GoDaddy is cutting off Texas Right to Life’s abortion ‘whistleblowing’ website
theverge.com
theverge.com
Since this is not the first time GoDaddy has done similar things I do not know why anyone would continue to use GoDaddy for anything. I want the employees of GoDaddy to be politically active and participate in the democratic process but I do not GoDaddy as a company to be the moral arbiter of things.
The CEO of GoDaddy, maybe not the current one I haven't kept up on things, has had his own troubles yet I don't recall him getting completely canceled by the company. This kind of Jim Crowesque behavior from companies always ends badly. This is literally what happens when people are single issue zealots. They seem completely incapable of understanding that the reasoning that they apply against their single issue will eventually turn around and be used against them.
What we need is laws that companies cannot be moral arbiters. If companies do choose to become moral arbiters then all protections against them are removed. You cannot cancel someone because you do not like what they say and then turn it right around and claim common carrier status therefore you are not responsible for something else you're hosting. Yeah this is what we see repeatedly with a number of these companies they wish to feign ignorance and common carrier status but they also wish to selectively police things.
While GoDaddy could be politically or morally motivated here, this just seems like a fair application of the policy.
ETA: I agree that that TOS provision is good and should be enforced, but it's no coincidence who gets the hammer for violating it.
Even if the fairness in terms of TOS accountability here is in practice unfair, I think leaving issues to bubble up organically rather than implementing some sort of heavy-handed machine moderation/content monitor system (looking at you, YouTube) is probably preferable.
I'm not sure what you mean by "better" or "nature". It sounds like you may have some form of structure in your thinking that clearly delineates "politics" from "business" and "morality". Can we explore that a little?
Do you consider it is the role of SCOTUS to be the moral arbiter of women's bodies?
If not, and SCOTUS has overreached, whose role is it to push back against SCOTUS' activism?
Nobody?
Everybody?
Somebody?
The answers to these questions are not mathematical, scientific, or technical. They are political.
If your "better nature" excludes companies from participating in the political process, how does it feel about companies donating to political parties e.g. to facilitate the building of oil pipelines across exempt areas of land, or to rezone land for mega warehouses, or to bust unions, or to facilitate casinos?
(As a commenter says above though, I do think that in this particular case the takedown was probably not politically motivated.)
Many people do structure their thinking that way for the simple reason that business molds itself to it's container; the shape of which was previously defined by a combo of politics and technological feasibility.
>Do you consider it is the role of SCOTUS to be the moral arbiter of women's bodies?
No, but they are the legal one. Two different things there.
>Who should push back?
Citizens have duly elected representatives and Senators to sort that out. The continued conscious decision not to sort it out, is alas, a Hallmark of the carefully laid checks and balances of our system to keep the frivolous or overly controversial from getting rolled into the law of the land... Nope, couldn't keep a straight face. Intent is there though.
>If your "better nature" excludes companies from participating in the political process, how does it feel about companies donating to political parties e.g. to facilitate the building of oil pipelines across exempt areas of land, or to rezone land for mega warehouses, or to bust unions, or to facilitate casinos?
The political landscape is arguably better off without business being able to directly effect it via campaign donations/lobbying/writing bills. Business should inform. Not drive, politics.
I also find companies making political donations at the behest of management to be suspect, especially since no one generally asks the laborer where the company should rout their political interest slush pile.
Not that I was asked. Just had an answer in mind and figured I'd share.
All SCOTUS has done is decline pre-enforcement review of the Texas Law on threshold grounds that won't apply once there is an actual enforcement action; while this is hugely significant in practical impact, it very much does not address the moral, or even legal, status of the law itself.
(Now, is the Texas Legislature overreaching and setting itself as the moral arbiter of women’s bodies? That's another question.)
Right.
SCOTUS chose not to answer the question, even though it is the only institution that can speak to it authoritatively.
“Not to Speak Is to Speak. Not to Act Is to Act.”
-- Dietrich Bonhoeffer.
