While this blog is hosted outside the UK the domain www.tenpercent.org.uk was registered through 1&1 Internet, that is now a disastrous fucking error, Spinwatch says-

Our SpinProfiles wiki website at www.spinprofiles.org was shut down by web firm 1&1 Internet on 21 June because we did not remove a profile on think-tank researcher Alexander Meleagrou-Hitchens, son of journalist Christopher Hitchens.

In an email dated Friday 18 June, 1&1′s lawyers said SpinProfiles must ‘immediately remove the profile’ by midday Monday, or face being shut down. Although 1&1 do not host our site, the URL is registered with them. They gave no explanation of how the webpage violated their terms and conditions except that it included ‘personal information’ we did not have ‘permission’ to use.

SpinProfiles’ editor David Miller wrote back asking for more precise details of the objection, arguing, ‘It is clear that the content of the webpage in question is factual and backed up by sourced information. It cannot be wholly contrary to your conditions of service…’

The 1&1 legal team refused to elaborate further. We refused to remove the page based on such a non-specific objection. It is our editorial policy to correct inaccurate information as soon as it is brought to our attention and also to offer a right of reply. That policy remains in force.

Such drastic action by 1&1 is clearly an attack on public interest reporting and free speech.  In principle this kind of objection could close down a wide variety of websites and indeed most news media organisations.

We are working to get the site online again and ask our readers and supporters to bear with us. The full SpinProfiles website can meanwhile be viewed at another web address: http://www.powerbase.info

More on this by David Miller of  Spinwatch at the Guardian here. Their profile of Hitchens the Lesser Here. So, what to do, and indeed what can I do, is this URL now fucked as I am in precisely the same boat ‘Although 1&1 do not host our site, the URL is registered with them.’ if touchy legal letter happy neocons and islamphobes hove into view whose main strategy for getting out from under their father’s shadow is to be even more obnoxious. Well not fucked but it is not free and secure of censorious take downs. Advice would be greatly appreciated, if I have to obtain a new URL it’s annoying mostly because it is another change for readers, sorry about that and the good domains for TenPercent that do not cost the earth are not so abundant. I am writing to 1 & 1 for clarification and if they cannot reassure me then, we shall see what we shall have to see. Arse Biscuits of Hellfire!

PS. Alexander Meleagrou-Hitchens and badgers you say? Hmmmm…

Update: Thanks for advice messages, a transfer of the domain to another register with more backbone should sort things. Also confidential sources darkly hint at  something about tortoises and Hitchens The Lesser too…