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IncogNET filed an official complaint against HE with the Attorney General of Washington State
This discussion has been closed.
Comments
@Altes I’m not sure I understand you, but I don’t think he is comvicted of anything at all
Your point is just your personal moral take on Kiwi, and this forum has had enough of that, from both sides, so I ask that we don’t fall into that rabbit hole in here
@emgh
What part is difficult for you to understand? CloudFlare rejected their services to three sites known in history, and KF is one of them. They didn't do it for the lulz, they did it because they couldn't be sure that the situation wouldn't escalate, and cyber stalking is a huge problem to begin with, and the law enforcement falls short of doing anything useful due to the miscreants using multiple jurisdictions (thus the "criminal's point of view comment) and if you were a legitimate and honest operation, you would be operating in the good ole US of A and you would defend yourself in the court of law -- legally.
Morality has nothing to do with the law, and in this case, you need to understand that we all have to answer to someone, and Josh would like to think that he can pretend to have a legal site, use criminal tactics, but answer to nobody and hide behind the guise of free speech?
It really doesn't work like that, and I am not saying this to be a contrarian. I am merely saying it because it's being misrepresented as a free speech issue when it's not.
Stormfront is the best example of free speech on the Internet, and you can't do anything about the site being hosted in the US because it violates no laws whatsoever, and the site is moderated (maybe not effectively, but enough to show that there's at least some sort of effort being put into it), which means that you have to simply accept the fact that people have varying opinions, and that there's nothing illegal (or bad) about it.
People who want to see KF die are quite literally seeing Josh play into their hand and doing everything a criminal would do: go to seedy hosts, change jurisdictions, hide away in remote places, etc. All of those things portray you as a villain, and not as someone who is interested in freedom of speech, or defending it. But rather, using it as a tool for their own gain, whatever that may be..
@Altes you start with an insult and proceed to expect me to read a wall of text, no thanks, but I hope it felt good typing nonetheless
It was not an insult, I asked you what part of the message was difficult to understand? You have the full context of the message, and not one part of it was demeaning or condescending. Lol
Yes it was
”For you” indicates that I’m stupid and that the message was clear to anyone else, classic passive agressive word usage, just like ”I’m sorry if you felt that way”
It’s a school book example really, no reason to argue around it, it just is
You show the same exact intent in your message where you try to prove no such intent by adding ”Lol”
You do you, but no way I’m reading it
@Altes The content of KiwiFarms has not been found illegal in the state of Washington. The argument is that HE is operating (customers and physical infrastructure) in the state thus performing actions illegal within that state.
I may be autistic, or something like that, but I'm not a liar.
If I say that I wasn't making fun of you, then take it for what it is. I probably should have worded it differently, but I didn't, and here we are. But, as said before, I was not making fun of you. I genuinely asked and wondered what part of the message you didn't understand, or rather, what part of it was confusing so to speak?
@Altes if that’s the case, all good
What I was confused about was the word criminal and unlawful entity, but I don’t recall any court ever claiming so?
If I’ve missed something, that’s fine, but I don’t recall anything like that.
And by using terms like criminal and unlawful, I think your argument gains more authority since you indicate that a lawful court where the site is based has found it criminal and unlawful, but they haven’t - right?
But isn't that the whole point here? Extenuating circumstances, it's what's fucking him in the ass (to be blunt).
KF, its content, or anything relating to KF has NOT been found illegal in any court of law, and their argument is bs (people who are trying to take KF down are also acting like criminals sometimes: DDoS, fake complaints, etc), but what's not bs is this:
Does not being found an illegal website in the court of law also mean that you are in fact a legal operation, and that you are operating legally?
No, it does not... You don't see any court finding a website that operates on the fringes of society illegal, why? Because it's a pointless and a very expensive exercise.
Usually, the proprietor would have to be domiciled in the said country, and they would have to have some sort of assets (I believe Josh has none?) as well, in this case however, the only things that are certain are the following:
Josh has an extreme dislike (or fetish) towards trans people, and can't resist publicizing it, and making the KF users into his own little army.
