Hollywood Trashes Americans 1st Amendment Right To Free Speech. Shuts Down Anti-Hollywood Website

BushCountry.org ^ | 05/04/03 | Jim Ownbey

[justme346]

Help Bush Country expose this injustice.  Do your part in sending this to Foxnews, CNN and any other news outlets you can think of.  We MUST stop Hollywood liberals from taking rights away from regular Americans. What are we talking about? Read below:

The William Morris Agency has been successful in silencing the American Public with their efforts in closing down the website http://www.boycott-hollywood.us. If you cannot access the site, here is the cached page: http://www.hollywoodhalfwits.com/boycott_hollywood.htm

WMA has put pressure to Dotster through their Attorneys (Rintala, Smoot, Jaenicke, & Rees LLP in Los Angeles, CA) to close down the website, which consisted of the postings of every day American Citizens expressing their feelings and opinions about Liberal Hollywood. The full info is posted on the boycott-Hollywood. us website which will go down permanently in 24-48 hours.

This is clearly an infringment of our 1st Admendment rights of free speech and is outrageous and unforgivable on the part of WMA.

See below for info from the boycott-Hollywood site.  Help us by contacting these people and all the media outlets you can find to share your outrage!  Remember when Martin Sheen put out a commercial to inundate Washington DC with calls, faxes, and emails?  We guess Hollywood believes it's ok for them to do this, but the average American citizen is NOT allowed!  Bush Country for one, will keep up the fight!  These anti-American Hollywood leftists will never see a penny of our money ever again!  Here is the email sent out from the Boycott-Hollywood.us website along with a letter from the law office. Here is the email that was sent out to their supporters:

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Well, folks - it's been a blast and it's been fun.

Apparently, our domain registrar (namesdirect.com - subsidiary of Dotster.com) have caved to the pressures of the William Morris Agency giant. On April 29, 2003, Dotster.com received a letter from the William Morris Agency in regards to this website. Their complaint accused us of liable and potentially other civil and criminal offenses.

This is another fine example of how Hollywood feels that their opinion and view is the only one that matters. Average citizens are disallowed the free expression of our point of view because they don't like being challenged for their views. I stand firm on the belief that we have done nothing wrong at this website - - The celebrities have expressed their views, and we have responded in kind by expressing our views regarding the thoughts and ideas that they have, publicly, expressed.

Dotster.com has suspended our update information at this domain and have informed us that the DNS information of this domain has been changed and the website will be down within the next 24 hours and our contract with them is now null and void. They are doing this because we did not provide accurate contact information in their public database.

When I explained that the reason we did not provide accurate contact information is because we have received multiple death threats and I did not wish for just anyone to have my personal information - and asked them for suggestions on what to do - Dotster was unmoved. They did not give me the chance to update the information with accurate information and keep the domain. That's not an option - - they are just simply going to shut down our domain - no explanation needed.

Further questioning of Dotster brought me a copy of the letter sent to them by the William Morris Agency and reads as follows:

We, in fact, received no such email from the William Morris Agency.

I can say only this - - the fact that we're being shut down because of the William Morris Agency tells me that we truly touched a raw nerve in someone, somewhere. At the very least, it tells me that our message was received by the people that it was intended for. The very fact that we cannot express our opinions regarding the views of these stars/celebs shows me, yet again, the double standard that exists in Follywood.

Thank you all for your support at this website - it appears my hands are tied in keeping it open. Dotster will be closing down our site within the next 24-48 hours. I appreciate the hard work that Chris and Reilly have done at this site and appreciate the ongoing and intelligent, provoking discussions held here.

Warm Regards.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Bush Country thought we would provide email addresses for both WMA and major media outlets.

Emails for WMA:

admin@wma.com; bgd@wma.com; eseastrand@wma.com; jmb@wma.com; jec@wma.com; jornstein@wma.com; jgiaime@wma.com; mguss@wma.com; mai@wma.com; rem@wma.com; shg@wma.com; tc@wma.com

Phone number for the Attorneys Office: 1-310-203-0935

Email Addresses of Media Outlets:

drudge@drudgereport.com; comments@foxnews.com; hannity@foxnews.com; oreilly@foxnews.com; cnn@cnn.com; netaudr@abc.com; World@MSNBC.com; letters@MSNBC.com

It would be best to send this web pages url to the media outlets explaining in your own words what is going on. To send the email using Internet Explorer, click on "File" then "send" and then "link by email".

Hopefully, with our combined efforts, we can expose Hollywood once again.

[CyberAnt]

"inaccuracies of its representations"

Excuse me ... are they trying to tell us that they can stand on a stage and "represent" that our military is killing "thousands of civilians" and we don't have the right to call those "inaccuracies of its representations".

Well ... in the free enterprise of America, I'm sure there is a web host who will be more than happy to have the website. We need to stop bellyaching and just get another website. If they try to shut that down, we'll go on to another web host. Surely there is one left in America who will not be cowed by a bunch of lawyers - who obviously don't know what the Constitution says about the 1st Amendment.

THERE IS NOTHING IN THE FIRST AMENDMENT WHICH SAYS - YOU HAVE TO TELL THE TRUTH IN WHAT YOU'RE SAYING.

[Arpege92]

"The www.boycott-hollywood.us website may potentially be liable, both criminally and civilly, for a variety of offences."


Notice the word "potentially"......by using this word in their accusations, it proves to me that we have done nothing wrong!

[muir_redwoods]

Total sidetrack but remember the old joke:

"Did you know that Elvis just signed with the William Morris agency? It seems he wants to stop being seen."

