HostingAnime
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
HostingAnime or Hosting Anime was a free web hosting service which was supposedly based in Westchester, California. The company rented webspace from a Houston, Texas-based server known as Everyones Internet. Despite the name, it had nothing to do with Japanese anime.
The company has raised some controversy amongst some Internet-users for hosting many suspected al-Qaeda-run websites which advocate jihad against the United States and other US-led occupation forces in Iraq and Afghanistan.
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[edit] al-Qaeda webhost
HostingAnime has been the internet service provider for websites which show the beheading images and video of Paul Johnson, Kim Sun-il, Eugene Armstrong and Jack Hensley, run by terror groups like Tawhid and Jihad. The company cited free speech as a justification for hosting such content.
In 2004, the website won a court victory declaring it perfectly legal for them to host such content, even though the Federal Bureau of Investigation and U.S. Department of Justice have knowledge of the sites being hosted. The Federal Bureau of Investigation has stated that the company is allowed to host such sites because the U.S. Constitution protects freedom of speech.
As of November 16, 2004, HostingAnime suspended all militant-linked webpages on its servers. This was due to the purchase of HostingAnime by new owners.
[edit] False information
HostingAnime was registered under a false address and owner name. Jeremy Reynalds reported that the contact address provided for HostingAnime is 8939 S. Sepulveda Blvd. Westchester, California 90045. According to the building manager at that location, HostingAnime was not a tenant but a web-hosting company known as Namecheap, HostingAnime's domain name registrar, does maintain offices there.
[edit] Downtime
As of May 18, 2006, HostingAnime appears to be down, returning a 404 error for trying to access the site. Free-webhosts.com has since removed HostingAnime from its list of available free web hosts [1].
