
We Fight for the Users - mdesq
https://www.dreamhost.com/blog/we-fight-for-the-users/
======
porkloin
This seems like a convenient time to remind folks that it is incredibly
important to stand up against this kind of government action not only when it
is conducted against your political allies, but _especially_ when it is
conducted against your political enemies. Even if this were a pro-Trump
website being subpoenaed, this should sicken you nonetheless. Short-sighted
political gain might be had by allowing the government to stomp all over
political dissidents you don't agree with, but in a few short years you might
find yourself on the receiving end of the same treatment you endorsed. My hope
is that those in the alt-right will realize that supporting this kind of
action may hurt themselves just as much as it hurts the anti-Trump folks.

~~~
buttcake
Maybe the government action is warranted here ? A few searches bring up
nothing good.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MHZSfhd1X_8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MHZSfhd1X_8)

And by the looks of it alt-right sites soon will barely have domains, they
don't need to worry about the state requesting something like this.

~~~
guelo
That's a strawman. The real issue is that Trump's DOJ is abusing its powers in
this case to do a dragnet collection of 1.3 million of its most fervent
political opponents.

~~~
buttcake
How is it a strawman exactly ? Is it ok to do anything you want just because
you don't like trump ? It would be abuse if it was illegal surveilance, but
this ? How exactly is this abuse ?

~~~
harry8
If you have probable cause getting a targeted warrant is not an issue. For or
against Trump has exactly ZERO baring on that. If you want records for 1.3
million people you're in the realms of claiming there's a criminal conspiracy
and a measurable fraction of adults in the USA are in on it.

Or you're doing dragnet on your political enemies.

It's wrong if someone working for Obama does it, it's wrong if Reagan does it,
it's wrong if Hilary does it, it's wrong if _anyone_ does it. Including Trump.
He's not special, he's the same whether you like him or not.

~~~
dingo_bat
For or against Trump is an issue. He is the president. You cannot threaten the
president and expect no action from the FBI and secret service.

~~~
brewdad
Are you saying 1.3 million people directly threatened the president? Really?
This is a dragnet plain and simple. Will they find a few threats? Probably. My
guess is 1.299 million Americans will needlessly be harmed by this action.

~~~
dingo_bat
How will they be harmed? What do you suggest FBI should do to protect American
interests? Will Google and other hosts block this website just like they are
doing with neo Nazi domains? If yes, then probably FBI can rest. Otherwise
they have to take measures that ensure the safety of America's elected
president.

~~~
charonn0
The actions of privately-owned registrars are completely irrelevant to this
discussion.

~~~
dingo_bat
It's not irrelevant. What Google and go daddy did is tantamount to censorship.
And that actually does prevent somebody from exercising free speech.

~~~
sixstringtheory
Private corporations and government are different, legally and
philosophically. You won't be able to apply a law written specifically
restricting the government to private citizens or corporations without a
constitutional amendment.

What Google and GoDaddy did was the private citizen equivalent of hearing
someone else state their opinion, allowing the words to enter their brain,
think about them, and then decide they do not espouse those opinions, so they
will not go around stating them to other people as fact. That is not
censorship, it's just good sense.

------
Meekro
Free speech is not just a constitutional amendment, it's a cultural value. It
happens when DreamHost protects a website that is organizing legal protests,
spending more per hour on legal fees than the website will pay over its
lifetime.

It happens when Cloudflare refuses to cancel service to some of the most
disgusting sites on the internet, even though they're on the free plan and
Cloudflare has no legal obligation to continue to host them.

It happens when reddit fights tooth and nail, at great expense and with no
reward forthcoming, to maintain some of the most toxic communities on the
internet, only agreeing to close them when there is truly no other choice.

It happens when computer scientists invent technologies like tor, freenet, and
bitcoin, allowing unpopular groups to get their message out and collect
donations, even if the majority would prefer that they be banished.

And yes, it even happens when a small ISP steps up to host The Daily Stormer,
secure in their knowledge that the best way to contend with such filth is to
let the sunlight disinfect it, rather than trying to bottle it up and hoping
that bottle never breaks.

