When you can't do everything, doing nothing is not the only option.
The web needs neutrality. Just because registrars CAN pull the plug on domains, that doesn't mean registrars MUST or SHOULD do so (or threaten to do so) in as many cases as possible. Nor does it mean registrars have the role or responsibility to canvass the web looking for sites to take offline.
A registrar can't monitor all web content. Hypothetically, let's say the registrar monitors 0.1%. Which 0.1% will that be? A random sample would be inefficient because the majority of content is innocuous. So the registrar would selectively choose the 0.1% of content that it deems most likely to deserve censorship. Customers in that category would be subject to investigations, ultimata, or expulsion at a much higher rate than normal customers.
Fair? Only if you imagine that registrar employees are competent experts at determining the legality of web content. (They're not.) Only if you imagine that they have no biases. (They do.) Only if you imagine that a registrar can't be influenced by outside pressure. (They are.) Subjecting some deliberately chosen 0.1% of web content to a threat of de-platforming by a registrar actively looking for content to censor – that does not necessarily make the web more stable, secure, or fair.
Imagine that you are the registrar employee whose primary job is to find objectionable content and to take action to censor it. Suppose that, at the end of a year, you don't find very much content that needs to be censored. Do you tell your employer: "Good news, boss! I did my job and found practically nothing"? If so, you lose your job. No, you meet your quota. You find content to censor, whether it needs to be censored or not.
Cost need not be passed onto customer, unless registrar margin is tight (I think not).
Of course it's tight. Indeed, it's a perfect example of a low-margin business. Registrars compete to gain customers by reducing their prices until the margin is zero or near-zero.
Suppose a registrar hires 1 or more additional employees to monitor web content and censor whatever is objectionable. It is inevitable that such cost is passed along to the consumer with higher prices. Or else the registrar must divert manpower toward censorship, and their level of service declines. In response, customers leave.
The status quo uses crowd-sourcing. That's free because the general public monitors the web every day. No 1 registrar employee can replicate the amount of monitoring millions of citizens provide. Registrars receive complaints of abuse from the general public, and they investigate those. And when registrars are contacted by a UDRP panel or a law enforcement agency, the registrars collaborate in providing information. That's the way the system SHOULD work.
ICANN is neutral. And I have heard nobody at all demanding that Verisign, as the .COM registry, should become an active police force and subject all .COM domains to censorship based on Verisign's own criteria. Since ICANN is neutral / agnostic / not involved, and since the TLD registry is neutral / agnostic / not involved, why on earth should the domain registrar be any different?
ICANN sets policy for all gTLDs. Registries set policy for each particular TLD. Registrars can only set policies for their own customers. So of all 3 parties, the LEAST effective at censoring the web is the registrar. Why? Because if 1 registrar's policy threatens to pull the plug on a domain based on content, then the domain will usually just be transferred to a different registrar. Given that obvious shortcoming in a registrar's ability to censor the web, and the inconsistent policies among registrars large and small, why on earth would people expect the registrar (and not the registry or ICANN) to be the web's police force and engage in censorship of content?
As I've explained previously, the registrar actually has no relationship with content. The domain owner, publisher, editor, writers, moderators, forum members – they create and monitor the content. And the content is stored and supplied by a separate company: The web host. So it seems very peculiar that people have focused on the domain registrar as the entity responsible for policing online content. Why? Just because registrars have the capability to pull the plug on a site? That means they're responsible for content? Registrars only maintain whois records, enable DNS records to be edited, and facilitate domain transfer processes. That's it.
It's mind-boggling that domainers (who should know better) want to voluntarily entrust censorship of all online content in the 21st century to a hodgepodge of companies (domain registrars) that are literally not involved with the online content itself. For the purpose of deciding what you are allowed to say or see online, do you really want to designate registrar employees as censors? You know: The people who answer questions about authorization codes, expiration dates, and name servers. These individuals should be tasked with finding content that makes them uncomfortable? And they should decide whether to pull the plug on what they find?
