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>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 p
by Clubber 9y ago
>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?
- troncheadle 9y agoBecause it's subject to market forces and not the government?
- tanilama 9y agoExcept you are not glued. Buy your own host, having a public IP, simple as that.
- dragonwriter 9y ago> 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.
- Clubber 9y agoI 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.
- jacquesm 9y ago> If we cheer this, we are cheering the death of free and public internet. I don't think it is that simple. ISIS does just fine on the web, I'm sure Neo Nazis will do just fine as well. But that's no reason why the IT giants of the planet should aid and abet them.
- trav4225 9y agoBut the Internet is neither free nor public... (?)
- smileysteve 9y agoIf we cheer this, we cheer that DNS is a flawed system. Which I think we already know from Comcast injecting ads and datacap banners in pages.
- logfromblammo 9y agoI'd rather argue for neither. Name-to-number resolution is too much of a strategic choke point to allow anyone to have too great a degree of control over it. But in the system we have now, domain registrars and DNS providers should not be engaging in viewpoint-based discrimination against the domain owner, or in content-based discrimination against anything they may have on their servers. I can certainly condone web hosting service companies embargoing troublesome customers, but anything closer to infrastructure than that should not be cut off for any reasons other than failure to pay the bills.
- msbarnett 9y ago> 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".
- Clubber 9y agoUndesirable 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.
- msbarnett 9y agoMandating 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.
- Clubber 9y agoI desire anyone the ability to say anything on the internet without being squelched. I don't see how that is the same. If private companies want play that game, it's time to take the internet out of their hands. The solution to that problem is to have a federalized registrar that will allow anyone to register anything and is required to uphold free speech laws as they apply to the internet.
- _jgvg 9y ago> 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.
- logfromblammo 9y agoYou 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.
- jacquesm 9y ago> 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.
- logfromblammo 9y agoWhich 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?
- sigstoat 9y agotaking 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?
- cmiles74 9y agoTelevision 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.
- Clubber 9y agoAnyone 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.
- cmiles74 9y agoIn the same way that anyone can start a newspaper, anyone can also start a website. In the same way that someone needs to sell the newspaper vital supplies like paper and ink, so to do websites need to have network providers and web servers. If you think that a pro-Nazi newspaper would have no problem setting up shop, you are sorely mistaken. They will have the same problems as this website and people of conscience will refuse to have them as clients. This website, as would those newspapers, will need to find suppliers sympathetic to their views. That few people are sympathetic to their views, in my opinion, is the market at work.
- willstrafach 9y agoAnyone can also set up their own DNS server for people to use.
- Clubber 9y agoNot top level.
- willstrafach 9y ago
- xanderstrike 9y agoThey're free to promote and advertise their ip address. DNS is a non-essential convenience.
- Clubber 9y agoThat's baloney. Try to run a website by an IP and see how far you get.
- Larrikin 9y agoSounds specifically like a problem of terrorists organizations and their marketing departments.
- Taniwha 9y agoSure you can - you type it in just like text, works great - I'm sure other terrorist organisations like ISIS do the same thing
- Clubber 9y agoSo how much traffic would Google.com lose if they switched from DNS to just an IP? None?
- smileysteve 9y agoOne perspective is that Google runs their own DNS that many people and services use as a convenience. Also, as I get chastised for using Bing (because they pay me) and much of their traffic comes from browser defaults, it's arguable that if they stopped hosting on google.com it may not be that negative of an impact. To the same degree, note that Amazon CHOOSES not to list their more specific apps in the google store and force customers to download THEIR store and change their phone permissions.
- tanilama 9y agoIf they choose to base themselves on extremist idealogy, it is their problem to figure out how to sustain themselves let alone craft its own monetization plan!
- foobarbazetc 9y agoIs 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.
- Clubber 9y ago>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.
- yahna 9y agoAnyone 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.
- jquery 9y agoBeen on that train for a while. Ever since Twitter banned Milo, who I'd never heard of until reading a news article about him being banned, the internet in the USA is slowly resembling the internet I experience in China whenever I visit the mainland. And the slippery slope is greased with "but muh private companies" even as these private companies become more and more monopolistic and indistinguishable.