Quicksearch
Calendar
|
September '10 |
|
||||
| Mon | Tue | Wed | Thu | Fri | Sat | Sun |
| 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | ||
| 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 |
| 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 |
| 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 |
| 27 | 28 | 29 | 30 | |||
Free speech of basic survival instincts?
Tuesday, March 25. 2008
I was initially only going to write about this story in French, mainly because I didn't really want to repeat in English the opinions I'd already voiced in a French-language post on the subject.
But an eCommerceTimes article I read since writing that post has infuriated me enough to get me going on this subject again…
Just for you non-French speakers out there, this is all about the new storm brewing around Network Solutions. This time, it's over Netsol's decision to suspend the website of controversial far-right Dutch politician Geert Wilders. His site was used to promote an upcoming film about the man's obsession: showing that the Koran is a racist book and getting it banned in Holland.
Netsol suspended the website and put the message used as this post's illustration up instead. The company has explained that the domain name hasn't been locked and that Wilders can do what he wants with it. Netsol is apparently just not comfortable with hosting content which might possibly spark the similar kind of racial tensions seen around the cartoons of Prophet Mohammed
I've since read many articles critical of this decision to suspend the site, but none quite so one-sided as the eCommerceTimes. Under the heading "Domain Name Registrars: The Weakest Link in Online Free Speech", the writer of this piece argues that for people who want to take down offending content, the easiest way nowadays isn't to go after the site's publisher, but the registrar behind the website. These "usually anonymous Internet players will fold like a tent in the face of an impending storm" says ECT's Erika Morphy.
While there may be some element of truth to that, the real question is why? Why can it sometimes be too much of a risk for a company whose primary focus is to stay in business to not heed such requests? I'm not as familiar with the American legal and political environments, but certainly in Europe I'd lay the blame on our governments.
In the past few years, we've seen a great increase in the pressures put on registrars to act as a kind of online police force on behalf of governments. In France for example, legislation has been passed or is being discussed to increase the responsibility of hosting companies and registrars in the case of misuse of any kind by the owner/operator of a website or domain name. Politicians who's idea of the Internet is clearly over simplistic seem to think that if there's any problem with a website or a domain name, "we'll let's just get the registrar to pull the plug". And if we don't, we can't… or even if we just don't have any prior knowledge of the problem? "Well it's the law, son!"
It's obviously not quite as bad as that, but the powers-that-be thinking along those lines is forcing registrars to tread carefully. And sometimes, to choose self-preservation over risk.
So the criticism that registrars just fold too easily seems very unfair. Especially when, in the same article, ECT has the gall to write that, by comparison, "a newspaper that is afraid to carry a controversial article is not going to stay in business long."
What? Is that a joke?! I was a journalist for 10 years before turning to the domain name industry and on several occasions, I saw my editor decide not to run a story simply because it might offend one of the paper's advertisers. But after all, newspapers couldn't possible risk losing some of that vital ad revenue, could they? Much easier to ask others to make the difficult choices that they won't…
