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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?"
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.
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.
"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.
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.
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