reason.
It seems to be down at the moment. But any amount of insults are still just insults. Illegal activity is different, but they're not claiming that's the reason, and it it was, the police should handle it.
I can understand a more "private" service like Twitter blocking cyber bullying, but domain names are part of the infrastructure. People depend on them much more.
Google and GoDaddy are private businesses. They are allowed to not do business with sites they find repugnant if they like.
The current headline on the Stormer is "Badass Cop Expresses Full Support for Running Over Fatties Charlottesville-Style" by the way. If I was running the domain registrar I'd have little enthusiasm for Nazi enthusiasts encouraging murder either.
So you may like Google's and GoDaddy's reaction in this case. be But try to think what could happen if this was the norm. Comcast could refuse to provide their services to sites that talk about Google fiber. Google could remove Bing from 8.8.8.8. T-Mobile could block calls to Sprint.
Some of what I listed are currently illegal, but are they in essence different? With rumors that the current administration might remove net neutrality, things like this will only encourage them to.
You're equating racists crowing over the death of someone at the hands of a racist (that was in all likelihood a reader of their site) with "sites that talk about Google fiber".
I mean, I've seen some daft "whataboutisms" this past week but this is amazing.
Lets say that in this case you are right. Who decides where to draw the line between talking about Google fiber and "crowing over the death of someone"? If we were in Italy in 1610 writing that the Sun was the center of the solar system would be hate speech. If we were in Germany in the 1930s the government would tell us that writing that Germans are not the master race is hate speech. If we were in the US in the 1950s saying that Communism is good would be hate speech. If we were in current China saying that the Tibet is not part of China could be considered hate speech. Maybe in a little while the current US administration will say that writing that climate change is caused by humans is hate speech.
But more importantly, Google made the decision not due to laws that were created by the elected officials but rather based on how they felt. Imagine if a Catholic hospital refused service to anyone who suggested that people should read books from the banned book list. After all, the reason that they are on the banned book list is because someone decided that those books were hateful.
I have several domains with light use or "parked" with Namecheap. A month or two ago, there was a story about their giving someone the boot because they "violated Namecheap's TOS". I seem to recall that said "breach" was weaker and more questionable as well as being based in apparent mis-understanding on Namecheap's part.
At the time, this caused me concern WRT whether more or all domain name registrations might end up subject to the will and whim of individual registrars.
Might I lose a domain due to some arbitrary decision by Namecheap? How long would I have to "rescue" it? What if I was traveling? I do travel to some remote places, occasionally.
Now, it starts to seem indeed more like one's presence in the DNS is or will be subject to the tastes and discretion of the private companies that are the registrars taking, holding, and managing these registrations.
As a famous movies says, "I hate Illinois Nazis."
But DNS should be managed technically, not emotionally.
Not looking forward to the "Great Corporate Firewall" any more than I've not enjoyed the Great Chinese Firewall, et al.
P.S. I guess I should read the article. It will probably be some disgusting behavior that more than half makes me want to change what I've just written.
But, I keep seeing the "open" net being chipped away at. And I'm not sure how or who we trust to draw the line between what's acceptably open and what's not.
P.P.S. Oops, I did already read it. But I didn't see the denigrating article nor much detail about that article, in it. However, I'm guessing it may be the one that a friend shared -- copy/pasta, without linking, by the way; no brownie points for the authors -- because it was so disgusting and offensive, she thought all her friends should be aware of the filth emanating from these people.
It was really damned offensive, and cruel.
Makes me a bit worried about what I wrote, above. Nonetheless, I'm also very worried about DNS becoming a political and emotional football.
Everything you do is political in some way. Saying that you're worried about DNS becoming a political football implies it isn't already. It is. From ICANN's self-serving lunacy (don't lift that rock unless you have time to go down some very deep and fairly scuzzy rabbit holes), to domain seizures by governments (and private companies like Microsoft), DNS is already political. So is every other part of the internet infrastructure. Examples: the great firewall of china, registering to get porn in the UK [1], payment processors refusing to handle donations to Wikileaks [2].
The question isn't "should DNS and/or Internet infrastructure be political?"...because it already is. The question is "whose politics should it follow?"
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[ 3.2 ms ] story [ 41.3 ms ] thread"The story, which attacked Heyer for her physical appearance and referred to her using various offensive epithets, prompted GoDaddy to give Daily Stormer 24 hours to find a new host for its domain."
They'll remove your domain for insulting someone? The internet is full of personal abuse. That can't possibly be the reason.
I can understand a more "private" service like Twitter blocking cyber bullying, but domain names are part of the infrastructure. People depend on them much more.
The current headline on the Stormer is "Badass Cop Expresses Full Support for Running Over Fatties Charlottesville-Style" by the way. If I was running the domain registrar I'd have little enthusiasm for Nazi enthusiasts encouraging murder either.
Some of what I listed are currently illegal, but are they in essence different? With rumors that the current administration might remove net neutrality, things like this will only encourage them to.
I mean, I've seen some daft "whataboutisms" this past week but this is amazing.
But more importantly, Google made the decision not due to laws that were created by the elected officials but rather based on how they felt. Imagine if a Catholic hospital refused service to anyone who suggested that people should read books from the banned book list. After all, the reason that they are on the banned book list is because someone decided that those books were hateful.
I don't understand how this is whataboutism.
At the time, this caused me concern WRT whether more or all domain name registrations might end up subject to the will and whim of individual registrars.
Might I lose a domain due to some arbitrary decision by Namecheap? How long would I have to "rescue" it? What if I was traveling? I do travel to some remote places, occasionally.
Now, it starts to seem indeed more like one's presence in the DNS is or will be subject to the tastes and discretion of the private companies that are the registrars taking, holding, and managing these registrations.
As a famous movies says, "I hate Illinois Nazis."
But DNS should be managed technically, not emotionally.
Not looking forward to the "Great Corporate Firewall" any more than I've not enjoyed the Great Chinese Firewall, et al.
P.S. I guess I should read the article. It will probably be some disgusting behavior that more than half makes me want to change what I've just written.
But, I keep seeing the "open" net being chipped away at. And I'm not sure how or who we trust to draw the line between what's acceptably open and what's not.
P.P.S. Oops, I did already read it. But I didn't see the denigrating article nor much detail about that article, in it. However, I'm guessing it may be the one that a friend shared -- copy/pasta, without linking, by the way; no brownie points for the authors -- because it was so disgusting and offensive, she thought all her friends should be aware of the filth emanating from these people.
It was really damned offensive, and cruel.
Makes me a bit worried about what I wrote, above. Nonetheless, I'm also very worried about DNS becoming a political and emotional football.
The question isn't "should DNS and/or Internet infrastructure be political?"...because it already is. The question is "whose politics should it follow?"
[1]: http://www.businessinsider.com/uk-government-force-porn-site...
[2]: https://www.wired.com/2010/12/paypal-wikileaks/