Some might say “but what about my free speech.” I’d say that, as with all businesses dealing with property (even if it is somewhat artificial like with domain names), you are going to be subject to the sentiment of the person or agency you deal with.

Regarding those registrars who claim to hew to the “Rule of Law,” I would advise them to read the essay from Professor Hasnas: “The Myth of the Rule of Law.” Laws are interpreted by men, not machines, and this applies not only to public, but private interactions too. This notion that one can separate their own feelings from the service that is provided to a customer is a rather silly one, as a transaction has to “work” for both parties to get past the finish line. No amount of idealism or scribbles in a law book can overcome this, despite hallucinations to the contrary about how forcing people to “bake the cake” will magically make things right.

If the market eventually favors truly “free” speech that cannot be suppressed by the whims of whatever DNS registrar(s), then a distributed system not under the control of ICANN (but rather machines) will eventually win out as an alternative design. As far as I can tell, however, the market for domain name directory services does not appear to currently scream out for this type of solution — otherwise things like Namecoin would have seen more traction than they have.

I transferred my domains as soon as I learned that Mark “got it” and have never looked back. Dealing with sane businessmen is good enough for me.

The NAP is one of the cornerstones of Libertarianism so I don’t know what you’re talking about. Are you one of the ones who think we had a moral obligation to do business with the Dailystormer crew? They can say whatever they want, but they can’t compel anybody to listen, nor are we duty bound to do business with them. We stand by that.

Our paying customers generally appreciate that we look out for them and keep the kind of riff-raff off our platform that would bring out the DDoS attacks en masse (just ask Dreamhost if they feel a moral duty to host Dailystormer).

Remember: Dailystormer was never a paying customer, they never had any standing here.

No probably about it, it is absolutely subjective and not at all libertarian. ‘We support free speech, except when we don’t like what you’re saying.’

Thats exactly the reason I chose another service. Its the height of arrogance to suggest your paying customers should be grateful that you allow them to use your service.

We certainly don’t intend to offend. Regardless of the source, those websites have been taken down by the Spanish government. We reported here in a previous issue when they raided the offices of the .CAT registry and arrested the CTO.

Further – we try to keep the scope of #AxisOfEasy on technology, privacy and censorship, sometimes reporting on a story is going to intersect with something political by definition, we try not to intentionally ruffle anybody feathers but talk about what is happening.

Your post about Catalonia is offending, I must suppose that you know you are just distributing news from RT.com, a web owned by Russian novosti agency, and that Russian goverment is doing as much as it can to feed this crisis.
If it is an innocent error, please read the following news (from Washington Post) about Russian interference in Catalonian crisis https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2017/oct/2/russian-interference-seen-catalonia-crisis/

Anyway it doesn’t seem too proper to include political news in the blog from a company, and even less to distribute it in a company newsletter.