EasyDNS refuses to host The DailyStormer domain

It should be clarified, but I appear to have missed your comment until the edit window had closed.

As to your second paragraph, I agree completely. I hate the negativity associated with a term like 'virtue signaling', but it seems like EasyDNS here was looking to virtue signal that they're not doing business with nazis. I expect they'll get a lot more business out of that than if they'd just quietly refused to do business with DailyStormer.

To (poorly) paraphrase someone else's thoughts on the matter, the fact that nazis, or the Westboro Baptist Church are free to spew their bile without censorship gives me comfort that the media has the freedom to be critical of our administration. I understand that this isn't government censorship, but honestly, I'm a little bit shocked that the DailyStormer is still hunting around for a host / registrar, and if this story hadn't broken, I might have gone on just assuming that they'd found a new home somewhere.

"Freedom of speech should not exist for people who do not want freedom of speech"

This sounds like a conundrum to me. If you think groups should not have free speech if they don't support free speech, then you don't support free speech and shouldn't be allowed to speak.

I think I expressly acknowledge that there's a difference, and I'm not looking for government intercession.

> Further, certain kinds of speech have never been considered protected: "fighting words", certain classes of harassment, fomenting seditious, the famous "fire!" in a crowded theater

You should really read this:

https://www.popehat.com/2016/06/11/hello-youve-been-referred...

and to a lesser extent, this:

https://www.popehat.com/2012/09/19/three-generations-of-a-ha...

Also, legislatively, the fighting words doctrine is basically toothless today, if it's not entirely dead.

Worth noting though that punishments for use of speech are an entirely different thing than refusing to allow someone to speak. Again, I acknowledge that no one is beholden to DailyStormer, or any other nazi to hosting their site -- I get that, and it's not a decision that I particularly fault -- it just doesn't sit well with me that a website has apparently been searching for a host for some time now and can't find one.

Maybe that's a testament to how far we've come as society -- perhaps if I were a better human, that's how I'd see it, but I see it as troubling, regardless of the content.

> Anyway. "free speech" is not a uniform perfect right that applies maximally in all situations

Nor have I suggested that it is, but it seems you think you understand the subject better than you do, and I think it's an important enough right to be informed on.

I just went to Bulletproof.ai and on their front page they stated their registrar .ai AKEP told them they had to drop ds. So not that bulletproof.

Something of a parable (not my words) follows:

In Chesterton’s The Secret of Father Brown, a beloved nobleman who murdered his good-for-nothing brother in a duel thirty years ago returns to his hometown wracked by guilt. All the townspeople want to forgive him immediately, and they mock the titular priest for only being willing to give a measured forgiveness conditional on penance and self-reflection. They lecture the priest on the virtues of charity and compassion.

Later, it comes out that the beloved nobleman did not in fact kill his good-for-nothing brother. The good-for-nothing brother killed the beloved nobleman (and stole his identity). Now the townspeople want to see him lynched or burned alive, and it is only the priest who – consistently – offers a measured forgiveness conditional on penance and self-reflection.

The priest tells them:

> It seems to me that you only pardon the sins that you don’t really think sinful. You only forgive criminals when they commit what you don’t regard as crimes, but rather as conventions. You forgive a conventional duel just as you forgive a conventional divorce. You forgive because there isn’t anything to be forgiven.

He further notes that this is why the townspeople can self-righteously consider themselves more compassionate and forgiving than he is. Actual forgiveness, the kind the priest needs to cultivate to forgive evildoers, is really really hard. The fake forgiveness the townspeople use to forgive the people they like is really easy, so they get to boast not only of their forgiving nature, but of how much nicer they are than those mean old priests who find forgiveness difficult and want penance along with it.

From Scott Alexander: http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/09/30/i-can-tolerate-anything...

Forgiveness here is somewhat like free speech. If you are for free speech when you do not find it objectionable, you are not really for free speech at all.