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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?"
awesome, it's nice to see a company with a bit of a spine, freedom of speech is one thing, but no-one has to provide a stage.
- tensions in our lives that are attacking our minds, unite themselves together to make our consciousness blind - op'ivy
"Freedom of speech" only applies to Government's interference in forms of speech. Rackspace is a private company and can do as they please.
How is this a matter of hate speech laws? There's no law involved here, only the Acceptable Use Policy of Rackspace. It's not a matter of whether people have the right to dislike other groups of people. It's a matter of whether you can be punished for breaking a contractual obligation not to host stuff that violates the acceptable use policy.
My postings are informational and does not constitute legal advice. Act on it at your risk.
Political Correctness has replaced both freedom of religion AND freedom of speech in this country. We've become a nation of cowards.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
The first amendment prohibits the government from suppressing speech, not Rackspace.
<xml><I><am><so><damn>Web 2.0</damn></so></am></I></xml>
is for all these groups going out of their way to condemn this idiotic church but no condemn the threatened response of adherents of Islam. If one little piss ant church in America can cause so many Muslims unglued.
Frankly, while I find the idea of burning any book abhorrent I think that spitting in the face of these radicals of Islam is more important than not. Either bring your religion to 21st century and join the rest of us or shut the hell up.
So, yeah a small town church with a ego maniac at its helm is burning a book, it is no excuse by any RATIONAL people to react with violence.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
I'm not sure what's sadder. A backwoods pastor trying to provoke a reaction by book burning or the international media giving the idiot so much free airtime and so many free column inches. I bet the guy has never felt so important. If I were a cynical sort, I would think the media is devoting so much time to this subject purely to provoke a reaction from certain groups in order to have something explosive to report and moralise on. After all, nothing sells newspapers like violence and bloodshed...
----------------------------------- My Other Sig Is Hilarious -----------------------------------
Reading a book from cover to cover should be a prerequisite to burning it.
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...
You misunderstand the point of the first amendment, and the founders' conception of rights. The first amendment does not GRANT rights; it merely acknowledges that the right to free speech exists, and constrains the federal government (and by the 14th amendment, state governments) from violating the right. Individuals, and corporations, can violate people's right to free speech without running afoul of the first amendment, because the rights are PRIOR to the constitution, and are inalienable.
You are thus conflating the "first amendment" as the source of free speech rights. It is not, at least under the American view of rights. Sadly, you've been modded informative, which means many Slashdot readers are ignorant of the basic Enlightenment philosophy underlying American law.
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
He's just burning some books. Our soldiers are being attacked because they are occupying peoples' homes and supporting a new government they don't all accept. The argument that burning these books would put our soldiers in more danger is not only incorrect, but irrelevant as here we are...giving up our rights and freedoms because we fear the terrorists. Another victory for fundies.
Talk about gross oversimplification. Our soldiers are being attacked because the people they displaced from power want it back. Oh, by the way, the people we displaced from power are Islamic Extremists, who deny basic education to women, recruit children into their armies, and are all around bad guys. The "regular" people of Afghanistan are all too happy to be out from the thumb of the Taliban. Not that our actions have been overtly friendly with civilians as of late, but that's the cost of a guerrilla war.
ASCII tastes bad dude.
Binary it is then.
Slashdot moderation violates our founding ideals. You shouldn't use slashdot.
These guys are doing -nothing- of consequence. The Koran comes off of a web press in the tens of thousands, just like any other book these days. So all they are doing ultimately is making a bit more business for some printer. It isn't as though they are destroying some special, ancient Koran that has historical and cultural significance, they are just burning a mass produced book. If they can't see the futility of that, well then that makes them the retards.
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. They have been some of the funniest episodes (the Mormon one kills me every time) but I'm sure they offended the hell out of a bunch of people. Tough. Nobody says you have the right to go through life and not be offended.
So these guys want to go offend Muslims. Big deal, who cares? Let them.
Tolerance means letting people do what they want, more or less. There has to be limits, you can't harm others, but there's no reason you can't offend them. Also real tolerance would be on the part of Muslims says "Ya knock yourselves out. Retards," and just ignoring the whole thing.
Western world: "I may disagree with what you have to say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it."
Islamic world: "Die for insulting our moon god!"
