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."