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I support net neutrality for the same reason I think this is a bad thing. What is the point of net neutrality if things like this aren't prevented?
In the same way that I don't think comcast should be able to start their own movie streaming service then slow down load speeds for competitors, I don't think domains should be blocked based on options expressed on a given site.
Stormfront is a disgusting and vile part of the internet, and I have little sympathy for the hate they get. It's well deserved. But, their speech, no matter how vile, is still speech and they have a right to speak their opinions.
For those who think this is a good thing, consider this: now, where will they go? And now, when they say "we are being suppressed" what argument do you have against them? Free speech allows for disgusting things to be said because, in a good society, people will challenge those things, utilizing their own free speech, and when things that are not based in reason or logic are challenged, they are inevitably proven false. Preventing racist speech only allows it to thrive in the dark. Put it in the spotlight and it inevitably is defeated by the human capacity to think.
Sorry but this is just poisonous. We cannot have sites being shut down unless unlawful content is involved.
And they have been shut down in such a way that they may not be able to recover their content nor move it to another site.
Sorry but this is absolutely awful.
If they don't have daily backups they fall into the "too dumb to run an internet site" group of people....which means they don't deserve to admin one.
And I speak as someone who ran sites larger than that for 22 years.
Even the laziest sysadmin has at least monthly backup. And, realistically, one jew-hating post is the same as another so you haven't missed anything if they restore from Aug 1 or so.
It's not awful any more than shutting down porn sites that use a similar URL to kids sports leagues. There were some American companies making a LOT of money off of doing this years ago. If the local sport site was townaa.com (town athletic league), they would buy townaa.net and put LOTS of porn pics and links. The parents and kids would be treated to an eyeful unless they wanted to pay $2K to the domain owners.
Guess what? They did. But I think we fixed that with some laws.
Laws can be made. If those laws are determined to be constitutional, then they can shut down all the sites they want. I think - at minimum - private businesses are allowed to decide who they want as customers.
Most every web host I have ever used has had TOS (terms of service) which exclude LOTS of legal speech (porn being just one example).
What happens when someone decides it should be your voice that should be suppressed? It always amazes me how quickly people are willing to allow our constitutional rights to be snatched. Right now what you say is in vogue, but that might not always be true and you have already given your blessings for suppression of your speech.
There's no way they can be kept off the internet if they really want to be online. Websites that live on the fringe, so to speak (both left and right) may have a little more difficulty finding a top tier hosting company to host their site, but there will always be options.
I'm not exactly doing cartwheels over this, because I'm somewhat troubled by it as well. But it's not as though they're being censored. They're just being told, "no, you can not spread your hate speech on our bandwidth. find a different host."
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