To a hammer, everything looks like a nail. Active censorship invariably becomes over-censorship. History is full of cases studies. I was reading an interview recently with Mario Vargas Llosa about the Odría dictatorship in Peru and the pettiness or arbitrariness of its government censors, whose decisions often made little sense. How to appeal the decision of a government censor in a dictatorship? How to appeal the decision of a domain registrar to suspend / delete / confiscate a domain? It's not easy. Do we want to registrars doing more in this area? Really?
Once special interest groups see registrars willing to de-platform content – even actively looking for content to censor – they will apply pressure to the registrar in order to censor the content they object to. There are strong financial incentives to go along with what they want, since it saves time and avoids negative publicity. Already this happens. It would only escalate.
Only customers with fear of censorship and de-platforming would FLEE a registrar.
Yes, but more and more customers would have a justifiable fear of censorship, once registrars begin actively looking for controversial content to kill. They'd apply their own standards, which I might not agree with. And they'd do in a way that disproportionately targets some customers or some topics or some viewpoints and not others.
Having worked at a registrar and having been a customer at dozens of registrars for nearly a decade, I would never voluntarily give away my right to host content elsewhere or publish my own content on my own domain name. Ask yourself, if someone wants to censor something that you publish on your own domain, then wouldn't you want that person to show cause and follow due process? If it is just some registrar employee telling you that your website has been taken offline because they judged the content to be problematic, then wouldn't you be furious? Wouldn't you expect someone qualified like a court or a UDRP panel to be involved? Or should the registrar just act unilaterally to kill your site if they please?
Not asking that operators take over role of police & courts but would prefer they don't just hold up their hands and say "Nothing to do with us".
Most consumers register a domain at a company they can trust to be neutral and not to interfere unnecessarily.
A deliberate position of neutrality is NOT an abdication of responsibility. Registrars are, in fact, involved in enforcement activities. We cooperate with UDRP panels and law enforcement agencies all the time. I personally have spent more hours than I care to count supplying information for UDPR cases, subpoenas, and the like.
In some cases, we registrar employees police nefarious activity and shut it down ourselves (e.g. phishing, spam, malware). But there are matters where content needs to be assessed more thoroughly or authoritatively than can be done by a registrar employee. For example, if someone is accused of libel, the registrar doesn't pull the plug on the website without first obtaining a court order. We don't assess the legality of the insults in someone's article. Likewise, registrars shouldn't adjudicate trademark complaints or transfer domains without a UDRP decision. The same applies to the legality of posts by individual members inside the Gab forum or to pharmaceutical websites and many other cases. As a registrar, we await an official finding by a competent authority. Registrars are a bad choice for adjudicating complex disputes because their staff has no experience or authority.
This is an important point. A registrar that adopts a position of neutrality is still actively involved in policing web content. But we do so as a witness, not as a judge. Registrars provide information. During the investigation and once a decision is reached, registrars take appropriate action to put the domain in a safe condition that respects the rights of all concerned.
The web needs neutrality. ICANN, registries, and registrars are part of the web's neutral infrastructure. Society has appointed agencies that are qualified to police the web: police departments, prosecutors, judges. ICANN has done so by creating the UDRP, for example. We want the web as a whole to be a level playing field, I assume, where legal content can still be published without censorship. Right? I'm not sure that everyone agrees with that anymore, but it's what I personally favor. Assuming we want the web to be fair, then agencies who censor content need to be trusted. Such agencies need to be authoritative, based on regulations that everybody in the society has a chance to change. That's the case with ICANN policy and with local and national law. It's not true of individual registrar policies and never will be. Such policing agencies need to be authoritative, competent, and neutral. A registrar and a registry each have commercial conflicts of interest that can prejudice them in favor of a paying client or against an unpopular client. So they may not be as neutral as we'd like. Registrars and registries don't have the staff to be competent as a law enforcement agency. And nobody will believe that 1 registrar's policy is authoritative for the web as a whole.
When you can't do everything, doing nothing is not the only option.
Just because you CAN do something doesn't mean you SHOULD. Registrars can pull the plug on any domain, cutting it off from content or registrant access. Does that mere ability to pull the plug mean that registrars ought to police all web content?