Neo-Nazi site The Daily Stormer lost its domain name registrar on Sunday when GoDaddy (finally) got fed up with the site’s flagrant disregard for GodDaddy’s terms of service.
Monday morning, publisher Andrew Anglin registered the domain with Google’s domain service. Shortly afterwards, Google cancelled the site’s registration.
Google’s terms of service gives it the right to “accept or reject Registrant’s application for registration or renewal for any reason at its sole discretion, including, rejection due to a prohibited, improper, unavailable, infringing or otherwise questionable domain name.”
The name is based upon “the gutter Nazi propaganda sheet known as Der Stürmer,” according to the Southern Poverty Law Center. The white supremacist website is associated with the nation’s self-described alt-right movement.
GoDaddy’s terms of service is more specific than Google’s, barring sites that “promotes, encourages or engages in terrorism, violence against people, animals or property.” However, GoDaddy has allowed its subsidiary, Domains by Proxy, to provide domain service for the site since its founding four years ago.
Without a domain name registrar, websites cannot easily be found.
The registrar provides a service that links the IP address of the computer hosting the web content with the human-readable domain name.
Although registrars use language like “selling a domain name” to describe their service, there’s no actual “sale” involved. Instead, there’s contract for leased service, which may be annual or longer. Failure to renew a contract results in loss of domain name, allowing someone else to become its registered “owner.”
Registrars are accredited by ICANN, the non-profit organization that oversees both IP addresses and domain names.
The actual content of The Daily Stormers is hosted by Cloudflare, which “will not deny its services to even the most offensive purveyors of hate.”
It is possible that Daily Stormers publisher Anglin deliberately picked Google Domains because of the controversy around an employee who was fired last week for spouting gender-biased malarky (“the argument in the document is, overall, despicable trash”). See From Google to GoDaddy, fringe speech brings unwelcome spotlight.
Known for gnawing at complex questions like a terrier with a bone. Digital evangelist, writer, teacher. Transplanted Southerner; teach newbies to ride motorcycles. @kegill (Twitter and Mastodon.social); wiredpen.com