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It must be nice for the US government to have a tool it can selectively use to punish the speech of anyone it disagrees with: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/For

It must be nice for the US government to have a tool it can selectively use to punish the speech of anyone it disagrees with: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_Agents_Registration_Act#Allegations_of_selective_enforcement https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_Agents_Registration_Ac... Unfortunately for the government, I suspect abusing control of domains like this will just make a decentralized DNS that they cannot control more of a reality.

derision 6y ago
Don't want your domain seized by the US? then don't use a TLD owned by the US to engage in anti-US activities. Have we already forgotten Iran and their calls for death to America? Would you expect any country to allow usage of their services to advocate for their downfall? Would you expect McDonalds to allow you to have an anti-McDonalds protest inside one of their restaurants?
- fit2rule 6y ago
  >Iran and their calls for death to America? Citation required. (EDIT: to be clear, it seems that we require a citation to the official Iranian policy, not some clear agitprop around a popular slogan ...)
  - SpicyLemonZest 6y ago
    It's an extremely common slogan in Iran(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_to_America https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_to_America). I should note that Iranian officials generally insist that it's not meant literally, although I'm not taking a position on whether or not that's true.
    - fit2rule 6y ago
      Oh, its a slogan .. I thought we were talking about official government policy. I wonder if McCain meant his death chant literally: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U7s5pT3Rris https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U7s5pT3Rris Its probably a good thing he didn't get a chance to set official US policy on Iran. EDIT: /s
      - dmurray 6y ago
        McCain absolutely meant the US should drop bombs on Iran and cause the death of some Iranian people. That's not even a controversial position in the US, probably 75%+ of American voters would support that if proposed by the right person. And he was a United States senator for 30 years, including a Chair of the Armed Services Committee. How much more involved in setting America's international policy could one be?
        fit2rule 6y ago
        I think far, far fewer Americans support its illegal wars than you claim .. they're just silenced by the minority who stand to profit from it and who currently control the war megaphone.
  - HenryKissinger 6y ago
    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_to_America https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_to_America
  - Ancapistani 6y ago
    Uh - is this sufficient? > Death to America (Persian: مرگ بر آمریکا‎ Marg bar Āmrikā) is an anti-American political slogan and chant which has been in use in Iran since the inception of the Iranian Revolution in 1979. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_to_America https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_to_America
    - fit2rule 6y ago
      No, not really sufficient. Official Government Policy > populist slogans.
      - Ancapistani 6y ago
        The very next line: > Ayatollah Khomeini, the first leader of the Islamic Republic of Iran, popularized the term.
        fit2rule 6y ago
        EDIT: lets be clear, what the Ayatollah himself thinks about this slogan: “It goes without saying that the slogan does not mean death to the American nation; this slogan means death to the US’s policies, death to arrogance,” he said. Was it made official government policy? If so, what's the policy - I'd truly like to read it. Because plenty of American politicians have said extremely hateful, despicable things about Iran too - is this cause for their censorship? If we are to measure things by populist slogans, America should have been glass parking lot'ed by the countries it has slandered and heaped hatred on, decades ago. I'm pretty sure this is a moral conundrum that American's are ill-equipped to respond to... Or is it the same old "might makes right" argument that keeps being proffered in these stupid agitprop articles? So this situation provides quite clear evidence of the lengths that very real war-mongers will go to in order to provide justification for their heinous acts. Not only is censorship occurring, but downright lies too. EDIT2: No, war-mongers. YOU give it a rest.
        Ancapistani 6y ago
        The government of Iran includes it in murals in Teheran. An Iran-sponsored rebel group include the phrase in their flag. > Tehran Radio, monitored in Nicosia on Tuesday, dubbed Nov. 4 ″Death to America Day.″ https://apnews.com/article/349374a3c1c5a4ec6c3fbefd1ac3f2ae https://apnews.com/article/349374a3c1c5a4ec6c3fbefd1ac3f2ae How could it be any more official?
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
- ahelwer 6y ago
  .com and .net hardly seem as though they should be subject to US ownership & authority. .us sure, knock yourself out. It would still be weird even if it were the .us TLD though. State censorship is state censorship.
  - djsumdog 6y ago
    .com is managed by VeriSign, a US company. For better or worse, that is the world we live in. But to be honest, with all the new TLDs, there's no longer anything really special about the .com/net/org domains anymore.
  - DeonPenny 6y ago
    .com and .net have always been all but .us. Since .us didn't exist when the web was created
    - tialaramex 6y ago
      Tim's toy hypermedia system (the "World Wide Web") is from 1990, but the US top level domain was created in 1985 and is one of the first ccTLDs.
- jameslk 6y ago
