A similar story is when GoDaddy shut down seclists.org at the request of MySpace because of a single post out of hundreds of thousands: http://seclists.org/nmap-hackers/2007/0
Wow, what a disturbing story, and a perfect glimpse into a post-SOPA internet. Why GoDaddy is even policing the content of its registrants is beyond me.
I'd get it if there were complaints about possible hosting of illegal materials (AKA kiddie porn), but policing content that falls under freedom of speech, and potentially means your corporation could face multiple charges of violations of constitutional rights is beyond me.
I'd get it if registering your domain with GoDaddy was a big visible thing that you might want to keep your name away from controversial content, but honestly I have no fucking clue who's hosting the domain of what or who's registered where.
I mean I don't exactly hunt down the DNS information of everything.. heck anything I look at.
> your corporation could face multiple charges of violations of constitutional rights
I don't think that can actually happen. The first amendment is a prohibition against Congress passing certain types of laws, not a cause of action for citizens to sue people. You have no right to freedom of speech or expression on Hacker News, for example. You are also free to contract away that right with GoDaddy or anyone else; see NDAs.
The only liability GoDaddy could have are breach of contract, if the contract does not allow this (which it likely does), and a dispute with ICANN over registration rights.
Every year I would come back to renew and it was getting more and more difficult. Eventually, it became ridiculous. The checkout process was finding the "No I don't want this shit" link (yes, link), listing through five pages of "GoDaddy girl" and special offers.
Speaking of the GoDaddy girl. That's how I knew they completely lost touch with their business. I remember their newsletters (were they newsletters?) about "seeing the GoDaddy girl in the shower" or something. I mean, wtf?
I still have a couple of domains there, for complicated reasons, but all others, I've transfered out of there long ago, new business goes to Namecheap.
Thanks for that. I actually remembered their color scheme/design, but couldn't find the website back when I was looking for a new registrar. It looks like they have a much larger selection of tld's compared to Namecheap. That will come in handy.
I think it's a common situation for non-experts. If you're in satisficer mode (versus the maximizer mode common to experts), you pick the first thing that's quick, convenient, and apparently safe. Lots of commercials means a recognizable brand, which feels safe to a lot of people when they are comparing a bunch of apparently equivalent choices.
Personally, I wouldn't be sad if GoDaddy went bankrupt tomorrow. I recently had to deal with their latest scam: sending notifications that suggest your domain name is up for auction. Having seen people lose domains before due to missing a renewal and/or outright thievery, my blood pressure went through the roof. It's a marketing lie, of course, to get you to sign up for get more crap.
Learning about it has definitely changed some of my behaviors. E.g., in restaurants I use to try to maximize by picking the very best item. Which made me kinda crazy, as there was never sufficient information to know. Now I take the satisficer approach and pick the first thing that looks good. Which is maximizing a different variable, so my nerdy side still approves.
I think there was a certain comfort in their size. You assumed that, because they were so prominent, nothing bad would happen because they were small.
Also, there is definitely a momentum effect -- it was the first registrar many people heard about and just kept using them, because that was the path of least resistance.
It wasn't the first registrar I heard about, but it was the first register I heard about besides Network Solutions, which used to be a monopoly, and charged (IIRC) $70 per domain. GoDaddy was pretty damn customer-friendly by comparison.
Yeah, GoDaddy made its name as one of the first registrars to offer domains around the $10 price point right after NS's monopoly was removed. They've basically just ridden that wave since then and have tried to capitalize on the brand recognition when the only thing a small business owner knows is that you have to use GoDaddy to get a website.
Well it was the registrar I heard of first, and if their ads had been less offensive, I probably would have gone with them. As it was though, I just went with the second registrar I heard of, http://Domain.com/ I had a coupon code from the Hak5 podcast, but I don't really know if it was cheaper than other registrars.
I signed up with them something like 12 years ago when they were a refreshing alternative to Network Solutions. Long before the Super Bowl ads and other nonsense.
