
Inciting violence vs freedom of speech - ted0
https://blog.namecheap.com/inciting-violence-vs-freedom-speech
======
jayess
This is turning into a virtue signalling circle jerk.

The _one_ quote provided is nothing near incitement violence, in the legal
sense. I'm now in the icky position of defending Daily Sturmer because I
believe in the First Amendment and this latest campaign against _one_ web site
feels so contrived and politically correct. Yes yes, I know that the First
Amendment doesn't apply to Namecheap or godaddy or cloudflare. But this has
gotten downright silly.

As another commenter noted, these large companies have no compunction
hosting/registering domains for sites that actually do incite violence and
actively ruin people's lives... like jihadist groups or ripoff report, a site
that makes it an active business model to defame people online, destroy lives
and careers, and then extort people to remove that content.

This whole daily sturmer campaign has gotten to the point of being nothing
more than a way for companies to pretend like they care or want to prevent a
type of speech they don't like, but in reality is picking on one site that is
mild in comparison to the other things these companies tacitly approve of.

Edit to add a link that apropos: The Seductive Appeal of the "Nazi Exception"
[https://www.popehat.com/2017/04/18/the-seductive-appeal-
of-t...](https://www.popehat.com/2017/04/18/the-seductive-appeal-of-the-nazi-
exception/)

~~~
mc32
I agree with you.

We're in such a state of things that people feel compelled to upfront state
that while they don't support the thoughts of these sites, they support their
right to free speech.

It used to be assumed that in supporting free speech one did not agree with
the most vile of those expressions. Now we're compelled to say that up front
lest someone conflate the two.

This re-interpretation of free speech is just as likely to come back to apply
to the people now in favor of kerbing free speech.

One of the most obvious is religion and people holding views opposite to it.
Or, what if you espouse Marxism. That could be incitement to violence, in this
interpretation.

Today one groups is in control of what acceptable speech is. Tomorrow it will
be someone else. And I will still be supporting free speech whoever is under
attack by the contextual free speechers.

~~~
peteretep

        > This re-interpretation of
        > free speech
    

This is an exceptionally American-centric view. The rest of the civilised
world outlawed hate speech and moved on a long time ago.

~~~
jayess
Good for you. We hold sacrosanct the view that free speech is free speech and
governments shouldn't be the arbiters of what is and isn't "hate."

~~~
peteretep
No, you don't.

[https://www.hg.org/article.asp?id=34258](https://www.hg.org/article.asp?id=34258)

~~~
pianom4n
No mention of the word "hate", because there are no exceptions for it.

------
dmitrygr
This claim keeps coming up that "hate speech" isn't allowed and isn't legal.
It is kind of funny to read since legally no such thing as "hate speech"
exists. SCOTUS has carved out only a few exceptions to free speech. The one
relevant here is "fighting words" and it doesn't apply since saying "all
$X-attributed people should be killed" is LEGAL. It does not CAUSE immediate
harm. But, saying that to an armed angry crowd MAY be illegal. Websites, at
least how SCOTUS saw it, cannot by definition be fighting words and thus
anything you say on a website would be protected under 1st amendment

This doesn't matter much, of course, because the amendment only applies to
government shutting you up, not a private entity.

BUT, I hate how all of these bozos keep making the excuse that these websites
wouldn't even be protected by 1st amendment so they can be banned from the
internet. This article does this too. It is annoying since this basic premise
itself is wrong.

~~~
cylinder714
Further amplification of the point, "Supreme Court unanimously reaffirms:
There is no ‘hate speech’ exception to the First Amendment":

[https://www.washingtonpost.com/amphtml/news/volokh-
conspirac...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/amphtml/news/volokh-
conspiracy/wp/2017/06/19/supreme-court-unanimously-reaffirms-there-is-no-hate-
speech-exception-to-the-first-amendment/)

------
zaroth
I'm pretty sure that statement they quoted is vile and disgusting, but
certainly not incitement to violence as the courts understand it.

Of course, Namecheap can probably choose their customers however they like
according to their own TOS. But don't delete someone off the Internet who is
saying things you don't like and spend the whole post patting yourself on the
back for following principles of free speech.

I think it's pretty simple -- if you don't believe that Nazis should be able
to voice their vile and disgusting opinions openly, you don't believe in free
speech. If you don't believe that Nazis should get to organize a nonviolent
protest, then you don't believe in freedom of assembly.

The Washington Post featured an article 'Who are the antifa' [1] by Mark Bray
who is the author of "The Anti-Fascist Handbook" which explained,
"Antifascists argue that after the horrors of chattel slavery and the
Holocaust, physical violence against white supremacists is both ethically
justifiable and strategically effective."

Of course we see how effective it is, because defending the bedrock principles
of freedom of speech and assembly when the speakers are Nazis now apparently
puts you at risk of being labeled a Nazi sympathizer / white supremacist /
racist yourself.

I'm not sure exactly when it became impossible to have an adult conversation
on the matter. When did it become impossible to understand that a protester
can represent abhorrent viewpoints without it being OK to throw bags of urine
and paint at them? That a protest can turn violent and even deadly without
being able to then condemn every single protester that was present? And that
we should not be celebrating, but in fact be very worried if not outraged,
that private parties who have gained superuser access to parts of the internet
through their course of business are now leveraging that power to police
content they find personally offensive, or which they takedown for PR reasons
to appeal to a populist mob.

