Is there anything preventing these fucking nazis from becoming a domain registrar? Or finding a company with no morals willing to host their domain? I don't see why they can't do one of the above. There's no duty on the part of Godaddy, Google, or any other company to provide these fuckers with service. Let them figure it out themselves if they want to stay online. This isn't a free speech issue. They have the right to say whatever they want. They do not have a right to force others to help them say whatever they want.
If we are framing this as a free speech issue: Isn't spam email free speech?
How dare any network provider tell me I can't send 500 billion emails about my Viagra supplements? That is violating my freedom of speech!
The US government has actually passed laws making spam email legal (CAN-SPAM, under certain conditions), and still most every reputable network provider will not let you send it on their networks, even if it is legal.
I'm not suggesting the particular issue in the OP is the same as spam, but clearly there are some boundaries of free speech on networks that everybody seems to agree are good.
Former anti-spam guy here. Spam is hardly something everyone agrees on. There are big grey areas where people spam without thinking they're spamming, and yes they do get upset about it.
The primary moral and legal defence the big email providers have with respect to spam filters is that they're essentially democratic: they're powered by user reports. So if someone complains to Google that their mail goes into the spam folder, Google can just say "it's our users fault, figure out how to make them happy" and that's a good answer that puts them back in the driving seat. Also, users can whitelist mail if they disagree with the mail providers opinion. Spam is ultimately not a matter of politics then, it's a matter of aggregate user opinion on what sort of mail they want vs don't want.
This particular issue seems rather different. There are no user votes involved here and it's unclear why you'd want such a system anyway, given that people who disagree with a website can just not visit it. There is no way for visitors who disagree with Google's assessment to access the site anyway. And so on.
Generally, only content-based restrictions on speech are subject to strict scrutiny under the First Amendment, whereas "time, place, and manner" restrictions (e.g., noise ordinances) are more tolerated. Additionally, commercial advertising is less protected than other speech under the First Amendment.
Laws against spam do not target messages on the basis of their content (except in so far as they are commercial advertising, which is a less protected category of speech), so they are upheld as a "time, place, and manner" restriction.
Curious then - if you're okay with this removal, would you be okay with a registrar removing a site because it violated some Catholic values? Supported abortion or something say?
There are reasonable restrictions but generally such restrictions have a lot more to do with technical or usability issues rather than civil or political issues. I doubt this will be popular around here, but I'm afraid of being on a registrar that would reject my domain for saying something controversial.
EDIT: I can't even reply to some of the children here because HN is rate limiting me because I disagreed with a majority opinion - even only slightly - and got downvoted. Eugh.
To those saying this is false equivalence or a slippery slope, this is directed towards people saying "they're a private company, they can remove whatever they way" - which it certainly fits the parameters of without modification. No slippery slope here, a slippery slope means this would have to lead to another, which I'm certainly not saying here. Merely a hypothetical that I'm curious how people resolve. I'm not really intending it as a formal argument one way or the other, just wanted to hear different perspectives on it.
Google seems to be in the right here. They aren't a government or even a clear monopoly as a name service provider.
The 1st prevents me from using government power to prevent people from saying things I disapprove of, but if they come into my house and say them, I can certainly demand that they leave.
We need more dumb-pipe-like services. It's one to fight SOPA-PIPA for something that affects directly your users and your business and it's another to being "forced" by pressure on social matters that don't directly affect your users/clients/business.
I would expect or rather hope that companies have their mission and strive on every chance to make that mission a fundamental reality with no compromises.
As much as I hate what the Daily Stormer does and what it represents, the reality is that such pressure can come in a different way in the future and be exploited for non-obvious cases. You open a pandora's box when things like that happens.
Google is a private entity, they could quite legally de-list all neo-nazi sites with zero consequences. Before Google newspapers were the primary source of people's information, was there a massive outcry that the New York Times and Washington Post didn't run neo-nazi stories?
Reminds me of this whole circus from my alma mater's reunions this year:
>The Princeton University’s class of 2012 had plans to dress up for their five-year reunion, but their choice of wearing stormtrooper masks from Star Wars got derailed when someone used the magic word -
Amusingly, an alum quipped on a FB post at the time about actual holocaust survivors not having raised a fuss about the term when the original films came out in the 70's.
