This is not a theoretical problem. After Quillette published the response of 4 scientists to the Google memo they were DDoSd off the net.
BlackLotus hosted stormfront for years, CloudFlare hosts reams of controversial content - wikileaks, the pirate bay, 8chan, etc. They're practically known for it.
Currently at least, it's still quite possible to find a provider who will look out for their customers. In the registrar category there are a few providers who shine, DynaDot and EasyDNS have really gone to bat before.
Where? Your bedroom? You can and will be blocked by your ISP. Colo? Private facility and network interconnects. Outside the country? Blocked at the borders, or you have to register with a US company (.com is managed by a US company, as is .net; .org is a global company but still incorporated in the US).
Plugged directly in to the backbone? You can still be shut down by Level3 and its ilk (or by the terminating ISPs).
In short, I disagree that even by hosting your own site you can still avoid censorship by private companies.
This is the problem. If nobody wants to host my speech, fine: I can set up a server in my own bedroom if need be. But if nobody accepts my domain, it's not quite so easy to set up my own registrar.
Private companies arbitrarily censoring domain names is a can of worms that shouldn't be opened. Registration must be held up to a higher standard, like an utility.
If I make a nazi movie nobody has to show it in their theatre. If I write a nazi book no publisher has to pick it up and print it.
If you want a nazi domain name system then go ahead and create it. Run a DNS server, advertise it as "this is the DNS for nazis" and you can have www.holocaustdenial.nazi all you want.
Google is under no obligation to provide such a service to a party they deem objectionable (on pretty good grounds).
> they are well within their rights as private companies to deny service.
Many utilities are also private companies and they they are required to provide service anyway. So one does not strictly follow from the other.
That's why I said DNS providers should be considered utilities. At least the national-level ones. If resellers won't take it you should still be able to get it straight from the ccTLD registrar.
Not on the hosting side.
> Many utilities are also private companies and they they are required to provide service anyway.
Yes, but they're not. DNS is a nice-to-have, not a must. Hosting is a must, if you want to make a case then you are going to have an uphill battle where a hosting provider would have to supply and and all paying customers.
I assumed we were talking about hosting from home, since hosting at some datacenter would again be dealing with additional private entities.
> if you want to make a case then you are going to have an uphill battle where a hosting provider would have to supply and and all paying customers.
I guess that would be an alternative. So either non-discriminatory treatment from hosters or non-discriminatory treatment from ISPs + DNS registrars.
That's because they're not exactly private companies; they're government-sponsored monopolies. If they weren't, and if there were real competition for the services they provide (like all of the other local businesses), then they wouldn't be required to provide services to any particular customer.
Static IPs are available and if you are hosting content you usually should prefer them.
OTOH, I think in the regime we do have, expecting Nazis to get a free pass for violating registration firms TOS is unreasonable, and granting such an exception, even silently by failure to enforce, would send a terrible message.
Just like you can't get kicked from your internet service, electricity or water providers for arbitrary reasons.
Given that the net neutrality regulations which were adopted to actually explicit protect all lawful content and applications are unlikely to ever go into effect given the new FCC makeup, this is not true. Nothing stops ISPs today from having restrictive, content-based TOS restricting lawful activity.
That being said, I can appreciate the argument that DNS service should be covered in an even more expansive net neutrality framework than the one we almost had in the US.