> Imagine if real life utilities did this. If because someone used your property for offensive purposes, the water company cut off the water supply, or the electricity company refused to provide electricity, or your phone provider cut off service or what not. That would be ridiculous, yet it's exactly the situation we're in with internet services. No one wants to just be a utility.
These are flawed comparisons, because water and electricity flow from the utility towards the consumer. If water worked like the internet, and the utility was just a "dumb pipe" that would mean you could pee in my drinking water - I would hope they would disconnect you. And you can be sure that if you mess with the power coming to your house they will disconnect you, too.
If we use the example of a distributed water supply, Cloudpipe would be the company that said:
> yeah sure someone shit in the drinking water coming from my pipes, but I'm not going to tell them to stop, nor tell you who did it so you can tell them yourself.
No, that's exactly the point. If water distribution worked in the way that utility companies just laid the pipes, connected them to those of other utilites, and otherwise did not care about what sort of water anybody pumped into them, water quality would drop pretty fast.
But agreed, I am stretching this example very far now to make "water as a utility" conform to "Internet as a utility" - which maybe goes to show that they are not quite the same and might benefit from not treating them the same.
I still don't understand your analogy. How is 8Chan affecting "water quality" in this analogy? They were not harming the quality of service Cloudflare provides to their customers in any way, were they? The same goes for the water company providing service to 8Chan's owner; providing service to 8Chan doesn't affect the quality of service to their other customers.
It doesn't matter. Cloudflare is a private company, and as a private company, they have a right to discontinue any service with anyone as long as it isn't some sort of discriminatory act based on a protected class.
Considering that 8chan has a proclivity to be a haven for mass shooters, the site needs to be excessively curtailed regardless of whether they're affecting the businesses services directly or not just for the sole fact that they don't seem to police the people or content that are on the site.
For example, do you think a business shouldn't fire an individual after he committed a murder of some person who isn't affiliated with the company?
>Considering that 8chan has a proclivity to be a haven for mass shooters, the site needs to be excessively curtailed regardless of whether they're affecting the businesses services directly or not just for the sole fact that they don't seem to police the people or content that are on the site.
I'll bet more mass shooters spend time on facebook than 8chan. When are they getting shut down?
These are flawed comparisons, because water and electricity flow from the utility towards the consumer. If water worked like the internet, and the utility was just a "dumb pipe" that would mean you could pee in my drinking water - I would hope they would disconnect you. And you can be sure that if you mess with the power coming to your house they will disconnect you, too.
If we use the example of a distributed water supply, Cloudpipe would be the company that said:
> yeah sure someone shit in the drinking water coming from my pipes, but I'm not going to tell them to stop, nor tell you who did it so you can tell them yourself.