If a contract says "no hate speech", then I definitely see the promotion of Quran burning as a valid excuse to terminate the contract and any services provided.
Which brings us neatly back around again to people discriminating against people for Freedom of Expression. "Hate Speech" is just a convenient term for subject matter that is politically problematic. The Koran itself (along with the Bible) has examples of "hate speech". Are you going to kick any excerpts from those books off-line as well? Are you going to take it upon yourself to decide what speech should be protected and what should not? Whether you violate the principle of Freedom of Expression with or without advance warning, it's still violated and you're still discriminating against people for their beliefs.
That is the first intelligent argument against allowing this publicity that in this entire thread. I still don't agree with this censorship, but yours is the first argument I've seen that has merit.
I think we're reaching the point where we can agree to disagree.:) I understand what you're saying perfectly clearly, I think. What I have been saying all along is that they aren't counters to what I'm saying because they start from a premise that is different to mine. I don't think there is disagreement between us due to misunderstanding, only in our rejection of each other's premises. The premises that don't apply to me which you hold are these two:
I believe it is quite OK (legally and ethically) not to do business with someone if they refuse to abide by the terms clearly set.
and
I also believe that a private enterprise has no ethical obligation to uphold free speech via their property, and is perfectly allowed to censor what happens on their property
Dealing with the first, first - I believe there are ethical and unethical reasons for refusing to do business with someone (whether you enforce that by setting of prejudicial terms or some other means). For example you would probably (I'm guessing) think it unethical to exclude someone from your business premises for no other reason than they were black / white / Jewish / Gay, etc. If you've ever been on the receiving end of such prejudice, you'll probably feel quite strongly on the subject. Now if you accept that such discriminations are bad from society's point view, I'd ask why you find discrimination on the basis of religious expression to be not bad or why you don't consider this church's actions to fall under such a category.
Regarding the second premise: that of an obligation to uphold free speech, I think it's both a failure of personal responsibility and hopelessly naive to expect the government to ensure society runs well whilst individuals simultaneously behave without regard to social good. Aside from the sheer amount of power over our lives we'd need to give the government in order to ensure we could depend on it to protect good social behaviour (and I'm of the mind that the government has quite enough power thankyouverymuch), governments are corruptible as is demonstrated again and again. In short, we cannot expect social good behaviour to magically manifest if individuals in society do not practice socially good behaviour. And I'm sure it's pretty obvious that I consider protection of Free Speech to be a good thing for society. So you either reject the premise that it is unethical for a private individual or company to behave in a way that is socially harmful (which is what you appear to be doing) which I find almost a contradiction in terms, or you don't consider protection of Freedom of Expression to be a socially good thing.
I think that covers the points of our disagreement so I wont go into the blog example unless you want me to. A hosting company is not really like a free and personal blog, imo.
I think its a bit of a case by case basis. I know in the case ATI, when it was taken over by AMD, they wanted to release Open Source drivers as quickly as possible but couldn't straight away because third party companies had contributed parts of the driver software and it was under NDAs. I think it took them a little while to work around some of those issues, secure agreements, etc. In other cases, companies have things in their drivers that they don't necessarily want their competitors to be able to just grab or study. You might think that a hardware manufacturer only has value invested in the hardware itself. But if you think about it, that they're writing software to go with it, it's not unlikely that in some cases there is value in the software as well.
Still, the mental shift for hardware companies is happening, thanks to the Free Software movement which is making Open Source drivers a saleable attribute both in terms of actual utility and in terms of PR.
You should not anthropomorphise Rackspace, it makes no sense.
Heh! I'll make you a deal - I'll stop anthromorphosizing Rackspace when the US legal system does. Corporations having the legal rights of a person? Bah, I say!:D
But joking aside, I haven't actually been anthromorphosizing (can you not use that word, please, it's hard to spell) Rackspace. I talked about the "behaviour of Rackspace" and that's acceptable. I can talk about the behaviour of a company as a shorthand when I don't know the names of the managers that made this decision and in what meeting.