America is exceptional in its embrace of the cultural value of free speech.
However bad we are about it sometimes, the rest of the world (including
Western Europe) is much worse. This makes me proud to be an American citizen.

~~~
pupppet
Getting a little tired of these 'exposure will cure-all' type of comments. The
only thing accomplished by not quashing sites like Daily Stormer is
desensitizing us to them which only leads to legitimizing.

~~~
toomuchtodo
Getting a little tired of "not all speech should be free" comments. You're
trading one brand of facism for another. Don't try to wrap your brand in the
appearance of progress.

To discuss does not legitimize. If you are fearful of an idea being debated,
that says more about you than the idea.

~~~
jauzeyimam
A private corporation deciding not to host /actually fascist/ content because
they're getting bad press for it has nothing to do with free speech. And
criticizing another corporation for hosting, again, /actually fascist/ content
is perfectly within the scope of the 1st amendment.

Relevant xkcd: [https://xkcd.com/1357](https://xkcd.com/1357)

~~~
blfr
Yes, yes it does have a lot to do with free speech. It strikes to the heart of
the issue.

Free speech isn't just a paragraph in the American Constitution that appeared
there out of nowhere. It's a larger cultural norm that allows you to share
your ideas and, much more importantly, allows you to hear other people's ideas
without censorship. Whether censorship comes from the government, university,
or some megacorp is completely irrelevant to whether it is an infringement on
free speech.

~~~
MaxfordAndSons
> Free speech isn't just a paragraph in the American Constitution that
> appeared there out of nowhere. It's a larger cultural norm that allows you
> to share your ideas and, much more importantly, allows you to hear other
> people's ideas without censorship.

Right.

> Whether censorship comes from the government, university, or some megacorp
> is completely irrelevant to whether it is an infringement on free speech.

Wrong, unless you mean a university or corporation literally physically
censoring you from communicating something. See sib response by dragonwriter.
If a university disinvites a speaker or a corporation stops hosting someone
customer's website, nobody's right to free speech was infringed upon. Sure,
you may accuse them of acting against the spirit of the value of free speech,
but that's their prerogative and they are in fact simultaneously exercising
their own right to free speech by choosing not to host/amplify another's
speech they find repugnant.

~~~
peoplewindow
Most censorship in China is done by the private sector. It doesn't come direct
from the government. Instead, the government makes it clear that various types
of speech are deemed unacceptable, but remains vague about exactly what. For
example the PRC likes to crack down on "rumours".

The consequence is that the private sector is a huge and critical part of how
China censors information. Actual direct government censorship is relatively
limited: it's all based on distributing vague principles to the private sector
combined, with punishments for failure to comply. The result is people
interpreting the principles in the most aggressive way possible.

In the west, governments have egged on progressive agendas and passed laws
that punish various kinds of speech (e.g. "hate speech"). But most of the
censorship is done by the private sector, who are trying to interpret vague
principles in ways that'll avoid them being targeted for punishment. The fact
that in the west the media and various ideological groupings have as much to
do with it as a government agenda doesn't change the fact that most of the
ensuring censorship is still run and managed by the private sector.

~~~
MaxfordAndSons
Ok, but were an American to find themselves legally censored by another
American individual or corporation, they could take their business
elsewhere/start their own newspaper or webhost/become a soapbox preacher,
whatever. None of those are options in the Chinese case.

~~~
peoplewindow
That's true as long as there are plenty of providers in the market and the
barriers to entry are low, so you can get specialist "free speech" firms.

Sometimes that's true, sometimes it's not. If Google and Bing both decide to
delist your website because they think it's "hateful" or some other reason
you're out of luck. There are only two major English-language search engines.

If your Wordpress hosting provider doesn't want you, well, that's inconvenient
but not the end of the world.

