How do I shut down an offensive website?

It’s near impossible. The first amendment gives us freedom of expression, and the webmaster is simply expressing their ideas of domestic violence and abuse (as far as I can tell).

If you feel that someone is breaking the law (has kiddie porn on the site for example, or there is a confession of some sort) then you can contact the FBI or the like for investigation.

I don’t think there is anything you can do. I agree with @Taciturnu in reporting it to the authorities if there seems to be some crimes being commited. Unfortunately they are just like roaches. Even if they got shut down, 10 more sites just like it will pick up the slack.

Being offensive is not enough reason for a site to be shut down. If they are actually encouraging and inciting domestic and sexual abuse, that might be a slightly different story, but that’s up to the authorities to decide.

Even encouraging and inciting is not illegal. Committing a crime is illegal. Talking about it is not. The website itself isn’t physically harming anybody, or forcing anyone to beat their wives.

You can find out which provider the site is on, and ask the owner to remove it, that is all.

Not to mention, the website could be hosted in a country that has loose laws regarding the material you find offensive. You’d be fighting a losing battle trying to shut them down unless they have videos of them committing crimes or breaking some other law. The best advice I can think of is to stay away from the site and keep it on the down low so as not to attract attention to the site.

Many high ranking companies/people have tried to shut down thepiratebay.org because they say it’s breaking the law by providing filesharing to millions of people for free. By not having the copy right material in their servers, they aren’t breaking any laws. We’re talking people and companies with millions upon millions and more lawyers than a episode of Law and Order. They can’t even get material taken down from the site, let alone shut it down. The point I’m trying to make is that unless they are actually doing something illegal, you’re fighting a lost cause no matter how wrong it seems.

For better or for worse, you don’t. Unless people are bragging about their crimes or actively plotting to commit crimes, there is nothing wrong with this kind of speech.

Ok well though i understand your comments re: more will just come up if this is shut down .. Still it sends a good message.. Furthermore the content on this site not only condones the beating and physical violence towards women as wives but also alludes to sexual abuse as well. And this site is from our USA

Is it all real? As troublesome as it may be, some people are into that sort of thing sexually. Is it some sort of porn site? Really, it may just be acting and in that case, again, they’re not really doing anything wrong. You could try to call your local authorities, your state authorities, some federal authorities or hell, any authority that would listen to you but I have a pretty good feeling that you’re just going to end up with the runaround and a high blood pressure. Best of luck to you.

Will you start burning books next?

If they can’t even shut down Neo-Nazi or White Supremacist sites actively promoting the vilest hatred and race baiting, it’s pretty unlikely any authorities would bother with sexual content.

However, I’ve suggested this for the racist sites and if this place has any type of forums or interactive features, you could try to annoy them to death by trolling them or spamming them.

At least it would keep them busy with something constructive :)

Nothing to be done about the site. All I can suggest is that you track the content to see if they do brag about the violence they commit, and once they do, give that to the authorities.

If you were both technologically-inclined and unafraid to commit an actual crime in order to rub out a non-crime, you could hack the site. Have fun squaring that.
Alternatively (and much less effectively) you could try to talk the site owner into changing the content.

You can’t. But the Chinese government sure can.

Sites that are offensive in some way or another are as numerous as weeds in a vacant lot, and you’ve got no chance of clearing them all. They pop up by the thousands, and every one that gets shut down for some reason or another ends up being replaced by one that’s just as bad. If you want, I can tell you how to redirect the URL to localhost so you will never have to look at it again – but that’s the extent of what I can do.

@Seek_Kolinahr Regarding what you said above, “even encouraging and inciting is not illegal. Committing a crime is illegal. Talking about it is not”:

Maybe this isn’t the case in the USA, but here in the UK, it is illegal to incite or encourage someone to commit a crime (as per the Serious Crime Act 2007). I’m not suggesting that this would apply to this particular scenario, or whether it would apply to websites, and I know the majority of people on Fluther are from the USA, but I just wanted to highlight the different laws that exist elsewhere, in case you weren’t already aware.

The best way to shut the site down is to avoid visiting it. The more people that ignore the site, the more chance you’ll have of the site owner shutting it down. No point in having a website if nobody is going to it. I wish we could do this for mainstream news too.

You obviously have an emotional connection with this topic, and rightly so, but I would recommend leaving it alone. Any attention you give this website (especially negative) is going to fuel its existence. So, don’t email the webmaster. Don’t try to sue. And certainly don’t lose any sleep over some redneck jackass that wants to try and start a fight by making an obscene website. Let it go.

As of this writing, the U.S. Constitution still allows foolish speech, such as, “I think we should restrict the freedoms (of speech, etc.) that others have.” I sincerely hope it continues to allow you the absolute privilege to suggest that we give away our freedom.

There isn’t much you can do to shut them down, the best thing you can do if it really bothers you about something a website says or promotes is to post a comment on the site (many sites allow comments) and harass the idiots on these sites, I’ve done this already (with death threats and name calling aimed at me) but I got my points across. Actually I DON’T RECOMMEND YOU DO THIS!!! That’s what I did on several websites that ticked me off. I recommend to anyone to just ignore them!

Why shut ‘em down when you could troll them?

The very purpose of the First Amendment to the US Constitution is to protect unpopular speech. If it weren’t unpopular or offensive to at least some people, it wouldn’t need protection. Currently syndicated talk radio is under pressure. Once free speech is denied, tyranny follows.