And yet, theyâre two separate things with critical distinctions that define and differentiate one from the other, which is why the former is protected by the First Amendment and the latter is not.
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In theory only. In practice they overlap. Like so many things, these artificial categories are used to simplify and codify things for human brains, that in real life, are inseparably linked.
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. . . which is why a jury will decide if Nazis yelling Nazi stuff caused a Nazi to drive his car into a crowd of people, a.k.a. the âThey Made Me Do Itâ defense.
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Apologies if this was mentioned before and I just missed it but now the EFF is jumping on the âfree speech even for Nazisâ train by decrying the Daily Stormerâs recent hosting troubles:
Iâve read and reread this article and I donât get it. The EFFs arguments here seem like some reactionary weak sauce to me.
I wonder what @doctorow thinks about thisâŚ
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If neo-nazis want to make a name for themselves, they have every right to become a registrar and give themselves one. Nobodyâs obligated to give them a fucking platform.
Jesus christ youâd think the EFF would know better.
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Not really.
Most of the libertarians are signing up for Team Fascism, while the rest are joining with the ACLU and corporate Dems in counterproductive handwringing appeasement.
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If thatâs true, then perhaps the EFF should host the Nazis on the EFFâs servers.
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Right. I forgot. The libertarians. Those limp fucks who donât realize the nazis will eventually come for them, because taxes are necessary to build more panzers.
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Exactly what Iâm thinking. Google holding onto their domain for âreasonsâ definitely seems like a questionable thing to do (and I have a feeling this isnât the complete story) but beyond that they arenât required to host these fucks. These people can set up their own DNS servers, set up their own web hosting, whatever. John Gilmore may be a crackpot but he was completely right in his assertion that you canât censor the internet.
Hell they can petition ICANN for a .nazi TLD or even set up their own special âwhite powerâ root zone and have full control.
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Iâm betting Google has a line somewhere in the TOS that says something like âyou canât use our services to facilitate violently killing a lot of people.â
That or terrorism. These white supremacists have done plenty of terrorism and have very specific tenets in their mission statements that make them inseparable from terrorism. Pretty sure thereâs no laws saying google has to host terrorists.
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The phrase is, âWe reserve the right to refuse service to anyone,ââyou know, the same phrase businesses have used to deny serving food to black people or baking cakes for gay people.
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Canât do that, theyâd lose all their government contracts.
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Very true. Although, the nazis did happen to agree to it. Maybe they should have considered legal advice before agreeing to anything, since their views of âeveryone whoâs not white shouldnât existâ is quite controversial and liable to raise some eyebrows literally anywhere that isnât nazi-run. Except apparently here.
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Seemed pretty thoroughly explained as far as I read it. Are you upset with their reasoning or something else?
Turns out you can. Thats been known for ages. Gilmore was wrong about this as well.
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Because these are companies, not government entities telling a customer that they arenât welcome to use their service. White supremacists arenât a protected class (as much as they wish they were). Thereâs no suppression of free speech going on here.
[citation needed]
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Of course but that wasnât actually part of the EFFâs stated reasoning to begin with. In fact pretty much the entire article is addressing corporations/free enterprises.
Firewalls/proxies with layer 7 inspection have been around since at least the early 90s. Its trivial to block content this way. That said, even before that there was simple port blocking at router levels. Early on and even to some degree now, in many nations telecoms & data is a government enterprise where that government can decide what traffic & content goes in and out of their borders. Even aside from China, Iran & Russiaâs border firewalls, theres been plenty written about various nation states and their domestic data traffic inspection, interception and blocking.
These and other methods may not be 100% effective but really, it is possible to censor the internet. Gilmore was wrong.
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Then what was their argument since Iâm obviously missing it? I see a lot of FUD with little substance.
This seems to be a contradiction. You can try to censor the internet but nothing is foolproof. Life, um, finds a way.
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The TL;DR seems to be âno company is obligated to serve content but because the issue is complicated at least have a transparent process for dropping customersâ.
Otherwise its all pretty plain english.
Obviously. Us Jews have been evading censorship since the Babylonian exile. But just as obviously, censorship is never 100% effective even where it does exist. Theres no contradiction here at all because the very word is about regulating content not totally eliminating content.
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Iâd love to spill this particular beans with the story how this came to be, but this would be kind of derail the discussion further because I absolutely couldnât do it without writing a long, complicated post on the situation in HamburgâŚ
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This is free speech:
Note that this song is perfectly acceptable and legal in Australia and Europe.
