Was doing a ringlink check for the webring and noticed a lot of 404s:
Neocities and all Neocities sites that do not use a custom top level domain are currently down - it is apparently to do with a cock-up about a court order out of India.
Hope they can resolve it soon, I had a quick look at Reddit and saw a lot of panicky webmasters.
India being a known bad actor as far as the global internet goes should not be a surprise for Neocities.
Though, I’m a little taken aback that one country being a jackass can upend what should be a regionally-independent GTLD, so maybe patience is in order here.
Aaaand it’s back. Got my post in just under the wire.
Looks like it’s some law firm sending an order to suspend some illegal streaming website and Neocities somehow got caught up in it. Looks like Namecheap didn’t check the order and just suspended Neocities without notice. I guess there’s a reason the registrar’s called Namecheap and not Servicegood.
I saw this on their Bluesky post. Glad it’s back! I think an event like this would make me transfer to another registrar.
wowwww. good to know namecheap doesn’t actually read court orders they get and just kind of randomly shut things down sort of arbitrarily, lol. glad they got it resolved today and it didn’t stretch out over the weekend!
@dungeonHack kinda racist to declare the most populated country on earth “a jackass” and “a bad actor” because employees at a us-based company couldn’t be bothered to read a legal filing correctly! maybe don’t do that
Racist? How in the world is calling out a country’s internet history racist? I think you’re reading too much into my post.
Glad i have a copy of my neocities over on my VPS. But yeah, the internet is not save anymore. And its far what it has been.
It’s smart to make copies of your page (especially if it’s static) on different hosting services.
@dungeonHack Did you read the Bluesky thread? The party at fault in this case is NameCheap, a US-based company, and you shouldn’t be letting them off the hook by redirecting your ire.
Yes, and I acknowledge my mistake in assuming the source of the problem was the Indian government.
and that assumption… was kinda racist? you saw the words “new delhi” and “neocities down” and assumed, “the indians are to blame,” and i think that’s kinda racist.
this seems like a rhetorical question rather than one posed out of curiosity or genuine confusion, but i’ll answer anyway just in case! the united states, the country home to the actual bad actors, has an “internet history” as well which you could have called out - which would have been more on-topic, considering the well-documented damage done and the monopoly control over the internet that us-based companies get up to - but you didn’t do that! instead, you projected a pre-existing bias onto the situation and based your comment on that instead of on what actually happened. perhaps it would have been more precise to say “xenophobic” but i personally don’t think that xenophobia and racism are meaningfully distinct from each other since they’re quite tightly intertwined.
it’s not like a hate crime or anything, just seemed like an out-of-pocket reading comprehension failure and i didn’t feel comfortable not saying anything.
I saw it was down last night I think but was at work all day so only recently caught up with the drama but seems it was all totally Namecheap’s fault and Neocities and the office of the legal firm in New Delhi were the ones actually trying to resolve this. Glad Neocities will move from Namecheap. I know a lot of people are leaving Neocities for other host sites due to unrelated issues and I totally get it but I am unreasonably stubborn so I will be staying lol. Great reminder to always backup everything all the time.
Small mistake, fixed quickly. What a nothingburger.
Fascinating. Just out of curiosity, do you believe that criticizing Israel’s government is inherently antisemitic?
i’m struggling to think of a good faith reason for you to be asking that question instead of actually responding to anything i said, so i’m gonna go ahead and ignore it! have a good one man 
I asked it because I wanted to understand where you’re coming from better. For example, if you equate government with race as a general rule, that gives me more insight into your worldview and I can calibrate my own communication accordingly.
I’m just mystified that you think I’m being racist. I suspect we define the word differently.
No kidding. I think providers in the US should ignore court orders issued by non-US courts unless backed by a Federal court order. There are treaties for this.
Glad I moved my domains off Namecheap a while back! Saves having to do it now; some folks in the thread mentioned it was bought by private equity recently, which I didn’t know.
Privaty Equity strikes again. 
Aye, I moved all of my domains off of Namecheap a couple years ago too. I use Porkbun now.