Hacker News Reader

Comment by jake_the_third | Hacker News Reader

Ignoring the offending content in question: What does a registrar have to do with the content of the website the domain points to? They are not hosting the content themselves, nor are they even pointing to it (assuming private nameservers are used).

I don't see any grounds on which godaddy could reasonably claim policy jurisdiction over objectionable content they do not actively host themselves. To me, this seems like a conservative phone company bricking users phones because they've been used to watch porn. If the hosted content is illegal, they should be reported to authorities. If it is not, godaddy should act like the transparent utility service that it is and not intervene.

Am I wrong in my line of thinking?

View on HN

It's freedom of association. Except for groups who faced historical discrimination and so are protected by law, businesses are not obliged to provide services to anybody the don't want to. Anti-Semites are not a protected class.

The analogy you make, a phone company, doesn't really work. Because of their natural monopoly status, phone companies are obliged to provide common carrier status: they can't arbitrarily interfere between two network users. The ISP equivalent is of course net neutrality, which also doesn't apply here, because domain registration is not a natural monopoly.

Is a domain registration not a natural Monopoly? I was under the impression that if I wanted to but a domain name I would have to do it through a domain register. Is there a way that I can get a .com domain directly from the US government?

> the US government

Actually, ICANN. But it's still a single entity at the top. And IIRC they don't register names by themselves.

Registrars are not a monopoly, though. I've read that in theory, you can even become one for yourself: https://www.thesitewizard.com/domain/register-with-icann-san...

> Anti-Semites are not a protected class.

Even if they were, would that matter?

Civil Rights Act of 1964:

> All persons shall be entitled to the full and equal enjoyment of the goods, services, facilities, and privileges, advantages, and accommodations of any place of public accommodation, as defined in this section, without discrimination or segregation on the ground of race, color, religion, or national origin.

GoDaddy is not a restaurant, hotel, or any other "public accommodation" business as defined by law.

AFAIK, GoDaddy could also discriminate against Jewish customers (which is a protected class) all day long and not be in violation of federal U.S. law

There is a fair amount of case law establishing online businesses as place of public accommodation.

If that were true -- and it's not -- online businesses would also be subject to the ADA (Americans with Disabilities Act).

Such lawsuits have been attempted, but AFAIK without success.

Generally they settle those cases but judges think it’s likely enough for them to be places of accommodation to proceed. A website acts as if the ADA doesn’t apply at their peril.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Federation_of_the_Bli....

https://www.adatitleiii.com/2012/10/netflix-settles-massachu...

I wonder how far this will eventually extend. For example, what about websites that have games on them (flash, html5, etc.)? What about websites that host game clients to be downloaded? MUDs could be decently accessible, but most games aren't at all accessible.

Reasonableness is generally a part of determining accommodations for disabilities. For many games, there are no reasonable steps to make them accessible to someone with a sensory or mobility impairment. But there are also reasonable steps that can be taken, like captions for recorded dialog for the hearing impaired or color/pattern alternatives for people with color vision deficiencies (I don't think color vision deficiency meets the legal definition of a disability but it's still something to keep in mind).

A site that offers games to download can be very accessible but the games themselves might not be and don't have to be; not every product a store sells has to be usable by every potential customer. That's not a reason to not make the site accessible; e.g. a disabled parent should be able to download a game for their non-disabled child.

Yup you're wrong, because they have a financial relationship. And Utility law doesn't affect the internet at all.

Yep, according to the 2017 FCC net neutrality ruling, the Internet is no longer regulated as a utility.

Even then, only ISPs were to be regulated like utilities. Registrars were not in scope.

Like most things, I assume it's more about money than ideology

GoDaddy is a big corporation employing an army of lawyers who can't be happy about the potential liability of enabling risky services like Gab.

When Gab is inevitably sued for negligence or whatever else is coming, they'll just poof and be gone, and the big fish with deep pockets like GoDaddy don't want to be left holding the bag.

You're wrong at a couple of points:

- GoDaddy isn't a transparent utility service, it's a for-profit business

- You seem to think GoDaddy needs a reasonable claim on their jurisdiction... customers agree to their TOS, which usually is very much in the provider's favour and allows the provider to do anything they want without requiring justification.

Your example scenario should be something more like "The customer is using their phone to organise a terrorist attack on American soil, should the telco brick the phone", because that is a much closer analogy to the present situation.

Yes, you're wrong.

>godaddy should act like the transparent utility service that it is

Look, found the false assumption!

No you are not wrong at all. They are exercising editorial control and Gab has not even been charged in connection with any crime, much less convicted of anything.

“Goebbels was in favor of free speech for views he liked. So was Stalin. If you’re really in favor of free speech, then you’re in favor of freedom of speech for precisely the views you despise. Otherwise, you’re not in favor of free speech.”

^^^ (guess the right-wing nutjob being quoted)

Reply on news.ycombinator.com