"You have the right to swing your first until it hits my nose "
That's John Stuart Mill, the same guy who supported the Marketplace of Ideas -- everyone has the right to promote their own "propaganda" (whether it's guinness-rules.com or guinness-sucks.com), because the only way to decide which opinions are correct is to allow all opinions to be expressed, and then decide on the most reasonable ones. I'm sure that no one at Guinness was severely traumatized by any anti-Guinness comments; therefore, there's no reason to censor anti-Guinness speech.
Domain names might be a little more complicated -- domain names are not just forms of expression, they're also navigation tools and site identifiers. Although I vehemently oppose rejecting domain names based on supposed intent, I do think that Guinness might have a valid point when it complains about language-based confusion. Though "sucks," to me, seems to be one of the core words of the English language;), maybe it would be confusing to foreign visitors -- I really don't know.
But just how valuable is the free speech embodied in a domain name? Domain names are powerful, but not supremely so. If you've got a massive site proving Guinness to be of inferior quality, it doesn't really matter if your site is at http://www.guinness-sucks.com/ or http://members.nbci.com/guinness-sucks/ -- as long as you have an audience, your message gets across.
We definitely shouldn't allow domain names to be rejected for silly reasons like intent for their creation, but at the same time, we shouldn't attach too much importance to the minimal amount of free expression embodied in a URL.
Slashdot Mirror
That's John Stuart Mill, the same guy who supported the Marketplace of Ideas -- everyone has the right to promote their own "propaganda" (whether it's guinness-rules.com or guinness-sucks.com), because the only way to decide which opinions are correct is to allow all opinions to be expressed, and then decide on the most reasonable ones. I'm sure that no one at Guinness was severely traumatized by any anti-Guinness comments; therefore, there's no reason to censor anti-Guinness speech.
Domain names might be a little more complicated -- domain names are not just forms of expression, they're also navigation tools and site identifiers. Although I vehemently oppose rejecting domain names based on supposed intent, I do think that Guinness might have a valid point when it complains about language-based confusion. Though "sucks," to me, seems to be one of the core words of the English language ;), maybe it would be confusing to foreign visitors -- I really don't know.
But just how valuable is the free speech embodied in a domain name? Domain names are powerful, but not supremely so. If you've got a massive site proving Guinness to be of inferior quality, it doesn't really matter if your site is at http://www.guinness-sucks.com/ or http://members.nbci.com/guinness-sucks/ -- as long as you have an audience, your message gets across.
We definitely shouldn't allow domain names to be rejected for silly reasons like intent for their creation, but at the same time, we shouldn't attach too much importance to the minimal amount of free expression embodied in a URL.
webpagesthatsuck might be a different matter, though :)
- Illya