Slashdot Mirror
Rackspace Shuts Down Quran-Burning Church's Sites
theodp writes "In response to a complaint, Rackspace has shut down the websites of the Dove World Outreach Center, a small 50-member church which has received national and international criticism for a planned book burning of the Quran on the anniversary of the 9-11 attacks. The center 'violated the hate-speech provision of our acceptable-use policy,' explained Rackspace spokesman Dan Goodgame. 'This is not a constitutional issue. This is a contract issue,' said Goodgame, who added he did not know how long it had hosted the church's sites. Not quite the same thing, but would Kurt Westergaard's cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad also violate Rackspace's AUP? How about Christopher Hitchens' Slate articles? Could articles from one-time Rackspace poster child The Onion pass muster?"
To all the people claiming that this violates this church's right to free speech, please inform me of how this is a government action. Because that is what is protected under the First Amendment. Hell, it's the first three words of the fucking amendment...
It's a webhoster, not an ISP.
Rackspace != ISP.
Rackspace is a website hosting company.
If burning your own copy of a book is "religious violence," to the point of being terrorism, then we have no free speech rights whatsoever, do we?
If you don't know where you are going, you will wind up somewhere else.
Yes. I agree. Oppressive it is. I've always viewed Canada as an oppressive country what with it's hate speech laws and all.
Oh. I'm sorry - you didn't know? Canada does not have freedom of speech _and_ Canada does have laws against hate speech. Clearly, Canada has a world-wide reputation for being oppressive, right?
I'm just sayin'.
For those of us who are a bit more conservative in our Christianity (many here may call me a fundie - the pastor burning the books would probably call me a lefty, so there you go...), this book burning issue is sad not because of the intolerance and idiocy that it shows, but because it serves no Gospel purpose. It will push Muslims away from Christianity (as well as Western values in general - many non-western Muslims link nationality and religion together). It does nothing to fulfill the Great Commission - the idea that Christ commanded us to go into the world and preach the Gospel (man is a sinner in need of a Saviour, provided by Christ's death on the Cross). It just does the opposite.
There's a big difference between an ISP and a web-host. Rackspace is a web-host.
No. I keep seeing this repeated, but it's absolutely not true. Constitutionally-protected free speech only applies to the government's interference in forms of speech. Free speech refers to lack of any interference. If a lynchmob attacks the idiot ranting on street corner, he is not able to exercise free speech. If someone can not publish a book critical of Islam because an Ayatollah will put a fatwa on him and someone will kill him if he does, then it's not free speech.
That Voltaire quote that everyone trots out says that he would 'defend to the death your right to say it' not that he would 'defend to your death the right for the government not to interfere with you.'
The entire point of free speech is to allow people to say unpopular things. Personally, I think that burning Muslim and Jewish[1] books is a pretty idiotic statement to make, outclassed in stupidity only by the Muslims threatening violence if he does it. Burning books harms no one - it is simply an expression of an opinion. He has just as much of a right to do it as I have to call him an asshat for doing it.
When it comes to Rackspace, the situation is more difficult. As a private company, they have the legal right to refuse to provide a service, but what happens if everyone does? It is not possible to publish information on the web without using some privately owned infrastructure. Does this mean that it's okay to stifle free speech on the Internet, as long as it's done via corporate collusion rather than government mandate? In the US, the legal answer is yes.
Of course, it's also within the rights of Rackspace's customers to decide to move elsewhere. If I did business with them, this would cause me to notify them that I was leaving at the end of the contract period. My hosting provider will object if I use their service to do anything illegal, but beyond that places no additional restrictions. I would be very nervous about using a provider that would pull your account because your posted material that was in some way objectionable to some arbitrary group.
[1] Yes, he's also burning the Talmud, but apparently we only care that he's burning the Qur'an. Oddly enough, he's not burning any books from non-Abrahamic religions.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
Have you seen the videos of the Muslim protests against this? They're burning all sorts of things in response to just the announcement of the Koran burning.
