September 9, 2010 · An Internet hosting company based in San Antonio is no longer supporting the website for the Dove World Outreach Center in Gainesville, Florida. The church’s pastor Terry Jones had planned to burn copies of the Quran on Saturday to commemorate the attacks of September 11th, but called off the protest Thursday.
When someone tries to access the church’s website at the URL doveworld.org, that person is greeted with a blank white page and the words “Bad Request, Invalid Host Name.” That’s because the Internet hosting provider for the church, San Antonio based Rackspace Hosting, decided to terminate its contract with the organization. Rackspace spokesman Dan Goodgame says the company acted on a complaint that the church was publishing hate speech on its site.
“We found out that this customer was in violation of our accepted use policy which they had agreed to abide by when they became a customer. They made clear that they intended to keep putting forward what we judge to be hate speech that was on our two websites. So we said, well, we’ll have to end our relationship. You’re certainly free to take your website elsewhere, that’s your right. So we gave them ample time to migrate their content,” said Goodgame.
The church’s pastor Terry Jones held a news conference shortly after the site ceased to operate and accused Rackspace of violating his First Amendment rights. But Goodgame says the decision Rackspace made was based on a contract issue, not a constitutional issue and that Dove World Outreach Center is free to find another Internet service provider.
|
