DDoS protection solutions provider Black Lotus Communications announced on Friday it will donate revenue it made from hosting the website of the Westboro Baptist Church to charity.
The announcement comes after hactivist group Anonymous called on the web hosts and security providers that are servicing the independent fundamentalist Christian church?s website to stop doing business with the church.
The ban was in response to the church?s planned protest against the funerals of the victims in last Friday?s mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut for which it blames on same-sex marriage legislation.
Black Lotus has recently been providing security solutions for Westboro?s website, following a series of online attacks. Earlier this week,?the Church?s website was defaced and shut down for nearly a day, while the Twitter accounts of the Church?s spokeswoman and leader were hacked and taken control of by Anonymous.
The situation brings attention to the debate of whether or not a web host or IT service provider should continue providing services to a client once learning that the client is hosting content the is deemed inappropriate or offensive. Black Lotus seems to take the stance that it has a responsibility to respect its clients? freedom of expression.
?As a security service, we value freedom of expression ? and have mandate to guarantee passage of data across the internet, which ultimately means that companies like Black Lotus should not interrupt services based solely on public opinion,? Jeffrey Lyon, certified information systems security professional with the Black Lotus team told Wikinews. ?By terminating their service, we would not actually take their sites offline. Instead, they would be without DDoS protection for a short period of time until they found another service that would harbor them. This logic did not add up for us.?
The online attacks came after the church announced plans earlier this week to protest the funerals of the victims in last Friday?s shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, blaming the shooting on Connecticut?s same-sex marriage legislation.
?We have received overwhelming support for donations to be given to various groups supporting the Newtown community, veterans groups like the Wounded Warrior Project, and LGBT groups like The Trevor Project,? said Lyon, adding that The United Way may be the first charity to receive its donation.
Lyon said Black Lotus decided to donate revenue made from WBC to charity after ?Anonymous? supporters began a full blown Twitter campaign boycotting any company who provides services to WBC,? as well as ?reached out to Anonymous spokespersons and asked their opinions on how the matter should be handled.?
So far, the amount Black Lotus has received ?from WBC is very small? and will ?actually make donations well in excess? of the fees WBC pays, said Lyon, adding that it has already informed WBC of its intentions.
And while the charitable donations only include revenue received from the WBC, Black Lotus hopes to expand the project to include other customers, said Lyon.
Black Lotus DDoS protection service, Human Behavior Analysis, was recently operating on the OnApp cloud hosting software, and earlier this year, Black Lotus began providing Australian web hosting and domain name provider VentraIP Group with enterprise-grade DDoS protection.
Talk back: Do you believe that web hosting and Internet service companies should respect their client?s right to freedom of expression when hosting the content of a ?hate group?? Do you think the web hosting provider of Westboro Baptist Church will follow Black Lotus? lead and donate its revenue to charities? Let us know in the comments.
About Justin Lee
Justin Lee has been a staff analyst with theWHIR since 2004. He writes about a range of web hosting and IT-related issues facing the industry on the WHIR website, as well the print version of the WHIR magazine. Follow him on Twitter @Justin_theWHIR.
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