Basically you keep making arguments following from the unshared assumption: "the only right or wrong is legal or not legal". I don't know why you expect me to argue from the point of view of Rackspace. Your posts all hinge on this idea that if Rackspace doesn't think it did wrong (or if you wish to encumber our discussion heavily in attempts to avoid the risk of anthromorphicizationation, their management) and if they can get away with it, it isn't wrong. Obviously I reject both the principles that if someone doesn't think something is bad then it isn't, and that if the law doesn't stop something, it is fine. I think any sane person would agree with both of those.
If you want a reason why you should consider my opinion of what is right or wrong over Rackspace's policy maker's opinions, then I'll give you one. Rackspace's opinion of good or bad appears to be (as you stated in your post) determined solely on the criteria of what makes Rackspace most money. I think you will agree that there is no intrinsic reason why this should be good from society's point of view or why anyone outside of Rackspace should share it. I can however make a strong case that restricting Freedom of Speech and Expression is bad from society's point of view. This is generally considered accepted so I'll only go into arguing whether Freedom of Speech is good if you really want to dispute that (I hope you don't). So the only question is whether you want to accept a definition of Good and Bad that accords with society's interests, or one that serves the interests of Rackspace. If you work for Rackspace / own it / etc. then perhaps you'll choose the latter (though I hope you'd put society above your own profit-motive), but otherwise I assume your definition of Good and Bad will overlap with the society in which you live as you and your descendents will gain or lose along with that society.
Would that ethical position require you to treat all customers, including customers who don't pay, equally? Would you continue to provide service perpetually to those who refuse to pay for that service?
You know the very line of my post you quote says: "that ethical position requires me to treat all customers equally and not cut off those whose views conflict with me own." In what way is failure to pay a question of supression of views?
Well of course it isn't a question of a conflict of views. Your question is merely intended to establish the validity of one part of a contract and then presume that establishing the correctness of part, establishes the correctness of the whole - a logical and recognized fallacy. Your basic contention is that the behaviour of Rackspace cannot be wrong if they have specified in their contract that they will do so. I dispute that because I consider Freedom of Speech and Expression to be more important than what a company wishes to be the case and I don't consider someone writing "Freedom of Expression doesn't apply to me" to have any ethical weight.
Broadcom wirelss. Cause of a 100 page thread on the Ubuntu forums (and innumerable posts elsewhere) by people trying to get those bloody cards working under Linux.
So speaking as one of the many sufferers, how long before I can just slap Linux on an old Acer laptop and expect the wireless to just work?
Businesses discriminate all the time since the vendor I use at work doesn't want to sell me stuff for home since I don't have enough volume (I'm not rich enough).
I said "Where an action is merely a representation of a belief rather than something that causes direct harm to another". Your lesser home needs compared to someone else's are an example of a direct effect - you're actually asking for them to sell you a different product-cost package. It is not a discrimination based on a belief that you hold. I was very precise in what I wrote.
In the south of the USA there are still venues that discriminate their customers against race and they are allowed to do so
If that is so, then (a) the USA has some seriously fucked up areas and (b) it doesn't make other bad actions elsewhere any better.
If those particular Mormons want to spread a message of religious intolerance and hatred, yes
So who gets to decide what is a message of religious intolerance and hatred, because I certainly don't want to make that call. I can't believe that there are so many people here who wish to pick and choose between which speech gets to be heard and which does not. If Rackspace decided to take down a site where someone recommended a competitor I bet you'd be howling with outrage, yes? So does that mean you've decided it's okay for Rackspace to cut off someone's religious expression but not their opinion on a company's business service? You'd be okay with saying expressions of religious belief can be cut off, but not customer feedback? I ask this question because I think if you answer it honestly it will make clear to you the point I am making. It is not okay for a company to start making discriminations based on their customer's beliefs. By substituting a case where I'm reasonably confident you would think it wrong for them to behave in this case, I hope to convince you of the principle.
Your dishonesty continues by changing the focus of the discussion and claiming I made an argument I did not.
What argument? There's been a thread of about five posts discussing the ethics of this and then suddenly you appeared in the thread and said I was being dishonest because Rackspace took down the site because it was "offensive and inflammatory". I responded by asking what the difference was between what this church has done and other things that are offensive and inflammatory which are protected (such as some of the contents of the Koran). That was a direct response and question about something you said and which you were using to support a case that I was being dishonest. So how is it me changing the focus of the discussion?
