Namecheap: Russia Service Termination

I've been setting up infrastructure to do blockade running over the obviously coming great Russian firewall for the last few days and made a mistake of relying on your service. I did expect payment troubles. I did not expect you to help the Kremlin in isolating the Russian populace from uncensored news and communication platforms beyond its reach. Right now my grandparents are going to have greater problem finding news about the war from any other source beyond Putin-controlled bullshit faucets, and so will I. It's likely also the case for antiwar protesters.

Isolating Russian users from foreign internet services is literally the Kremlin's dream, something it could not achieve for a long time even with all the power amassed over the years. It's revolting to see Namecheap and others doing Putin's job for him, while claiming to stand up against his war crimes. And spare me the "tax dollar" spiel. The overwhelming revenue going towards the war comes from oil and gas exports (even more so with the currency crisis), something that is explicitly not being sanctioned - less the Western tech executives are inconvenienced.

If you're going to harm people because of their country of birth to feel better about yourself - say it straight. What you're doing right now will not help a single Ukrainian, and will make Putin more resilient, not less.

I am a business owner that sells services worldwide. We've just checked and found that a non-trivial number of our customers are registered in Russia. I don't feel comfortable with our company receiving their money.

I am appalled and horrified by the invasion and I wish to make this right some how. I just don't know what to do here as the leader. I've had relationships with some of these clients for years, and I know them to be good people. (Others, not so much - they will be easy to lose.)

The other thing is - and I'm ashamed to say this - I have a lot of fear about being drawn into the spotlight by publicly removing customers in the way that you have. We are a well-known data provider in our industry with clients all over the world, and I personally rely on this business for my livelihood. As I said, I feel ashamed and guilty about this, but I just don't feel brave enough to take a stand like you have. That said, I do want to set this right.

So I wonder what can be done?

- We can close the website to new visitors from Russia, and prevent new paying registrations, as an immediate first step.

- We can make a donation to the defence and rebuilding of Ukraine, covering the entire amount of revenue we received from Russian companies in the past year.

- We can contact paying clients located in Russia, informing them that their service is being terminated at our discretion, as we are no longer able to serve clients in Russia. We'll have to check our T&Cs for termination as there may be a 30 day cooldown, but we can certainly immediately stop their payments.

I know this isn't even a half-measure and I feel terrible about that. I'm just too afraid of having a target upon me or my company right now. I will just do what I can because it feels right.

However, unless you apply that same logic to the US, UK, and a host of other nations, you are being hypocritical. They have murdered so many civilians, including kids, that surely they deserve the same punishment.

Yet we both know we're not about to see that, and I think we know why.

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> If more grace time is necessary for some to move, we will provide it.

Why not 14 or 30 days? I've moved domains before (many years ago) and I think it took > 10 days depending on lots of factors, complications, and even had to cut support tickets, etc.. So I'd hate to see an innocent Russian freelancer get punished by this, if they missed your notification and had to move in a hurry.