Global Domain Name Registrar and Internet Technology Provider, Epik Inc., provided an update regarding its BitMitigate service as well as its decision to not provide site hosting services to the controversial message board service known as 8Chan.

Chronology of key events

On Sunday, August 4, 2019, Internet Service Provider, CloudFlare, announced that it was terminating its services to the popular alternative message board service, 8Chan, without opportunity for appeal. The following morning, on August 5, 2019, a principal of 8Chan contacted Epik, Inc. to request its consideration for a transfer-in of accounts and necessary technical services due to Epik’s previously declared stance on lawful free speech. Although 8Chan domains were transferred to Epik early that Monday, Epik remained reticent in the interim to provide a definitive statement regarding the prospect of providing content delivery services to 8Chan; namely, for Denial of Service protection or Content Delivery Network services through its operating division called BitMitigate. In the course of Monday, in response to 8Chan’s social media statement of its anticipated deployment of content delivery services with Epik, a critical network provider of so-called Border Gateway Protocol services elected to discontinue services for Epik with immediate effect. Although Epik’s core domain registrar services were not impacted, Epik’s BitMitigate service was rendered temporarily inoperable due to interruption of contracted upstream services.

BitMitigate services restored

Although the disruption of services by upstream providers did have the potential to be highly damaging to BitMitigate’s customers, Epik engineers worked diligently to restore services to its customers. The BitMitigate platform is designed to provide highly scalable and cost-effective solutions for Content Delivery and Denial of Service mitigation. The system has successfully defended against so-called Layer 7 attacks as well as attacks involving more than 1 million unique IP addresses in a single coordinated attack. The Content Delivery Service provides intelligent optimization for fast loading of web content, most notably on mobile devices. The BitMitigate service has been integrated into Epik’s flagship product called Resilient Domains.

Statement on Acceptable Use

Epik actively supports lawful content, community, and commerce. As a matter of policy, management seeks to provide customers with solutions without bias or favoritism vis-à-vis race, religion, political affiliation, or sexual orientation. If a given content is legal, Epik endeavors to empower anyone to participate whether as producer or consumer. With the prevalence of user-generated content, including in fast-growing public forums, timely enforcement of Terms of Service can prove extremely difficult, notably in cases where a site has little in the way of revenue model with which to fund the services of professional moderators. In cases whereby Epik identifies a particular publisher as being under-equipped to properly enforce its own Terms of Service, Epik reserves the right to deny service.

Statement on decision to not provide BitMitigate service to 8Chan

Upon careful consideration of the recent operating history of 8Chan, and in the wake of tragic news in El Paso and Dayton over the weekend, Epik has elected to not provide content delivery services to 8Chan. This is largely due to the concern of inadequate enforcement and the elevated possibility of violent radicalization on the platform.