CloudFlare was also providing anti-DDOS capabilities to this site. It's one thing to defend people's right to free speech from the government, it's another to provide security services for hate speech.
Even hate speech is free speech. The public private nature of the internet is the only issue here. I am really getting scared and disgusted by all the 'nazi punchers' showing themselves here. To support someones right to free speech is not the same as supporting the content of said speech.
Many people disagree. Many countries[0] have laws against hate speech. In Canada, for example:
> it is a criminal act to "advocate or promote genocide" — to call for, support, encourage or argue for the killing of members of a group based on colour, race, religion, ethnic origin or sexual orientation.[1]
"Stirring up or inciting hatred" is also against the law.
I have no doubt that The Daily Stormer would be illegal in Canada.
Also illegal, under another part of the Criminal Code, is assault; including "nazi punching". Not everyone who thinks websites like this should be shut down support physical violence against those they disagree with.
There is no slippery slope here -- shutting down hateful propaganda is not the same as full blown censorship: a provision prevents "people from being charged with a hate crime if their statements are truthful or the expression of a religious opinion."[1]
I know that might sound scary to some of you (who gets to decide what is true, or what is a religious belief?), but in Canada, we're lucky enough to have reasonable judges. The system works pretty well -- check out [1] for a few examples, and you can see what you think of the courts decisions.
> To support someones right to free speech is not the same as supporting the content of said speech.
Supporting someone's right to free speech doesn't mean enabling them to.
I support the right of the Nazis to voice their (IMHO completely absurd) speech, but if I had a business, I'd have guidelines against that type of speech in my business. In the same way, I wouldn't welcome one into my house. None of those measures infringes on their freedom of speech.
And it's not on registrar hold. There is a transfer lock
which is automatic because it was just transferred in.
So it's unclear what BI even means by 'cancelled'.
Something doesn't sound right about this story actually.
They certainly don't have grounds to delete the domain based on this:
"The extremeist site published a critical story about Heather Heyer, the 32-year-old woman killed when a car rammed into counter-protesters in Charlottesville, VA, over the weekend. The story prompted GoDaddy to give Daily Stormer 24 hours to find a new host for its domain."
Not to mention hard to believe godaddy would have said something like that either.
Domain registrars have no business doing this. Originally, they just registered domains for ICANN. Now they act like they own them and just rent them out.
Why do we need registrars at all? They don't seem to do a whole lot, but they charge quite a bit for it. The "service" they provide is handed down from a pseudo-government organization.
I suppose someone needs to resolve naming conflicts, and charge rent so unused domains eventually go away.
I wonder if anyone's made a DNS system where the registry can detect conflicts but doesn't actually know what domains you own. So you pay $10 for some encryption key or something, which happens to correspond to a domain, but nobody including the registrar can tell which domain the key maps to. If you stop paying, the domain stops resolving; but nobody knows who's paying.
What is the option for someone to register a domain name if every domain registrar refuses to do business with them? I may have the terminology wrong, since the domain is registered but needs to be transferred to another registrar.
Regardless of the topic, censorship (private or public) can never be an acceptable reaction. To quote Louis Brandeis (Supreme Court Justice): "If there be time to expose through discussion the falsehood and fallacies, to avert the evil by the processes of education, the remedy to be applied is more speech, not enforced silence."
EDIT: I was not expecting to be downvoted when quoting a SCOTUS Justice arguing for openness of debates, education and spreading of knowledge. I'm savoring the irony.
This is a stronger comment if you first make the case that refusal to do business with someone is censorship.
I mean, I see at least a vague analogy between not doing business with Nazis and not inviting boring people over for dinner. Is choosing dinner guests censorship?
So you're arguing a private business has no right to refuse to do business with an individual customer, for any reason? What's your reasoning behind that? Are you against personal liberty and freedom, or do you believe the liberties of the Daily Stormer's operators somehow override the liberties of the people who operate Google's domain registration services?
Always good to keep the following quote often attributed to Voltaire in mind : "I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it."
Google is not preventing the Daily Stormer from spewing their swill. They aren't interfering with the Daily Stormer's rights in any way. They're just refusing to support the Daily Stormer on their commercial platform. In that, Google is well within their rights. The Daily Stormer is capable of taking their business elsewhere.