I made a comment, you posted something in response to it that you think invalidates what I said. I said why I don't think it does and asked you to explain how it could. That request is still awaiting your answer if you would like to go back to my previous post and respond to the question I asked in it.
"Hate speech" may indeed be a political term, but last time I checked that hosting company is not in the political industry, it's in the hosting industry where (surprise surprise) legal contracts trump your opinions.
I haven't been arguing though, that the contracts are illegal. I've been arguing that the behaviour of Rackspace is wrong. Saying that they can get away with it is not a counter to that. The intent of your posts seems to be to establish that Rackspace are not obliged to listen to my opinions. That is orthogonal to whether they are in the right or not. If you are merely making the case that I can't force them to my will, then you've stated that twice and I've agreed and said that's not what I'm arguing and we can stop this here. If you're arguing that Rackspace's behaviour is right, then there is still far to go, I'm afraid.
As it is my opinion on this matter that you keep challenging, then you'll agree that whether or not Rackspace must legally listen to judgement on their behaviour isn't really germane to whether or not my opinion is valid.
Your dishonesty for the sake of argument is getting very tiresome. Rackspace did not end the business relationship because of any religious views or bigotry. If that was the case, they never would have allowed the hosting to begin with! They took down the site because it was offensive and inflammatory.
I'm not being dishonest. I don't see the distinction between the offensive and inflammatory nature of the Koran-burning and the offensive and inflammatory nature of much of the contents of the Koran. Both are free expression and both deserve the same protection. Seriously, if you are able to explain the difference between why one is free speech and the other is not, I'm willing to listen. I just don't see it myself - there's no "dishonesty for the sake of argument" that I'm aware of. I sincerely consider this church's actions no different in princple to any other expressions.
You can't legally discriminate against a non-protected class.
So the Free Speech of only "protected classes" is protected? I can publish the Koran which contains lots of hateful speech, but I can't show some people burning it? I think both should be equally allowed to be published. And again, I didn't talk about "legal", I talked about "right". People's recurrent equating of "legal" with "right" could be very depressing if I let it.
If you go to a photo shop that has a sign on the door (i.e. the contract) saying "we do not condone witchcraft, and will not develop photos of witches" (i.e. "no hate speech on our servers"), and then try to get them to develop photos of your witch party, what would you expect to happen?
Let's make your analogy even closer to reality (surely you couldn't object to that principle?;). Suppose there was such a shop and a story about it and their double-standards was posted on Slashdot. What I would do is post how I thought that was wrong. Would you, scot4875, champion the rightness of the shop in excluding some people for their beliefs from the shop? : )
If a mormon group had 'violated the hate-speech provision of [their] acceptable-use policy,' I'd expect them to be cut off. If a kitten-cuddling group had 'violated the hate-speech provision of [their] acceptable-use policy,' I'd expect them to be cut off too.
You see my question to you is why are expressions of religious belief protected, e.g. you presumably agree that to ban the contents of the Koran would be wrong, but expressions such as this, are okay to ban? "Hate speech" is a political term and the thin end of a wedge. Accept that some opinions we don't like are acceptable to surpress and where will it end.
So it's the 'right' thing to do because it agrees with your views? Self-centered to say the least.
The book burning doesn't fit with my views either. However, I consider it wrong to interfere with people's freedom of expression. As a major company, that ethical position requires me to treat all customers equally and not cut off those whose views conflict with me own. That is not being self-centred.
Does your belief in free speech invalidate their right to free association?
Firstly whether I believe in Free Speech is irrelevant to the principle of the matter, only to whether or not I argue about it on Slashdot. If Rackspace were robbing people's houses, it wouldn't be a question of whether or not my beliefs in whether or not they should be allowed to do so conflicted with anything. It's a question of ethics independent of who puts them. This is important, because your rephrasing makes it sound like we're discussing my personal stake in their behaviour and I have none, other than wishing to live in a free and open society.