"Clear and present danger" is most emphatically NOT a recognized exception to free speech. Schenck was overturned in Brandenburg v. Ohio. The standard is "imminent lawless action." Speech is not protected by the First Amendment if the speaker intends to incite a violation of the law that is both imminent and likely. This was further clarified in Hess v. Indiana, which found that Hess's words did not fall outside the limits of protected speech, in part, because his speech "amounted to nothing more than advocacy of illegal action at some indefinite future time."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imminent_lawless_action
Moderating "-1, Disagree" is simple censorship. Have the guts to post your opinion.
Last night I watched My Trip to Al Qaeda. Lawrence Wright has spent more time with hands on research than anyone I have seen. It seemed, to me, his main point was the fact that radicalism feeds entirely on humiliation and anger - including the humiliation of the Islamic faith by the West. What really is the point here on burning a pile of Korans on 9/11 than to humiliate and anger the moderate and extreme Muslims. It's very distasteful. Trying not to sound like I am just quoting the movie (yet whole hardily agreeing to the message that) we should stand up for what America believes in - and stop playing our role in the story Bin Laden narrates - one of a holy war against the Muslim faith.
Whatever your point of view on the subject - this documentary is definately a must see.
Comprehensive solutions via a competition of ideas like no other.
Is it offensive? Probably but then when did anyone have the right not to be offended? I see offensive shit all the time out there, particularly against religions. South Park has been positively brutal to the Catholics, the Mormons, the Scientologists, etc.
You'll note that they've never done anything particularly offensive about Islam. The real lesson here is that the Catholics, Mormons and Scientology need to start issuing death threats when South Park insults them. Then the corporate overlords will cave and prevent the South Park guys from mocking their religion.....
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
"government has no right to speak negatively about what this guy is doing"
There is no "official" government view, the President has a viewpoint, the congress has its viewpoints,etc,etc,etc
The President of the United States has the same right as any other citizen to express his views, the fact that his views may have persuaded rackspace to yank the nutjobs
account is irrelevant as long the President took no official action to cause this. Auditing someone in retaliation for refusal to do what the president says is illegal and isnt necessary.
The bully pulpit of the presidency has been used many times and is completely within the Presidents perogative
whoa there cowboy, network neutrality has NOTHING to do with free speech laws.
Network neutrality only means that a network operator should treat packets the same regardless of source, meaning no "preferred service" to YouTube or degraded service for break.com. The content of the packets, the actual speech part, plays no part at all in this. Rackspace is also not a network provider, they're a hosting service.
Some bring out the best in others, some the worst. Some bring out far more.
Did you know there was a Greek Orthodox that's nearby and destroyed when WTC fell on it? Do you know that they haven't been given their permit to rebuild but the city has given one to the imam? They've been trying since it was destroyed.. There's that double standard again. How long do we have to put up with it?
Did you know that the Greek Orthodox church has been allowed to rebuild the entire time? Did you know they are trying to broker a better deal with the port authority to get a new, bigger building? Did you know they turned down free land and $60 million because it wasn't enough? Did you know the port authority finally took the deal off the table because the church kept demanding more?
The church could have been rebuilt years ago if they were willing to keep their original location and pay for it themselves.
Did you know that the area the world trade center was built in used to be called, "Little Syria" because it was the part of manhattan where the most muslims lived? There are plenty of mosques, and plenty of muslims in that area, and it's not a new thing.
Get over yourself. If they want to build a mosque next to a titty bar, in an old outlet store building, why the hell should you care?
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
"None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free." -- Goethe
No, its not. Network neutrality is about promoting free competition in online content businesses by prohibiting network access providers from leveraging their market power in the access area to stifle competition in content. Its about commerce, not expression.
It certainly is not about prohibiting content hosting companies (whether or not they also happen to be ISPs) from discriminating in the content they choose to host.
Think of it as performance art. Bibles get burned all the time, often in Islamic states. Does that cause major diplomatic incidents? Flag burning? Christian street protests? Presidents getting involved? Does the Vatican or your minister down the street start pronouncing death sentences on people? But merely threatening to burn a Koran causes all of these things to happen: death threats, diplomatic incidents, massive street protests. And we're not talking about the actions of a few crazy extremists and terrorists here, we are talking about the actions of thousands of Muslim clerics and politicians and citizens in Islamic nations. Jones doesn't need to actually go through with the Koran burning, he has already made his point.