Josh is playing into their response the way that they would want him to; firstly by switching to Tor, and then by continuing to utilize services from shady companies and jurisdictions, almost like he has the mind of a criminal, and doesn't understand that you can defend yourself in and your "legal" website in other ways as well.
My only advice to Josh from someone who actually uses the site is to stop playing into it, and let it run autonomously, with the help of a legal professional, and yeah, even though it sucks that you would have to take action on a frivolous legal complaint, it's still the law, and we all have to obey it, unfortunately (?).
Otherwise, you can't really be screaming "free speech" if you're only pretending to be a legal site.
Thank you for being cool about the first part; I do promise that it wasn't a dig, I wouldn't have elaborated on the issue extensively if I got off on making fun of anyone.
So, when it comes to ESP's (Electronic Service Providers) you have to operate your website in a legal manner, and you have to act on complaints in a timely manner, as well.
Say for instance, imagine if FictionalHostingForum.com let hosting providers advertise any illegal services openly and brazenly, and imagine FictionalHostingForum.com was informed of the said allegations and refused to do anything.
Imagine if they were once again informed of the said allegations many different times, and if the alleged issues continued to happen.
Those alleged violations would be documented, and should they ever be brought before court, you could in fact prove that FictionalHostingForum.com allowed criminal activity to flourish, and did nothing when they were informed of the alleged issues.
Obviously, the issue here is a little bit different, because it deals with the topics of cyberstalking, non-consensual pornography, dealing in information obtained through unlawful access, leaked information which was only sent to a specific person, etc, etc.
When you have so many instances where reporting of said ocurrences was not only arbitrarily handled, but also ignored or even ridiculed in some cases, where it resulted in even more abuse towards an individual, then you honestly cannot be surprised that you don't have to have your website found illegal in a court of law for it to be cut off from the Internet.
It stops being about whether or not they support freedom of speech, it's basically about whether or not them letting the website be online in its current form will result in anything bad, e.g. something that the company cannot possibly be saved from.
Risk management isn't a game, and in the case of KF, should it be in its current form, how could you as a company, whether you're a T1/T2/T3 or a random hosting company be sure that the website will in fact be moderated now?
For example, Josh's interpretation of the law is fucked at best, and in his opinion, moving the non-consensual nudes behind the login form is somehow "legal", and a wise approach, even though it's quite literally illegal for him to ignore a proper DMCA notification.
If you are an ESP, and operate legally, you have to take it down, even if it's OBVIOUSLY fake. It's not up to an ESP to nitpick or even give a shit; it's up to the poster of the said information to counter it or not, and the ESP could counter it as well, but then they would have to OWN the said information themselves, and if you as an ESP take ownership over your poster's content, then, obviously... it would be an even bigger liability issue at hand.
TL;DR version of this post is that cyber crime is really difficult to tackle, especially when you have domain providers in Whateverfuckistan's and hosters in random shitholes, and no one will provide any funding for cases like this. I mean, you have cases in most of our countries where a cyberstalking victim can beg the police for help for years, and end up committing suicide shortly thereafter because of their ineptitude, or rather, the lack of care...
In KF's case, there are in fact individuals who have genuinely be harmed by the site's users, and Josh's cockiness hasn't helped the issue either, because it increased the abuse (and that's one of the biggest reasons why it's impossible to claim to be a legal site, when illegal behavior isn't sanctioned) but there are also individuals who are simply hating on KF because they want to see the world burn, and nothing else.
I for one would be happy if KF resolved its issues with the rampant abuse, because even though it though the site wasn't a pretty sight back then either it still wasn't this bad, and painting a target on people's backs in my opinion was a full retard move, and it encouraged, and directed a bunch of vulnerable and misguided people into doing Josh's bidding for him, even though he should have resolved the issues with the said individuals as a man, and not basically publicly blame them for wanting to see their reports being acknowledged.
I hope this thread doesn't go so far off topic that a mod decides it's worth closing.
