If they're willing to terminate service for political reasons in this case, who's to say they won't do it in the future for other political reasons? Here begins the slippery slope of Namecheap terminating service to those it deems "wrong".
Been a happy, confident Namecheap user for a long time. Now I'm not so confident.
This is a terrible attempt at slippery slope argumentation. Launching a major land war while pursuing nuclear escalation is a solid cliff above cancel culture.
I am highly sympathetic to the plight of civilians under Putin. Good people in a bad place.
But come on. Crimea was annexed almost a decade ago. The troop build-up was broadcast for months. For several days, international airlines were flying. Unlike in Ukraine, nobody is subjecting Russia’s people to mortal peril. But there is a bare minimum level of culpability that comes with nationality. Being told, with advance notice, that you need to move your domains amply clears that threshold.
Our Russian contractor has been attempting to emigrate for most of his life, and he has a leg up on the rest of the people in the country because he lives in a border town and his family is historically from Poland. That he has not succeeded should maybe tell us something about how easy this sort of thing is.
Also, if you are a U.S. citizen and you would not like to support the droning of weddings and the indefinite detention and torture of taxicab drivers at Guantanamo Bay, you need to pay $150,000 or so to Saint Kitts or some similar country to buy a citizenship so that you can end your relationship with the IRS.
We don't hold ordinary citizens accountable for the crimes of their country. Putin invading Ukraine doesn't justify dropping bombs on Russian homes.
But culpability? For resident nationals? Unless you were a dissident or in the opposition, yes, you absolutely bear culpability. I wouldn't even go so far as to say in a moral sense. Not automatically. But at least to one's ability to interact with other countries' economies.
> But culpability? For resident nationals? Unless you were a dissident or in the opposition, yes, you absolutely bear culpability. I wouldn't even go so far as to say in a moral sense. Not automatically. But at least to one's ability to interact with other countries' economies.
Maybe you are right. But holding ordinary citizens accountable doesn't always work the way we want. That's exactly what the West did with Germans after World War 1.
It depends on what you mean by "holding accountable"
Germany was financially crippled and mostly demilitarized after WW1 which of course hugely affected the population. But in terms of _actually_ holding people personally accountable, there was a much stronger and organized effort after WW2, see e.g. [0]. I think that worked out rather okay. So I don't think it's quite as simple as saying it doesn't work.
The U.S. killed like 2 million civilians on the Korean peninsula and Japan slaughtered about 200,000 civilians in a major city in China. U.S. and Japanese subscribers to this service should watch out. I should be especially concerned, as a U.S. subscriber living in Japan.
(I am residing in Russia, anti-war, anti-regime and don't have any domains with Namecheap)
Launching a major land war: let's take the Iraq operation for instance. Did any private company cut ties with its US customers over that? I really doubt it. Could an ordinary US citizen realistically do something to prevent the Iraq war? I really doubt it. Have the Iraq war lead to anything good? I don't think so. Death, destruction and ISIS.
I mean... I would be OK if namecheap decides to terminate the service for other countries that threat the world with nuclear bombs. I think that's a whole different level.
But countries that constantly drop non-nuclear bombs on other countries and murder civilians and children are still cool, right? USA only averages 46 strikes per day for the past 20 years. So maybe the cutoff is at 50.
This isn't just about them. This is happening to Russians with nearly every western based service. There are Russians stuck in the EU because their credit card company blacklisted them. Where was this energy when the US was taking a flamethrower to the entire Middle East region? Really eye opening and I'll never forget this.
> Where was this energy when the US was taking a flamethrower to the entire Middle East region?
Muted for two reasons:
(1) racism, as many people have noted, but also
(2) the fact that the regimes the US was taking a flamethrower to in the middle east were ones that the international community would have acted against previously for war crimes, etc., even despite racial bias against the targets, but for superpowers standing in the way (notably, in the case of Saddam’s Iraq, the United States itself.)
Yeah it's not all about them but you can bet the employees were wanting as big a reaction as the company could give after they are being invaded. Can't expect fully measured responses, in the end this is a relatively little disruption compared to what they're going through
I would not be ok with that. Threats of nuclear war should be resolved at the negotiating table. Random private companies voluntarily retaliating only risks making the situation more delicate.
Literally everyone is willing to terminate services for political reasons given the right reasons for their politics. If Russia was invading a city where you or your coworkers were working and your employer decided to stop doing business with them, I think you might be more forgiving
Personally I'd hope that anyone that gets their offices bombed by another nation would stop and think critically about how much they want to support the people trying to literally kill them.
The problem with the slippery slope fallacy is that it goes both ways. If they're not able to suspend service during a war of conquest on the home of their employees, when can they?
Putin going Hitler doesn't seem like a slippery slope, it's surprising they're even able to legally continue business relationships with Russian customers at this point.
Been a happy, confident Namecheap user for a long time. Now I'm not so confident.