Christian world: "Die for insulting our sky god!"
"When Mighty Mouse falls victim of cocaine, the Devil's talcum powder, when directors with Mafia-sounding names make films about Jesus hanging out with whores just a stone's throw from that wholesome Universal Studios family tour, it is time for action. Unfortunately, conventional protests such as picketing and telephoned bomb threats do not seem to be working" Episcopal Bishop Paul Moore, New York
“Neither the label ‘fiction’ nor the First Amendment gives Universal the right to libel, slander and ridicule the most central figure in world history.” - Jerry Falwell
"Following the boycott and protests against The Last Temptation of Christ, no Hollywood movie studio has seriously considered making a film that challenges the gospel story of Jesus." - The Long Term Effects on Censorship as a Result of the Protest Against the Last Temptation of Christ
Does this kind of thing still happen in the Christian world? Hmm... Playboy in Portugal shut down for its ‘blasphemous’ Jesus photoshoot
Step back and take a breath. Look at the sequence of events. Think. This is about provocation, retaliation, and the nature of tolerance. One man threatens to do something but has not actually done anything yet, thousands "respond" by actually doing that thing first.
The parent asked how this can be satire, so...
It's a pity you couldn't manifest all of this moral outage when we were funding and arming those Islamic extremists to fight the Rooskies.
"I guess the moral of the story is, don't paint your airship with rocket fuel." -- Addison Bain
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.
Rothbard's argument is relevant, but not sufficient. There's a huge difference between saying that we should consider this from a propertarian viewpoint and that we should consider it only from that viewpoint. Rothbard crosses that line by the time he uses the word "simply" in the second sentence of your quote. As one poster has already pointed out, this situation is complex, and oversimplifying doesn't give meaningful input.
How would Murray Rothbard's argument address any apparent conflict when property is held in common? Do I gain the right to shout fire in a crowded public venue funded from tax dollars? Your Rothbard quote is arguing that all public property is criminal, because all rights can only be sustained where there is private ownership. But, in the US, it took a whole series of special laws in every state's legal codes for theatre owners to gain the right to be treated as though a contract existed without actually having printed one and gained signatures. A right of implied contract exists only because of specialised laws (a privilege or private law, the very word privilege coming from the Latin roots 'Privus' (Private) + 'Lex' (law)) intended to protect theater owners.
Rothbard actually is arguing for the unlimited power of the government to create or destroy rights. How else can the right of contract support all these other rights, particularly when, in his own example, a contract doesn't exist physically, but exists only by government fiat. At the same time, he's arguing against himself, holding that same government fiat is insufficent to grant another right by any other means than through property rights. Since the real US constitution is most emphatically not about how the government grants rights, but how it must rather respect them, neither facet of his argument really sheds more light than heat.
Who is John Cabal?
when the trolls, from the christian world, or the muslim world, or the liberal world or the conservative world, are the ones driving the conversation
the vast majority of christians, muslims, liberals and conservatives are simply good people. but the ones who make the headlines and drive every subject of conversation are the same sort of people you see with a -1 rating on slashdot: the fucking useless trolls
i swear, international relations and domestic political commentary needs something like a slashdot rating system
let the trolls loose on slashdot, with no ratings to tell the difference between something you should read and something you should ignore, and what do you get?: a flooding out of a sane rational commons that anyone with good intent wants to be a part of. you drive good people away, you reward the most useless sort of asshole: the destruction of slashdot
likewise, when the lunatic asshole muslims and the lunatic asshole christians are the ones who set the news headlines aflame and drive the topic of discussion, you get the destruction of the whole fucking world: no civility, no understanding, empty useless seething emotions, until somebody sets off the powder keg. i weep for our children
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
We stand behind our freedoms... until someone says they'll hurt us, then we cave.
Which is why we are now in the process of losing them.
Hi there! I hear you want to use borrow a megaphone to spread your word more clearly to people around you. Ok, sure, but you can't use it to shout out religious hatred, ok? You can shout that out on your own, by all means, but not using my megaphone.
Hey, I heard you've been using my megaphone to shout out messages of religious hate. I'll be having that back now.
See? He can carry on screaming about burning the Quran all he wants. Just not on Rackspace's services.
Finally had enough. Come see us over at https://soylentnews.org/