[1] - [https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/made-by-
history/wp/2017/...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/made-by-
history/wp/2017/08/16/who-are-the-antifa/)

------
RcouF1uZ4gsC
Quote from [https://blog.namecheap.com/we-say-no-to-
sopa/](https://blog.namecheap.com/we-say-no-to-sopa/)

"Why are we against the proposed SOPA legislation? It’s very simple; at
Namecheap, we believe in internet freedom.

When you register a domain name, you can do anything you wish with it within
the confines of the law."

You find how much you believe in your principles, when they lead to outcomes
you don't like. Given their actions now, namecheap's SOPA opposition now
sounds like just a cheap publicity trick they did to distinguish themselves
from GoDaddy.

------
tweedledee
As someone who is facinated by what is happening I spend a decent amount of
time spelunking in the dark web.

The Neo-Nazis are not that upset by this. They want to use the same tools to
boycott the Zionist and Jews. It's actually one of the many things the Alt-
Left and the Alt-Right agree on.

In addition we're making them into martyrs. Banning and suppression was
counter productive on the original Nazis and it is counter productive here.

This should be we'll know by those who read civics. It is even codified in the
book Rules For Radicals by Saul Alinsky. It makes me wonder what books Antifa
are reading as they are doing all of the wrong things.

I get that it feels like we're (non nazis) are winning but we're not and this
is isn't helping.

~~~
jayess
You're right, this is giving an inordinate amount of free publicity to daily
stormer and is making people (like me) who support free speech uncomfortable.
I'm now instinctively supporting their right to free speech against the horde
of disingenuous virtue signallers.

------
dTal
>"It doesn’t take a Ph.D. in mathematics to understand that White men + pride
+ organization = Jews being stuffed into ovens."

To me, out of context, that reads as anti- White men, not anti-Semitic. Or at
least ambiguous. Certainly not an outright endorsement as such.

I haven't read the material, and I'm sure it's as hateful as they say. But as
their entire argument is predicated on how beyond the pale that statement is,
and if "the site spends considerable effort demonizing Asians, Blacks,
Mexicans, etc" \- they could probably have found a better example to make
their point.

~~~
vim_wannabe
Wow, what an amazing quote to pick since that is exactly the kind of thing a
far-leftist would say.

If the site is as bad as they say they should have picked a better quote than
that obviously ironic one...

------
belorn
Why are registrars doing the policy decisions when its the registries has the
mandate to control and policy the domain name system?

If IANA decide that .com address should not be used for sites like this, then
at least it would be their decision to make. They also already thought about
how to handle this type of questions, and drawn the lines where the consensus
says they should be. If people want to change them, the process to do so is
likely well documented.

------
paradite
I guess I won't be down-voted for posting this, right?

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streisand_effect](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streisand_effect)

------
abhi3
All these companies tripping over each other to ban DailyStormer while at the
same time they won't take a position against similar sites that are just as
unquestionably immoral/illegal as DailyStormer (Torrent sites, ISIS sites).
One might be forgiven for thinking that this sudden moral awakening of 'Big
Internet' is nothing more than a selfish PR stunt.

~~~
peteretep
If you think torrent sites are "just as" immoral as White Supremacy sites,
your moral compass is unambiguously broken.

~~~
madengr
Well you didn't mention the ISIS sites. Much of the torrents are actually
illegal, the hate speech is protected speech.

~~~
nine_k
The 1st amendment protects speech from being suppressed by _the state_.
Private entities may ban whatever they see fit, basically; you know they do if
you ever read a end-user license.

~~~
madengr
Yes, I know that. We are talking about a public communications medium. If they
can throttle hate speech, they can throttle Netflix. So they won't host it,
they won't provide DNS resolution. How far does it go? Can't get a static IP?

------
madengr
Seems like the proponents of net neutrality have a dilemma on their hands.

There are neo-nazi shows on cable access channels, so I'd think the same legal
reasoning applies to the internet.

------
dominotw
>: Daily Stormer: “Summer of Hate Edition.” The site spends considerable
effort demonizing Asians, Blacks, Mexicans, etc.

I am an Indian and every single "crossover" indian youtube video is filled
with "Designated Shitting streets [1]" comments. I really don't give a shit(
pardon the pun) about those comments. Do majority of "Asians, Blacks,
Mexicans" in America want this kind of censorship on their behalf ? Really
curious.

1\. [http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/designated-shitting-streets-
po...](http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/designated-shitting-streets-poo-in-the-
loo)

~~~
peteretep
Is there a history of large-scale and state-enforced discrimination against
Asian Indians in the US?

~~~
dominotw
That sentence has "Asian" in it. I am not so sure, assumed Asia includes
India. Is "Asian Indian" a separate category ?

Also are "Asians, Blacks, Mexicans" only three groups that those rules apply
to? Noone else has a 'history of discrimination'?

~~~
peteretep
America also uses the term Indian to mean Native American, so I was attempting
to distinguish between the two. East Asians (as against separate from Indian
Asians) -- or at least Japanese -- have indeed been the victims of state-
sanctioned discrimination in the past.

~~~
dominotw
well we were 'historically discriminated' via colonialism too. But, I think
you saying that these rules should specifically apply to groups that were
discriminated in America. Vast majority of mexicans and asians in America are
immigrants in last 3 decades so that definition doesn't really apply to vast
majority of them either.

But I guess you can see that how vague and meaningless defintion you have come
up with to decide which cites deserve to be censored.

I have a feeling all these people are just following a trend, there is no
solid principle, any rhyme or reason to what they are doing. Its literally
this- 'oh google banned site X, we don't want to get called out, lets ban it
too'

~~~
peteretep
The Americans didn't colonise India. Is history education there really that
poor?

