I don't believe resilience to censorship on the internet should be a right reserved for the wealthy (or even reserved for networking experts who could build their own AS), but I have yet to reconcile that with the right that private service providers have to turn down customers (and it goes without saying that this particular website will not be missed). I wonder if a non-profit hosting provider that was bound by its constitution to host any legal content for anyone that could pay could be successful.
There are lots of other domain registers, some in specific that specialize in free speech rights.
> What's more, even if you have the monetary means to buy an ASN and IPv4 space (which has a market value of about $4,000 for the smallest block you can announce)
Realistically someone could publish to IPFS and do CNAME redirects without a server.
> I wonder if a non-profit hosting provider that was bound by its constitution to host any legal content for anyone that could pay could be successful.
Reminds me of riseup, but that has a littered history as well.
Also there is Namecoin and .bit addresses. Not saying they work flawlessly, but the concept does solve this problem.
I can understand hosting, but I think DNS records should held to higher standards. People don't like governments messing with the DNS system why should we give a private company a pass?