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Namecheap: Russia Service Termination

news.ycombinator.com

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Re: Namecheap: Russia Service Termination

#411

Post by ryantgtg »

hysan wrote: post #240
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…

As a long time Namecheap user, I support your decision. To everyone complaining, have you first tried to contact support and explained your situation? It's clear that Namecheap will talk to you to understand your situation and help where it can. It's also one of the reasons why I switched to them many years back. Not every company hides behind their nameless, automated robots.

Seems like not a great time for their chat support to be down for maintenance.

Incidentally I am in the process of transferring a domain to namecheap today.

Re: Namecheap: Russia Service Termination

#412

Post by propagandist »

lwneal wrote: post #311

I was surprised by this, until I realized that one of Namecheap's offices is in downtown Kharkiv. Today, the Russian military bombed Kharkiv with cluster munitions [1]. Civilians were killed, possibly including children [2]. Given the severity of the situation, I'm surprised that Namecheap has not opted for more drastic measures- for example, redirecting Russian web traffic. Simply transferring Russian businesses to…

That does need indeed put it into perspective.

This was a decision made by someone who has heard horror stories and seen their cheery teammates turned into shells of themselves.

Re: Namecheap: Russia Service Termination

#413

Post by jacktribe »

bakugo wrote: post #149
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…

Everything about this screams immaturity. You didn't think about this, how it would affect others, whether or not it would actually improve anything for anyone, etc. This doesn't affect the Russian government in any way whatsoever. You are not making a difference, not a positive one anyway. You're acting purely based on spite, attacking mostly innocent people in any way you can purely because they are living under a…

You're missing the point. It's supposed to inconvenience the Russian people.

You can't have it both -- benefit from western companies and technology, but keep a leader in power that is completely indifferent to any human life and suffering other than (arguably) the one of the Russian people.

We like to think that we're all just citizens under the rule of the few, but we're all complicit in who governs us, whether we like to admit to it or not.

In the west we're all very aware that any kind of regime change in Russia will involve bloodshed amongst innocent Russian people, but that is already happening right now -- except you've exported the genocide to your neighbors, Belarus and Ukraine, and that is unacceptable.

Re: Namecheap: Russia Service Termination

#414

Post by neohaven »

NamecheapCEO wrote: post #123
raxi wrote: post #109

But such moves only shows the unreliability of businesses that preach net neutrality and similar things and in fact discriminate based on ethnicity. So they show that Putin is right, that democracy and liberalism are dead, that Ukrainians are nazi, and rally people around him even more.

We've always had a policy that almost anything goes excluding human rights abuses and especially war crimes and supporting violence. Nothing changed here.

I would have assumed that to mean, very specifically, that you wouldn't do business with, for example, a Private Military Contractor accused of human rights abuses. The specific business. Not brushing off the individual citizens of an entire country collectively, no matter their agreement with the war, for the issues you have with the country's governance. In some cases, they would have assumed themselves safe with you, in fact, because they were not seemingly aligned with their government and more aligned with Western values, and thought you would be more censorship-resistant. Far from them, I am certain, would be the idea that you would be the first to threaten their domains when they can't even pay for another registrar. (Which is another thing that would have been a good reason for, say, a Russian activist to renew with long 5+ year terms, which... Are you going to refund those? Or just tell them to figure it out?)

I mean, I can understand where you're coming from, but it's a stretch. I would not think that's what the language means in the terms. At all. It would make an activist's day 1000x worse. Imagine if they're right now being detained and can't renew or move their domain (and this is why they took a 5 year term with you!) and they can't even see this email or this discussion. You might make the worst week of their life into a much worse one. It seems bad for business. Just saying. Older netheads expect the net to be censorship resistant, not ban-happy, for what it's worth.

Re: Namecheap: Russia Service Termination

#416

Post by Beltalowda »

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…

Donating all income from Russian users to the Ukrainian war efforts or refugee relief efforts would have seemed like a much more satisfying (and effective!) way to go about this.

Re: Namecheap: Russia Service Termination

#417

Post by crossroadsguy »

Anybody affected by this or not, at this point I’d really recommend moving your domains away ASAP from such unstable leadership anyway. Just read in the comments and see how this person seems to be taking such critical decisions at whims comment by comment. They seem to have simply lost the plot. Tomorrow it can simply be you at the receiving end unless you change your passport to where this company is based (not sure even that will work) - assuming they’d give a clean chit to at least that country.

PS. Or maybe Namecheap is making a smart preemptive business move. It’s a good possibility that very soon Russians might not be able to pay them for renewals (at least for sometime) and then when they start letting the domains expire, and rightly so, they do not want to deal with “please be considerate”.

Re: Namecheap: Russia Service Termination

#418

Post by propagandist »

amir734jj wrote: post #176
xanaxagoras wrote: post #125

I'm not in Russia and I don't really care about this war (sorry, just being honest!) but this isn't the kind of internet I want, where companies show their virtue by taking political positions and removing service from their customers (looking at you AWS). The domain and e-mail service that I paid money for shouldn't be contingent on my government behaving and continuing to behave in a manor that Namecheap approves o…

It was a decision more motivated by the sanctions than human right of war crime.

The email and CEO's explanations say otherwise.

Re: Namecheap: Russia Service Termination

#420

Post by FateOfNations »

jacquesm wrote: post #357
waffle_maniac wrote: post #290

Quoted post unavailable.

Once upon a time trading with the enemy would get you shot. Now obviously those days are past and it is no apparently perfectly acceptable to do this (see: German Gas), but for Namecheap this isn't about money, but about the fact that their employees are mostly in Ukraine and that you are effectively asking them to continue to trade with the party that has declared themselves their enemy, which they - in good conscie…

In the legal "trading with the enemy" sense an "enemy" is a country your country is actually at at war with... Germany is not currently at war with Russia, Ukraine is.
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