As far as I know, the question hasn’t even been asked of SCOTUS. All that was asked was for an injunction against the law while it goes through the lower courts.
Your question about the supreme Court by its nature is invalid. Supreme Court interprets or applies the laws under the constitutional framework. It is the people or their elected representatives that establish the laws. The supreme Court does not become an arbiter of women's bodies ever. The people or by proxy the people's Representatives may do this by having passed laws and the supreme Court determines the constitutionality of those laws. Now if you were to say the Constitution could become the arbiter of women's bodies that is a possibility, as the amendment process would allow for this.
Supreme Court activism is another buzzword used by people of all kinds of political persuasions. It has become that anyone who disagrees with a supreme Court ruling simply calls them as Court activism. There are cases that I have disagreed with but I believe it is a lot of hyperbole to toss around a supreme court activism. If there is supreme Court activism the remedy is constitutional amendments.
I do not believe that companies as an entity should be politically active. This is one of those areas where the supreme Court disagrees and has granted companies as an entity to have the legal right of freedom of speech and participation in the political process effectively unrestricted. I do not know how they reached the conclusion that companies as an entity are granted personhood and therefore the enumerated rights granted to peoples but they did. It's quite evident when you follow the money in politics that laws that companies tend to support almost always pass regardless of the popular support of people. When there are laws that have massive popular support of the people but the companies do not support they rarely pass. This shows that there is not equal representation. A company does not have the representation power of an individual person it has the representation power of all of their employees and the monetary power that those employees generate but the company often does not follow the political ideals of their employees.
That's an interesting comment - "invalid". I was asking for your opinion when I asked "Do you consider it is the role of SCOTUS to be the moral arbiter of women's bodies?"
How can it be invalid to ask for your opinion?
Perhaps you meant it would be irrelevant what anybody's opinion was of the role of SCOTUS because in your schema, the role of SCOTUS is prescribed as "Supreme Court interprets or applies the laws under the constitutional framework." For you, perhaps that is absolutely clear and precise, and not at all subjective or political.
But have you considered that SCOTUS has discretion about which cases it chooses to hear? In this case, the Texas legislature has passed a law that the applicant tried to challenge as unconstitutional.
Is the legislation unconstitutional, and if so, how?
We don't know, and we haven't been informed at all by SCOTUS because it decided 5-4 not to hear this case.
The thing is we have a law that sharply limits the possibilities of the kind of law you want; that law is the First Amendment.
No one is entitled to a platform. Let the Texans receive snail mail reporting folks for attempting to exercise their rights, or others attempting to help them exercise their rights.
This is a completely different thing. They were not asking GoDaddy to create their website or perform any task other than the hosting of it which is the selling of the cake. If GoDaddy chose not to create the website and instead referred them to other places for their creative work that would be the correct comparison. This is the lack of History that we seem to have in this country currently.
No, he refused to make any cake at all for the event for which one waa sought, explicitly because it was a same sex wedding. Artwork was not the issue:
---quote---
Phillips informed the couple that he does not “create” wedding cakes for same-sex weddings. Ibid. He explained, “I’ll make your birthday cakes, shower cakes, sell you cookies and brownies, I just don’t make cakes for same sex weddings.”
---end quote---
MASTERPIECE CAKESHOP, LTD., ET AL. v. COLORADO CIVIL RIGHTS COMMISSION ET AL. 584 US ____ (2018), No. 16-111, slip op. @ 4 (Sup.Ct., June 4, 2018) https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/17pdf/16-111_j4el.pdf
The law, as it currently stands, cannot force a technology provider to provide a platform for content if they prefer not to host it.
My point is this excessive moral arbitration that causes the exclusion of people and entities from society is a very dangerous path to head down. We should want individuals to make moral and political decisions and participate in the processes that allow for change and remediation. By having companies both large and small become the moral arbiters and forcibly excluding people from the participation in society will only ever end badly.
