America is going to have a hard time reconciling freedom of speech on the one hand and curtailing the new Nazi's on the other.

Not if we realize that free speech doesn't mean letting hate speech go unchecked

It's a tough problem to tackle as soon as you throw subjectivity and personal beliefs in the mix.

That's exactly the reason why it exists in the first place.

Racist viewpoints? COVERED

Misogynistic viewpoints? COVERED

Satanism, Cults and "questionable" religious groups? COVERED

Pedophiles and MBLA? COVERED

Websites that advocate illegal drug use? COVERED

Websites that advocate political assassination? COVERED

Websites that advocate killing law enforcement officers? COVERED

There are limitations to free speech, but the reason it EXISTS is not cover speech YOU approve it, it's for speech people you DO NOT agree with and viewpoints that aren't popular.

This is the problem I have with people who say they support freedom of speech, but when it comes to groups like ANTIFA, BLM and others on the left, it's ok to shut down white supremacist websites, but not others exposing the same thing, just on the other side of the aisle.

You can't have it both ways, that's why freedom of speech covers EVERYBODY equally.

Except that 'antifa' is Anti Fascism, which is a pretty good thing except of course when you're a fascist and BLM does not say 'but white lives do not matter', it is usually interpreted as 'black lives matter too'.

It takes a special kind of warp to see either of those as spewing hate, whereas it is pretty easy to why people in general believe Nazis spew hate.

This isn't an issue of freedom of speech. You're allowed to say something, and I'm allowed to respond.

Allowing Nazi's any platform carries a risk, some memes are best kept away from fertile ground lest they spread. Germany learned that the hard way, I'm curious how the USA will deal with this and if they will manage to control it while keeping the free speech laws. I don't know which way it will go but I can see some problems.

I also wonder how many of the 300+ million Americans are now quiet converts waiting in the wings. Scary times.

Are you suggesting that freedom of speech is what allowed or was necessary for the Nazi party to become what they were?

Nazism is a meme, just like stupid cat videos and the bible. It spreads from person to person seeking fertile ground in terms of an easy to identify scape-goat and an association with trouble experienced in a persons life. Allowing such memes to spread unchecked is playing roulette with open societies, the question then becomes whether you'd prefer free speech if it becomes the deciding factor in whether or not a thing like that can take root on a scale that it could cause a disaster or whether you forgo free speech to some extent in order to squelch the problem before it gets out of hand. Note that the Nazis themselves were not exactly free speech fans.

So even if it isn't a necessity it certainly will help to make it grow, and will allow it to grow faster.

Your rationale is exactly what every dictator throughout history has used to protect their power. Every, single, one. You either have free speech and allow all to express their ideas unfettered, or you will end up in a dictatorship sooner or later, guaranteed. To be clear, i'm talking about expressing ideas like "men and women differ biologically" and not speaking about threats/fighting words. Once you start punishing people for their ideas you're on the road to dictatorship, at least if every dictatorship in history is any guide.

Right, that's why all countries that do not have USA style free speech are dictatorships. Come on, that's not even trying. If anything the USA is more at risk of becoming a dictatorship than many other democracies.

You're not going to see any trouble anywhere - except on private property - for expressing ideas such as 'men and women differ biologically', note that no government you'd care to list here has ever suppressed speech like that.

But Nazism is on a different level, and if you're willing to go down that road protecting the free speech of Nazis you really have to be very optimistic about human nature. I keep hearing echoes of 'it can't happen here'. But I believe it can happen, and it probably can happen everywhere. The question is if we will let it and what it will take to stop it once the ball starts rolling.

that's why all countries that do not have USA style free speech are dictatorships

They partly are. The USA, for all its faults, is the last bastion of free speech in the world. And I say this as a European.

Yes, because driving them underground onto the dark web, without any adult supervision is a way better idea right? You drive these groups underground and one day are going to seriously regret doing so.

We are in the midst of a cultural civil war. The funny thing is that the more you suppress their ability to protest and their speech, the more converts you're making.