Secondly, yes, if a company is refusing people as customers based on solely on those customer's beliefs, that is not good and invites my condemnation. Discrimination should be beaten back, through education as a first measure, through market forces following on from that, and through legal measures as a last resort. Pick any religious group you like, from Catholic to Luciferian to Ba'ahi and tell me it's okay for companies to turn their money away purely on the basis of that belief, and I'll say that it's wrong. Freedom of Speech is a basic requirement of a healthy society. the USA has privatised vast parts of the infrastructure of its society. For human rights to be preserved in the USA, human rights must now be observed by private industry. Anything else will leave you with a few people shouting loudly in the middle of your national parks because everything else is private.
Someone posted a bad analogy which was intended to show that Rackspace's actions were right (I am precise with my terms, I don't and never did say 'legal'). I took their analogy and corrected it to be more accurate as the quickest way to show where they went wrong. Don't blame me that I'm arguing by analogy in the circumstances.;)
As regards it "not being our business", I disagree. We're all part of this society and we all bear the consequences of discrimination and censorship within society. Many people in this thread are posting analogies in which they own a megaphone, billboard or somesuch, and ask why they should be forced to use it to support something with which they disagree. That's very different to businesses refusing to serve part of the market based solely on the segment's religious beliefs. In the USA today, there is very little which isn't privatized. Malls, radio stations, newspapers, web-hosting... If your argument is that private ownership allows one to excuse oneself from any restrictions on discrimination, then you've just struck a major blow against fighting discrimination. If your argument is that these particular people don't fall under restraints against discrimination because their beliefs are bad beliefs that it is okay to discriminate against whilst other religious beliefs are not, then I'd consider that a double standard. The double standard applies, incidentally, whether you're talking about ethics or if the double standard is enshrined in law.
However, I don't want my house burned down, so I ask you to cease and desist, or move out (don't know if I could legally get away with that, but you get the similarity here I hope)
I get the similarity and I understand that position without condoning it. I do not think freedom of expression should be curtailed by fear of violent reprisals ("getting your house burned down"). It's a more honest argument than the people arguing that Rackspace's actions are right, merely because they're not illegal.
You offered a compound argument though, by drawing the analogy with you being forced to rent your house out to anyone. In fact, there are some ethics involved here. If you refused to rent your house to someone because they were jewish, muslim, black, white or whatever, we probably would condemn that. The beliefs of these Koran burners seem no worse to me than what many muslims believe. But that's not the issue. It blurs the lines a bit drawing an analogy in which it is an individual's limited property (you own a house). We're discussing a business selling a service across society. For it to start excluding segments of society for anything other than practical reasons (and the sole practical reason is the danger of reprisals we've discussed), is a discrimination I don't think we should approve of.
Okay, so what was the GP talking about when they said burning the Koran should lose the church its tax exempt status? Unless they're selling tickets to it and pocketing the cash, then I don't see how its relevant. Thanks for the link. GP was probably just babbling.
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.
So you're saying it's okay for companies to discriminate between customers based on expressed beliefs. If you, a private person, don't want to hand your megaphone to someone to spread a message you don't believe in, that's fine. But if you a shopkeeper, want to sell megaphones to everyone but mormons, for example, that's something different.
If I own a megaphone, and I don't lend it to you because I don't agree with you, am I violating your free speech rights?
More accurate analogy - you are a megaphone rental company and one day someone walks in of a political / religious / ethnic / sexual persuasion that you don't like. You continue to hand out megaphones to everyone else, but tell this person they're not allowed to rent one from you.
On the way home, that person also has to sit at the back of the bus.
I don't get the relationship of churches and taxes in the USA. Why not just create blanket categories of Not For Profit organizations and treat a church as the appropriate type?
Rackspace is under no obligation to facilitate anyone in distributing their speech.
It is called 'discrimination'. If you withold your services from some people but not others on the basis of their beliefs / gender / race or, basically, anything other than their actions, then it is discrimination. I would guess that many of us (I do), don't consider burning the Koran to be a valid "action" for discriminating on such as using too much bandwidth would be. Where an action is merely a represenation of a belief rather than something that causes direct harm to another, we do not consider supression of that action to be any less of an act of discrimination than supression of speech. If you say: our shop will develop your photos of you wearing a yarmaluke, but not ones of you wearing a witch's hat, it's discrimination.
