Epik decided not to host 8chan

Epik issued a press release today explaining the timeline of events regarding 8Chan and how Epik decided not to host the 8Chan website on its BitMitigate service.

8Chan’s main website is 8ch.net that is not currently resolving after CloudFlare terminated service for 8Chan on August 5. Soon after, the domain 8ch.net was transferred from the Canadian registrar Tucows to US registrar Epik.

Epik’s press release below doesn’t state if Epik will allow the 8Chan domain names to remain and use its registrar services.

Epik draws line on Acceptable Use

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.

Sold.Domains

About Konstantinos Zournas

I studied Computer Engineering and Computer Science in London, UK and I am now living in Athens, Greece. I went online in 1995, started coding in 1996 and began buying domain names and creating websites in 2000. I started the OnlineDomain.com blog in 2012.

6 comments

  1. Konstantinos, you’ve got a lot of nerve even showing up at this blog at all after leaving everyone in suspense for so long and still to this day about what you did over here: https://onlinedomain.com/2019/07/27/domain-name-news/what-to-do-a-default-in-a-domain-name-holding-transaction/. 😐

  2. Epik has zero credibility and Rob seems to be a PR whore. He was preaching about free speech earlier in the day, rumor on the street is this was not his decision, but a decision that was made by his vendors for him.

    Why does the domain community continue to give this guy a voice?

    • Konstantinos Zournas

      So we must close down websites, don’t give people a voice, maybe close my website too…
      Where does it end?

      I have critisized Rob here and privately. It is what it is.

    • Censorship and suppression is not only not the answer, but is a path to destruction. And in case people haven’t noticed, which is apparently the case for many, the current wave of censorship and suppression is not just taking place against the right, conservatives, extreme right wackos and the Alex Joneses of the world, but also against the real left non-mainstream/non-corporatist/non-oligarchy/non-plutocracy non-neolibs as well.

      It is occurring against voices that oppose mainstream “establshment approved” narrative, not just against one ideological side.

      And it is taking place to YOUR detriment and all of society.

      Epik is one of the “best things since sliced bread” in the industry, and we are very fortunate it exists.

      I just transferred another domain to Epik recently, regged something recently too, and look forward to the next time I do all of that as well.

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