[soac-mapo] when is a domain name "incitement" that can be prohibited?

[Robin Gross <robin@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Interesting real world development of relevance to the discussion on the legal 
standard of incitement / instigation to commit violence.

The words "kill x" alone is not incitement under US law that can be prohibited 
(unless x is Obama).

Robin

.........
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/01/14/death-threat-domain-names_n_809174.html

Death Threat Domain Names: Registrar Says Killjulianassange.com Will Not Be 
Removed

The Huffington Post  Lila Shapiro Posted: 01/14/11 03:23 PM

BoingBoing has a quick post up today claiming that "Registering death threats 
as domain names is the hot new thing in psychopathic anti-Wikileaks action!"

According to vivantleakers.org -- a new site created to track "cyber-bullying 
domain names of wikileaks associates" -- multiple death-threat domain names 
have been registered going after Wikileaks director Julian Assange. 
Killjulianassange.com and julianassangemustdie.com are recently registered 
examples, although they have no content on them at this time.

Go Daddy, the site which registered both killjulianassange.com and 
julianassangemustdie.com said there is nothing that can be done about either 
site while they are contentless. Go Daddy registers a domain name every .8 
seconds -- any domain name can be registered and there is no human intervention.

"Unless and until there is content associated with killjulianassange.com there 
is no way for us to know what that means," said Christine Jones, Go Daddy's 
General Counsel. "There's no way to judge whether there's going to be something 
done with that domain name or if it is going to be violating any rule."

In the past week, Go Daddy has received numerous calls regarding the death 
threat domain names, but the company has no intention of taking action at this 
time. The one exception to this, Jones said, would be a domain name death 
threat for the President, "if the secret service contacted us, we would almost 
certainly take action on those domain names."

Assange is no stranger to death threats of the old fashioned kind either. In an 
online chat with the Guardian Assange wrote that anyone making threats against 
his life should be charged with incitement to murder: "The threats against our 
lives are a matter of public record, however, we are taking the appropriate 
precautions to the degree that we are able when dealing with a superpower."

Domain name attacks have become increasingly popular in a wide range of 
scenarios.

To prepare for an allegedly forthcoming WikiLeak which will supposedly reveal 
troves of highly sensitive information, Bank of America reportedly bought up 
scores of domain names that are critical of the bank and CEO Brian Moynihan.







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