One problem with encouraging a culture of "free speech doesn't matter if
you're a company" is that the type of speech that requires the most defence is
the most unpopular kind, which means you can end up with all the offensive or
challenging material lumped under one or two providers ... who are then
vulnerable to other forms of attack by people who wish to crush speech they
disagree with. It's really a lot more robust if everyone agrees that "I
disagree with what you have to say, but I'll fight to the death for your right
to say it".

~~~
MaxfordAndSons
> One problem with encouraging a culture of "free speech doesn't matter if
> you're a company" is that the type of speech that requires the most defence
> is the most unpopular kind, which means you can end up with all the
> offensive or challenging material lumped under one or two providers ... who
> are then vulnerable to other forms of attack by people who wish to crush
> speech they disagree with. It's really a lot more robust if everyone agrees
> that "I disagree with what you have to say, but I'll fight to the death for
> your right to say it".

I totally agree. I wasn't encouraging that attitude per se, but rather
pointing out that free speech protections as they are implemented in the US
protect the rights of private individuals/corporations to take either attitude
towards the speech of others. And FWIW I can't really envision an alternate
implementation that insures people abide by the robust interpretation of the
value of free speech - at a certain point it falls to the public to continue
to embrace free speech as a positive value.

------
thephyber
TL;DR: DreamHost was issued a warrant to produce any and all
content+logs+metadata about a customer-hosted website that presumably may have
been related to violent protests/riots in Washington DC circa Jan 20th (Trump
inauguration day). They pushed back on the overly broad nature of the warrant,
the DOJ pushed the courts to then "compel" DH to comply.

------
porkloin
This seems like a convenient time to remind folks that it is incredibly
important to stand up against this kind of government action not only when it
is conducted against your political allies, but especially when it is
conducted against your political enemies. Even if this were a pro-Trump
website being subpoenaed, this should sicken you nonetheless. Short-sighted
political gain might be had by allowing the government to stomp all over
political dissidents you don't agree with, but in a few short years you might
find yourself on the receiving end of the same treatment you endorsed. My hope
is that those in the alt-right will realize that supporting this kind of
action may hurt themselves just as much as it hurts the anti-Trump folks.

~~~
Frondo
For my part, I value the right of black/gay/jewish/whoever people to exist and
live their lives without threats of violence _more_ than I value freedom of
speech.

Right to life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness, in that order.

Groups calling for their extermination, I'm not going to stand up for any of
them, because they're actively working against the first of those three
values.

What good is freedom of speech or assembly when you're being run over by a
white supremacist in a Charger?

If that's a slippery slope--that ordering of values that prizes life over
website hosting--then it's one I'm still content to stand on, because the
alternative isn't taking us anywhere good right now.

~~~
nippples
Let me remind you that who brought up the concept of "acceptable punching
targets" to modern politics was antifa, and that staging a counter-protest in
the exact same venue and time as a rally / protest is OBVIOUSLY going to cause
trouble.

White supremacists are disgusting.

Other race supremacists are disgusting.

Anarchists are disgusting.

Communists are disgusting.

People calling for dead cops are disgusting.

People looting and committing arson during protests are disgusting.

There's a lot of disgusting people out there, and I'm beyond tired of people
trying to escalate things even further. If all this political tension in the
US escalates to full-blown civil war, it will be to no credit of a single
group, but the many who keep getting excused by mainstream politicians,
political commentators and journalists.

The fun fact is that most of this could probably have been widely defused by
_allowing_ people to speak up in public, and then providing better counter-
speech, but I guess that was hurting way too many feelings.

------
bkeroack
Would they have done the same for a right-wing website? Just as importantly,
would HN be just as pro free speech if they had?

Free speech as a value and ideal must be content-neutral.

~~~
walterstucco
Freedom comes at a cost: we value more the freedom to not be harmed than the
freedom to harm.

Those trying to harm other people _must_ be less free to do so.

Freedom is not neutral

~~~
bkeroack
This is a false argument. Speech is not "harming someone".

This is a tactic that seems to be more common recently: trying to equate
expression of ideas with violence, and then claiming that violence is
acceptable to suppress this supposed "speech violence".