  > Don't want your domain seized by the US? then don't use a TLD owned by the US to engage in anti-US activities. ICANN is based in the US so they can theoretically turn off any domain they want. Also are you suggesting it's OK for the US to shutdown any website engaging in whatever the US government defines as "anti-US activities?" > Have we already forgotten Iran and their calls for death to America? I'd love to see the proof you have that these websites were bannering "death to America" across their websites. Unless you have some special knowledge about the situation I don't, I think we can safely say we don't know if any of the accusations the US is making about these websites are even true.
  - jeremyjh 6y ago
    > ICANN is based in the US so they can turn off any website they want. Please tell us more about this. Which ir and ru domains have been seized by the US lately?
    - vmception 6y ago
      They can and exercise a lot of discretion in not doing so. It has nothing to do with the legal authority, which they can also rationalize, feel free to come to the US and appeal in court. The internet being administered by US corporations makes them easily compellable and any property they steward can be seized despite being for the benefit of foreign citizens and non-residents.
    - jameslk 6y ago
      Which law prevents them from doing it?
  - jariel 6y ago
    "I'd love to see the proof you have that these websites were bannering "death to America" across their websites." ??? 'Death to America' is a common refrain used by officials of the Iranian Revolution. Literally here is the Ayatollah's justification for it [1], as if a dark comedy come to life. That anyone would ask for 'evidence', heyzeus. Also, here's Amnesty International's assessment on the regimes arbitrary murder of 300 dissidents during a minor uprising recently. [2] [1] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/nov/03/ayatollah-khamenei-iran-death-to-america https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/nov/03/ayatollah-kham... [2] https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2020/05/iran-details-released-of-304-deaths-during-protests-six-months-after-security-forces-killing-spree/ https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2020/05/iran-details-...
- mindslight 6y ago
  "Death to America" is US Constitutionally protected speech, regardless of who is saying it. Your McDonalds example is fallacious, as McDonalds is not bound by the first amendment. Someone protesting on the sidewalk outside of McDonalds certainly has that right, even if McDonalds has bought the local government. Freedom of speech is not simply being able to wear a Pepsi shirt in downtown Atlanta, but about viewpoints that necessarily make us uncomfortable. "I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it". That so many are willing to discard our hard-earned freedoms for the lure of simplistic neo-fascism [0] is harrowing. Our society has been whipped into a stupor by the specter of foreign strawmen, while the real threats to the US are the domestic powers doing the whipping. If you can't see how this action is utterly anti-American, you are contributing to our destruction. [0] One telltale indicator of neo-fascism is the analogizing of state activity to business activity.
- albntomat0 6y ago
  I think you're overstating the reasoning behind the takedown, as cited in the original post. The issue was that the IRGC was pretending to be genuine new outlets, not the actual information they posted.
rasengan 6y ago
I agree. That’s exactly what Handshake [1] does. [1] https://handshake.org https://handshake.org
kube-system 6y ago
DNS is already highly decentralized. Iran has a TLD of their own, which is controlled by the Institute for Research in Fundamental Sciences in Tehran.
vmception 6y ago
this kind of property grab reminds me of the Guano Islands Act of 1856
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
albntomat0 6y ago
Could you explain how the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) results in "selectively use to punish the speech of anyone it disagrees"? The original submission mentions that the issue was the IRGC was pretending to be a genuine new outlet, which is exactly what the FARA describes. Link from one of the provided domains: https://web.archive.org/web/20200308072511/http://newsstand7.com/about-us/ https://web.archive.org/web/20200308072511/http://newsstand7...
- jameslk 6y ago
  FARA itself doesn't necessarily result in selective use "to punish the speech of anyone it disagrees." Rather one could argue any law can be selectively applied to punish some and not others. I provided a link in my original comment to demonstrate there's accusations that this exact thing has been done historically in the case of FARA: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_Agents_Registration_Act#Allegations_of_selective_enforcement https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_Agents_Registration_Ac...
  - albntomat0 6y ago
    > Rather one could argue any law can be selectively applied to punish some and not others. The flip side is that anyone being punished can argue they are being selectively targeted, regardless of the validity of it. None of the examples there show the punishment of speech the US government disagrees with. Furthermore, none of them are analogous to the original post, where a foreign government was pretending to be legitimate news organizations.
    - jameslk 6y ago
      AIPAC is a huge lobbying organization in the US and the examples provided in that linked Wikipedia section show they've had a history of being accused as a foreign mouthpiece of Israel, yet nothing has ever been done about it w.r.t NARA. On the other hand, if the US accuses IRGC of controlling all these websites but does nothing about the multi-billion dollar lobbying organization in the US that's had multiple high ranking officials demanding it register with NARA (and then later mysteriously dropping their demands), does that not strike you as a bit odd?