Mainstream Islam, as practiced in the major Islamic nations around the world, has an atrocious human rights record and needs to reform, just like the medieval Christian church needed to reform. And just look at what happened with Luther: he called the Pope the "anti-Christ", the Pope excommunicated him (which amounted to a fatwa), and a friendly state sheltered and protected him. Causing offense ("trolling") and conflict are an intrinsic part of reform and social change.
As for supposedly moderate Muslims, if they don't take the burning of the Koran by a redneck pastor in the middle of nowhere in stride, they aren't so moderate. Part of being moderate is that you realize that other people have different beliefs and simply don't respect your religion, and that that's OK.
I'm unaware of the part of the discussion where content has been specifically brought up, but that may be a failure of imagination. Who exactly is concerned that ISPs are analyzing packets for content regardless of their source?
Definitely? I could be wrong, but as far as I know Rackspace is a hosting provider and nothing more. Where do they provide ISP services? What type of network services do they provide?
Network neutrality ONLY concerns itself with getting packets from the server to the user, meaning the ISPs. The server and user themselves are not the focus of network neutrality.
Some bring out the best in others, some the worst. Some bring out far more.
Wow.
RACKSPACE IS NOT AN ISP. How much more clear can I be? Rackspace is a HOSTING PROVIDER. THAT IS NOT THE SAME THING AS AN ISP.
AT&T IS AN ISP.
THEY'RE TWO DIFFERENT THINGS.
You claimed that Rackspace is also an ISP, but when I asked you to identify what ISP services they provide, you didn't answer. The reason for that is probably that they are not an ISP.
Some bring out the best in others, some the worst. Some bring out far more.
Any public figure weighing in against any of these activities should be impeached immediately.
Ummm, no, they should not.
'Freedom' means freedom from opinion as well.
Wrong again, O Great Constitutional Scholar. If you don't want to hear what others are saying, you can always stick your fingers in your ears. You have no constitutional right to be shielded from speech that displeases you.
Those public servants surrendered their right to impune others for their protected speech the moment they were sworn in.
No, they did not. Free speech rights are rights for everyone, including those who have been elected to public office. Public servants should not arrest, imprison, prosecute, or otherwise harass those exercising their free speech rights (and are often called on the carpet by the courts when they attempt to do so), but calling someone a jackass and asking them not to be the same is not disallowed, which is about as far as anyone has gone in this case (and by "this case", I mean the whole Koran burning thing - which I happen to think is a stupid and ridiculous thing done by a rather repulsive fundamentalist publicity seeker masquerading as a preacher) and I would just as vehemently defend the people inveighing against the building of the Muslim Community Center, no matter how stupid their position is.
That is all.
Second, the Holocaust was not a Christian thing
I suggest you visit the Holocaust Museum in Berlin and become educated about the history of German anti-semitism. Germany has historically been a Christian nation, and the anti-semitic history of its Christian people has been well documented. Please don't try to rewrite history by pretending that religion was not involved. The Nazi propaganda newspaper Der Stürmer frequently invoked stories and images of supposed Jewish assaults and plots against Christians. There were numerous pro-Nazi Christian groups that wove Nazi propaganda into their theology (Rexists, etc.)
"Christianity, however, did play a critical role, not perhaps in motivating the top decision makers, but in making their commands comprehensible and tolerable to the rank-and-file - the people who actively carried out the measures against the Jews as well as those who passively condoned their implementation.... The old antisemitism had created a climate in which the 'new' antisemitism was, at the very least, acceptable to millions of Germans." - Catholics, Protestants and Christian Antisemitism in Nazi Germany
Some of the top Christian leaders actively supported the Holocaust:
"The duty of a Christian is to love himself first and to see that his needs are satisfied. Only then can he help his neighbor... Why should we not get rid of these parasites [Jews] who suck Rumanian Christian blood? It is logical and holy to react against them." - Patriarch Miron Cristea