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Comment by ivraatiems | Hacker News Reader

Is a company morally obligated to serve all customers, and not permitted to exercise discretion about who they provide services to?

Even if those people are using the company's services to break the laws of the country the company operates in?

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Domain registrars are providing a utility service, they are essentially "common carriers". Imagine if your phone company revoked your phone number, or the postal service refused to send you any mail because of the content of your communications? What if the DMV revoked your license plate because of a bumper sticker on your car? Domains are (at present) a key linchpin of freedom on the internet. If ICANN allows registrars to terminate contracts for political reasons, that's a huge blow to freedom online.

It's really a judge's responsibility to decide if they're breaking the law in this case. DNS registries can't possibly decide if Gab.ai is actually guilty of what they claim given the incredibly vague wording of the requirements. Surely Twitter and the Guardian could be argued to also meet such a vague standard to be banned.

It's quite obvious what's going on here. There's an organised effort to erase people with right wing views off the internet by people with extremist left wing views, who simply describe anything they don't like as "hate speech".

You are spot on. They are trying to do it behind the scenes at this point, but as the culture war continues to shift to the right winning they will go full blown. My theory is it will start with google, facebook, and twitter. This is why its more important to get these alternative media up before its too late.

Im assuming you are an adult. And as adults we both know exactly what they are doing. Regardless gab should find somewhere else to host their registry and move on.

How on earth are you supposed to live on the internet then? Become a domain name registrar? You can't really avoid them, can you?

I became a registrar for .fi because I was tired of dealing with other registrars. I only provide domains for myself and my friends, but it's still easier, cheaper, and more secure than going through some third party.

That being said, I have no personal experience with other TLDs, but based on a bit of searching some do seem quite easy to become a registrar for.

That is very interesting, can you give an estimate how much (more) does it cost to you be a registrar and own domains? Compared to random ones. I guess .fi is a bit more expensive than .com anyway.

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