5 ms·

Well you can host your own website on your own server. Of course, I do wonder how far this goes. What happens if the DNS server refuses to host the IP lookup?

Well you can host your own website on your own server. Of course, I do wonder how far this goes. What happens if the DNS server refuses to host the IP lookup? Host your own DNS server? What if the browsers refuse to allow access to the site? Build your own browser? What if ISPs refuse to transfer the data over the wire? Make your own internet? People have defended that this vs. Net Neutrality (at least the extent of the ability of an ISP to control what goes over its wires) as having a core difference, but it feels to me they are closer than people realize and the standards set by one can influence the other.

cm2187 8y ago
And like for everything else, first a precedent is created with an indefensible case of terrorism/pedophilia/neo-nazism, then the rule gets progressively applied more broadly.
- gamblor956 8y ago
  Or, in the real world, cases like these actually reinforce the applicability of legal rights. Because in the real world, judges are able to protect the rights of pedophiles and neo-nazis while also upholding the laws against child pornography and hate crimes. In fact, a fair number of modern legal rights were established in cases involving fairly heinous defendants. For example: in recent decades, a lot of non-political free speech cases involve pornography or hate speech. [Note: terrorism is different because nationality matters. Domestic terrorists get the benefit of their constitutional rights, foreign terrorists do not, especially if said foreigners have renounced the citizenship (and thus protections) of another state. This is why Guantanamo was legally defensible, if morally reprehensible.]
  - DanAndersen 8y ago
    The main difference we are seeing in this new world of large tech companies is that the role of the "judge" is diminished. Groups figure out the fine lines on which to make judgment, but only as a matter of internal company policy, behind closed doors, which none of us get to have a say in or even read the guidelines. When a judge sentences you to prison, you know pretty well exactly what sentence of which law was the one that did it. When deplatformed from these private-but-ever-growing services, vague "ToS violations" is the best you get. Very easy for "rule of law" to become "rule of man."
    - gamblor956 8y ago
      A website ban isn't even remotely the same thing as a legal sanction. If you want to control the platform, create your own. You'll need the hardware and the software, and it could get expensive. But if you want to spread hate speech or libel, suck up the cost. If you want to be on someone else's platform you accept the restrictions of using that platform. Hate speech is on the list of almost every major platform (except Twitter).
      - Covzire 8y ago
        As someone else pointed out, what if they go after your DNS registrar? Your SSL certificate provider? Where will it end? De platforming people who spew vile (but legal) speech isn't good for society and it's contrary to the spirit of the first amendment.
        anigbrowl 8y ago
        Well it ends with (generic) you running a hidden service on TOR that only committed misanthropes are willing to participate in on a regular basis, and looking over your shoulder in public a lot. De platforming people who spew vile (but legal) speech isn't good for society On the contrary, I think it's very good for the same reason I would want to drain an abscess or excise a tumor. The vile speech that you mention isn't harmless, and the people targeted by vile speech are part of society. What benefit is achieved that exceeds the costs imposed upon them?
      - jewelthief91 8y ago
        > A website ban isn't even remotely the same thing as a legal sanction. The Supreme Court seemed to have very different take (Packingham v. North Carolina): "Social media allows users to gain access to information and communicate with one another on any subject that might come to mind. With one broad stroke, North Carolina bars access to what for many are the principal sources for knowing current events, checking ads for employment, speaking and listening in the modern public square, and otherwise exploring the vast realms of human thought and knowledge. Foreclosing access to social media altogether thus prevents users from engaging in the legitimate exercise of First Amendment rights."
lylecubed 8y ago
> What happens if the DNS server refuses to host the IP lookup? No need. It's easier if DNS registrars conspire to confiscate and/or refuse to sell domain names. This has already been done. SSL certs can, and have been, revoked. The ISPs haven't really been involved in these types of actions since the 90s, so I'm curious what their stance is. For now, if you've been run off the face of the WWW, you still have TOR hidden services or IPFS. Who knows what will happen when the ISPs get involved.
zokier 8y ago
Personally I would draw the line on requiring ISPs to carry legal IP traffic fairly ("net neutrality"), and pretty much everything else being free game for terms of services etc. I would considering extending the "neutrality" aspect for domains, considering that ICANN has effectively monopoly on DNS. There are still some practical problems for hosting your own website with those "primitives", most importantly getting an internet connection suitable for hosting anything in the first place if nobody is willing to co-locate your servers. One would hope that with the proliferation of IPv6 and FTTx, actually hosting stuff from your basement would become more realistic.
zkms 8y ago
> Well you can host your own website on your own server. Sure, then the people who drove you off Facebook/Amazon/Apple iTunes/Youtube/Azure/EC2/Digitalocean/Cloudflare will go after your DNS registrar and the ISP/CDN/colocation-facility you're using. They won't give up and they'll ruthlessly go after every single commercial entity you do business with. After all, if it's not the government punishing you for speech, it's not censorship and it's fine! That's the trick of this kind of lawfare -- having any kind of internet presence inherently involves relationships with private, non-governmental entities, and it's disturbingly easy to suborn them and shame them into refusing to do business with unsavoury people.
- s73v3r_ 8y ago
  Yeah, I don't buy that. If Stormfront and Daily Stormer can still be up, then there can't really be any credibility to that argument.
  - patrickg_zill 8y ago
    The DS's original domain and another subsequent one, was deleted or taken over by the registrar, I thought?
  - Covzire 8y ago
    Did you read any headlines in the last couple days?
  - zkms 8y ago
    > Yeah, I don't buy that. If Stormfront and Daily Stormer can still be up, then there can't really be any credibility to that argument. That those two loathsome websites are still up doesn't mean that the technique I described is invalid; it just means it doesn't have a 100% kill rate, and it certainly works on less resourced and less indefatigable targets. I'm not worried about those specific websites -- I'm worried about the increased spread and normalisation of the "contact everyone %s has a business relationship with, and shame them until they drop them as a customer" tactic. Where does it end? We've established that pressuring domain registrars and hosts is fine; what's fair game after that? Is it fine for me to pressure and suborn an electric company into cutting off service to someone I don't like (after all, without electricity, they can't make those bad internet posts!). If I can rile up enough of an internet mob, can I get them evicted from their residence, simply by annoying their landlord until the trouble's not worth the monthly rent cheque? I've seen firsthand these tactics used by internet mobs and it's a very ugly process, and it's not something whose prevalence I'm happy to see expand. Just because in these cases the targets are generally disgusting doesn't mean it's something that should be tolerated (if only because those who you hate will positively relish a chance to use that against your side of things).
wmf 8y ago
What happens if the DNS server refuses to host the IP lookup? That already happened; the Daily Stormer (yep, Nazis) was kicked off GoDaddy, Google, Tucows, Namecheap, DreamHost, etc. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Daily_Stormer#Site_hosting_issues_after_the_2017_Unite_the_Right_rally https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Daily_Stormer#Site_hosting...
another-cuppa 8y ago
The only thing you can really do is use tor. But you have to be very, very careful and know what you're doing. It's not something most people can set up, and not something most people can (easily) access.

