LANSING, Mich. — A local website company is getting a lot of attention for hosting a hate group site that allegedly inspired the South Carolina mass murder.
The Lansing website is called Liquid Web and it was founded by Holt native Matt Hill.
Now, the company serves over 30,000 customers that include reputable companies you see everyday.
But the one website in question is called Council of Conservative Citizens.
That website was named in one of Dylan Roof's social media posts as he wrote about his disbelief in the amount of brutal black on white murders and that he realized something was wrong.
Roof then shot and killed nine people at a bible study at a church in Charleston. All of the victims were black.
Many wonder does a website or website host have any responsibility in cases like these?
"I think they have some responsibility civilly as a result of that, but I don't know that they do criminally because there is, there was not, you know they were saying these are the facts sort of thing even though there very distorted or very pre-selected facts that they put on their website but because of that they are not going to be criminally culpable," Michael McDaniel, dead at the WMU Cooley Law School, said.
The Michigan State Police said that because of the first amendment, the Council of Conservative Citizens could technically not get into any trouble, but they said it was all on a case by case basis.
We reached out to Liquid Web to get their reaction and we have not received a response.
Liquid Host told the technology and science website Gizmodo they are not in the business of policing their customers, however, they have told the Council of Conservative Citizens to find a new web host.
Roof was found guilty and sentenced to nine consecutive life sentences without parole.
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