derision 6y ago

Don't want your domain seized by the US? then don't use a TLD owned by the US to engage in anti-US activities. Have we already forgotten Iran and their calls for death to America? Would you expect any country to allow usage of their services to advocate for their downfall? Would you expect McDonalds to allow you to have an anti-McDonalds protest inside one of their restaurants?

fit2rule 6y ago
>Iran and their calls for death to America? Citation required. (EDIT: to be clear, it seems that we require a citation to the official Iranian policy, not some clear agitprop around a popular slogan ...)
- SpicyLemonZest 6y ago
  It's an extremely common slogan in Iran(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_to_America https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_to_America). I should note that Iranian officials generally insist that it's not meant literally, although I'm not taking a position on whether or not that's true.
  - fit2rule 6y ago
    Oh, its a slogan .. I thought we were talking about official government policy. I wonder if McCain meant his death chant literally: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U7s5pT3Rris https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U7s5pT3Rris Its probably a good thing he didn't get a chance to set official US policy on Iran. EDIT: /s
    - dmurray 6y ago
      McCain absolutely meant the US should drop bombs on Iran and cause the death of some Iranian people. That's not even a controversial position in the US, probably 75%+ of American voters would support that if proposed by the right person. And he was a United States senator for 30 years, including a Chair of the Armed Services Committee. How much more involved in setting America's international policy could one be?
      - fit2rule 6y ago
        I think far, far fewer Americans support its illegal wars than you claim .. they're just silenced by the minority who stand to profit from it and who currently control the war megaphone.
- HenryKissinger 6y ago
  https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_to_America https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_to_America
- Ancapistani 6y ago
  Uh - is this sufficient? > Death to America (Persian: مرگ بر آمریکا‎ Marg bar Āmrikā) is an anti-American political slogan and chant which has been in use in Iran since the inception of the Iranian Revolution in 1979. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_to_America https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_to_America
  - fit2rule 6y ago
    No, not really sufficient. Official Government Policy > populist slogans.
    - Ancapistani 6y ago
      The very next line: > Ayatollah Khomeini, the first leader of the Islamic Republic of Iran, popularized the term.
      - fit2rule 6y ago
        EDIT: lets be clear, what the Ayatollah himself thinks about this slogan: “It goes without saying that the slogan does not mean death to the American nation; this slogan means death to the US’s policies, death to arrogance,” he said. Was it made official government policy? If so, what's the policy - I'd truly like to read it. Because plenty of American politicians have said extremely hateful, despicable things about Iran too - is this cause for their censorship? If we are to measure things by populist slogans, America should have been glass parking lot'ed by the countries it has slandered and heaped hatred on, decades ago. I'm pretty sure this is a moral conundrum that American's are ill-equipped to respond to... Or is it the same old "might makes right" argument that keeps being proffered in these stupid agitprop articles? So this situation provides quite clear evidence of the lengths that very real war-mongers will go to in order to provide justification for their heinous acts. Not only is censorship occurring, but downright lies too. EDIT2: No, war-mongers. YOU give it a rest.
        Ancapistani 6y ago
        The government of Iran includes it in murals in Teheran. An Iran-sponsored rebel group include the phrase in their flag. > Tehran Radio, monitored in Nicosia on Tuesday, dubbed Nov. 4 ″Death to America Day.″ https://apnews.com/article/349374a3c1c5a4ec6c3fbefd1ac3f2ae https://apnews.com/article/349374a3c1c5a4ec6c3fbefd1ac3f2ae How could it be any more official?
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
ahelwer 6y ago
.com and .net hardly seem as though they should be subject to US ownership & authority. .us sure, knock yourself out. It would still be weird even if it were the .us TLD though. State censorship is state censorship.
- djsumdog 6y ago
  .com is managed by VeriSign, a US company. For better or worse, that is the world we live in. But to be honest, with all the new TLDs, there's no longer anything really special about the .com/net/org domains anymore.
- DeonPenny 6y ago
  .com and .net have always been all but .us. Since .us didn't exist when the web was created
  - tialaramex 6y ago
    Tim's toy hypermedia system (the "World Wide Web") is from 1990, but the US top level domain was created in 1985 and is one of the first ccTLDs.
jameslk 6y ago
> Don't want your domain seized by the US? then don't use a TLD owned by the US to engage in anti-US activities. ICANN is based in the US so they can theoretically turn off any domain they want. Also are you suggesting it's OK for the US to shutdown any website engaging in whatever the US government defines as "anti-US activities?" > Have we already forgotten Iran and their calls for death to America? I'd love to see the proof you have that these websites were bannering "death to America" across their websites. Unless you have some special knowledge about the situation I don't, I think we can safely say we don't know if any of the accusations the US is making about these websites are even true.
- jeremyjh 6y ago
  > ICANN is based in the US so they can turn off any website they want. Please tell us more about this. Which ir and ru domains have been seized by the US lately?
  - vmception 6y ago
    They can and exercise a lot of discretion in not doing so. It has nothing to do with the legal authority, which they can also rationalize, feel free to come to the US and appeal in court. The internet being administered by US corporations makes them easily compellable and any property they steward can be seized despite being for the benefit of foreign citizens and non-residents.
  - jameslk 6y ago
    Which law prevents them from doing it?
- jariel 6y ago
  "I'd love to see the proof you have that these websites were bannering "death to America" across their websites." ??? 'Death to America' is a common refrain used by officials of the Iranian Revolution. Literally here is the Ayatollah's justification for it [1], as if a dark comedy come to life. That anyone would ask for 'evidence', heyzeus. Also, here's Amnesty International's assessment on the regimes arbitrary murder of 300 dissidents during a minor uprising recently. [2] [1] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/nov/03/ayatollah-khamenei-iran-death-to-america https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/nov/03/ayatollah-kham... [2] https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2020/05/iran-details-released-of-304-deaths-during-protests-six-months-after-security-forces-killing-spree/ https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2020/05/iran-details-...
mindslight 6y ago
"Death to America" is US Constitutionally protected speech, regardless of who is saying it. Your McDonalds example is fallacious, as McDonalds is not bound by the first amendment. Someone protesting on the sidewalk outside of McDonalds certainly has that right, even if McDonalds has bought the local government. Freedom of speech is not simply being able to wear a Pepsi shirt in downtown Atlanta, but about viewpoints that necessarily make us uncomfortable. "I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it". That so many are willing to discard our hard-earned freedoms for the lure of simplistic neo-fascism [0] is harrowing. Our society has been whipped into a stupor by the specter of foreign strawmen, while the real threats to the US are the domestic powers doing the whipping. If you can't see how this action is utterly anti-American, you are contributing to our destruction. [0] One telltale indicator of neo-fascism is the analogizing of state activity to business activity.
albntomat0 6y ago
I think you're overstating the reasoning behind the takedown, as cited in the original post. The issue was that the IRGC was pretending to be genuine new outlets, not the actual information they posted.