Slashdot Mirror
If a contract says "no hate speech", then I definitely see the promotion of Quran burning as a valid excuse to terminate the contract and any services provided.
Which brings us neatly back around again to people discriminating against people for Freedom of Expression. "Hate Speech" is just a convenient term for subject matter that is politically problematic. The Koran itself (along with the Bible) has examples of "hate speech". Are you going to kick any excerpts from those books off-line as well? Are you going to take it upon yourself to decide what speech should be protected and what should not? Whether you violate the principle of Freedom of Expression with or without advance warning, it's still violated and you're still discriminating against people for their beliefs.
That is the first intelligent argument against allowing this publicity that in this entire thread. I still don't agree with this censorship, but yours is the first argument I've seen that has merit.
You don't get to be a provocative asshole and then play the part of the victim when people call you a provocative asshole.
I don't think the story is about people being called provocative arseholes, I think it's about people having their website taken away from them.
I believe it is quite OK (legally and ethically) not to do business with someone if they refuse to abide by the terms clearly set.
and
I also believe that a private enterprise has no ethical obligation to uphold free speech via their property, and is perfectly allowed to censor what happens on their property
Dealing with the first, first - I believe there are ethical and unethical reasons for refusing to do business with someone (whether you enforce that by setting of prejudicial terms or some other means). For example you would probably (I'm guessing) think it unethical to exclude someone from your business premises for no other reason than they were black / white / Jewish / Gay, etc. If you've ever been on the receiving end of such prejudice, you'll probably feel quite strongly on the subject. Now if you accept that such discriminations are bad from society's point view, I'd ask why you find discrimination on the basis of religious expression to be not bad or why you don't consider this church's actions to fall under such a category.
Regarding the second premise: that of an obligation to uphold free speech, I think it's both a failure of personal responsibility and hopelessly naive to expect the government to ensure society runs well whilst individuals simultaneously behave without regard to social good. Aside from the sheer amount of power over our lives we'd need to give the government in order to ensure we could depend on it to protect good social behaviour (and I'm of the mind that the government has quite enough power thankyouverymuch), governments are corruptible as is demonstrated again and again. In short, we cannot expect social good behaviour to magically manifest if individuals in society do not practice socially good behaviour. And I'm sure it's pretty obvious that I consider protection of Free Speech to be a good thing for society. So you either reject the premise that it is unethical for a private individual or company to behave in a way that is socially harmful (which is what you appear to be doing) which I find almost a contradiction in terms, or you don't consider protection of Freedom of Expression to be a socially good thing.
I think that covers the points of our disagreement so I wont go into the blog example unless you want me to. A hosting company is not really like a free and personal blog, imo.
Regards,
H.
Fixed that for me.
I think its a bit of a case by case basis. I know in the case ATI, when it was taken over by AMD, they wanted to release Open Source drivers as quickly as possible but couldn't straight away because third party companies had contributed parts of the driver software and it was under NDAs. I think it took them a little while to work around some of those issues, secure agreements, etc. In other cases, companies have things in their drivers that they don't necessarily want their competitors to be able to just grab or study. You might think that a hardware manufacturer only has value invested in the hardware itself. But if you think about it, that they're writing software to go with it, it's not unlikely that in some cases there is value in the software as well.
Still, the mental shift for hardware companies is happening, thanks to the Free Software movement which is making Open Source drivers a saleable attribute both in terms of actual utility and in terms of PR.
You should not anthropomorphise Rackspace, it makes no sense.
Heh! I'll make you a deal - I'll stop anthromorphosizing Rackspace when the US legal system does. Corporations having the legal rights of a person? Bah, I say! :D
But joking aside, I haven't actually been anthromorphosizing (can you not use that word, please, it's hard to spell) Rackspace. I talked about the "behaviour of Rackspace" and that's acceptable. I can talk about the behaviour of a company as a shorthand when I don't know the names of the managers that made this decision and in what meeting.
