[Marticus]

It's a ToS agreement for a reason.

"You may not publish, transmit or store on or via Rackspace's network and equipment any content or links to any content that Rackspace reasonably believes:

is excessively violent, incites violence, threatens violence, or contains harassing content or hate speech"

[wallfly]

It's pretty clear that this church's site was inciting or had the potential to incite violence.

I think the tricky issue here is "hate speech". There are varying standards, and what metric will/do Rackspace and other hosting providers adhere to?

For example, what if a Rackspace-hosted site contained all or portions of the text of the Catechism of the Catholic Church?

Certainly the Catechism does not promote or incite physical violence. However, it contains unambiguous language regarding the immorality of homosexual acts: http://bit.ly/ccc2357

I'm not attempting to "stir the pot" and initiate an argument over this point in the teaching of the Catholic Church. But I wonder, could/would Rackspace and other hosting companies take down a site which cited this material or posted it verbatim? If not at present, are we headed toward such a day?

In general ...

At what point does a strongly stated religious or moral principle which is at complete odds with the beliefs or lifestyle of another person or group constitute hate speech? And who decides that with respect to something like web hosting, as opposed to someone preaching on a street corner out in public?

Please, no flames, I think this is a serious topic that deserves sincere and balanced treatment.

[Marticus]

But the thing is that is religious text, and also isn't particularly inflammatory. We know that religions don't usually accept homosexuality. They're not saying to burn a couple hundred.

But really if some organisation was to round up a few hundred Bibles, post on their site that they were going to burn them and here's an invitation, bring your family and your friends, we're doing it to show how we don't like Christians, you can bet that the ISP servicing their site would likely go "uh.... yeah not so much" and also pull the plug.

If they just said they were having a meeting to talk about how they don't like Muslims, fine. You can do that. But it's a bit more drastic to burn a bunch of their holy texts which is DEFINITELY with the intent of inciting violence or hatred toward a (very LARGE) group of people.

Edit: The "very large" bit is not to say that the numbers matter in this case (I'd be just as much against doing that to any other religion or group regardless of size), but only that they are spitting in the eyes of quite a few people and that it's unfortunate.

[notahacker]

In the case of Rackspace, when they receive complaints and start to wonder whether that religious organisations' continued business is really worth dealing with large-scale DDoS etc.

[Vivtek]

I'm not arguing they're [edit] not [/edit, sigh] within their rights. I just don't like the situation, and I think their action will inflame the loony right even more.

[jacquesm]

> and I think their action will inflame the loony right even more.

Who cares? If you let yourself be guided by whether or not the fringe dwellers will get 'inflamed' you've become part of the problem.

Rackspace made the right decision in this case, good for them. I wished the hosting provider of the cos would be just as pro-active.