> My point is this excessive moral arbitration that causes the exclusion of people and entities from society is a very dangerous path to head down. We should want individuals to make moral and political decisions and participate in the processes that allow for change and remediation. By having companies both large and small become the moral arbiters and forcibly excluding people from the participation in society will only ever end badly.
Some people and entities should be excluded due to incompatibility (broadly speaking, but would include human rights beliefs, harming others, etc). Their participation is not in good faith. They are not attempting to have a debate or a discussion, but are attempting to rule through tyranny. In this example, Texan conservatives are ramming through legislation to enforce their belief system on the women of Texas. They are simply running up against the consequences of such (distasteful, unethical) behavior, and as conservatives, you would think they're comfortable with the idea of personal responsibility and business freedom, and consequently are prepared to face the repercussions of their decisions.
You can have a conversation, a discussion, or a debate of ideas with a rational actor operating in good faith; you punch a bully in the face.
The executive branch isn’t going to take any actions that support Texas in this matter from an antitrust perspective (Biden’s comments have made it exceptionally clear where they stand on Texas’ legislation as an assault on the rights of women).
Otherwise women wouldn't be voting in the US still.
Classic. "They" want to take away your rights, off course. The shadowy malicious, always scheming in secrecy, always forcing companies' hands to crack down and decide things that have nothing to do with them.
This is not flirting with fascism at all. (Not until it's used against you, at any rate.)
Allowing corporations to make decisions on moral, ethical or political grounds isn't at odds with your framing of individual agency. If corporations (or other organized entities) do something that most associated individuals find to be truly against their moral and political sensibilities, then in a world where individual agency matters the way you imply it does, people would simply dissociate from the company/organization at some point.
I doubt that will happen with any kind of scale in this case, as there are some behaviors and beliefs that - while legal - are generally viewed as undesirable, and aren't going to garner any support from your average employee. Doxxing and harassing women seeking abortions is just one of many such cases.
Also, we could pick easier discussions like how religious organizations have broad freedoms to discriminate against gay individuals, such as by firing gay employees or evicting gay students. There it becomes clear that religious rights have a very special place in law, and that gay marital benefits by the likes of Microsoft or Google is simply an expression of soft company power.
Furthermore, gay protections exist at the federal level largely due to a previous Supreme Court with a Sandra Day O'Connor acting as a pivotal vote. It is not obvious how Lawrence v Texas, which legalized gay sex, would've turned out in today's court.
That was not the decision, though it appears to be a common misconception. The decision was that the Colorado Civil Rights Commission had exhibited hostility towards religion and that wasn't allowed. They didn't rule on free speech grounds.
After the Texas Legislature’s tactic in crafting the law to evade standing and jurisdictional requirements for review before attempted enforcement by the federal courts, so that the blatantly, brazenly unconstitutional law could nevertheless have the maximum chilling effect on protected conduct, the federal executive brance announced a “whole of government” effort to rectify the issue.
GoDaddy is wisely choosing to be out of the crosshairs of that effort by not actively participating and knowingly profiting from that criminal conspiracy.
Statutory rights.
The cutoff might happen to align with GoDaddy's political views - god, I hope so - but the explicit reason for it is not political.
Caring more about an ideological slippery slope than the actual people who will suffer under these laws in Texas is an amazingly insulated position that I can’t take seriously.
Although I'm pretty outraged that a hosting provider would pull something like this, I can't for the life of me think of a way to "safely" outlaw it without creating all sorts of unintended consequences. Then again, I'm not a lawmaker, so maybe they're more clever than I am. It seems that a lot of private enterprise in the Unites States believes that the US conservative movement is so irrelevant as to be safe to completely ignore - if it turns out they're wrong, they're in for a rough next few years.
Private property is one of the main reasons for what the USA stands for. GoDaddy is a private company.
Conservatives are ALWAYS outraged when something like this goes against them, but when they want it the other way it is perfectly ok - like the bakery where the owners didn't want to create a wedding cake for two homosexuals. Then it was all, "A private business can do what they want, which means not working for the gay."
