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Comment by birken | Hacker News Reader

If we are framing this as a free speech issue: Isn't spam email free speech?

How dare any network provider tell me I can't send 500 billion emails about my Viagra supplements? That is violating my freedom of speech!

The US government has actually passed laws making spam email legal (CAN-SPAM, under certain conditions), and still most every reputable network provider will not let you send it on their networks, even if it is legal.

I'm not suggesting the particular issue in the OP is the same as spam, but clearly there are some boundaries of free speech on networks that everybody seems to agree are good.

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Former anti-spam guy here. Spam is hardly something everyone agrees on. There are big grey areas where people spam without thinking they're spamming, and yes they do get upset about it.

The primary moral and legal defence the big email providers have with respect to spam filters is that they're essentially democratic: they're powered by user reports. So if someone complains to Google that their mail goes into the spam folder, Google can just say "it's our users fault, figure out how to make them happy" and that's a good answer that puts them back in the driving seat. Also, users can whitelist mail if they disagree with the mail providers opinion. Spam is ultimately not a matter of politics then, it's a matter of aggregate user opinion on what sort of mail they want vs don't want.

This particular issue seems rather different. There are no user votes involved here and it's unclear why you'd want such a system anyway, given that people who disagree with a website can just not visit it. There is no way for visitors who disagree with Google's assessment to access the site anyway. And so on.

My understanding was sufficiently bad spam mail got dropped and never got into the spam folder to begin with.

In the US the 1st amendment constrains what the govt can do, it doesn't constrain private individuals or companies

...yet. ;)

Generally, only content-based restrictions on speech are subject to strict scrutiny under the First Amendment, whereas "time, place, and manner" restrictions (e.g., noise ordinances) are more tolerated. Additionally, commercial advertising is less protected than other speech under the First Amendment.

Laws against spam do not target messages on the basis of their content (except in so far as they are commercial advertising, which is a less protected category of speech), so they are upheld as a "time, place, and manner" restriction.

> Laws against spam do not target messages on the basis of their content (except in so far as they are commercial advertising, which is a less protected category of speech)

I'm not a lawyer, but the parenthetical is doing a lot of work here.

Curious then - if you're okay with this removal, would you be okay with a registrar removing a site because it violated some Catholic values? Supported abortion or something say?

There are reasonable restrictions but generally such restrictions have a lot more to do with technical or usability issues rather than civil or political issues. I doubt this will be popular around here, but I'm afraid of being on a registrar that would reject my domain for saying something controversial.

EDIT: I can't even reply to some of the children here because HN is rate limiting me because I disagreed with a majority opinion - even only slightly - and got downvoted. Eugh.

To those saying this is false equivalence or a slippery slope, this is directed towards people saying "they're a private company, they can remove whatever they way" - which it certainly fits the parameters of without modification. No slippery slope here, a slippery slope means this would have to lead to another, which I'm certainly not saying here. Merely a hypothetical that I'm curious how people resolve. I'm not really intending it as a formal argument one way or the other, just wanted to hear different perspectives on it.

> would you be okay with a registrar removing a site because it violated some Catholic values?

Except, that didn't happen. But if there was a Catholics only registrar (and then, not all Catholics oppose abortion rights) and that website got booted I'm sure that lots of other websites would pack up and leave as well. Somehow I don't think this particular DNS entry not being hosted by Google is going to cost Google any customers.

> Curious then - if you're okay with this removal, would you be okay with a registrar removing a site because it violated some Catholic values?

I'd fully support it for the ccTLD registrar for the .va domain.

Other registrars...depends on details not specified in the hypothetical.

You are providing false equivalence and arguing by slippery slope.

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