~~~
glenndebacker
As somebody who has been battling a whole part of his life against PTSD I find
it very troubling that people in 2017 still believe that bs that you can only
harm people when you use fysical violence.

~~~
bkeroack
My sympathies for your condition, but I regret to inform you that the rest of
the world does not revolve around you and your symptoms. Speech is not
violence harming you, however much you might want to claim it as such.

------
daturkel
I've never (to my knowledge) had any issues re: legal requests about my site,
but I can say that I've been a happy customer of Dreamhost for many years now.
Support is quick, friendly, and knowledgeable, and the pricepoint for the
product (shared server, web-hosting and domain renewal, unlimited bandwidth
and storage) is a no-brainer for me. I'm not surprised to see that the host
advocates for its users when it can.

------
javajosh
Just a reminder that a good system design doesn't store user data. If you
don't have it it can't be used against your users.

~~~
jlgaddis
Indeed. It will also save your company time and money (in more ways than one).

I work for an ISP and I intentionally do not log user <-> IP address mappings.
The time I've had to spend producing similar information in response to such
requests is very minimal (basically, "sorry, we don't have that!").

------
flashman
It would be interesting to hear from Google whether the government has issued
a search warrant for the Google Analytics data generated by the site's
visitors, which would include IP address.

------
thrillgore
I'm glad that Dreamhost is opposing the order. I'm glad to give them my
business. To me, it would be no more different if it was an alt-right site.

------
driverdan
It's great to see DreamHost stand up for their users in this instance but
they're not always like that.

I had a bogus DMCA takedown filed against a WP blog I have on a DH shared
hosting account. DH went into my DB and took the post offline before they even
notified me.

Had they bothered to notify me first or spend 5 min reading the blog they
would have found it to be clearly fair use.

------
badmadrad
We already know about neo-nazi racists and gov already investigates them.
However, Antifa and these Marxist Resistance groups are radicalized and
dangerous groups that regularly entertain violence against Trump and his
supporters. They deserve to be investigated as it effects the stability of our
country.

~~~
DanBC
You're operating under a pretty severe cognitive bias there.

Anti-fa violence is investigated, but the levels of actual recorded violence,
and threats of violence, from anti-fa groups is minuscule when compared to
that from white supremacists.

They're simply not comparable.

White supremacists have already murdered people in the US, sometimes in mass
killings.

~~~
e40
And is there an example of the government asking for information on right-wing
website users? I don't remember one.

------
woofyman
Scary and outrageous.

~~~
scierama
No not really, this is about the DC riots on Inauguration Day which violated
DC peace keeping laws, probably because it's the capitol of America, I'm
thinking but read for yourself:

[https://beta.code.dccouncil.us/dc/council/code/sections/22-1...](https://beta.code.dccouncil.us/dc/council/code/sections/22-1322.html)

The rioters broke DC law. Nothing scary, nothing shocking, it's a click bait
title and nothing more.

~~~
eggpy
200 people were indicted on rioting charges. What use does the 1.3 million IP
addresses have in those cases? How can the DoJ justify that disparity? So yes,
it is a little scary.

------
arca_vorago
Makes me happy to have been using Dreamhost for over 10 years now. I got in on
the my domain crazy insane package, and have mostly gotten along with them. I
am still super-angry they took away my squirellmail and forced the webmail
into a non-FOSS webmail though.

~~~
nsx147
Same here - same plan since feb 2007

------
TheDreamBotcher
When you give up your rights to authorities, you are done. Nono this regime is
better! They just want to keep us safe! Go read a book and preferably of
history. If you consider total control keeping you safe, then go on and do it.
People seem to forget the government is supposed to work for you in a
democracy. Not the other way around

------
ubernostrum
I am sure that every single person who always stands on absolutist free-speech
principles against the chilling effect of, say, calling for someone to be
fired when it turns out they believe women are biologically inferior, will of
course turn up to immediately oppose this on principle, and not adopt some
sort of "let's wait and see, there may be nuances to this" approach.

------
lucd
Asking states voters data, and now that.. It could be more data collection for
voter suppression..

------
wolfram74
Especially in light of various american fascist groups interpreting the
sitting president's half hearted comments regarding the Charlottesville murder
as intentional endorsement of their philosophies.