As far as the religious freedom law goes, it is supposed to acknowledge deeply held religious beliefs. For example, Satanic Temple just cites Religious Freedom Restoration Act to request access to abortion drugs in aftermath of Texas ban. But, I'm SURE that the religious freaks that support the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, WON'T support it because they are hell-bent (pun intended) on violated the First Amendment of the Constitution of the United States of America allowing the freedom of religion, with some lame-ass excuse like saying that the Satanic Temple is not a religion. To them it isn't. But for those who belong to it, it sure is.
That is way larger and more consequential limit of freedom, especially since exceptions are so few people will inevitably harmed physically.
You don't get to play freedom fighter while insisting on third parties to enable the above. There are consequences and one of them is that your "omg freedom if go daddy does not enable the harassement" sounds hypocriticaland merely a rhetorical device.
I agree that you can't be for or against something depending on what political affiliations are. However, it is the Republicans that are doing this, in this case. They are FOR allowing a baker to refuse to bake a cake for a gay wedding because it is their right and their business can do what they want to do, but are against GoDaddy from kicking them off their private platform. That's what I'm saying. If Zuckerburg or Youtube go conservative, then they can ban liberals.
The thing is, is that with the internet, it is so easy to create your own site, your own thing. For both sides.
However, there is something that both sides are not allowed to do is to refuse service to protected classes. This includes by race, sex, age, etc. These are things that businesses don't control, and can't decide. This was done by Congress.
Furthermore, local governments CAN ban companies from starting in their own town or city, no matter what the private citizen things he or she can do. Towns or cities have zoning laws, for example. My town, you can only open an auto repair shop on certain roads, unless grandfathered in, of course. Towns or cities can completely ban industries. You can open a strip club in San Jose Califoria, but not in Los Altos California.
And, what I am saying is that the conservatives/Republicans got the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, which allows people and companies to do things that they have a deeply held religious conviction about, which is why the Satanic Temple said that it is there deeply held religious conviction that women should have access to birth control and abortions.
But, if you want me to go off on the retardedness of liberals, I'm more than happy to do that, too. It's just at this point, it is the conservatives turn for me.
People have forgotten their history and why certain attributes have become protected classes for which discrimination is not allowed. This was not done due to some moral altruism by the laws and courts. These were assigned protective class status because private companies began to exclude people and eventually all or most private companies in an area started excluding people of a certain race or gender etc... This results in people not being able to participate in society. While they remain free people and the businesses have their freedom to choose it is not real freedom when you cannot participate in the society that you are part of. This is why we now have enforced protected classes.
When we do not stand up as reasonable people and participate in the process to indicate the companies we do not want them to be the moral arbiters of our lives we are effectively letting them determine who can participate in the online society and who cannot. The idea that just because of company can do something does not mean it should and does not mean that we should allow it. If we get to the point that we have to make laws to protect someone's race or sex or now what's coming is political affiliation or opinion then we as a society have failed in our duty to each other. Creating a new law and codifying the fact that people should be allowed to participate in society even with opinions that we do not like should cause everyone to take a hard look in the mirror and realize they are the problem. Whatever happened to the idea that I do not agree with what you say but I will defend your right to say it.
A company should not be able to act like a publisher and determine what stays on their service and when someone sues them for libel they claim they're not a publisher and hide behind the shield.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Section_230
---
> At its core, Section 230(c)(1) provides immunity from liability for providers and users of an "interactive computer service" who publish information provided by third-party users
> No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider.
Do you have anything reasonable that describes the position that Section 230 somehow doesn't mean what it plainly says?
[1] https://www.dmlp.org/legal-guide/immunity-online-publishers-...
> the court held that because Prodigy was exercising editorial control over the messages that appeared on its bulletin boards through its content guidelines and software screening program, Prodigy was more like a "publisher" than a "distributor" and therefore fully liable for all of the content on its site.