But does that involve expending your resources allowing them to?
Also, isn't this Google/GoDaddy expressing THEIR speech by removing users who violate their TOS? Remember, GoDaddy was ok with hosting the site until an article defaming the woman who died on Saturday started making the rounds.
I will stop using Gmail and move my email elsewhere as google banned the accounts of Jordan B Peterson and Dennis Cooper, people who do NOT spread hate. Google is a SJW company.
[+] [-] mnm1|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] birken|8 years ago|reply
How dare any network provider tell me I can't send 500 billion emails about my Viagra supplements? That is violating my freedom of speech!
The US government has actually passed laws making spam email legal (CAN-SPAM, under certain conditions), and still most every reputable network provider will not let you send it on their networks, even if it is legal.
I'm not suggesting the particular issue in the OP is the same as spam, but clearly there are some boundaries of free speech on networks that everybody seems to agree are good.
[+] [-] mike_hearn|8 years ago|reply
The primary moral and legal defence the big email providers have with respect to spam filters is that they're essentially democratic: they're powered by user reports. So if someone complains to Google that their mail goes into the spam folder, Google can just say "it's our users fault, figure out how to make them happy" and that's a good answer that puts them back in the driving seat. Also, users can whitelist mail if they disagree with the mail providers opinion. Spam is ultimately not a matter of politics then, it's a matter of aggregate user opinion on what sort of mail they want vs don't want.
This particular issue seems rather different. There are no user votes involved here and it's unclear why you'd want such a system anyway, given that people who disagree with a website can just not visit it. There is no way for visitors who disagree with Google's assessment to access the site anyway. And so on.
[+] [-] Taniwha|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nokcha|8 years ago|reply
Laws against spam do not target messages on the basis of their content (except in so far as they are commercial advertising, which is a less protected category of speech), so they are upheld as a "time, place, and manner" restriction.
[+] [-] notruthallowed|8 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] problems|8 years ago|reply
There are reasonable restrictions but generally such restrictions have a lot more to do with technical or usability issues rather than civil or political issues. I doubt this will be popular around here, but I'm afraid of being on a registrar that would reject my domain for saying something controversial.
EDIT: I can't even reply to some of the children here because HN is rate limiting me because I disagreed with a majority opinion - even only slightly - and got downvoted. Eugh.
To those saying this is false equivalence or a slippery slope, this is directed towards people saying "they're a private company, they can remove whatever they way" - which it certainly fits the parameters of without modification. No slippery slope here, a slippery slope means this would have to lead to another, which I'm certainly not saying here. Merely a hypothetical that I'm curious how people resolve. I'm not really intending it as a formal argument one way or the other, just wanted to hear different perspectives on it.
[+] [-] noonespecial|8 years ago|reply
The 1st prevents me from using government power to prevent people from saying things I disapprove of, but if they come into my house and say them, I can certainly demand that they leave.
[+] [-] kbody|8 years ago|reply
I would expect or rather hope that companies have their mission and strive on every chance to make that mission a fundamental reality with no compromises.
As much as I hate what the Daily Stormer does and what it represents, the reality is that such pressure can come in a different way in the future and be exploited for non-obvious cases. You open a pandora's box when things like that happens.
We need more dumb-pipes.
[+] [-] jacquesm|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dragonwriter|8 years ago|reply
In fact, it is exactly the freedom for such parties to decline to do so that is included in freedom of speech.
[+] [-] scottLobster|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] The_Sponge|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hkmurakami|8 years ago|reply
>The Princeton University’s class of 2012 had plans to dress up for their five-year reunion, but their choice of wearing stormtrooper masks from Star Wars got derailed when someone used the magic word -
>Nazis.
http://www.dailywire.com/news/14043/princeton-reunion-cancel...
Amusingly, an alum quipped on a FB post at the time about actual holocaust survivors not having raised a fuss about the term when the original films came out in the 70's.
[+] [-] bgun|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rbanffy|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|8 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] ibn_ibid|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] smhenderson|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] abawany|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jdavis703|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] eridius|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] damnfine|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] canadian_voter|8 years ago|reply
Is it? Really?