rasengan 6y ago

I agree. That’s exactly what Handshake [1] does. [1] https://handshake.org https://handshake.org

kube-system 6y ago

DNS is already highly decentralized. Iran has a TLD of their own, which is controlled by the Institute for Research in Fundamental Sciences in Tehran.

vmception 6y ago

this kind of property grab reminds me of the Guano Islands Act of 1856

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

albntomat0 6y ago

Could you explain how the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) results in "selectively use to punish the speech of anyone it disagrees"? The original submission mentions that the issue was the IRGC was pretending to be a genuine new outlet, which is exactly what the FARA describes. Link from one of the provided domains: https://web.archive.org/web/20200308072511/http://newsstand7.com/about-us/ https://web.archive.org/web/20200308072511/http://newsstand7...

jameslk 6y ago
FARA itself doesn't necessarily result in selective use "to punish the speech of anyone it disagrees." Rather one could argue any law can be selectively applied to punish some and not others. I provided a link in my original comment to demonstrate there's accusations that this exact thing has been done historically in the case of FARA: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_Agents_Registration_Act#Allegations_of_selective_enforcement https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_Agents_Registration_Ac...
- albntomat0 6y ago
  > Rather one could argue any law can be selectively applied to punish some and not others. The flip side is that anyone being punished can argue they are being selectively targeted, regardless of the validity of it. None of the examples there show the punishment of speech the US government disagrees with. Furthermore, none of them are analogous to the original post, where a foreign government was pretending to be legitimate news organizations.
  - jameslk 6y ago
    AIPAC is a huge lobbying organization in the US and the examples provided in that linked Wikipedia section show they've had a history of being accused as a foreign mouthpiece of Israel, yet nothing has ever been done about it w.r.t NARA. On the other hand, if the US accuses IRGC of controlling all these websites but does nothing about the multi-billion dollar lobbying organization in the US that's had multiple high ranking officials demanding it register with NARA (and then later mysteriously dropping their demands), does that not strike you as a bit odd?