Maybe we should start by asking WHY these groups are getting more popular, why they are so enraged and angry and suddenly are out front airing their frustrations. And saying this is all about Trump is simply masking something that has clearly been brewing for a long time prior to this.

Every society has a population of disenfranchised people that can be turned to the tune of the right words. That's not unique to Trump followers, or even the USA.

What a society does when that monster rears its ugly head is what matters.

Pushing it underground is maybe ineffective as a sole strategy but making it seem acceptable is also not right.

Lots of these people only do this because they feel they have cover.

> What a society does when that monster rears its ugly head is what matters.

In that last decade, apparently not much - which is why you have the problem you have now. This idea of doing something has not been done at all, but now all the SJW's have their hammers out and now everything looks like a nail.

It doesn't work like that. In a society that values the ability to speak freely, you can't pick and choose your winners based on who's OX is being gored this week, or which party is currently in power.

There is nothing magical about Nazism; it's not some kind of special Pandora's box waiting to spring upon an unsuspecting public. It's just one of many ideologies that appeal to people who feel oppressed by giving them the easy target of vulnerable populations on whom to blame their misfortunes.

That it happened to be the ideology used to horrific ends in the industrialized world last century is much more a product of its moment in history than due to anything unique about the ideology itself.

The poisonous seed isn't the problem - rather, the ground fertile to it must be tended so that it will reject such things taking root.

Allowing Nazi's any platform carries a risk, some memes are best kept away from fertile ground lest they spread.

I have two rather distinct objections to this line of thinking. One is that this isn't especially true. To name one semi-controlled experiment: Germany has laws against using Nazi symbols, denying the Holocaust, and so forth, and yet the crypto-neo-Nazi NPD pulls down hundreds of thousands of votes every election--not enough to win anything aside from one European Parliament seat, but a significant number anyway. Meanwhile, the US has no laws against neo-Nazi expression and also doesn't seem to have very many more neo-Nazis per capita--even in Charlottesville, the neo-Nazis numbered in the high dozens to low hundreds and were vastly outnumbered by counterprotesters.

A more philosophical objection is that you don't want to go into the business of deciding what ideas are too dangerous to express, because there's a greater risk that any institution with the power to make and enforce that judgment call will abuse that power. This is also a lesson that Europe learned the hard way, but seems to have forgotten.

But Germany has so far managed to keep the NPD on the fringe. The number of votes they get is low enough that it can be considered a safety valve of sorts. More interesting would be to see how Germany would react if the NPD got within striking distance of control of the Reichstag.

As for your second point, ideas may be too dangerous to express and you're still free to express them. But that's no reason to hand someone a megaphone to express those ideas and I think that Europe learned that there are points in time where small changes can have large effects, and that some of those effects can get out of control. So they tried (and possibly failed, but so far so good) to put mechanisms in place to stop a re-occurrence of recent history.

Which system is better only time will tell, but what's happening in the USA right now does not have a parallel in Europe.

Which system is better only time will tell, but what's happening in the USA right now does not have a parallel in Europe.

Likewise, a lot of what's happened in Europe does not have a parallel in the USA. Elections have been seriously contested and sometimes won by the likes of Golden Dawn, Le Pen--both father and daughter--the BNP, Alessandra Mussolini, Jorg Haider, and so forth. Sure, in Europe you don't have a hundred white nationalists marching down the street carrying swastika flags, but you have an awful lot of them in the European Parliament.

you have an awful lot of them in the European Parliament.

We're working on it. The last batch of elections was pretty scary but so far so good. If WWII wasn't enough to teach the world a lasting lesson you have to wonder how bad it would have to get before we will. Quite possibly it can not be done and we will occasionally revert to type.

The scary thing is that WWII is quickly passing out of living memory. In the next 20 years, there will start to be a critical mass of voters who have never MET anyone who was an adult in WWII.

This isn't an issue of freedom of speech.