The purpose of our complaint was to formally put in the public record that Hurricane Electric has taken it upon themselves to cancel one of our customers without first contacting us. We'll let the AG and those much smarter than us fight over the definition of 'broadband access'. Whichever way you slice it, the manner in which they acted was extremely unprofessional and is setting an uncomfortable precedent.
Suppose it's always possible they did get some kind of court order and a gag order over it. I would much more appreciate that knowledge.
I've considered that as well, but it would seem that in that case the federales would likely be more interested in the traffic data than saying, "No! This is bad! We can't have this on the internet!" and would likely want the site to remain in one place and compel HE to capture traffic data. At least, that is my assumption. I assume that is why websites like the literal neo-nazi site The Daily Stormer is still being protected by Cloudflare.
We received one complaint (non-HE) and it was just some copy/pasted general complaint from some TikToker or something. That was it.
Look at what KF is doing from a different perspective. As it is currently a legal operation, all the deplatforming up to this point is because of decisions that private companies can make based on some catchall clause in their AUPs. They may be very controversial decisions that set a very bad precedent, but they are allowed to make them.
But, because KF is not being persecuted due to any legal reason, they are completely free to host the site in eastern Europe, in China, over Tor, or whatever other means you consider "shady" or "criminal" (these things are not actually criminal, in case you weren't aware). The only thing saying he can't is your opinion.
Only now that Josh has discovered this potential opportunity in Washington can he leverage it to force an ISP to uphold a legally operating site there. Is that strategy more or less "shady" in your opinion?
Besides, sites on the fringe do get taken down. Does silk road ring a bell? And in the US, you can file pro-se and in forma pauperis (represent yourself and court fees waived). It is not an extensive or expensive exercise, the cost is only the time it takes to file. In reality, it costs Josh more time and money to pay lawyers and defend himself, as he has already done for numerous lawsuits in relation to the site, and won.
If the people involved in the complaint bombing campaigns had any case against KF they would bring it to court and it would be done forever. But they don't and we all know why. So instead they resort to actual shady and criminal activities like DDoS.
It's a public thread, I don't see the harm in discussing as to why they did what they did?
I think you were probably misguided in believing that a site had to have been deemed illegal in the court of law, and that they have to send a notice to transit providers and ISP's; but they don't. It's only done so for piracy websites, and mainly because they are either inherently illegal, or ignore DMCA notices.
In this case, letting it traverse through their network could open them to issues such as:
What I wouldn't consider as an option is that they did it out of the goodness of their hearts, IMHO. It's a business decision, and a good one. Probably made by their risk management team. Very easily explained by any lawyer, so it's not like they are afraid of any repercussions, especially considering that the issues at hand are ignoring legal complaints and jerking off to people's tears (literally, lol).
Homie, there's that saying, it goes something like: don't bullshit a bullshitter.
KF's true and main purpose is to discuss lolcows, and as such, there's nothing illegal about that.
The illegal parts are the following:
So no, homie... I don't buy your argument about him being a martyr, or that he wouldn't be able to run the website in the US were it to be operated legally.
If you allow yourself to be known as a site operating on the fringes of society, you will eventually garner enough attention from the feds; they couldn't care less, because every site of that type can be guilty of something, because for it not to be guilty of something, you have to operate it in a legal manner:
I can only see this ending two ways; he either starts actually operating as a legal website, or it ends up being a "proxy bay" type of thing where people will run frontend proxies for it until they actually see that it's not really a freedom-of-speech thing but rather a wanting-to-operate-lawlessly-on-the-internet thing...
Of course, by all means. I just meant I didn't want the thread closed due to name calling or anything that seemed to be happening earlier. I've only skimmed the thread, haven't read it in full.
It's common courtesy regardless if required or not. Aside from their action being questionable under Washington State's laws, it's just unprofessional. It'd be unprofessional for me to terminate your server without notice (even after the fact) just because I didn't like that you were pro-life or pro-choice or running a campaign site for a politician I don't like or whatever.
