A sign outside the Dove World Outreach Center in Gainesville, Florida. The official Dove World Church site was taken offline today. Newscom
“Web-hosting company Rackspace has pulled down a pair of websites belonging to the Dove World Outreach Center church and the Rev. Terry Jones, who promised – and then canceled plans – to burn copies of the Koran on the anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks. As of 9 p.m. on Thursday, the official Dove World site remained offline, although the cached version was still available.
Dan Goodgame, a spokesman for Rackspace, which is based in Texas, told the AFP today that Dove World had “violated the Offensive Content section of its Acceptable Use policy… As a customer of Rackspace, they agree to adhere to the policy and they didn’t,” Goodgame added.
According to the AFP, Goodgame pointed specifically to a clause that forbids any content that is “excessively violent, incites violence, threatens violence, or contains harassing content or hate speech; and creates a risk to a person’s safety or health, creates a risk to public safety or health, compromises national security, or interferes with a investigation by law enforcement.”
Question: is throwing a rock through a church sign because you don’t like what the church is saying…is that a hate crime? Or is it only a hate crime if the sign belongs to a mosque?
Another Question: if someone starts threatening to commit violence because they don’t like other Rackspace-hosted websites, will those violent threats now make the content on those websites “Offensive”?
Hundreds of websites offend people. Do we start taking them all down? Or do only take down sites if someone threatens to commit violence? BTW: Dove World was not threatening violence – Muslims were.