It absolutely is, just not with the government. If private companies have the abilities to squelch speech from the public internet, that is a very bad thing. Google is the second registrar to kick them out. I don't care for what they say, but if we want a free internet, we have to allow the good with the bad.

I mean we complain when China does it, how is this fundamentally different?

You aren't allowed to respond by gluing someone's mouth shut.

Refusing to actively collaborate in spreading someone else's viewpoint isn't gluing their mouth shut.

Now, if you want to argue that domain registration should be a public utility and not a private interaction where the service providers freedom of speech and association is protected, that's perhaps a reasonable argument. But that's not the status quo.

I know it's not the status quo, but if we cheer this, we are cheering the death of free and public internet. Careful what you wish for.

I mean we complain when China does it, how is this fundamentally different?

Because a private company declining to participate in the hosting of somebody's speech is a hell of a distance from the government mandating blocking said speech? How is this even a serious question?

Random House probably isn't interested in publishing a neo-nazi racial superiority manifesto, either. That's neither a free speech issue nor "tantamount to Chinese censorship".

Undesirable speech removed from the internet via multiple registrars refusing to host DNS, vs undesirable speech removed from the internet via Chinese firewall has the same result: undesirable speech removed from the internet. That's the fundamental issue. That is not different.

Mandating that Google host this speech would constitute compelled speech, and violate the first amendment. Ironically, what you seem to desire here is something much more in line with China's conception of constrained freedom.

If private companies have the abilities to squelch speech from the public internet

Nobody is doing that.

Nobody is mandated to give you a medium for your speech. Go on the corner and scream all you want.

You weaken your own rights by choosing to interpret "speech" literally instead of as participation in public communications and discourse, which increasingly occurs over channels that do not require everyone to be within shouting distance of each other. Freedom of the press now extends further than a literal ink-on-paper printing press, to digital publication on an http server.

Delisting a domain from the DNS is metaphorically equivalent to raiding the premises of a newspaper publisher and ripping the banner off the front page of each printed copy, while leaving the remainder intact, so that anyone attempting to read the latest copy of that paper would not be able to find one, even if they were standing on a stack of them. It is backdoor censorship, by attacking people's name-based associations.

Delisting a domain from the DNS is metaphorically equivalent to raiding the premises of a newspaper publisher and ripping the banner off the front page of each printed copy, while leaving the remainder intact, so that anyone attempting to read the latest copy of that paper would not be able to find one, even if they were standing on a stack of them. It is backdoor censorship, by attacking people's name-based associations.

No, it isn't. It is merely saying that you won't take an entry in your copy of the phone book, but you're free to petition the other issuers of phone books and you're free to create your own phone book.

Which kicks the can down the road to the issuer of the phone book book, which is not obligated to list any particular phone book in it, including the one you created yourself, because no one else would list your number in theirs.

Do you think it acceptable for casual users of the phone network to keep their own list of phone books that include self-published phone books that the major phone book book publishers won't list?

You weaken your own rights by choosing to interpret "speech" literally instead of as participation in public communications and discourse, which increasingly occurs over channels that do not require everyone to be within shouting distance of each other.

Are you implying that every online community and service should be forced to accept absolute freedom of speech?

Porn is speech, should YT and Fb be forced to host porn?

It's a little different with domain registrars, particularly when two of the biggest ones blocked a domain from registering. A power the US government gave them. Also, no one is saying "force," you are injecting that as a straw man. Just because people think free speech is something worth fighting for rather than actively fighting against because sometimes it is distasteful, doesn't mean we want the government to force anything.

Also, Google and GoDaddy sure forced Stormwhatever to not be accessible through their domain name. Again, using power given to them by the US government.

Do you believe you are actively fighting against the freedom of this group to speak? Do you see where some people would think you are? Do you think that will come back to bite you in the future?

A power the US government gave them.

With no requirements that they should not refuse service to anyone.

Also, no one is saying "force."

Then what are you saying? Should Google be "xxxxx" to accept Stormwhatever? What is "xxxxx"? Honest question, what are you proposing?

