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In this case, I believe, technically, the domain "belonged" to the domain registrar. Why? Because the registrant used the registrar's privacy protection.

While private domain registrations seem like a mildly useful privacy tool, factors to consider is that you are no longer the “owner” or your domain name (ICANN defines who owns the domain by what is published in WHOIS), and also that you no longer have any rights unless you sue the registrar.

I really don't like this kind of rationalization for censorship on technicalities.

Technically correct may matter legally, but we should make it clear that it is not acceptable for companies like Network Solutions or Facebook to engage in this behavior. If the law does not protect speech in these instances, we should push back using other means.

It's simply not reasonable to expect non-technical, non-lawyers to understand these nuances well enough to get their message out without risking censorship. Today, that's OK because we're talking about a very bad message, but tomorrow it may not be quite so OK.

Censorship is fine. Use it as a tool to maintain social order.

Don't be the guy that read 1984 and thinks all censorship is bad, and that the world is going to collapse because someone banned a neo-nazi forum. You don't have enough information to make that far-reaching slippery-slope conclusion, mostly because of the millions of other factors that you didn't consider in your model.

We need to encourage companies that engage in this behavior that censor violent people.

who gets to decide what's censored? you?

Is this really correct? If I decide to use privacy protection then I no longer own my domain?!

From what I understand, because the contact information pointed at Network Solutions' privacy protection service, there's no official "record" of ownership pointing to anyone else. So the domain ownership is in limbo since Network Solutions can't (or won't) verify the actual owner.

I think this also brings up the question of how much control registrars have over a "purchased" domain. Am I buying that domain? Or am I buying the ability to tell the registrar what to do with it?

Regardless of how the rules are presently defined, that would _never_ stand up in court. And I think it's a waste of time for us to squabble over nonsense that every rational thinking person knows is nonsense.

It's important to remember and consider the reason that registrars exist and the reason ICANN was created. All of these things are meant to protect the sanity of internet operations, not to contribute to their corruption and breakdown.

> Regardless of how the rules are presently defined, that would _never_ stand up in court

IANAL, but I agree. When you sign up for privacy protection, you're hiring the registrar to act as your agent. If they then act outside their granted authority as such, then they're doing so in breach of contract. I believe that's called 'conversion'.

AFAIK:

You never own the domain. You register it for a period of time, subject to terms of an agreement. I'm almost certain of that, unless something has changed recently. I'm surprised so many on HN seem unaware of it.

If you use privacy protection, you are not the registrant; the privacy protection vendor is. That's what I've read in agreements with the privacy vendors, and that's what the whois record says.

> You never own the domain. You register it for a period of time

No, that's not what's happening.

When you register a domain you are purchasing it. The fees you pay are to cover the operations of the registrar, who are providing a public service. It is also to allow people to pick up dropped domains that nobody is using anymore. This system was never intended to be abused the way it is being abused today.

if they became the owners, they wouldn't have to re-up every period of time.

You aren't "re-up"ing. Domain names are not pre-paid cell phone plans.

Look at it this way. Until a domain is registered, nobody owns it. When you pay to register a domain, you aren't buying it on the registrar's behalf.

When you register a domain name you are purchasing that domain name for the duration of the registration period. You own it. Period.

The registrar's role is to handle certain technical functions such as providing PTR service, WHOIS records, and to expire the domain when the registration period expires. They don't own it, and the cost of registration is meant to cover their operating costs.

This is also why domains are so cheap. A .com is about $10 per year. That's basically nothing, when you compare to other things you pay for. If there weren't a recurring fee, people would never give up their unused domain names.

This is a good point, but I think you could still make the case that you own it. Is the yearly registration fee analagous to a subscription, or to property taxes?

I don't have the answer here; curious to find out what everyone thinks.

It’s not a matter of what people think it’s a matter of law. When you register a domain name with NetworkSolutions, you do not own that domain name.

What law are you referring to?

Contract law.

You own the name; the service of actually pointing that name to some nameservers, and maintaining secure control over it, is what you're paying for.

I could see a registrar telling you they don't want to do business with you any more; they should have to give you some time to transfer it out. However, it's still a dangerous precedent that people on all sides of the political spectrum would do well to heed as a warning of censorship to come.

> You own the name; the service of actually pointing that name to some nameservers, and maintaining secure control over it, is what you're paying for.

If that were the case, letting it expire would result in it just being dead rather than available for others to register.

> If that were the case, letting it expire would result in it just being dead rather than available for others to register.

No, it was always intended that when someone no longer needs a domain name, it would be returned to the pool of available domain names for others to make use of. This is in the very spirit of the internet.

What do you mean, "it was always intended?" That's certainly not how property rights work. If I legally own something, it doesn't become available to others just because I don't need it myself anymore.

> What do you mean, "it was always intended?"

