Which entities should take down websites, and when?
There has been a lot of talk about censorship and taking down websites over the past couple of months. On today’s show, I talk with Tucows CEO Elliot Noss about the issue. Tucows is one of the world’s largest domain name registrars. We discuss the role that registrars and registries could play in taking down domains used for nefarious purposes, and how Noss’ take on the issue has changed over time. He also explains what Tucows is doing about it.
Also: New DNS Abuse Institute, a peachy domain sale, bitcoin domain, and more.
Sponsor: Sav
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“domains used for nefarious purposes”: Who decides when a domain is used for “nefarious” activity or not? In the actual “cancel culture”, NO ONE should have that “power”, unless it’s really really necessary (which is rare, IMHO). In any case, registrars shouldn’t be able to do it without a proper court order.
When you arrive around the 10mn mark, your guest is just becoming scary: Countries and courts won’t do something (I really understand “enough”), so we the registrars will start to become some bad vigilante because we think very highly of ourselves… Cancel culture at its finest 🙁
To me, the guy just made a 30mn advertisement for Unstoppable Domains & decentralized domains.
After finishing the podcast, I’m just asking myself the question: What are we even talking about, exactly? I’ve listened half an hour about the supposed need of taking more things down and the need of more “policing”. But WHAT would actually need to be taken down? It always stays very vague or not said at all.
Yes.
23:00 “Citizen of the internet”
That is where the sophistry of his collectivism begins.
This has a name, it is called communism from Latin communis, ‘common, universal’.
Where did I vote to become such a thing? Or do I get not vote and this will be forced onto me by those men who think themselves in control of my life and freewill?
https://imprimis.hillsdale.edu/the-history-and-danger-of-administrative-law/
“I argue that the rise of administrative law is essentially a re-emergence of the absolute power practiced by pre-modern kings. Rather than a modern necessity, it is a latter-day version of a recurring threat—a threat inherent in human nature and in the temptations of power.”
“Administrative acts by executive agencies are a way of driving off-road, exercising power through other pathways. For those in the driver’s seat, this can be quite exhilarating.”
“Administrative adjudication evades almost all of the procedural rights guaranteed under the Constitution [and all other country’s sovereign laws]. It subjects Americans to adjudication without real judges, without juries, without grand juries, without full protection against self-incrimination, and so forth.”
“If all printers were determined not to print anything till they were sure it would offend nobody, there would be very little printed.”
– Benjamin Franklin
“To learn who rules over you, simply find out who you are not allowed to criticize.”
– Voltaire
“Once a government is committed to the principle of silencing the voice of opposition, it has only one way to go, and that is down the path of increasingly repressive measures, until it becomes a source of terror to all its citizens and creates a country where everyone lives in fear.”
– Harry S. Truman, President of the United States, Special Message to the Congress on the Internal Security of the United States, August 8, 1950
“The most effective way to destroy people is to deny and obliterate their own understanding of their history.”
– George Orwell