Could be, though the announcement was still relatively new and fresh so not much time for proper assessment in my opinion. Still seems that you have more to lose (business wise) by caving to a small group that aren't particularly known for self-hosting their platforms. Seems like most that have complained are Twitch Streamers, TikTokers, or other social media types. Maybe they are buying racks and spending big money on transit. Doesn't seem likely, but I wouldn't know one way or the other anyway.
Perhaps in time we will find out the real reason. I didn't realize this was going to blow up like this. I just wanted to tweet some cool AI art I made with a blurb about how we're doing our part to stand up for free speech. Filing a report hopefully means we get at least some sort of official response. I don't have faith in much positive coming from it, but it's worth putting in public record at least.
Fire up the good ole Tor, and read up a bit on KF... a lot of entertaining threads, but also a lot of abuse. Mainly towards trans people, and alcoholic/self-destructive YouTube stars, camgirls, washed-up celebrities, etc... the general rule is to just watch the trainwreck, and not affect the outcome, but there are sick people out there, and some of them harass them, post their compromising pictures (these are not famous people or anything, they're not even "stars", lol), contact their relatives... you name it.
If the site were to be properly moderated, none of this would be an issue in my opinion, but Josh is either immature, or genuinely doesn't understand the impact KF has (or had) on the people that are being discussed on the platform. I won't say that they are helping the situation themselves either, but most of them have no supportive partners or families, and end up being targeted by a bunch of weirdos for being themselves, and nothing more than that.
In this instance, you can clearly see who is the victim, and who is the perpetrator.
@Altes
You will find far worse content on mainstream websites.
You are forgetting about this, aren't you:
But nice try, nonetheless. I'm a KF user, so I kinda know it both inside and out, and you can't tell me that mainstream websites have far worse content, and if they do, they probably do take it down when they receive a legitimate notice.
Once again... I'm merely playing the devil's advocate here, and only trying to say that this has nothing to do with freedom of speech. It. really. does. not.
The trans stuff does not affect if the site is legal and what federal laws is Kiwifarms breaking?
So IANAL, and this isn't federal law but as this complaint is in washington state let's stay there, but the non-consesual posting of nude photos would violate 9A.86.010 in Washington state and by locking it to logged in users that would in a way confirm that he has seen it and knows of it's existence and as such I would expect he wouldn't be protected by the federal safe harbor provision in section 230.
I don't really care about kiwi farms I think there a shitty site and I just ignore them. But in this case I do see how HE could argue that the site was in fact not legal and as such the provision they have made the complaint under doesn't apply.
This has nothing to do with legal this or free speech that or lolcows. This is strictly business.
When you look at CF for an example, the CEO can post whatever he wants on his blog being pro free-speech, pro-life, pro-barney. The problem is, either A, the bean counters or B, the shareholders, are the ones that call the shots.
Money talks and bullshit walks. Period.
With low revenue clients like this (who cause the most drama btw), based on the number of shares CF issued, if they drop 1 cent due to the bad PR and/or the amount of HR time it takes to deal with all the BS (abuse etc), they’re actually losing more than what the account is worth. It’s smart business to send the account walking, not keeping it online.
For HE, supporting sites like that, sends a bad message to their corporate clients, who actually spend large amounts of money who, in today’s age, have a more snowflake culture. Bite your tongue or get written up for hurting someone’s feelings. My old boss, when he started working for another company, had to take the same sensitivity course 3 times because he couldn’t keep his mouth shut. Needless to say, he’s not working there anymore. I wonder why? In today’s age, now people get trophy’s for coming in last place. Can’t hurt their feelings, it has to be equal.
When (insert random sports/movie/whatever) star gets arrested, they get dropped by Nike. Oh no, they weren’t convicted! Doesn’t matter. Their behavior doesn’t match with the vision and/or code of conduct Nike has. They don’t want the drama and they don’t want the drama dropping share value.
What law is the site breaking?! Who cares!! Show me a law that states the carriers/providers have to keep sites like this online or keep them as a customer either directly or indirectly. It doesn’t exist. In any country. You’re free to pick and choose who you want to host your content the same way they can pick and choose who they want to provide services to. Piss them off, there’s the door.
