Re:Gab's domain registrar gives 5 days to transfer domain or...
by Mattasher on Monday September 18, 2017 @12:00PM
(#15277013)
Domain registrars are providing a utility service, they are essentially "common carriers". Imagine if your phone company revoked your phone number, or the postal service refused to send you any mail because of the content of your communications? What if the DMV revoked your license plate because of a bumper sticker on your car? Domains are (at present) a key linchpin of freedom on the internet. If ICANN allows registrars to terminate contracts for political reasons, that's a huge blow to freedom online.
Re:Gab's domain registrar gives 5 days to transfer domain or...
by peoplewindow on Monday September 18, 2017 @11:59AM
(#15277007)
It's really a judge's responsibility to decide if they're breaking the law in this case. DNS registries can't possibly decide if Gab.ai is actually guilty of what they claim given the incredibly vague wording of the requirements. Surely Twitter and the Guardian could be argued to also meet such a vague standard to be banned.
It's quite obvious what's going on here. There's an organised effort to erase people with right wing views off the internet by people with extremist left wing views, who simply describe anything they don't like as "hate speech".
Re:Gab's domain registrar gives 5 days to transfer domain or...
by thatonechad on Monday September 18, 2017 @12:08PM
(#15277083)
You are spot on. They are trying to do it behind the scenes at this point, but as the culture war continues to shift to the right winning they will go full blown. My theory is it will start with google, facebook, and twitter. This is why its more important to get these alternative media up before its too late.
Re:Gab's domain registrar gives 5 days to transfer domain or...
by thatonechad on Monday September 18, 2017 @11:55AM
(#15276983)
Im assuming you are an adult. And as adults we both know exactly what they are doing. Regardless gab should find somewhere else to host their registry and move on.
Re:Gab's domain registrar gives 5 days to transfer domain or...
by AtteLynx on Tuesday September 19, 2017 @06:15AM
(#15283221)
I became a registrar for .fi because I was tired of dealing with other registrars. I only provide domains for myself and my friends, but it's still easier, cheaper, and more secure than going through some third party.
That being said, I have no personal experience with other TLDs, but based on a bit of searching some do seem quite easy to become a registrar for.
Re:Gab's domain registrar gives 5 days to transfer domain or...
by cisanti on Wednesday September 20, 2017 @01:31PM
(#15296240)
That is very interesting, can you give an estimate how much (more) does it cost to you be a registrar and own domains? Compared to random ones. I guess .fi is a bit more expensive than .com anyway.
Re:Gab's domain registrar gives 5 days to transfer domain or...
by matt4077 on Monday September 18, 2017 @11:55AM
(#15276975)
Or, you know, instead of re-litigating the Nuremberg Trials with every single idiot on the planet, use your agency not to participate in their propaganda efforts.
Re:Gab's domain registrar gives 5 days to transfer domain or...
by thatonechad on Monday September 18, 2017 @12:10PM
(#15277097)
Im assuming you are ok with shutting down twitter, facebook, and other social media platforms for allowing far left and extreme islamic terrorist ideologies?
Re:Gab's domain registrar gives 5 days to transfer domain or...
by ZeroGravitas on Monday September 18, 2017 @01:59PM
(#15278035)
Did twitter suggest that it wanted to host terrorist material due to an uncompromising commitment to free speech? I assume if you gave them a magic wand to wave that would remove all terrorist material then twitter would wave it. Could Gab say the same?
Re:Gab's domain registrar gives 5 days to transfer domain or...
by WorldMaker on Monday September 18, 2017 @06:25PM
(#15280226)
Not all speech is equal in building fear/stress/intimidation. Bomb/death/dismemberment threats are very different from the content of my comment.
While most of us feel like we can shrug off threats and "words can't hurt me", that isn't actually true [1], it is possible for a campaign of terrorism (in terms of "intimidation [through fear] for a political aim") to be enacted solely in words.
Freedom of speech is not freedom from consequences, and words have consequences in the way the brain processes them, even if we want to keep arguing whether or not it is valid for speech to also warrant consequences such as a private company (domain registrar) refusing to do business with another private company.
[1] It is something of a comfortable lie that we tell school children to avoid what actual science/psychology tells us is stressful/harmful to humans.
According to this. Scroll down and you can see the post says INTERNET FATTIES something or other. Unless im missing the context it seems pretty ridiculous.
