Censorship: Fitna The Movie

Pt. I The Tech Issue (Skip if You're a Tech)

Network Solutions ain't the only game in town - either as a Domain Registrar, a DNS host, or a web host. It's closer to Billy Joe Bob's gun shop deciding you're more trouble than your worth, so you end up having to go down the street to Joe Bob Billy's gun shop where the coffee isn't as good but the prices are lower on a smaller selection - it's not as if Billy Joe Bob can ban you, even if he wanted, from the whole world of guns. Even if he did wish you'd cut back on the beans.

Same deal with Network Solutions. Right now they hold all three of the pieces above for the Fitna domain from what I get from the news stories. Yay for them. The domain owner isn't without options - he can transfer the domain registration to another host, change the DNS hosting to another DNS server, and he can move the web hosting elsewhere (to a co-location service, to a dedicated hosting facility, or to a box in his basement as he chooses) and if worst comes to worst and Network Solutions tries to hold the Domain hostage...he's not exactly barred from inventing a bright shiny new domain name and registering it with a more sensible registrar and then setting up hosting for the dns and web any place that'll have him (might be good to read the Acceptable Use Policy this time, though).

And a domain is "somethingsomething.com", DNS is like the internet traffic cop that reads a domain name and tells your computer where to go look for the web page or to send the email, and web hosting is the physical place a website lives.

Pt. II

What, according to the news, Network Solutions has done is turn off the web hosting pending an investigation. To my eye that doesn't exactly make them a stand-up citizen in the fight for truth, freedom, and the American way - and in fact is kind of obnoxious. But...at the end of the day, the servers and such *do* belong to them and they can write their AUP pretty much the way they want - but since they aren't the only game in town, that means that offended folks can meander off to other homes on the net.

Not quite the black and white picture the MSM would like to paint us, but that's the problem with being observant...grey happens a whole lot more often.

Crusader Rabbit pretty well nails it.