Many people disagree. Many countries[0] have laws against hate speech. In Canada, for example:
> it is a criminal act to "advocate or promote genocide" — to call for, support, encourage or argue for the killing of members of a group based on colour, race, religion, ethnic origin or sexual orientation.[1]
"Stirring up or inciting hatred" is also against the law.
I have no doubt that The Daily Stormer would be illegal in Canada.
Also illegal, under another part of the Criminal Code, is assault; including "nazi punching". Not everyone who thinks websites like this should be shut down support physical violence against those they disagree with.
There is no slippery slope here -- shutting down hateful propaganda is not the same as full blown censorship: a provision prevents "people from being charged with a hate crime if their statements are truthful or the expression of a religious opinion."[1]
I know that might sound scary to some of you (who gets to decide what is true, or what is a religious belief?), but in Canada, we're lucky enough to have reasonable judges. The system works pretty well -- check out [1] for a few examples, and you can see what you think of the courts decisions.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hate_speech
[1] http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/when-is-it-hate-speech-7-signi...
[+] [-] dragonwriter|8 years ago|reply
I can do the former while declining, no matter what you are willing to pay, to do the latter.
Free speech is not entitlement to others’ active collaboration in transmitting your speech.
[+] [-] _jgvg|8 years ago|reply
Supporting someone's right to free speech doesn't mean enabling them to.
I support the right of the Nazis to voice their (IMHO completely absurd) speech, but if I had a business, I'd have guidelines against that type of speech in my business. In the same way, I wouldn't welcome one into my house. None of those measures infringes on their freedom of speech.
[+] [-] gist|8 years ago|reply
nslookup DAILYSTORMER.COM Server: 8.8.8.8 Address: 8.8.8.8#53
Non-authoritative answer: Name: DAILYSTORMER.COM Address: 104.25.126.103 Name: DAILYSTORMER.COM Address: 104.25.125.103
And it's not on registrar hold. There is a transfer lock which is automatic because it was just transferred in.
So it's unclear what BI even means by 'cancelled'.
Something doesn't sound right about this story actually.
They certainly don't have grounds to delete the domain based on this:
"The extremeist site published a critical story about Heather Heyer, the 32-year-old woman killed when a car rammed into counter-protesters in Charlottesville, VA, over the weekend. The story prompted GoDaddy to give Daily Stormer 24 hours to find a new host for its domain."
Not to mention hard to believe godaddy would have said something like that either.
[+] [-] ibn_ibid|8 years ago|reply
It's their service. Hate speech probably violates their ToS.
[+] [-] Animats|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] MichaelBurge|8 years ago|reply
I suppose someone needs to resolve naming conflicts, and charge rent so unused domains eventually go away.
I wonder if anyone's made a DNS system where the registry can detect conflicts but doesn't actually know what domains you own. So you pay $10 for some encryption key or something, which happens to correspond to a domain, but nobody including the registrar can tell which domain the key maps to. If you stop paying, the domain stops resolving; but nobody knows who's paying.
[+] [-] syphilis2|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] eeks|8 years ago|reply
EDIT: I was not expecting to be downvoted when quoting a SCOTUS Justice arguing for openness of debates, education and spreading of knowledge. I'm savoring the irony.
[+] [-] maxerickson|8 years ago|reply
I mean, I see at least a vague analogy between not doing business with Nazis and not inviting boring people over for dinner. Is choosing dinner guests censorship?
[+] [-] kevingadd|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|8 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] kareldonk|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] CalChris|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tompagenet2|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] foobarbazetc|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|8 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] tanilama|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] _jgvg|8 years ago|reply
Please notice that the quote is not "I disapprove of what you say, but I'll offer you my house for you to say it".
[+] [-] s73ver_|8 years ago|reply
Also, isn't this Google/GoDaddy expressing THEIR speech by removing users who violate their TOS? Remember, GoDaddy was ok with hosting the site until an article defaming the woman who died on Saturday started making the rounds.
[+] [-] ibn_ibid|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] badwulf|8 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] desbest|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Eleopteryx|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pottersbasilisk|8 years ago|reply
Cant wait until they cancel domain registration of sites that disagree with Google.
[+] [-] lilyball|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] 1337biz|8 years ago|reply