[friendly]

Loser Pays would solve this supression of Free Speech in a heartbeat. This is the law in the civilized democratic world. Loser pays is also just simple justice.

The action by this evil, corrupt lawfirm is technically known as a SLAPP, a strategic lawsuit against public participation.

SLAPPs use the extreme expense of litigation for a innocent party to legally defend against fale charges, in order to shut down free speech and public participation.

In Loser Pays, the crooked lawfirm and its Hollywood Left clients would have to pay all the expenses of the little website.

[Inkie]

You are 100% correct. It is dotster's prerogative as to whether it will host a particular site. If it pulls privileges in response to pressure from its public, that is no different from any country music station, say, refusing to play Dixie Chicks songs in response to pressure from its public. I'm as anti-Hollywood lefties as anyone, but this is not a First Amendment issue.

[justshe]

Thank you!

I also am "as anti-Hollywood lefties as anyone", as you said, but this willy-nilly throwing out 1st Amendment rights as an excuse, is exceedingly dishonest!

[timestax]

bump to the top

[Timesink]

*Is* this a violation of the first amendment? While the behavior of WMA has been despicable, I don't see that the federal government has passed a law inhibiting speech. When we have the moral high ground we should pound Truth and Justice, rather than squandering our point with idiotic pseudolegal blather.

The relationship between the US government and domain name registrars is somewhat complex, but there's no question that the privileges of all private domain name registrars companies are devolved directly from the National Science Foundation, which is the US government.

A smart lawyer could absolutely nail this in court as a First Amendment violation. It probably wouldn't result in anything more than Dotster losing its right to register domains, but hey, destroying the entire company is essentially the death penalty. I'd be quite happy, myself.

[Timesink]

In what manner has the federal government attempted to shut down this website.....which would make their claim re: 1st Amendment rights infringement legitimate.

Dotster's "privilege" to register domains is granted to them by the US government. If Dotster and all the other domain registrars got together and decided "Well, we're not going to register conservative sites," then conservative sites would not be able to get online at all*, and that is a direct 1st Amendment violation since they're more or less government-licensed.

* Getting very technical, you still COULD set up a conservative site, but you'd have to use an IP address, a pure number (like 127.0.0.1) that nobody could remember ... it would be vaguely analagous to the phone company telling you "Sure, you can have a phone line, but we won't tell you what the number is."

[AlexW]

Your link has a "period" at the end...
Leave out the period and the site comes up just fine.

[Timesink]

You are 100% correct. It is dotster's prerogative as to whether it will host a particular site. If it pulls privileges in response to pressure from its public, that is no different from any country music station, say, refusing to play Dixie Chicks songs in response to pressure from its public.

No it isn't. The United States Government has set up a system whereby they have authorized private companies to handle the job of registering and maintaining Internet domain names, a job that used to be handled by the US government itself. As such, Dotster has NO prerogative to arbitrarily decide to whom they will and will not provide service, because if they could, entire sections of the population could be prevented from setting up web sites. They can only refuse and/or yank service in response to specific violations of the law. A pissy threat from a lawyer does not qualify.

[Excuse_My_Bellicosity]

But of course. They throw in "potentially" so that they can throw down any accusation they want without proving a thing. It's the same tactic as the news media that makes outrageous accusations about GW Bush in news headlines, then puts a question mark after it so that they don't have to be responsible for it later. (Some examples: "Bush is incompetent?" "Bush is going to war in Iraq just for oil?" "Bush only cares about rich people?")

[breakem]

I agree that those who protested this site are hypocrites, but "hollywood" didn't shut it down. The web site providers did. They wet their pants when they got the letter instead of giving them the finger as they should have.

[Excuse_My_Bellicosity]

I would have thought that dotster would have at least wanted to see a reasonable explanation of what laws were violated or what breach of ethics occurred.

I would agree that it's not a 1st Amendment issue any more than Jim Robinson's decision to ban a poster from FR. (Most people don't realize that the intent of the 1st Amendment is to prevent the government from stifling free speech, it's not supposed to apply to every magazine and web provider that decides that they don't want to be affiliated with certain type of material or subject.)

[DoctorMichael]

The Fascist Left marches on!

Bump.

[gcruse]

The sad thing about this First and Second amendment turmoil is that while we spend our outrage on someone shutting down a web site or the inability of Joe Blow to have antitank weapons, the federal government continues hauling legislation by the convoy load through the hole where the Tenth Amendment used to be and nobody gives a damn.

[justshe]

Dotster's "privilege" to register domains is granted to them by the US government. If Dotster and all the other domain registrars got together and decided "Well, we're not going to register conservative sites," then conservative sites would not be able to get online at all*, and that is a direct 1st Amendment violation since they're more or less government-licensed.

---

Thanks for the explanation re: the 1st Amendment connection. Makes more sense now.

[Alain2112]

The relationship between the US government and domain name registrars is somewhat complex, but there's no question that the privileges of all private domain name registrars companies are devolved directly from the National Science Foundation, which is the US government.

Formidable! Thanks for setting me straight - and with an arguement rather than a passle of indignant assertions.

[Inkie]

This would only be true if Dotster were the only game in town. Also, are you then saying that Dotster or any other domain administrator is obliged to host sites by the Klan, the Black Panthers, Al Qaeda and Jacques Chirac?

[Freedom2specul8]

I thought they got shut down because the operators of hte website gave their provider false contact info. They did this because they had received death threats! SO between the falso contact info, and the letter from william morris..I suspect both issues got them shut down.