Rackspace, one of the largest hosting providers on the Internet, has decided that the Dove World Outreach Center’s planned Quran burning is hate speech and in violation of their policies. In response to that decision, Rackspace has pulled the plug on their website:

“We feel that it’s definitely an indirect attack on our freedom of speech,” Jones said, adding that the provider, Rackspace, is “trying to shut us down.”

But he said, “This is not going to affect the event going forward.”

A spokesman for the provider, Rackspace, said the company decided to cancel the center’s sites after investigating a complaint and reviewing both sites.

The center “violated the hate-speech provision of our acceptable-use policy,” said Rackspace spokesman Dan Goodgame.

“This is not a constitutional issue. This is a contract issue,” said Goodgame, adding that his company had given the center until midnight to find another host and move its content. Goodgame said Rackspace has about 100,000 customers and he did not know how long it had hosted those two specific sites.

Now when you go to the site, www.doveworld.org, this is what you see:

It will be interesting to see how long the site remains down. I’m sure they will be able to find another provider that doesn’t have the same high standards as Rackspace, but finding a host that isn’t a reseller through Rackspace might be a little harder.