If you missed Friday's BoingBoing installment of "As the Bugmenot Turns," I'd recommend you read that post before continuing with this one. Following up on that post about the death and subsequent resurrection of registration-avoidance-helper Bugmenot.com, Jeff Wheelhouse of NearlyFreeSpeech.NET — the service's new webhost — says:
"Regarding that post, I want to clarify a couple of potential misunderstandings that could arise based on feedback you received from a reader.– NearlyFreeSpeech.NET is not a racist/fascist organization.
– The bugmenot.com site was probably *not* incorrectly filtered by WebSense.
Your reader is quoted below:
With regard to bugmenot leaving a host that sold racist paraphernalia — their new web host provides service to a combat18 / redwatch site.
This is true. NearlyFreeSpeech.NET is a service founded on the principles of an equal voice for *all* people, without regard for their race, gender, religion, or beliefs. That still applies when the beliefs being expressed are antithetical to our own.
[If they moved because] they didn't want to be blocked by censorship software… Bugmenot had better hope they're not on the same server
this time.If I understand the situation correctly, the second host bugmenot tried, dissidenthosting.com forwarded www.bugmenot.com traffic to another established site with racist content. Presumably, it was *that* site that was blocked by web filters and not the bugmenot site. Ironically, if this is correct, it sort of means that the filtering did its job properly and blocked the racist content. I felt this might not be clear based on your reader's message. Makers of web filters long ago learned that blocking traffic by IP address was not a successful practice. There should be no danger of bugmenot.com, or any site hosted by us, being filtered except upon its own merits (or lack thereof). Of course, some clueless sysadmin somewhere will prove me wrong, but if I am only wrong once today, it will be a good day. NearlyFreeSpeech.NET never redirects 404 errors or offline sites. Again, quoting from your post:
[Ed note: a banner ad on Redwatch plugs a hosting service identified as "Nigger Free Hosting," but the site does appear to live at nearlyfreespeech.net.]
I have long hoped that the 'Nigger Free Hosting' site is some sort of puerile racist joke; the site hardly appears developed enough to be a real hosting company. But whether it is or not, we are not affiliated with it in any way. We are thrilled to have bugmenot.com hosted with us. As you can see, we don't always get to say that. It's clever, it's useful, and it's one guy making a difference. I don't know what happened to the first hosting company to get the site shut down. Probably we're going to find out, and there's a good chance it's going to suck. But we will not go down without a fight, and we will never go down quietly. Not when sites like bugmenot are the whole freakin' point of our service. Thanks!"