Re:Gab's domain registrar gives 5 days to transfer domain or...
by Overtonwindow on Tuesday September 19, 2017 @01:24PM
(#15286666)
This is getting out of hand. Domain registrars should not have the power to silence speech they disagree with. Not everything is hate speech, and not every platform promotes it.
Re:Gab's domain registrar gives 5 days to transfer domain or...
by ryanx435 on Monday September 18, 2017 @11:13AM
(#15276619)
Richard Stallman has been way undervalued, as a whole, in the last couple of decades. He has predicted this and other similar situations and worked his entire career to try to prevent the "tyranny of software companies", or however he phrases it.
If you don't know who he is, or haven't read up on him recently, please check him out.
He gave a talk at my college back in 2007/2008 that I went to, talking about quants and investment algorithms, and how they had directly contributed to the economic collapse. He made the point that, because all of the algorithms were closed source and not open to public review, they were dependent on the market understanding of the individuals who wrote the algorithms. Given the nature of humanity, many of those individuals likely had faulty or incomplete understanding of the markets, and therefore the algorithms also misunderstood the markets. Free (open sourced) code could have prevented that.
Well, i'm not sure I agree with his conclusions about that. I asked him about his thoughts on the recursive effect the algorithms would have on the market (the algorithms were so prevalent that they basically were the market makers, thus changing the market itself to reflect their faulty assumptions about the market before their existence).
He said it was an excellent question, didn't have an answer, and offered me an internship to work on that problem under his direction. I declined for various reasons.
Re:Gab's domain registrar gives 5 days to transfer domain or...
by cheez on Monday September 18, 2017 @11:26AM
(#15276732)
Disclaimer: I wrote some of those algorithms. I used to believe that as well: the algorithms are gobbledygook, but once I got into it and really understood, I realized it's use of the algorithms that was problematic. The first time I priced mortgage-backed "bonds", I was honestly aghast as to how it was possible to perpetrate such a structure.
After a lot of testing, I realized that the models were fine, but the politics behind choosing the parameters were to blame (hint: the ones that gave the best bonuses).
Just my 2c. Stallman is smart, and correctly called a lot of the stuff that is happening now, but I don't think he is right there.
Even if those people are using the company's services to break the laws of the country the company operates in?
It's quite obvious what's going on here. There's an organised effort to erase people with right wing views off the internet by people with extremist left wing views, who simply describe anything they don't like as "hate speech".
That being said, I have no personal experience with other TLDs, but based on a bit of searching some do seem quite easy to become a registrar for.
https://archive.fo/D70Yr
While most of us feel like we can shrug off threats and "words can't hurt me", that isn't actually true [1], it is possible for a campaign of terrorism (in terms of "intimidation [through fear] for a political aim") to be enacted solely in words.
Freedom of speech is not freedom from consequences, and words have consequences in the way the brain processes them, even if we want to keep arguing whether or not it is valid for speech to also warrant consequences such as a private company (domain registrar) refusing to do business with another private company.
[1] It is something of a comfortable lie that we tell school children to avoid what actual science/psychology tells us is stressful/harmful to humans.
According to this. Scroll down and you can see the post says INTERNET FATTIES something or other. Unless im missing the context it seems pretty ridiculous.
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2017/09/twitter-rival-ga...
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
If you don't know who he is, or haven't read up on him recently, please check him out.
He gave a talk at my college back in 2007/2008 that I went to, talking about quants and investment algorithms, and how they had directly contributed to the economic collapse. He made the point that, because all of the algorithms were closed source and not open to public review, they were dependent on the market understanding of the individuals who wrote the algorithms. Given the nature of humanity, many of those individuals likely had faulty or incomplete understanding of the markets, and therefore the algorithms also misunderstood the markets. Free (open sourced) code could have prevented that.
Well, i'm not sure I agree with his conclusions about that. I asked him about his thoughts on the recursive effect the algorithms would have on the market (the algorithms were so prevalent that they basically were the market makers, thus changing the market itself to reflect their faulty assumptions about the market before their existence).
He said it was an excellent question, didn't have an answer, and offered me an internship to work on that problem under his direction. I declined for various reasons.
anyways, he was correct about a lot of things.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Stallman) (https://stallman.org/)
After a lot of testing, I realized that the models were fine, but the politics behind choosing the parameters were to blame (hint: the ones that gave the best bonuses).
Just my 2c. Stallman is smart, and correctly called a lot of the stuff that is happening now, but I don't think he is right there.