cm2187 8y ago

And like for everything else, first a precedent is created with an indefensible case of terrorism/pedophilia/neo-nazism, then the rule gets progressively applied more broadly.

gamblor956 8y ago
Or, in the real world, cases like these actually reinforce the applicability of legal rights. Because in the real world, judges are able to protect the rights of pedophiles and neo-nazis while also upholding the laws against child pornography and hate crimes. In fact, a fair number of modern legal rights were established in cases involving fairly heinous defendants. For example: in recent decades, a lot of non-political free speech cases involve pornography or hate speech. [Note: terrorism is different because nationality matters. Domestic terrorists get the benefit of their constitutional rights, foreign terrorists do not, especially if said foreigners have renounced the citizenship (and thus protections) of another state. This is why Guantanamo was legally defensible, if morally reprehensible.]
- DanAndersen 8y ago
  The main difference we are seeing in this new world of large tech companies is that the role of the "judge" is diminished. Groups figure out the fine lines on which to make judgment, but only as a matter of internal company policy, behind closed doors, which none of us get to have a say in or even read the guidelines. When a judge sentences you to prison, you know pretty well exactly what sentence of which law was the one that did it. When deplatformed from these private-but-ever-growing services, vague "ToS violations" is the best you get. Very easy for "rule of law" to become "rule of man."
  - gamblor956 8y ago
    A website ban isn't even remotely the same thing as a legal sanction. If you want to control the platform, create your own. You'll need the hardware and the software, and it could get expensive. But if you want to spread hate speech or libel, suck up the cost. If you want to be on someone else's platform you accept the restrictions of using that platform. Hate speech is on the list of almost every major platform (except Twitter).
    - Covzire 8y ago
      As someone else pointed out, what if they go after your DNS registrar? Your SSL certificate provider? Where will it end? De platforming people who spew vile (but legal) speech isn't good for society and it's contrary to the spirit of the first amendment.
      - anigbrowl 8y ago
        Well it ends with (generic) you running a hidden service on TOR that only committed misanthropes are willing to participate in on a regular basis, and looking over your shoulder in public a lot. De platforming people who spew vile (but legal) speech isn't good for society On the contrary, I think it's very good for the same reason I would want to drain an abscess or excise a tumor. The vile speech that you mention isn't harmless, and the people targeted by vile speech are part of society. What benefit is achieved that exceeds the costs imposed upon them?
    - jewelthief91 8y ago
      > A website ban isn't even remotely the same thing as a legal sanction. The Supreme Court seemed to have very different take (Packingham v. North Carolina): "Social media allows users to gain access to information and communicate with one another on any subject that might come to mind. With one broad stroke, North Carolina bars access to what for many are the principal sources for knowing current events, checking ads for employment, speaking and listening in the modern public square, and otherwise exploring the vast realms of human thought and knowledge. Foreclosing access to social media altogether thus prevents users from engaging in the legitimate exercise of First Amendment rights."