Basically you keep making arguments following from the unshared assumption: "the only right or wrong is legal or not legal". I don't know why you expect me to argue from the point of view of Rackspace. Your posts all hinge on this idea that if Rackspace doesn't think it did wrong (or if you wish to encumber our discussion heavily in attempts to avoid the risk of anthromorphicizationation, their management) and if they can get away with it, it isn't wrong. Obviously I reject both the principles that if someone doesn't think something is bad then it isn't, and that if the law doesn't stop something, it is fine. I think any sane person would agree with both of those.
If you want a reason why you should consider my opinion of what is right or wrong over Rackspace's policy maker's opinions, then I'll give you one. Rackspace's opinion of good or bad appears to be (as you stated in your post) determined solely on the criteria of what makes Rackspace most money. I think you will agree that there is no intrinsic reason why this should be good from society's point of view or why anyone outside of Rackspace should share it. I can however make a strong case that restricting Freedom of Speech and Expression is bad from society's point of view. This is generally considered accepted so I'll only go into arguing whether Freedom of Speech is good if you really want to dispute that (I hope you don't). So the only question is whether you want to accept a definition of Good and Bad that accords with society's interests, or one that serves the interests of Rackspace. If you work for Rackspace / own it / etc. then perhaps you'll choose the latter (though I hope you'd put society above your own profit-motive), but otherwise I assume your definition of Good and Bad will overlap with the society in which you live as you and your descendents will gain or lose along with that society.
Would that ethical position require you to treat all customers, including customers who don't pay, equally? Would you continue to provide service perpetually to those who refuse to pay for that service?
You know the very line of my post you quote says: "that ethical position requires me to treat all customers equally and not cut off those whose views conflict with me own." In what way is failure to pay a question of supression of views?
Well of course it isn't a question of a conflict of views. Your question is merely intended to establish the validity of one part of a contract and then presume that establishing the correctness of part, establishes the correctness of the whole - a logical and recognized fallacy. Your basic contention is that the behaviour of Rackspace cannot be wrong if they have specified in their contract that they will do so. I dispute that because I consider Freedom of Speech and Expression to be more important than what a company wishes to be the case and I don't consider someone writing "Freedom of Expression doesn't apply to me" to have any ethical weight.
Broadcom wirelss. Cause of a 100 page thread on the Ubuntu forums (and innumerable posts elsewhere) by people trying to get those bloody cards working under Linux.
So speaking as one of the many sufferers, how long before I can just slap Linux on an old Acer laptop and expect the wireless to just work?
Businesses discriminate all the time since the vendor I use at work doesn't want to sell me stuff for home since I don't have enough volume (I'm not rich enough).
I said "Where an action is merely a representation of a belief rather than something that causes direct harm to another". Your lesser home needs compared to someone else's are an example of a direct effect - you're actually asking for them to sell you a different product-cost package. It is not a discrimination based on a belief that you hold. I was very precise in what I wrote.
In the south of the USA there are still venues that discriminate their customers against race and they are allowed to do so
If that is so, then (a) the USA has some seriously fucked up areas and (b) it doesn't make other bad actions elsewhere any better.
If those particular Mormons want to spread a message of religious intolerance and hatred, yes
So who gets to decide what is a message of religious intolerance and hatred, because I certainly don't want to make that call. I can't believe that there are so many people here who wish to pick and choose between which speech gets to be heard and which does not. If Rackspace decided to take down a site where someone recommended a competitor I bet you'd be howling with outrage, yes? So does that mean you've decided it's okay for Rackspace to cut off someone's religious expression but not their opinion on a company's business service? You'd be okay with saying expressions of religious belief can be cut off, but not customer feedback? I ask this question because I think if you answer it honestly it will make clear to you the point I am making. It is not okay for a company to start making discriminations based on their customer's beliefs. By substituting a case where I'm reasonably confident you would think it wrong for them to behave in this case, I hope to convince you of the principle.
Your dishonesty continues by changing the focus of the discussion and claiming I made an argument I did not.
What argument? There's been a thread of about five posts discussing the ethics of this and then suddenly you appeared in the thread and said I was being dishonest because Rackspace took down the site because it was "offensive and inflammatory". I responded by asking what the difference was between what this church has done and other things that are offensive and inflammatory which are protected (such as some of the contents of the Koran). That was a direct response and question about something you said and which you were using to support a case that I was being dishonest. So how is it me changing the focus of the discussion?
