4 ms·

This is a great reminder for those who question the logic of free speech.

by nugi 9y ago

ad_hominem 9y ago
This is a great reminder to not auto-upvote an HN darling when you see the handle. It's pathetic this comment pointing out their hypocrisy is buried at the bottom of the thread.
- jacquesm 9y ago
  And where did you see me advocating in this thread that they should not exercise editorial control? I merely pointed out the consequences of exercising editorial control: that once you show you can do it you lose any kind of argument based on your ability to do it or that you are only taking down content when the law requires it, such as when ordered to do so on account of a ruling by a judge. My position is pretty consistent: - Cloudflare for the longest used a broken argument to leave all kinds of crap websites up longer than they should have (for instance: booter sites) - Their argumentation was that they would not censor sites based on content unless a court order was presented to them - And so they were aiding and abetting many illegal schemes, which were too costly for the people suffering from those schemes to prosecute (for instance: because they were abroad) - But when the Daily Stormer thing happened Cloudflare crossed their self imposed line - At the time I pointed out that they would regret this, just like Slashdot folding for Scientology would regret it. - And now we've come to the end of that line and Cloudflare now takes down sites because some vested commercial interest is harmed, as predicted. So, I argue that they should exercise editorial control, and that they never had any shot at achieving common carrier protection (because (a) they are not a phone company and (b) because they are not essential, and (c) they never litigated that). In this case it would have been nice for them to make a stand. Unfortunately for Cloudflare the publishing houses can now point at Cloudflare taking down the Daily Stormer without a court order, and there is no helping them for that. But just like before, Cloudflare simply is a commercial service, they have the ability (and sometimes the responsibility) to take down content. They are simply bad at picking their battles. Then finally, I see the likes of Cloudflare as a cancer on the web. Way too much power in the hands of one entity in a jurisdiction that is too expensive to litigate in for the vast majority of the world. I hope the net/webservers will get fast enough and that bandwidth on the server side will get cheap enough that we do not need CDNs anymore.
  - ad_hominem 9y ago
    Apologies, I misread what you originally wrote. You are consistent after all.
hedora 9y ago
I want to ironically downvote this, but I won’t.

This is a great reminder for those who question the logic of free speech.

by nugi 9y ago

This is a great reminder for those who question the logic of free speech.

This is a great reminder to not auto-upvote an HN darling when you see the handle. It's pathetic this comment pointing out their hypocrisy is buried at the bottom of the thread.

jacquesm 9y ago
And where did you see me advocating in this thread that they should not exercise editorial control? I merely pointed out the consequences of exercising editorial control: that once you show you can do it you lose any kind of argument based on your ability to do it or that you are only taking down content when the law requires it, such as when ordered to do so on account of a ruling by a judge. My position is pretty consistent: - Cloudflare for the longest used a broken argument to leave all kinds of crap websites up longer than they should have (for instance: booter sites) - Their argumentation was that they would not censor sites based on content unless a court order was presented to them - And so they were aiding and abetting many illegal schemes, which were too costly for the people suffering from those schemes to prosecute (for instance: because they were abroad) - But when the Daily Stormer thing happened Cloudflare crossed their self imposed line - At the time I pointed out that they would regret this, just like Slashdot folding for Scientology would regret it. - And now we've come to the end of that line and Cloudflare now takes down sites because some vested commercial interest is harmed, as predicted. So, I argue that they should exercise editorial control, and that they never had any shot at achieving common carrier protection (because (a) they are not a phone company and (b) because they are not essential, and (c) they never litigated that). In this case it would have been nice for them to make a stand. Unfortunately for Cloudflare the publishing houses can now point at Cloudflare taking down the Daily Stormer without a court order, and there is no helping them for that. But just like before, Cloudflare simply is a commercial service, they have the ability (and sometimes the responsibility) to take down content. They are simply bad at picking their battles. Then finally, I see the likes of Cloudflare as a cancer on the web. Way too much power in the hands of one entity in a jurisdiction that is too expensive to litigate in for the vast majority of the world. I hope the net/webservers will get fast enough and that bandwidth on the server side will get cheap enough that we do not need CDNs anymore.
- ad_hominem 9y ago
  Apologies, I misread what you originally wrote. You are consistent after all.

hedora 9y ago

I want to ironically downvote this, but I won’t.