Geert Wilders, a Dutch politician, wants to put up a short video criticizing Islam and the Koran. He believes the Koran is a "fascist book," that it goes against Dutch law and he wants it banned (irony watch: he wants the Koran banned, but his website to promote the view is getting censored). He's quoted on Wikipedia thusly:
Later, Wilders suggested that Muslims should "tear out half of the Koran if they wished to stay in the Netherlands" because it contained 'terrible things' and that Muhammad would "in these days be hunted down as a terrorist."
I'm not as worried about a jingoist and isolationist politician in the Netherlands. I'm far more worried about Network Solutions. In February of 2006 I railed--railed--in multiple posts against Viacom, for not letting South Park show Muhammad, and against those who tried to censor the cartoons. Free speech means pissing people off. It means ignorance, bigotry, intolerance, and even blasphemy can not be silenced.
Network Solutions should not be able to cut off a website because it doesn't like the content. Even if they are afraid of a violent reaction, they should not be able to cut it off. In fact, the telecommunication and domain registrars should be pushing the US the hardest in favor of the Net Neutrality Act that would prevent them from doing crap like this. Why? Because then they are legally obligated not to interfere with a website. If they really are concerned about employee's safety, then passing the buck to the American voters (through Congress) is the best way to go.
Registrars should not have this kind of power. It rewards violence, because it cowers in fear of it. They claim that they want to quell violence, but it only makes it worse. It emboldens other groups to start trying to get websites they don't like shut down.
Stop it now, Network Solutions. You're making everything a lot worse.
1 comments:
This is a serious concern for me. Up until now I haven't published much that could be construed as controversial but professionally I have become more deeply involved in computer security. Cases of computer security research being stifled by DNS delisting, among other methods, have been documented.
I'm already using Rimuhosting, a web hosting company that is located offshore, although my data center is in Dallas, Texas. Rimuhosting has a data center in Europe and I am considering migrating to that data center. Also , I have been using Google Apps for your Domain to run my email server but I may start running my own email server soon.
I have been using godaddy as a DNS registrar but they have a terrible track record of keeping DNS alive in the face of controversy. Most recently they have been involved in the delisting of RateMyCop.com. You can read more about this latest controversy here and here .
I plan to migrate my DNS registrations to either Gandi, based in France, or Key Systems, based in Germany and best known as the DNS registrar for ThePirateBay.org. If a registrar can keep The Pirate Bay domain names resolving then I think they will be able to handle my computer security research websites and mailing lists.
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