I made a comment, you posted something in response to it that you think invalidates what I said. I said why I don't think it does and asked you to explain how it could. That request is still awaiting your answer if you would like to go back to my previous post and respond to the question I asked in it.
"Hate speech" may indeed be a political term, but last time I checked that hosting company is not in the political industry, it's in the hosting industry where (surprise surprise) legal contracts trump your opinions.
I haven't been arguing though, that the contracts are illegal. I've been arguing that the behaviour of Rackspace is wrong. Saying that they can get away with it is not a counter to that. The intent of your posts seems to be to establish that Rackspace are not obliged to listen to my opinions. That is orthogonal to whether they are in the right or not. If you are merely making the case that I can't force them to my will, then you've stated that twice and I've agreed and said that's not what I'm arguing and we can stop this here. If you're arguing that Rackspace's behaviour is right, then there is still far to go, I'm afraid.
As it is my opinion on this matter that you keep challenging, then you'll agree that whether or not Rackspace must legally listen to judgement on their behaviour isn't really germane to whether or not my opinion is valid.
Your dishonesty for the sake of argument is getting very tiresome. Rackspace did not end the business relationship because of any religious views or bigotry. If that was the case, they never would have allowed the hosting to begin with! They took down the site because it was offensive and inflammatory.
I'm not being dishonest. I don't see the distinction between the offensive and inflammatory nature of the Koran-burning and the offensive and inflammatory nature of much of the contents of the Koran. Both are free expression and both deserve the same protection. Seriously, if you are able to explain the difference between why one is free speech and the other is not, I'm willing to listen. I just don't see it myself - there's no "dishonesty for the sake of argument" that I'm aware of. I sincerely consider this church's actions no different in princple to any other expressions.
You can't legally discriminate against a non-protected class.
So the Free Speech of only "protected classes" is protected? I can publish the Koran which contains lots of hateful speech, but I can't show some people burning it? I think both should be equally allowed to be published. And again, I didn't talk about "legal", I talked about "right". People's recurrent equating of "legal" with "right" could be very depressing if I let it.
If you go to a photo shop that has a sign on the door (i.e. the contract) saying "we do not condone witchcraft, and will not develop photos of witches" (i.e. "no hate speech on our servers"), and then try to get them to develop photos of your witch party, what would you expect to happen?
Let's make your analogy even closer to reality (surely you couldn't object to that principle? ;). Suppose there was such a shop and a story about it and their double-standards was posted on Slashdot. What I would do is post how I thought that was wrong. Would you, scot4875, champion the rightness of the shop in excluding some people for their beliefs from the shop? : )
If a mormon group had 'violated the hate-speech provision of [their] acceptable-use policy,' I'd expect them to be cut off. If a kitten-cuddling group had 'violated the hate-speech provision of [their] acceptable-use policy,' I'd expect them to be cut off too.
You see my question to you is why are expressions of religious belief protected, e.g. you presumably agree that to ban the contents of the Koran would be wrong, but expressions such as this, are okay to ban? "Hate speech" is a political term and the thin end of a wedge. Accept that some opinions we don't like are acceptable to surpress and where will it end.
So it's the 'right' thing to do because it agrees with your views? Self-centered to say the least.
The book burning doesn't fit with my views either. However, I consider it wrong to interfere with people's freedom of expression. As a major company, that ethical position requires me to treat all customers equally and not cut off those whose views conflict with me own. That is not being self-centred.
Does your belief in free speech invalidate their right to free association?
Firstly whether I believe in Free Speech is irrelevant to the principle of the matter, only to whether or not I argue about it on Slashdot. If Rackspace were robbing people's houses, it wouldn't be a question of whether or not my beliefs in whether or not they should be allowed to do so conflicted with anything. It's a question of ethics independent of who puts them. This is important, because your rephrasing makes it sound like we're discussing my personal stake in their behaviour and I have none, other than wishing to live in a free and open society.