Yes, it was shitty the way HE did it, however the OP is lucky they didn’t drop their upstreams port because of it. Now the question is, how many more times will HE put up with shit like this before the port does get dropped. I wonder what choice the upstream provider will have when they get told either drop the client (the OP) or the port is terminated, which ironically is the same situation this site has caused, multiple times now, for other providers!
You guys can bend and twist state laws all you want however, AT&T does clearly outline what their broadband internet access service is and it has nothing to do with wholesale network capacity (transit). HE/Cogent don’t offer broadband services therefore that law doesn’t apply to them, hence why they did what they did. The AG won’t fix that.
Do you think it should be legal for the post office or fire department to refuse service to somebody because of your opinion, regardless of if they are a criminal? The reason people don't buy your argument is that in 2023 and for the past decade or more, the Internet has become an essential service and people feel it should be protected in the same way.
If that means the internet needs to become nationalised or regulated such that some ISP is controlled by the US government and strictly adheres to the law, or that a state law like the one in question applies, then so be it. Of course it's not an ideal solution, the ideal solution would be that the ISPs just do their job.
~snip~
No sir, they have laws that prohibit that. Again, there are no laws stating a provider has to keep any site or customer online. If they believe the internet should be looked at the same way, then they need to pass the laws for such. Until then, they can do whatever they want.
A law like that sounds nice. And remember, it wouldn't oblige ISPs to keep any customer, but just the ones that follow the law.
I agree, the Internet should be transparent and unless an actual law is being broken or bad billing etc, the carriers can pound sand. Unfortunately, that's not the case right now. However I wonder why that law doesn't exist and I'm sure the carriers cry about losing share value because of it. So now we go right back to the start.
That very well may be true, and I agree re: KF (and also their counterparts that are bullies all the same to the opposite end of the spectrum), but--and I'm not sure how much of this is public yet--it is the manner in which HE did it and the refusal to acknowledge it. Extremely underhanded, extremely unprofessional, extremely scary (in the US). Ignoring NN in WA state, that has been the bigger issue internally. I think HE would have been better suited to make us aware, give notice and a resolution time-frame, let us pass this on to our downstream, and resolve it like any other abuse/take-down request.
The reason it is worrisome is because what comes next? Local firearms shops we host? Some off-color KF-lite social media sites we host? Some more "extreme" adult-themed stuff we host? It's all legal, and we absolutely follow local, state, and federal laws. Having absolutely 0 visibility into the decision making process or having any form of a resolution process is what irked and worried us. If we have to get into picking and choosing transit providers based on the politics of who currently works there, the whole show breaks relatively quickly. KF is the canary. It might be a shit-covered screeching canary, but it is a canary none-the-less.
I'm the upstream, so I will tell you: they can terminate the port.
Losing access to a HE port in eastern WA won't change the day to day and most customers won't even notice. It would be quite a stretch for them to terminate a legally binding contract by saying "Someone in your network violated AUP, but we can't tell you who or what they violated and you're also now terminated". That being said, I wouldn't be surprised after what just happened. I will staunchly defend my customers' legal rights to the furthest extent I can reasonably do so. I would want all of our customers to know and expect that same respect and treatment. We are a service provider, not a content moderation platform. Would I directly take KF on as a customer on our platform? No, I'd have to charge for the added burden so we're not a good fit. Will I force any of our customers to take down legal content? Absolutely not.
As far as all the armchair lawyering about the definition of broadband, I guess that is up to the AG and courts to decide. You may be correct and that is how they end up translating it, but legally speaking AT&T does not control the definition of 'broadband'. I wouldn't even rely fully on Wikipedia, but they claim 'broadband' is:
and when laws are drafted, they generally use open and encompassing language for this specific purpose. The state law was written specifically for individuals and small businesses, it would probably help a lot of people in this thread to read the text of the bill first before starting up their legal arguments. In particular:
That is why I posted the bills definition.