I mean the internet is a new world which is only about 40 years old. It was created by a lot of really smart guys who mostly don't care about the "traditional market rules" and it was created a specific way to follow specific philosophies one of which is when a domain name is no longer being used it should be available for other people to purchase.

It's not exactly counter-culture, but it's completely different. The distributed infastructure, the emphasis on putting equal power in the hands of the smallest operators rather than focusing it on the largest corporations, none of these things mesh with how the offline world has been operating for centuries.

People who were aware of the internet before it was cool remember these details.

I don't know how to make it more clear for you than that.

I'm aware of the philosophies behind the creation of the Internet. I'm just telling you the system you're describing is mutually exclusive with one in which domains are owned by people who register them.

I absolutely agree there are some loose ends. That's why there were a lot of court cases about 10-15 years ago, mostly spearheaded by large corporations who were late to the game and suddenly realized they needed to protect their trademarks in the domain name market.

It's safe to say that it has not been settled yet. But it is in everyone's best interest to do our best to adhere to the intentions of the original creators.

If you don't own the name then how can you sell it for thousands?

You do own the domains you purchase, this is why there were court trials about trademarks. It's a question of property rights.

You can't. You can sell the right to have that domain name point at nameservers of your choosing.

> When a person registers a domain name, they become the owners of that domain name.

They may own the name such that it would be improper to allow someone else to register it, but there entitlement to service from the registrar is based on the terms of the contract they have signed.

> ICANN should probably get involved and punish Network Solutions for this action.

What specific ICANN policy has been violated?

> Network Solutions might be within their rights to choose to no longer 'host' the domain name themselves, but in that case they must be obligated to arrange for a transfer to a different registrar.

They are obligated to process a transfer at the request of the owner and new registrar, subject to certain timing and other rules. They are not, AFAICT, required to arrange such a transfer proactively.

> What specific ICANN policy has been violated?

I'm not going to dig through their books, I don't have the time and that's a job for lawyers. But I was around when ICANN was created and I know what their job is, and preventing these kinds of abuses by registrars is right at the top of their priority list.

> They are obligated to process a transfer at the request of the owner and new registrar, subject to certain timing and other rules. They are not, AFAICT, required to arrange such a transfer proactively.

That isn't what I meant. I only meant that if they were going to refuse to perform their duties as a registrar for one particular customer then they should provide that customer a means to switch registrars.

What they did instead is a kind of theft, regardless of how you feel about that particular customer. (not a fan, myself, as I've stated).

Is there any history of ICANN muscling registrars? What do they have to negotiate with?

ICANN could in theory revoke the ability of the registrar to operate. Meaning that they could be put out of business pretty easily. That said I doubt that ICANN would actually do this on a first offense kind of thing. ICANN can also forcibly take the domain from the current registrar and cause a transfer to someone else instead. I think that is what will likely happen if NS doesn't get rid of the parking/stealing of the domain.

ICANNs primary reason for existing is to "muscle" registrars. Their job is to enforce the rules.

Network Solutions is both as a registrar and DNS provider. This is likely coming from their DNS side.

And they don't have to provide DNS services to neo-Nazis.

Network Solutions is not currently the DNS provider for "stormfront.org". Cloudflare is.

Cloudflare rejects IP-only requests. The IP address is 104.20.30.134, but using that in the browser address bar won't work.

    curl --verbose --insecure --header "Host:stormfront.org" https://104.20.30.134/forum/

ought to work, but it doesn't. It gets stuck at Cloudflare's NGINX server.

It's still available on the Internet Archive.[1] Runs vBulletin, so the posts didn't get archived, just the titles.

Stormfront has been around for decades, getting little traction. It's partly David Duke's site, or was. Now it's just a forum. It's about as nutty as the usual white militia crowd, with which there's some overlap. Compare "vdare.com", which is somewhat white supremacist and pro-Trump. There's a whole spectrum of groups like that.

This was a bad decision by Network Solutions. If registrars start censoring everybody the ADL and the Southern Poverty Law Center don't like, they're going to run head-on into the Trump supporters. That won't end well.

[1] https://web.archive.org/web/20170818020428/stormfront.org/fo...

> This was a bad decision by Network Solutions. If registrars start censoring everybody the ADL and the Southern Poverty Law Center don't like, they're going to run head-on into the Trump supporters. That won't end well.

I agree that it was a bad decision, however I think it's going to be revealed that the decision has more to do with the connections to violence that the forum apparently had, rather than the "speech" content.

Still, they (NS) are going to have to work really hard to convince people that they didn't just make a power grab.

It works for me. I get a 301 to https://www.stormfront.org/forum/

I'm actually surprised it works, because I thought headers need a space after the colon.

Changing the host header to www.stormfrom.org gets me html.

You're right.

    curl --verbose --insecure --header "Host:www.stormfront.org" https://104.20.30.134/forum/

works. So Cloudflare hasn't cut them off. It's just DNS.