> The result of the case is central to the rationale behind passage of Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act of 1996, aimed to allow internet service providers to avoid liability for user content on their services while still giving them the means for removing illegal content.
The phone company is a common carrier, under the Communications Act of 1934, which is why it can't cancel your line in the scenario you gave.
GoDaddy is not regulated under common carrier laws.
In the absence of any law saying otherwise, GoDaddy can exercise its freedom of association to kick off people for whatever reason, subject perhaps only to civil lawsuits for breaking any contract with their customers -- and of course the court of public opinion.
In this case, they appear to be saying it's a ToS violation, and The Verge suggests it violates prohibitions on users who "“collect or harvest” any personal information “about another User or any other person or entity without their express prior written consent.”"
That may well be the cover used to hide an ideologically reason, but why wouldn't that be enough? There are cases where your phone company is allowed to cut you off (try plugging the phone line to the power line.)
Savannah, is a hosting site for "software forge for people committed to free software", at http://savannah.gnu.org/ . They will cut you off on ideological grounds should you switch to a non-free license.
Should that also be illegal?
> GoDaddy is not regulated under common carrier laws.
> In the absence of any law saying otherwise, GoDaddy can exercise its freedom of association to kick off people for whatever reason [...]
m0zg saying that it should be illegal presumably means that they already know that it's not currently illegal, rather they want similar regulations introduced (or the removal of existing protections) to affect GoDaddy.
> Should that also be illegal?
The way I often see it argued by those in favor of repealing/reinterpreting Section 230 is that a service shouldn't have the protections of a platform/carrier while acting as a publisher with full control over the content. A curated software library should be fine as a publisher, just that they'd only have the same protections as non-digital publishers.
If hosting means being a common carrier, then GNU must be forced to host non-free software, yes?
The social media site Ravelry banned users from expressing support for the US President Donald Trump. m0zg's argument appears to be that that prohibition should be illegal.
That is, it really seems like m0zg is against the First Amendment freedom of association, and not some commentary about equality of civil lawsuit liability for publishers.
Now, I'm fine with some restrictions on a businesses' right of free association, as when they conflict with personal civil rights. But what makes hosting companies so critical so as to require common carrier-like restrictions that no other (non-common-carrier) companies faces?
Non-digital publishers aren't required to publish anything not illegal they get.
If you take the most extreme interpretation, then you could even claim that m0zg wants any random person to be able to publish freely on https://www.nytimes.com/
But generally I see this camp hold a distinction between publisher and host/platform. A curated software library (or news site) would be fine to act as a publisher and only include whatever software they want - just that they'd be responsible for the content published in the same way any non-digital publisher would be.
> This has nothing to do with Section 230.
> That is, it really seems like m0zg is against the First Amendment freedom of association, and not some commentary about equality of civil lawsuit liability for publishers.
It's not specifically that they care about the equality of civil lawsuit liability for publishers. I believe the main hope is that infrastructure like website hosts, DDoS protection, ISPs, domain registrars, email, messaging clients, etc. would stop acting as publishers due to the infeasibility of actually being the "publisher" of all user content when the special protections are removed.
> Non-digital publishers aren't required to publish anything not illegal they get.
I don't think anyone is arguing that publishers should be required to do so. Rather that hosts and infrastructure like ISPs are acting as publishers when instead they should be common carriers (or subject to similar protections and regulations).
I personally like the idea for infrastructure with limited competition like ISPs, but I think the publisher/carrier dichotomy leaves out moderated sites like this one, where the host should presumably have some responsibility (responding to infringement complaints in a certain timeframe) and some editorial control (deleting user content as they see fit).
Let's assume it's false cover for refusing support due to political viewpoint.
There are investment funds which specially avoid investing in, say, tobacco companies, or fossil fuel companies, or (historically) apartheid South Africa, sometimes explicitly doing so for political reasons.
It seems that the trivial solution for GoDaddy would be to say they are an "ethical" company which doesn't support forced childbirth proponent organizations, etc. .