Again, using power given to them by the US government.

And doing so per the conditions specified by the US government.

First Amendment lawyer Ken White describes the Daily Stormer as a "sewer of humanity." In a statement to Ars, he argued that the article about Heyer "is repulsive, and arguably advocates for killing people in general, but it's not actionable incitement under the law. GoDaddy, of course, can kick Nazis off its platform as it likes, though."

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2017/08/godaddy-blacklis...

I am implying that the internet is now communications infrastructure, and should therefore be equally open to all comers.

Domain registration and DNS are [nearly] essential now, in the same way that street signs are essential for a road network. If your city council decides to rip out the street sign that labeled the street you live on, such that visitors could not easily locate your house, and mail would not be delivered in a timely or reliable fashion to your mailbox, do you think you might have grounds to complain?

Assigning a street name and postal address to your lot is not the same as building a house on it.

So not "every online community" should be barred from censorship on their own properties, but if you're running a core information service, you're danged skippy that censorship is not okay.

If Cthulhu comes up to your desk chewing on half of a Dagonite cultist, you accept its business, and charge it exactly the same fee per month as you just charged smiling baby Jesus holding two cute kittens for his domain registration. The amount of editorial control you may exercise is inversely proportional to your power to influence the entire Internet. Since domain registration is right there at the center and has such great power, you do not get to color the whole Internet with your own personal values.

So not "every online community" should be barred from censorship on their own properties, but if you're running a core information service, you're danged skippy that censorship is not okay.

Google or GoDaddy aren't running the DNS system, or even street signs.

They are running a phone book service, which is also run by many other companies, each under their own ToS. They can reject service to anyone (well, except protected classes).

taking the above as a starting point...

If private companies have the abilities to squelch speech from the public internet, that is a very bad thing.

the whole point of the net neutrality folks is ensuring that ISPs can't keep them from accessing whatever sites they want, isn't it?

if it is in some sense OK for google to refuse these domain registrations, is it also OK for google (and then comcast, etc etc) to refuse to carry the packets for these sites?

Television stations, radio stations and newspapers all decide which editorials to air or stories to cover. There's no requirement that they provide every organization equal time to present whatever they think might be valuable.

Perhaps if DNS service was regulated as a utility, or if Google was an arm of a state or federal government, there might be something to your argument.

Anyone can start and distribute a newspaper. Not everyone can broadcast on a spectrum (there are technical reasons to now allow that). If you think of a website as a newspaper, and there are similarities, then this in effect is a private entity preventing someone from publishing and distributing a newspaper.

Anyone can also set up their own DNS server for people to use.

Not top level.

Users would be free to add the DNS server to their systems.

They're free to promote and advertise their ip address. DNS is a non-essential convenience.

That's baloney. Try to run a website by an IP and see how far you get.

Sure you can - you type it in just like text, works great - I'm sure other terrorist organisations like ISIS do the same thing

So how much traffic would Google.com lose if they switched from DNS to just an IP? None?

Is it really that hard for people to understand that the first amendment only applies to the federal government?

Not to mention that the Internet is a global network with 200+ speech laws.

Is it really that hard for people to understand that the first amendment only applies to the federal government?

That's the standard fallback of authoritarians. The law says the government can't ban speech, but the spirit of free speech, particularly on something like the internet, should be protected.

The internet is much larger than America. Why would American law be internet law?

Both are American entities.

Anyone on board with the whole "The tech companies are too big" thing yet?

no?

okay I'll keep popping up every once in a while to ask.

Freedom of speech isn't a power to mandate that other private parties must help to spread your speech.

In fact, it is exactly the freedom for such parties to decline to do so that is included in freedom of speech.

This is made challenging by the fact that the entirety of the internet is composed of private parties.

Should we simply stop expecting anything resembling free speech on the internet?

