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Namecheap: Russia Service Termination

news.ycombinator.com

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Re: Namecheap: Russia Service Termination

#571

Post by jbarham »

I have 30+ domains registered w/ Namecheap. I recently bought an ebook about UI design from a Russian. And I'm a longtime customer of JetBrains. While JetBrains is officially based in Prague (Czech Republic) I understand that many/most of their employees are in Russia. Similarly Namecheap is officially based in Arizona but many (most?) of their employees are in the Ukraine.

I'm definitely ambivalent about this move from Namecheap. I'd be curious to know whether this decision was made unilaterally by Namecheap's US-based CEO or whether it was pushed by their Ukrainian employees.

While Namecheap are understandably angry about the Russian invasion of Ukraine, I'm skeptical that cutting of their Russian customers will do anything to help Ukraine. If anything it will only cause Namecheap to lose revenue and thereby force them to cut jobs in their Ukrainian based workforce. Long term it also creates reputational risk for Namecheap as a company that makes decisions based on short-term political factors.

Requiring Namecheap's Russian customers to transfer their domains to another registrar in the next week is also easier said than done given the financial sanctions against Russia will probably make it much more difficult for them to pay for transferring the domains to a different registrar. I think it's safe to say that the average tech-savvy Russian is probably more anti-Putin than the average Russian as they have to jump through hoops and mess w/ VPNs to access western based services such as Twitter etc. So in practice this move might lead to de facto censorship and loss of income for their Russian customers, many of whom would be against the war.

Re: Namecheap: Russia Service Termination

#572

Post by jablongo »

FabHK wrote: post #489

Here my two cents as someone that has visited, lived in, or good friends in authoritarian regimes such as East Germany, Russia, North Korea, Iran, Hong Kong: - in a democracy, the population is responsible for what the government does. Conversely, the more authoritarian the regime, arguably the less culpable the population is. (Of course, people shouldn't have allowed an authoritarian figure to gain power... indeed.…

All the reporting from (non-kremlin) sources that I've seen say that Putin is quite popular with the average Russian: https://theconversation.com/putins-public-approval-is-soarin....

Re: Namecheap: Russia Service Termination

#573

Post by fjabre »

aluminum96 wrote: post #543
firekvz wrote: post #244

As a non-russia customer, I am inmediatly moving all of my domains I host at namecheap to another provider. this kind of stuff from private companies are useless, and downvote me all you want, they do not work, and dont come to lecture me from your SF desk while im living in a sanctioned country, how did the 2017-2019 sactions for Venezuela worked? Everyone in the world moved on and even forgot about our country, and…

Namecheap is entitled to terminate its business relationship with RU entities, just as you are entitled to do the same with Namecheap. I, for one, will be moving my own personal domain to Namecheap at next renewal. This is a political issue, and I am on the side of sanctioning the invader.

He’s right. It just ends up hurting regular folks.

Putin and friends are doing just fine under sanctions. They expected sanctions for a long time.

This effectively does nothing except make the lives of the non invaders harder.

If you actually want to help Ukraine pick up a gun and go fight.

Re: Namecheap: Russia Service Termination

#574

Post by sundarurfriend »

Seattle3503 wrote: post #561
paxys wrote: post #268

"They should stay neutral in all this!!" – people sitting comfortably in a first world country opining about a company whose 1700 employees in Ukraine – including in Kharkiv – ( https://www.namecheap.com/careers/ukraine/ ) are literally getting murdered as we speak. What should they do? Keep taking support calls from Russia while their missiles rain from above?

Yes, to everyone who is saying "why don't you block Americans for their war crimes as well?" Maybe they would, if American bombs were falling on their city.

So in "the Russian regime's war crimes and human rights violations in Ukraine", the "in Ukraine" is the important part.

The actual message is "you are our enemy and we don't want to provide services for you" - which is fair enough, but not palatable by current business standards, so they instead couch it in moralistic high-ground terms that they can selectively apply.

Re: Namecheap: Russia Service Termination

#575

Post by jacktribe »

fsociety999 wrote: post #436
NamecheapCEO wrote: post #42

We haven't blocked the domains, we are asking people to move. There are plenty of other choices out there when it comes to infrastructure services so this isn't "deplatforming". I sympathize with people that are not pro regime but ultimately even those tax dollars they may generate go to the regime. We have people on the ground in Ukraine being bombarded now non stop. I cannot with good conscience continue to support…

Why don’t you cut off United States citizens while you are at it? The regime that has probably done more damage and caused more instability to the world than any other country. The U.S. uses the entire world as their playground couping any Government that disagrees with them or refuses to bend to their demands and bombing their citizens and civilians. What about the atrocities and war crimes committed in Iraq and Afg…

When the day comes when US tanks cross over into Canada to annex it under a false pretext, running over passenger vehicles; when the US tells its soldiers they are going on a military exercise only to have them shoot at their neighbor; when the US tells the world "if you get involved we'll nuke you"; when the US jails its anti-war protestors for as much as carrying a sign... then perhaps your comparison will be valid. Until then you're just deflecting.

Re: Namecheap: Russia Service Termination

#576

Post by zawaideh »

NamecheapCEO wrote: post #42

We haven't blocked the domains, we are asking people to move. There are plenty of other choices out there when it comes to infrastructure services so this isn't "deplatforming". I sympathize with people that are not pro regime but ultimately even those tax dollars they may generate go to the regime. We have people on the ground in Ukraine being bombarded now non stop. I cannot with good conscience continue to support…

Do Israel next. The tax dollars support Apartheid and war crimes.

Re: Namecheap: Russia Service Termination

#577

Post by NicoJuicy »

jablongo wrote: post #572
FabHK wrote: post #489

Here my two cents as someone that has visited, lived in, or good friends in authoritarian regimes such as East Germany, Russia, North Korea, Iran, Hong Kong: - in a democracy, the population is responsible for what the government does. Conversely, the more authoritarian the regime, arguably the less culpable the population is. (Of course, people shouldn't have allowed an authoritarian figure to gain power... indeed.…

All the reporting from (non-kremlin) sources that I've seen say that Putin is quite popular with the average Russian: https://theconversation.com/putins-public-approval-is-soarin... .

That's the sad thing about this. They don't know better, rural areas only have tv-propaganda.

Additionally, that report is from 23/02. I believe that opinion should have shifted quite a lot already.

Re: Namecheap: Russia Service Termination

#580

Post by bananabiscuit »

gip wrote: post #547
FabHK wrote: post #489

Here my two cents as someone that has visited, lived in, or good friends in authoritarian regimes such as East Germany, Russia, North Korea, Iran, Hong Kong: - in a democracy, the population is responsible for what the government does. Conversely, the more authoritarian the regime, arguably the less culpable the population is. (Of course, people shouldn't have allowed an authoritarian figure to gain power... indeed.…

I have no problem making life harder for Russians, having them cancel their holiday in Turkey, wait in line a bit, move to a new VPN. Maybe that will make some realize that something is wrong with their entire government and they need to revolt and change that fast. This after Aleppo and the rest. I think that the government of a country is a lagging metric of the value of its people.

I guess all the Putin supporters outside of Russia are very lucky to not have to move their domains off namecheap!
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