The first webhost/registrar I used closed down my site (that I had paid yearly for) and made it annoying to move my domain away because I was hosting videos (of myself and friends) on the website. Apparently there was a clause in their terms that I couldn't host any type of video file on there. This was back in 2003; youtube didn't exist yet. Anyway, I moved the domain to godaddy and the website to somewhere else and had no issues for years.
Sadly, I know this story isn't an isolated incident. It's also why I don't believe their 'change of heart' in the slightest. This type of behavior and belief is ingrained into the company's culture. On top of that, the whois issues, GoDaddy is also known for messing with their whois (forcing you to go to their site and fill out a captcha instead of giving full info from the whois server directly).
Gives a glimmer of why GoDaddy would want to support SOPA. It would instantly create a market for premium DNS services where you are protected from this sort of thing.
SOPA is but a battle in a war. The "war" is the corruption in the US Congress. Go check out what Larry Lessig is doing nowadays... he's trying to fight the war, not the battle.
His comments on why he's "MIA" in the SOPA battle (despite being an open source software and copyleft activist) shed light on this. I'm with Larry... SOPA, the USA PATRIOT Act, DMCA, all that BS are just symptoms of a disease. I'm not saying we "netizens" shouldn't fight SOPA tooth and nail, but some effort should be put into the 'war' as well, to avoid only seeing one or two trees and not the forest.
I had a similar experience when Dyn.com suspended my DNS hosting after a complaint from Amazon about a "phishing" link on my site (it was actually a legitimate Amazon affiliate link). My site was inaccessible while I scrambled to move my DNS entries elsewhere. Even though I have a premium account with Dyn, I was never given any sort of notification beforehand, and it took 5 days of pestering for them to finally reinstate it. Meanwhile, all I got from Amazon was a half-hearted apology from their affiliate customer service rep.
Really, who needs SOPA when companies can shut down websites just like that?
FWIW, this was the post that made me move my domains out from godaddy. Seems like it shows clearly that Godaddy's product is not high quality rather than just their company's stand on SOPA.
I don't generally feel that I can sanely make all of my product decisions based on the political/moral/etc positions of the companies involved. Not that I wouldn't love to, but it just doesn't seem manageable.
I was perhaps a bit too liberal with my SEO ventures once... I received one single complaint to GoDaddy about a domain name that I owned with them (and admittedly was doing a bit of backlinking with)... One email and a ~$75 "fine" later I was back in business. But this is absurd.
The complaint was along the lines of "Somebody posted a link to this website X and I think it's spam."
GoDaddy immediately placed my domain on hold (same abuse department call that weebly received) and was told I would have to pay the fine to proceed or I could just forfeit the domain to them.
It seemed incredibly heavy handed for a stray blog comment.
If sopa passes maybe there is a way we can get all .gov sites blacklisted with everyone scrambling and wondering why nobody in the world can reach these sites. we need to start programming some weapons into the internet so the people can fight censorship after it becomes law. In the land of spear and sword, the rifleman makes policy.
I'm pretty convinced that SOPA will become law. So I'm wondering if the next best way to fight it is to go with it? Get as many sites shut down as possible to get people to wake up and start noticing?
Even if people notice, it would be too late. Look at the patent issue. Everyone knows how fucked up the situation is. But since its already there, moving it is too hard.
Replace every site on the internet with a page that says this site is unauthorized by the authority of a few people, nevermind who or you will be tazed.
This isn't going to happen. If SOPA passes, there will be selective enforcement just as there is now -- you won't be able to get any .gov sites blacklisted, or facebook, or Google. You probably couldn't even get ycombinator blacklisted. 4chan, maybe.
But SOPA includes private rights of action -- you don't have to convince a government to prosecute anyone. You just need to get any private rightsholder whose content appears on a site to make the good faith claims and poof, their ad networks and payment processors have to sever ties if they want safe harbor.