Yes. We've never had free speech on the internet. Or rather, we do, but only so far as you're free to set up your own server and host your own site and put whatever you want on it (and if you can't convince a domain registrar to give you a domain, you can always advertise its IP address, or maybe operate a Tor hidden service or something like that). But if you're not willing to host your own site, then free speech on the internet has only been an illusion.

The DNS tree at least probably should get the same treatment as ISPs, i.e. being considered a utility and thus provide service to everyone.

Providers of DNS services have terms of service. And arguably even if something is not in their terms of service if they deem it to be unacceptable then they are well within their rights as private companies to deny service. ISPs are all about access, the DNS is all about publishing and your ability to publish depends to a large extent on whether or not you will be able to find parties to work with to enable the publishing of the material you wish to spread.

Google is under no obligation to provide such a service to a party they deem objectionable (on pretty good grounds).

Considering that IP addresses you get from most service providers are dynamic you need a lookup system for others to be able to access your speech.

they are well within their rights as private companies to deny service.

Many utilities are also private companies and they they are required to provide service anyway. So one does not strictly follow from the other.

That's why I said DNS providers should be considered utilities. At least the national-level ones. If resellers won't take it you should still be able to get it straight from the ccTLD registrar.

Considering that IP addresses you get from most service providers are dynamic you need a lookup system for others to be able to access your speech.

Not on the hosting side.

Many utilities are also private companies and they they are required to provide service anyway.

Yes, but they're not. DNS is a nice-to-have, not a must. Hosting is a must, if you want to make a case then you are going to have an uphill battle where a hosting provider would have to supply and and all paying customers.

FWIW, I don't necessarily disagree with this and certainly think that it's a debate we should have.

OTOH, I think in the regime we do have, expecting Nazis to get a free pass for violating registration firms TOS is unreasonable, and granting such an exception, even silently by failure to enforce, would send a terrible message.

My point is that they (at least ccTLD registry operators) should not be allowed to have arbitrary ToS. As long as it is legal and the customer can pay non-discriminatory prices they should not have any leverage to remove them.

Just like you can't get kicked from your internet service, electricity or water providers for arbitrary reasons.

Just like you can't get kicked from your internet service, electricity or water providers for arbitrary reasons.

Given that the net neutrality regulations which were adopted to actually explicit protect all lawful content and applications are unlikely to ever go into effect given the new FCC makeup, this is not true. Nothing stops ISPs today from having restrictive, content-based TOS restricting lawful activity.

That being said, I can appreciate the argument that DNS service should be covered in an even more expansive net neutrality framework than the one we almost had in the US.

That's a good point. There are plenty of Tor sites (most of them?) that are on Tor specifically because no private third party is willing to host their content. Let the bigots go to Tor and enjoy all the free speech they like, down in the darkness where they won't bother anyone who doesn't want to hear them.

and if you can't convince a domain registrar to give you a domain

This is the problem. If nobody wants to host my speech, fine: I can set up a server in my own bedroom if need be. But if nobody accepts my domain, it's not quite so easy to set up my own registrar.

Private companies arbitrarily censoring domain names is a can of worms that shouldn't be opened. Registration must be held up to a higher standard, like an utility.

Self-hosting doesn't solve free speech on the internet. The first person who doesn't like you will DDoS you off the net, and then you'll need to run and hide behind a service like CloudFlare. There are only a few such firms. If they've been pressured not to protect you because your opinions are deemed objectionable, then you effectively cannot publish online at all.

This is not a theoretical problem. After Quillette published the response of 4 scientists to the Google memo they were DDoSd off the net.

There are indeed only a few such firms - but those firms are probably some of the most bulletproof in the entire industry.

BlackLotus hosted stormfront for years, CloudFlare hosts reams of controversial content - wikileaks, the pirate bay, 8chan, etc. They're practically known for it.

Currently at least, it's still quite possible to find a provider who will look out for their customers. In the registrar category there are a few providers who shine, DynaDot and EasyDNS have really gone to bat before.

This is made challenging by the fact that the entirety of the internet is composed of private parties.

