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August’s top news and podcasts

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Top 5 etched into a rubber stampHere are the top five stories on Domain Name Wire last month, ranked by views:

1. Turmoil in the SSL market – After propping them up, browser makers are dealing a big blow to SSL certificate sellers.

2. Epik CEO Rob Monster statement on 8chan – Rob Monster and Epik were in the spotlight again last month after 8chan moved its domain to the registrar. It will allow the domain to stay, but not use its other services after its upstream provider cut it off.

3. This is a dirty way to use an expired domain – A double amputee’s domain expired. Someone bought it and turned it into a gambling site with a new logo matching the guy’s name.

4. Scott Wagner leaving GoDaddy for health reasons, new CEO from Expedia named – It’s the end of an era at GoDaddy.  Aman Bhutani will take over as CEO.

5. Huh. Guy wants to trademark “Premium Domain” – This trademark application isn’t going anywhere.

Here are the four podcasts from the month:

#250 – I speak with Mitch Stoltz about EFF’s concerns about the new .org contract. Listen

#249 – Jeffrey Black’s attorney, Mike Rodenbaugh, discusses the expensive battle to defend IMI.com. Listen

#248 – I chat with Radix CEO Sandeep Ramchandani about the state of new TLDs and his company. Listen

#247 – New Sedo CEO Matthias Conrad explains what his company does well and how it can improve, plus his early impressions of the domain aftermarket. Listen

Epik provides update on 8chan

by — Domain Registrars 21 Comments

Epik will provide registrar services but not content delivery. CEO Monster says, “Their community grew and their moderation skills did not.”

Screenshot of 8ch.net, the website for 8chan

A screenshot of 8ch.net, the 8chan website, on August 3. As captured by Archive.org. Further down the page are deragotry threads about black people and Jewish people, among others.

Domain name registrar Epik has issued an update on providing services to 8chan.

8chan came under fire after the shooting in El Paso this weekend. The site operator moved the domain to Epik, a registrar which has welcomed domain names for other controversial websites such as Gab.

Epik CEO Rob Monster told Domain Name Wire yesterday that it had not solicited 8chan’s business. He also said that the company had not made a decision on whether it should provide content delivery services and DDoS mitigation to the site.

Then Epik’s upstream provider for these services, Voxility, pulled the plug. This caused Epik to scramble to replace Voxility.

Today, the company said it will not provide content delivery services to 8chan. Here’s the company’s statement about this:

Upon careful consideration of the recent operating history of 8Chan, and in the wake of tragic news in El Paso and Dayton over the weekend, Epik has elected to not provide content delivery services to 8Chan. This is largely due to the concern of inadequate enforcement and the elevated possibility of violent radicalization on the platform.

How much of this decision was Epik’s as opposed to finding a backend provider for its services is not clear. Perhaps Voxility just forced its hand. Monster elaborated on the official statement in a message to Domain Name Wire:

The issue is that their community grew and their moderation skills did not. This was neglect, and like a neglected building it eventually became a menace to itself.

Monster told Domain Name Wire that his company will continue to provide registrar services to 8chan.

Epik CEO Rob Monster statement on 8chan

by — Domain Registrars 63 Comments

8ch.net moves to Epik. Here’s Rob Monster’s response.

Picture of Rob Monster, CEO of Epik

Rob Monster, CEO of Epik, releases statement on 8chan moving to his registrar.

8Chan, a website again in the spotlight after the shooting in El Paso this weekend, has switched registrars. It already got booted off of its DDoS provider CloudFlare. Now, perhaps to avoid any pressure from its domain registrar, it moved to Epik for registration services. Epik also offers DDoS.

Epik has accepted domains that other registrars have kicked out, including Gab.com.

The registrar’s CEO Rob Monster said that it did not solicit 8chan’s business and is evaluating whether to offer it DDoS mitigation. Here’s Monster’s full statement about 8ch.net moving to the registrar.

Freedom of speech and expression are fundamental rights in a free society. We enter into a slippery slope when we start to limit speech that makes us uncomfortable. The censorship we’ve seen across major social media platforms as of late has created a vacuum. Our services fill the ever growing need for a neutral service provider that will not terminate accounts based on arbitrary reasoning or political pressure. Our philosophy is, if the customer is not breaking the law, they are protected under our umbrella of services.

Specific to any of the “Chan” sites, Epik did not solicit this business. We have not made a definitive decision about whether to provide DDoS mitigation or Content Delivery services for them. We will evaluate this in the coming days. From what little we know so far, the Chans are not lawless and do have moderation, especially in regards to DMCA and content which is illegal in the United States. Ultimately, we believe that the best disinfectant for darkness however this must absolutely occur within the bounds of the law.

Year in Review: Domain names and free speech

by — Policy & Law 12 Comments

Registrars continue to grapple with thorny questions about content.

Free Speech

What role do domain name organizations play when it comes to free speech? This continued to be a hot topic in 2018.

In the United States, the government cannot limit free speech. But businesses are not obliged to do the same.

Domain name companies try to stay out of thorny issues about content on websites but they have limits. Last year, GoDaddy told the operator of the white nationalist site Daily Stormer to move his domain off the platform after the death during the Charlottesville rallies. The website’s content wasn’t hosted at GoDaddy, but GoDaddy faced lots of pressure. The kicker was when GoDaddy determined that the site was inciting violence.

This year GoDaddy took similar action with Gab.com after the person who murdered people in a Pittsburgh synagogue was found to have posted hate speech on the site.

Rob Monster, the founder and CEO of domain name registrar Epik, welcomed Gab.com onto his platform. Although he doesn’t agree with much of the commentary on the site, he believes that sites should not be “de-platformed”. The decision to accept the domain brought a lot of heat and a subpoena from Pennsylvania’s attorney general.

It will be interesting to see how domain companies approach this thorny issue going forward. Will registries get more involved on various types of domain takedowns?

Pennsylvania Attorney General subpoenas Epik over Gab.com domain name

by — Domain Registrars 35 Comments

AG asks Epik to hand over communications with Gab.

Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh Shapiro has asked domain name registrar Epik to send it information about its interactions with Gab, the social network that came under fire after one of its users shot people at a synagogue in Pittsburgh.

Gab.com was registered at GoDaddy before moving to Uniregistry, and then to Epik. Epik founder Rob Monster got in touch and invited Gab to move the domain to its service, but he said he didn’t take the decision lightly.

It’s not clear what the Attorney General is looking for, but he is asking for all communications between Gab and the company, information about people working at Gab, and any complaints about Gab that Epik has received.

Gab disclosed the subpoena on twitter.

Update: Gab has deleted the tweet about the subpoena.