~~~
starik36
I think your dislike of the current president is clouding your ability to see
facts for what they are. Since the incident he condemned the guilty on the TV,
tweeted about it multiple times, his daughter spoke extensively on the
subject, various people in the administration condemned it. Prime minister of
Canada pretty much repeated Trump's condemnation verbatim and got praised for
it. I am not sure what else you need at this point.

~~~
woofyman
It took him 2 days! He first raised a false equivalency between neo-nazis and
the counter protestors. And he still hasn't labeled it domestic terorrism.

~~~
DamnYuppie
He also didn't label the liberal protester who attacked people with a bike
lock as terrorists.

~~~
woofyman
Are you making a an equivalence between a bike lock and a 2 ton missile used
by a neo-nazi. That's disgusting

~~~
KekDemaga
I'm still waiting on Obama's similar statement regarding this:
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_shooting_of_Dallas_poli...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_shooting_of_Dallas_police_officers)

Perhaps Trump had issues "untangling motives" hence the delay:
[http://m.washingtontimes.com/news/2016/jul/9/obama-says-
moti...](http://m.washingtontimes.com/news/2016/jul/9/obama-says-motives-
dallas-cop-killer-micah-xavier-/)

~~~
woofyman
Regarding Obama, that's whataboutism.

On not knowing all the facts. That's never stopped Trump before when a brown
person was the perpetrator

~~~
KekDemaga
Either not directly calling out racist attacks as racist is a problem for a
president or it isn't. Unless you can tell me how one is different than the
other?

------
pottersbasilisk
Antifa and the nazis should all be thrown in prison.

We dont need political violence and any more escalation.

Dont believe me. How about the atlantic?
[https://www.theatlantic.com/amp/article/534192/](https://www.theatlantic.com/amp/article/534192/)
How about cnn ? [https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2017/08/14/us/what-is-antifa-
trnd/in...](https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2017/08/14/us/what-is-antifa-
trnd/index.html)

~~~
pacaro
I consider myself antifa in part because my great grandfather was murdered by
the Nazis, and I consider it to be part of my social and civil responsibility
to oppose fascism.

Edit: ¡No pasaran!

~~~
driverdan
Antifa is not just anti-facism. If you go to any of their rallies or counter
protests you'll find most are socio-anarchists or communists who don't see
anything wrong with violence.

~~~
pacaro
Ask yourself who is defending the counter protestors when the police are
defending the white supremacists, kkk, and other assorted fascists.

Historically the police have a poor track record when it comes to choosing
sides in the fight against fascism

If you think antifa has too many anarchists and communists, maybe it's time to
mask up and help

------
zhuzhu
you should delete 'for'

------
arkitaip
Anyone care to compare Dreamhost to Webfaction?

------
clamprecht
Upvote for the TRON reference:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8kcgosLwPDE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8kcgosLwPDE)

------
emerged
It doesn't say which website exactly. If there's an FBI investigation (which
seems possible, even likely, considering how extreme antifa and other
"resistance" groups can be), it seems pretty par for the course to request
information in order to help locate particular parties.

~~~
rodgerd
> considering how extreme antifa and other "resistance" groups can be

How many people have they killed recently? Are they marching through the
streets ripping off Nazi salutes?

~~~
severine
[https://thelongestway.com/2017/04/08/i-dont-like-the-
antifa/](https://thelongestway.com/2017/04/08/i-dont-like-the-antifa/)

~~~
ianbicking
That's a very tactical criticism. It seems like something very important is
being lost in these comparisons. The primary criticism of Nazis and white
supremacists is not their tactics or their protests, it's that they are
fucking Nazis and white supremacists.

~~~
hjrnunes
It's not tactical criticism, it is a personal account of what anyone can see
by searching youtube for "antifa": that they're thugs who use their supposed
"anti-fascism" as a pretext for their thuggery.

If there aren't any nazis, a good old international summit will do.