The entirety of the internet is not composed of private entities. There are plenty of public entities that comprise parts of the internet. (And, in the US, those public entities are restricted in viewpoint discrimination when they create public fora.)

Now, it's true that private users in the US generally must deal with private vendors for internet services, and most of those services (including, e.g., DNS services) are neither public nor regulated-utility services, which does mean that lots of things one might want to do on the internet are subject to viewpoint discrimination by other private parties whose collaboration would be necessary for one to complete one’s intent.

Should we simply stop expecting anything resembling free speech on the internet?

Free speech involves, fundamentally, the challenge of convincing others that your speech should be relayed. The internet is no different in that regard.

Of course, if this was leftist speech we were talking about, the "arguments" would be all about evil capitalists and the need for legislation to protect free speech.

I think you'd find that actual leftist speech, calling for a violent Marxist revolution for example, would be treated the same way.

There are tons of leftist sites advocating violent revolution. I haven't heard of a single one being denied domain registration (or being banned in any other way).

Examples?

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 -

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.

Well, that last part can be explained by the Empire being a generic metaphor for oppressive regimes. The Empire wasn't exactly a morally ambiguous character.

I mean, how bad is blowing up a planet really?

Empire being a generic metaphor for oppressive regimes

It wasn't always like this. The best example is the Roman Empire in the time of Augustus, with its Pax Romana and everything related to it, which wasn't seen as a bad thing by lots of writers during the centuries that followed it. The second example that comes to mind is the Investiture Controversy from the early Middle Ages (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Investiture_Controversy), which saw the Papacy ideologically battling it out against the Holy Roman Empire, and the Holy Roman Empire was definitely not seen as oppressive or anything the like.

On a more generic note, us Christian Orthodox use the phrase "The Empire from the Skies" (my not so good translation, here's the wiki article on it in Romanian which literally translates as "God's Empire" : https://ro.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%8Emp%C4%83r%C4%83%C8%9Bia_...), and, again, the term "empire" is not seen as oppressive or anything similar, quite the contrary.

unless the parent edited the post (possible), they're saying "the Empire" as in the empire in the movies, not the word "empire" in and of itself.

I believe that American courts have been examining this situation for some time and have imposed restrictions that they deemed reasonable: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shouting_fire_in_a_crowded_the... .

It's Time to Stop Using the 'Fire in a Crowded Theater' Quote

https://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2012/11/its-tim...

Without fail, whenever a free speech controversy hits, someone will cite this phrase as proof of limits on the First Amendment. And whatever that controversy may be, "the law"--as some have curiously called it--can be interpreted to suggest that we should err on the side of censorship. Holmes' quote has become a crutch for every censor in America, yet the quote is wildly misunderstood.

those who quote Holmes might want to actually read the case where the phrase originated before using it as their main defense. If they did, they'd realize it was never binding law, and the underlying case, U.S. v. Schenck, is not only one of the most odious free speech decisions in the Court's history, but was overturned over 40 years ago.

Three Generations of a Hackneyed Apologia for Censorship Are Enough

https://www.popehat.com/2012/09/19/three-generations-of-a-ha...

Holmes' famous quote is the go-to argument by appeal to authority for anyone who wants to suggest that some particular utterance is not protected by the First Amendment. Its relentless overuse is annoying and unpersuasive to most people concerned with the actual history and progress of free speech jurisprudence. People tend to cite the "fire in a crowded theater" quote for two reasons First, they trot out the Holmes quote for the proposition that not all speech is protected by the First Amendment. But this is not in dispute. Saying it is not an apt or persuasive argument for the proposition that some particular speech is unprotected, any more than saying "well, some speech is protected by the First Amendment" is a persuasive argument to the contrary. Second, people tend to cite Holmes to imply that there is some undisclosed legal authority showing that the speech they are criticizing is not protected by the First Amendment. This is dishonest at worst and unconvincing at best. If you have a pertinent case showing that particular speech falls outside the First Amendment, you don't have to rely on a 90-year-old rhetorical flourish to support your argument. Holmes' quote is the most famous and pervasive lazy cheat in American dialogue about free speech.

