Comment by fbnt | Hacker News Reader

Comment by fbnt | Hacker News Reader

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I don't get all the fuss here: The site was against their TOS and Rackspace had to pull it off.

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

- Constitutes, depicts, fosters, promotes or relates in any manner to child pornography, bestiality, or non-consensual sex acts;

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

- is unfair or deceptive under the consumer protection laws of any jurisdiction, including chain letters and pyramid schemes;

- is defamatory or violates a person's privacy;

- creates a risk to a person's safety or health, creates a risk to public safety or health, compromises national security or interferes with a investigation by law enforcement;

- improperly exposes trade secrets or other confidential or proprietary information of another person; - is intended to assist others in defeating technical copyright protections;

- infringes on another person's copyright, trade or service mark, patent or other property right;

- promotes illegal drugs, violates export control laws, relates to illegal gambling or illegal arms trafficking;

- is otherwise illegal or solicits conduct that is illegal under laws applicable to you or to the Rackspace Cloud;

- is otherwise malicious, fraudulent or may result in retaliation against the Rackspace Cloud by offended viewers.

Content "published or transmitted" via the Rackspace Cloud's network or equipment includes Web content, email, bulletin board postings, chat and any other type of posting or transmission that relies on the Internet.

I think that site was in clear contradiction with point no. 2

Point 2 is more or less what the courts use to decide whether the government can ban some certain speech. I read that as saying that you cannot encourage someone to commit an act of violence. The fact that If someone else gets their panties in a bunch over what I say and wants to be violent towards me, that is not inciting violence.

That is, a website encouraging people to murder abortion providers would be prohibited, but no reasonable person would consider the church's actions in the same category.

Does Rackspace have the right to pull the plug on anyone they want? I don't know -- that's a contractual issue. It looks like the last point does give them that right. I know I will never consider Rackspace for hosting any news or political website. Is supporting CA prop 19 in violation of their AUP? I don't know. It seems to depend on whether enough people get worked up about it. Would Rackspace have pulled the plug on Craigslist when state AGs start calling them sex traffickers?

Rackspace is now unreliable to anyone who can ever anticipate any controversy.

The problem is that point is inherently subjective and gives a veto to the least-rational, most-emotional people. Allegations that certain speech is 'harassing' or 'hate speech' can be made strategically to censor disfavored speech. Such policies can even provide an incentive for violence, as a means of proving certain speech should be squelched. ("You said something that made me throw this rock, so you should shut up. And I'll keep throwing rocks until I've shown exactly how dangerous your speech is.")

Unless speech contains a credible threat of violence, speech is not itself 'violent'. No reasonable, law-abiding person should see/hear any speech and be thrown into a violent rage. (If they do, they're the person breaching civilized norms deserving punishment -- not the original speaker.)

I understand the business reasons for caving to any sufficiently-large angry mob with grievances. But if more businesses said they didn't censor otherwise legal speech because of emotion of the part of third parties, as a matter of non-discriminatory policy, then it'd be easier for all similar businesses to adhere to the same principle.

> Allegations that certain speech is 'harassing' or 'hate speech' can be made strategically to censor disfavored speech.

Legally, some judges are wary of this. They call this the "heckler's veto."

"I understand the business reasons for caving to any sufficiently-large angry mob with grievances"

Yup. A DDoS attack was almost certainly going their way, and perhaps physical threats as well.

Is there any evidence to support this contention? Or is this complete speculation based on absolutely no evidence whatsoever?

Agreed. DDoS attacks (in our experience) do not originate from the religious right.

> creates a risk to a person's safety or health, creates a risk to public safety or health, compromises national security or interferes with a investigation by law enforcement;

I'd say this criterion is clearly met in this case. When you have a general, secretary of state, and President of the United States all saying that this would cause national security issues, and put American troops in more danger, I think it's safe to say that Rackspace isn't really making a subjective decision any more.

So to you and everyone else who seems to be saying "Oh no, what if they stop hosting my site!?!": don't piss off the POTUS (and even then, you'll get a warning first).

Ironically, so is the Koran itself, as well as the Bible.

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