lylecubed 8y ago

> What happens if the DNS server refuses to host the IP lookup? No need. It's easier if DNS registrars conspire to confiscate and/or refuse to sell domain names. This has already been done. SSL certs can, and have been, revoked. The ISPs haven't really been involved in these types of actions since the 90s, so I'm curious what their stance is. For now, if you've been run off the face of the WWW, you still have TOR hidden services or IPFS. Who knows what will happen when the ISPs get involved.

zokier 8y ago

Personally I would draw the line on requiring ISPs to carry legal IP traffic fairly ("net neutrality"), and pretty much everything else being free game for terms of services etc. I would considering extending the "neutrality" aspect for domains, considering that ICANN has effectively monopoly on DNS. There are still some practical problems for hosting your own website with those "primitives", most importantly getting an internet connection suitable for hosting anything in the first place if nobody is willing to co-locate your servers. One would hope that with the proliferation of IPv6 and FTTx, actually hosting stuff from your basement would become more realistic.

zkms 8y ago

> Well you can host your own website on your own server. Sure, then the people who drove you off Facebook/Amazon/Apple iTunes/Youtube/Azure/EC2/Digitalocean/Cloudflare will go after your DNS registrar and the ISP/CDN/colocation-facility you're using. They won't give up and they'll ruthlessly go after every single commercial entity you do business with. After all, if it's not the government punishing you for speech, it's not censorship and it's fine! That's the trick of this kind of lawfare -- having any kind of internet presence inherently involves relationships with private, non-governmental entities, and it's disturbingly easy to suborn them and shame them into refusing to do business with unsavoury people.

s73v3r_ 8y ago
Yeah, I don't buy that. If Stormfront and Daily Stormer can still be up, then there can't really be any credibility to that argument.
- patrickg_zill 8y ago
  The DS's original domain and another subsequent one, was deleted or taken over by the registrar, I thought?
- Covzire 8y ago
  Did you read any headlines in the last couple days?
- zkms 8y ago
  > Yeah, I don't buy that. If Stormfront and Daily Stormer can still be up, then there can't really be any credibility to that argument. That those two loathsome websites are still up doesn't mean that the technique I described is invalid; it just means it doesn't have a 100% kill rate, and it certainly works on less resourced and less indefatigable targets. I'm not worried about those specific websites -- I'm worried about the increased spread and normalisation of the "contact everyone %s has a business relationship with, and shame them until they drop them as a customer" tactic. Where does it end? We've established that pressuring domain registrars and hosts is fine; what's fair game after that? Is it fine for me to pressure and suborn an electric company into cutting off service to someone I don't like (after all, without electricity, they can't make those bad internet posts!). If I can rile up enough of an internet mob, can I get them evicted from their residence, simply by annoying their landlord until the trouble's not worth the monthly rent cheque? I've seen firsthand these tactics used by internet mobs and it's a very ugly process, and it's not something whose prevalence I'm happy to see expand. Just because in these cases the targets are generally disgusting doesn't mean it's something that should be tolerated (if only because those who you hate will positively relish a chance to use that against your side of things).

wmf 8y ago

What happens if the DNS server refuses to host the IP lookup? That already happened; the Daily Stormer (yep, Nazis) was kicked off GoDaddy, Google, Tucows, Namecheap, DreamHost, etc. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Daily_Stormer#Site_hosting_issues_after_the_2017_Unite_the_Right_rally https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Daily_Stormer#Site_hosting...

another-cuppa 8y ago

The only thing you can really do is use tor. But you have to be very, very careful and know what you're doing. It's not something most people can set up, and not something most people can (easily) access.