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?

The washington post and new york times don't have a monopoly.

I'd also be fine if they dropped them from search. I'm not fine with them abusing their status as a domain registrar.

It still resolves:

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.

They certainly don't have grounds to delete the domain based on this

It's their service. Hate speech probably violates their ToS.

Not seeing hate speech listed here:

https://www.godaddy.com/agreements/showdoc.aspx?pageid=UTOS

https://payments.google.com/payments/apis-secure/get_legal_d...

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.

CloudFlare provides basic anti-DDOS capabilities to anyone. You may as well complain that their ISP provided an internet connection.

This is a terrible precedent.

Cant wait until they cancel domain registration of sites that disagree with Google.

Didn't Zuckerberg already kill the 'Fuck Zuck2020' page from Facebook for being hate speech?

Not everything is a slippery slope.

Yes, but some things should be protected vehemently.

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 has every right morally and legally to not wish to provide a platform for hate speech.

The more Google chooses what content is hosted on their platforms, the less authentic their claims of independence from the content and the more liability to which they should be exposed.

They're not hosting anything.

These Nazis got kicked off one registrar and decided to make it Google's problem.

Companies have every right to choose who they do business with.

There are plenty of registrars out there that have no issues with hate speech. This is just a PR exercise for the Nazis.

The funny thing about hate speech is that no one can make a unanimous conclusion for what hate speech is.

Nowadays hate speech is a euphamism for any idea or opinion someone doesn't like, so the term hate speech has lost its meaning. It now means using gender pronouns to refer to people, using gendered job names, saying that men and women are born with different brains, saying that there's only 2 genders, saying that feminism is cancer, saying there's a link between islam and terrorism, saying that black people underachieve in society due to genetics instead of the evil racist oppressive white male - and much more.

Well you pretty much just concisely spelled out your political leanings.

no one can make a unanimous conclusion for what hate speech is

Would it be a "unanimous" conclusion if it were a conclusion drawn by a singular person or entity?

It now means using gender pronouns to refer to people

Do you have an example of this being identified as hate speech?

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.

Of course Google has that right. I question whether it will have the intended effect, though. Pretty sure isolating extremists tends to cause further extremism.

Actually they are not. Once a domain is transferred it has a 60 day lock on it and can't be transferred to another registrar. It can only be transferred back to the losing registrar if there is some of accident or other clearly defined reason. This is to prevent people from shifting domains around primarily to avoid IP enforcement or UDRP problems.

Honestly this is a terrible precedent they have here. I am surprised they are doing this (if true and hence why I questioned the entire story) because it puts them at a disadvantage in future cases as far as 'why didn't you stop xyz domain registration that is now responsible for my child's death after I wrote to you and put you on notice'.

"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it."

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".

This is not offering your house for it. That would be if google was actually hosting their site on its servers. In this case it's a domain pointing to their content. As a registrar Google is serving the public and I doubt you can deny someone this service in a moral sense. Can a doctor deny to treat them if they end up in his office for serious injuries? What if all registrars deny them, is it morally right to effectively erase them from the internet for simply expressing their thoughts?

As a registrar Google is serving the public and I doubt you can deny someone this service in a moral sense.

Actually, you can deny anyone except protected categories.

Can a doctor deny to treat them if they end up in his office for serious injuries?

Yes, the doctor chooses not to treat patients with the illness or injury you suffer from.

What if all registrars deny them, is it morally right to effectively erase them from the internet for simply expressing their thoughts?

Nobody is being erased from the internet. Also, they can open their own registrar system.

So no, there's no obligation for Google, or any other registrar, to host their information.

I hope you dont end up in an emergency hospital with the only doctor who can help you refusing to do so because he doesnt like you for some reason.

So do I, but that doesn't change reality.

And a hospital might fire a doctor for refusing to treat you.

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.

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.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/court-rules-baker-cant-refuse-t...

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.

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.