That would be an explicit rejection of supporting 'all user content' and thus avoid regulations meant for a 'publisher/carrier dichotomy'.
Any argument which say that should be illegal seems also like an argument for why Ravelry can't decide for themselves to reject obviously non-knitting content divisive to the site.
Under the intended changes, this would give them the same liabilities as non-digital publishers. Currently Section 230 provides special protections for digital services.
> Any argument which say that should be illegal seems also like an argument for why Ravelry can't decide for themselves to reject obviously non-knitting content divisive to the site.
It wouldn't be illegal, but the idea is that it'd be infeasible for infrastructure to act as a publisher.
E.G: Comcast couldn't block all anarchist content if acting as a common carrier. It'd require acting as a publisher, which comes with liabilities they're unlikely able to take on.
Why does that make sense?
The only options are "infrastructure" = "common carrier" and "provide editorial oversight on all materials?"
What do other countries do?
As mentioned, I personally think there'd need to be something to account for "moderated forums/platforms" as an in-between (but not exactly sure how to do that without just recreating the current situation).
Maybe they, and other Internet infrastructure providers, should be.
> Savannah, is a hosting site for "software forge for people committed to free software", at http://savannah.gnu.org/ . They will cut you off on ideological grounds should you switch to a non-free license.
> Should that also be illegal?
In your example, would they be cutting off everyone who chooses a non-free license, or just singling out one person for political reasons, and turning a blind eye to a bunch of other people also using non-free licenses?
A similar case went all the way to the US Supreme Court, who decided that yes, it is legal to be refused service on ideological grounds: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Masterpiece_Cakeshop_v._Colora...
Same as "You can cook $Food" != "Somebody else must be willing to cook $Food for you".
You buy a server, find a coloc facility, pay the price to colocate, plug your server in, host whatever you want, free of essentially all terms of service. That's "hosting whatever you want".
Have you ever heard of a ISP kicking someone off a rented dedicated cable? Maybe it has happened. I have no memory of ever hearing about this in any case where there wasn't prima facie illegal acitivit occuring over the line.
If you use just an IP connection, you're likely to find that the ToS cover only actual illegal activity.
And for this website in particular, I can totally see Comcast citing "participate in the collection of large numbers of email addresses, screen names, or other identifiers of others (without their prior consent)" to ban it. Isn't that basically the exact same argument GoDaddy made?
https://www.verizon.com/business/terms/aup/
But to return to the Comcast AuP for a moment. Their stated goals are:
"In general, the Policy prohibits uses and activities involving the Service that are illegal, infringe the rights of others, or interfere with or diminish the use and enjoyment of the Service by others."
Do you see believe that someone ought to be allowed to do what the texas site was doing? Do you believe that Comcast's policy is actually wrong? Do you feel a need to support an organization that tries to collect information in that way (regardless of the intended purpose) ?
Because to me, there are two ways of looking at this question:
1. Should anyone be able to use an internet connection and/or a hosting service to be able to collect information supposedly about other people?
2. Should anyone be allowed to make available any data they want to via an internet connection and/or a hosting service?
My answer to (2) is essentially an firm yes, with exceptions for illegal material and some wobbliness on copyright.
My answer to (1) is a firm no, and even though it would require "hosting" something, the denial of service is based on the data collection rather than data being made available.
It is possible that no ISP will offer you even a dedicated T1 and allow you to engage in (1). My take on that is that you can still host whatever you want, despite being prohibited from engaging in certain kinds of data collection.
There are still things that I think warrant disconnecting someone's IP connectivity in the same way that you can do things that will justify cutting off water, electricity or gas.
There's a larger set of things that I think can justify a hosting service saying "sorry, we just don't want to provide this service to you anymore". I don't consider hosting to be a public utility, unlike IP connectivity.
> "When girls and women in the Occupied Territories of the East have abortions, we can only be in favor of it; in any case we should not oppose it."
> "The means for abortion and contraceptive means may be offered publicly without police restriction."