The blog of the Iranian blogger Hossein Derakhshan (aka Hoder) has been suspended by the U.S. based hosting company, Hosting Matters, after a complaint filed by lawyers representing Mehdi Khalaji, Next Generation fellow at The Washington Institute. The complaint -not filed to the court- centered on allegedly defamatory content published on Derakhshan's blogs. Hosting Matters requested that Hossein remove a specific post related to Mehdi Khalaji: regarding the material and commentary you have posted, we have found that the material and commentary fall into a grey area regarding the allegations made by the complainant. The most prudent course of action, whether the allegations of defamation are valid or not in this instance, is to remove the material from the site (…) While we do not agree with the assessment as it relates to the latest post you have made, we do not have the time, interest, or resources to invest in continually dealing with his complaints and to review your site. Please remove that post and refrain from mentioning this person in any form on the site you host within this network. “This is incredibly disturbing,” wrote Sepideh Saremi, “the host recognized that Khalaji/Khalaji’s lawyers were wrong but still allowed Khalaji’s bullying to force their hand.” After removing the post in question, the hosting company made a new request, this time asking Hossein to remove anything he has written mentioning Mehdi Khalaji “in any language in which it is posted” and “to refrain from mentioning this person in any form on the site.” In an email sent to friends, and posted later on his temporary blog, alerting them about what he described as a “new blow to online free speech”, Hossein Derakhshan wrote: Last Friday, I was kicked out of my hosting company (Florida-based Hosting Matters), as a result of a legal notice sent by Mehdi Khalaji, an Iranian fellow at a neo-conservative think-tank (Washington Institute for the Near East Policy with Richard Perle, Paul Wolfowitz and James Woolsey on its advisory board). Mhedi Khalaji's lawyer has sent a notice to my hosting company and also my domain registrar, Go Daddy, asking them to a) remove any ‘defamatory’ material about him, b) make me publish an apology, and c) pay $10,000 for the claimed damages. (…) Then last Friday, I noticed that the hosting company had actually removed, from my web serve and even my blogging software's database, any post where Mehdi Khalaji was named in English. After threatening me not to disclose what the hosting company did, and after a few email exchanges, they terminated my account. Mehdi Khalaji's lawyers were also requesting that the hosting company provide them “with any information in their possession” that indicates the Internel protocol addresses (IP) of the visitors of Derakhshan's web sites since their creation. “I feel that this presents a grave privacy concern,” noted Nart Villeneuve, technical research director at CitizenLab. “Handing over the IP addresses of the visitors to Hossein’s blog? I fail to see how that is related to the alleged defamatory claims.” Villeneuve warned that “the legal notice that resulted in the deletion of some of Hossein Derakhshan’s blog posts by his hosting company and lead to the termination of his blog’s hosting service should raise red flags within the Anti-Censorship community.” In another post “Censored in Iran, Deleted in USA“, Villeneuve, who is also documenting Internet content filtering and surveillance practices worldwide with the OpenNet Initiative (ONI) noticed that “Threatening ISP’s with “take down” requests is one of the most undocumented methods of censoring Internet content.” Nima Milaninia, the editor of the blog Iranian Truth, submitted numerous legal arguments contesting Hosting Matters’ decision to suspend Hossein Derakhshan blogs: Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act (CDA) says that “No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider.” This federal law preempts any state laws to the contrary: “[n]o cause of action may be brought and no liability may be imposed under any State or local law that is inconsistent with this section.” Adding that “Shutting down a blog and seeking to control its contents, even though it is legally permissible, is not an action ANY service provider should be committing. Its enough that all bloggers and activists take notice and petition against their action.” And while some Iranian bloggers are trying to find the right solution to the Derakhshan/ Khalaji dispute, Jahanshah Javid, who knows “Hossein and Mehdi personally and have enjoyed their company” thinks that: Hossein has not been found guilty in a court of law.