Secondly, yes, if a company is refusing people as customers based on solely on those customer's beliefs, that is not good and invites my condemnation. Discrimination should be beaten back, through education as a first measure, through market forces following on from that, and through legal measures as a last resort. Pick any religious group you like, from Catholic to Luciferian to Ba'ahi and tell me it's okay for companies to turn their money away purely on the basis of that belief, and I'll say that it's wrong. Freedom of Speech is a basic requirement of a healthy society. the USA has privatised vast parts of the infrastructure of its society. For human rights to be preserved in the USA, human rights must now be observed by private industry. Anything else will leave you with a few people shouting loudly in the middle of your national parks because everything else is private.
Someone posted a bad analogy which was intended to show that Rackspace's actions were right (I am precise with my terms, I don't and never did say 'legal'). I took their analogy and corrected it to be more accurate as the quickest way to show where they went wrong. Don't blame me that I'm arguing by analogy in the circumstances. ;)
As regards it "not being our business", I disagree. We're all part of this society and we all bear the consequences of discrimination and censorship within society. Many people in this thread are posting analogies in which they own a megaphone, billboard or somesuch, and ask why they should be forced to use it to support something with which they disagree. That's very different to businesses refusing to serve part of the market based solely on the segment's religious beliefs. In the USA today, there is very little which isn't privatized. Malls, radio stations, newspapers, web-hosting... If your argument is that private ownership allows one to excuse oneself from any restrictions on discrimination, then you've just struck a major blow against fighting discrimination. If your argument is that these particular people don't fall under restraints against discrimination because their beliefs are bad beliefs that it is okay to discriminate against whilst other religious beliefs are not, then I'd consider that a double standard. The double standard applies, incidentally, whether you're talking about ethics or if the double standard is enshrined in law.
However, I don't want my house burned down, so I ask you to cease and desist, or move out (don't know if I could legally get away with that, but you get the similarity here I hope)
I get the similarity and I understand that position without condoning it. I do not think freedom of expression should be curtailed by fear of violent reprisals ("getting your house burned down"). It's a more honest argument than the people arguing that Rackspace's actions are right, merely because they're not illegal.
You offered a compound argument though, by drawing the analogy with you being forced to rent your house out to anyone. In fact, there are some ethics involved here. If you refused to rent your house to someone because they were jewish, muslim, black, white or whatever, we probably would condemn that. The beliefs of these Koran burners seem no worse to me than what many muslims believe. But that's not the issue. It blurs the lines a bit drawing an analogy in which it is an individual's limited property (you own a house). We're discussing a business selling a service across society. For it to start excluding segments of society for anything other than practical reasons (and the sole practical reason is the danger of reprisals we've discussed), is a discrimination I don't think we should approve of.
Okay, so what was the GP talking about when they said burning the Koran should lose the church its tax exempt status? Unless they're selling tickets to it and pocketing the cash, then I don't see how its relevant. Thanks for the link. GP was probably just babbling.
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.
So you're saying it's okay for companies to discriminate between customers based on expressed beliefs. If you, a private person, don't want to hand your megaphone to someone to spread a message you don't believe in, that's fine. But if you a shopkeeper, want to sell megaphones to everyone but mormons, for example, that's something different.
If I own a megaphone, and I don't lend it to you because I don't agree with you, am I violating your free speech rights?
More accurate analogy - you are a megaphone rental company and one day someone walks in of a political / religious / ethnic / sexual persuasion that you don't like. You continue to hand out megaphones to everyone else, but tell this person they're not allowed to rent one from you.
On the way home, that person also has to sit at the back of the bus.
I don't get the relationship of churches and taxes in the USA. Why not just create blanket categories of Not For Profit organizations and treat a church as the appropriate type?
Same day that your wife stops beating you. ;)
Rackspace is under no obligation to facilitate anyone in distributing their speech.
It is called 'discrimination'. If you withold your services from some people but not others on the basis of their beliefs / gender / race or, basically, anything other than their actions, then it is discrimination. I would guess that many of us (I do), don't consider burning the Koran to be a valid "action" for discriminating on such as using too much bandwidth would be. Where an action is merely a represenation of a belief rather than something that causes direct harm to another, we do not consider supression of that action to be any less of an act of discrimination than supression of speech. If you say: our shop will develop your photos of you wearing a yarmaluke, but not ones of you wearing a witch's hat, it's discrimination.