Even though I strongly disagree with the content, I think it's an awful precedent.

Perhaps they should complain to ICANN (although I think the intellectual level there may be too low for a meaningful complaint) ?

Domain registrars have no business doing this.

Why do you think that Google doesn't have the right (business) to do this? They are not the sole registrar. Is there some contract with ICAAN which specifies this as a duty owed?

Originally, they just registered domains for ICANN. Now they act like they own them and just rent them out.

This is exactly backwards. Google is refusing to act like they own them. They're refusing to have anything to do with them.

Is there some contract with ICAAN which specifies this as a duty owed?

There should be.

ICAAN should stop allowing Google to do any registrations. This is ridiculous.

Domain registrars are not obliged to give service to anybody. If you register a domain you are given the use of a nice-and-easy-to-remember alias for your IP address. Whether or not the registrar will want to do business with you is their problem, that's a transaction between consenting parties, not an obligation on the part of the supplier. Whether ICANN accepts a registration or not is another matter, and so far ICANN has not been involved here.

So stormfront is free to shop around until someone wants their business or they can use their IP address, assuming they'll find at least one party willing to host them.

This same argument could be made for gay couples who want service for their gay wedding. We already set the precedent that a business cannot refuse service for customers it finds objectionable. You are essentially arguing in favor of the christian bakery refusing the gay wedding cake. So I don't think you can have it both ways, you either force people to do business with those you find objectionable or you dont.

I agree. This is what society has come to.

Muslim employee in a supermarket refuses to handle bacon = okay

Christian employee in a supermarket refuses bake a cake for a homosexual = not okay

Free speech and anti-discrimination when it suits you, and the opposite when it suits you. The doublethink is strong.

Discrimination based on sexual orientation is different from discrimination based on nazi affiliation.

Last time I checked, most of the stormfront members and most of the alt-right aren't committing any crimes against people who are coloured, just like how homosexuals don't commit crimes against heterosexual people.

We already set the precedent that a business cannot refuse service for customers it finds objectionable.

Incorrect; we've already established in law a small set of narrow protected bases of discrimination in public accommodation. Outside of those categories (or in business relationship that are not within the scope of public accommodation, regardless of basid) a business absolutely can refuse service to customers it finds objectionable.

Discrimination based on advocacy of race-based violence does not, it should be noted, fall into any of those protected categories.

Discrimination based on advocacy of race-based violence does not, it should be noted, fall into any of those protected categories.

I agree but this policy is not applied evenly.

a business absolutely can refuse service to customers it finds objectionable.

How was the gay wedding cake thing able to progress then?

LGBT people are a protected class, nazis are not.

That's a real question in California. The Unruh Civil Rights Act has been held to be broad enough to cover white supremacist affiliation.[1] There are a few cities, including Washington, D.C., which specifically prohibit discrimination on the basis of political affiliation.

[1] http://articles.latimes.com/1988-03-11/news/mn-1358_1_civil-...

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.

In the US the 1st amendment constrains what the govt can do, it doesn't constrain private individuals or companies

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.

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?

It becomes censorship when all accesses to a medium (ie. DNS resolvers) are privatized. In other words, if all private providers refuse them access to a medium and if we agree this people still have rights, there is nothing in place to defend these rights. The collective action to refuse them access is therefore censorship.

So what you're suggesting is that DNS and domain registration and web hosting should all be public services operated by the government, because only the government is obligated to protect internet content from censorship? Or are you simply arguing that private businesses should be required to accept money from anyone to host any content, including content that is illegal in other countries or content that is against their personal beliefs?

Is canonical DNS a medium or a convention?

(I'm not aware of anything restricting me from setting up a server that answers DNS queries with quotes from Dune, it's just that, because I'm not following the convention, pretty much everyone would just ignore it)

The issue at hand is not about serving the DNS but registering a DNS. One could serve its own domain name server as long as they have been able to register it first. Unfortunately, not everyone can become a registrar. And if all registrar refuse to register you, you don't have a domain name.

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?