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by admiralpumpkin 3218 days ago
A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds...

Taking down a Nazi website creates no onerous obligation to police the entirety of the web. Addressing only those sites which rise to prominence admirably moves us towards a better internet and society.
1 comments
rkeene2 3218 days ago
Until you (namecheap) are sued for violence that occurred because you failed to take down a website that clearly incited violence, despite it being against your terms of service, started position, and now part behavior. This may make your defense wallet in such a case because you are could now be seen as endorsing that which you do not act against when they are violating your terms.

Of course, it's only one high-profile incident and it should be possible to successfully argue that you (namecheap) only act on this policy when information about the violation actively reaches you as a passive observer. But you are then playing from behind so it's still not as if this action carries no potential future liabilities.

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ve55 3218 days ago
Why would it (legally or not) be Namecheap's job to curate the content? What about the server the content is hosted on, its CDN, its DNS servers, its domain registry (not registrar), or so many other layers?

If a website that incites violence can be taken down because of a single violence-inciting remark, then people will just post violent remarks on their enemies websites and proceed to get them taken down. As an administrator, whether of a domain, social network, forum, or services on other layers of the Internet, it's unreasonable to be held responsible for every single thing done by your users. That doesn't mean you have to let them do anything, but when a problem occurs, the first step should not be to start taking down websites and servers, instead of looking for a more reasonable solution.

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soneil 3218 days ago
At this point it's turned into a game of hot potato. No-one wants the bad press of being "the one who said yes".

They need to find a registrar whose market position is built on taking a stance. Namecheap ain't it.

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