RateMyCop censored by GoDaddy
RateMyCop.com -- a site where the general public can comment on police officers -- has been shut down by its hosting company, GoDaddy. The company claims his site had been engaged in "suspicious activity." Various police departments and organizations have spoken out against RateMyCop, arguing that it would reveal the identities of undercovers (undercovers are not listed on RateMyCop) or put police in danger by revealing their addresses and personal information (personal information and addresses are not given on RateMyCop), or that it would be used to grind axes against cops (RateMyCop has a facility for police rebuttal).
Unfortunately for the startup, the company it chose for hosting is known to be quick to censor its customers. In January of last year, GoDaddy took down entire computer security website -- delisting it from DNS -- to get a single, archived mailing list post off the web.LinkOn that occasion, at least, it gave the site's owner 60 seconds notice. GoDaddy notified Seto by posting its "Oops!" message to his public website.
"You put on my website for me to call you, when you have my phone number?," says Sesto.
the latest
latest episodes
The site seems to be back online now.
Eric Monse
"The site seems to be back online now.
Eric Monse"
????
"This site is currently unavailable.
If you are the owner of this site, please contact us at 1-480-505-8855 at your earliest convenience."
It seems to load just fine. BTW, wanna bet that this action by GoDaddy will make RateMyCop bigger? (because of the so-called 'Streisand effect', which we see happen a lot lately.)
I had never known about RMC before this. (have no need for it, since I'm not from the States, but still.)
Strathmeyer@2: Major DNS changes can take up to 48h to propagate.
Madjo (#3)
Do you have no need for RMC because it only talks about US cops, or because you don't have cops, or because the cops you do have are sweet and nice and fair?
But seriously: Do you think a localized edition of RMC would be of benefit to your community?
I actually am in the process of switching my domain away from GoDaddy; after they were brought up in a Slashdot article on the WikiLeaks thing (someone was talking about other hosting companies one should boycott), I decided I could no longer support them.
I use Go Daddy because they are cheap and reliable in a non-Registerfly kind of way. What Freedom-loving registrar is also cheap and reliable?
I would be happy to switch, and probably even pay a little more for a Freedom-loving registrar, so long as they can match No Daddy's reliability (when they aren't knee-jerk censoring).
Ditto bitemenow @7. Looks like I'm in the market for a new registrar. Does anybody have any strong candidates for a cheap/reliable alternative?
And I don't even need freedom-loving. Just technically competent and freedom-tolerating will do.
My favorite registrar is TuCows/DomainDirect.com -- I use them for all my domains. They're in Canada, so out of the US Treasury's jurisdiction, and I know the founder personally (Eliot Noss) and trust him to be honorable and cautious in honoring takedowns and similar complaints.
I stopped using GoDaddy because of its CEO's supporting torture and then lying about it, but I guess censorship's a good reason too.
http://mccarthy.vg/article.pl?sid=05/06/21/1238206
DomainDirect is reliable (used to use them), but is not cheap. They are 50% (minimum) more expensive than Go Daddy.
What would Eliot Noss have done if TuCows had been told by the police to take down a site because it was supporting illegal activity, such as selling pot seeds? The reach of the DEA may be farther than the Treasury department.
namecheap.com does pretty well by me, and their prices are more or less comparable to GoDaddy's. Plus they don't kill you with a thousand come-ons for their other products when all you want to do is register a damned domain name. And, they throw in WhoisGuard privacy protection free with each domain purchased.
I've been moving my domains over to them from GoDaddy for a while now. As each comes due for renewal, I transfer them instead. So far, so good.
Well, you'd have to ask Eliot. But I suspect that a US warrant wouldn't be any more valid for the Canadian company than a Saudi warrant is.
Cory, I think you know more than your comment suggests. It's an issue of law enforcement working together. When the DEA or the the FBI,NSA,CIA asks for Canadian help, that help is more often than not, given. And I suspect that even a swell guy like Eliot would take down a site if told that if he doesn't, he will be charged with any number of things that he wouldn't want to deal with. Criminal charges tend to frighten people.
I think I can answer my own question: NearlyFreeSpeech.net registers the common TLDs for $8. They are also committed to Freedom.
However, unless you use their hosting, you are on your own for configuring the DNS.
dreamhost.com replaced GoDaddy for me. Slightly more expensive, but a much less maddening administrative system, more versatility, insane monthly transfer caps, and a portion of my monthly bill is not supporting politics I disagree with.
Oh no, not again.
I've been through four providers in 6 years. One who had issues with melting hard drives. One had issues with allowing spammers direct access to their mail server. One with a bad accountant. And now GoDaddy is censoring websites.
Anyone want to start a hosting company with me?
What's the deal with these companies telling you to call them? When did this become an accepted practice? Verizon has done this to me this month. They call with an automated message to call them at some number about an important change in my plan. Why not just tell me what the heck that change is in the first place?
Comcast has done the same thing, except it was acutally a telemarketing call. Are you kidding me? You call me, so I call you, so you can try an sell me something? WTF.
I'm amazed that GoDaddy wouldn't actually call about the takedown. It would be like Public Service turning off my heat without calling or sending a letter. What cowards.
I use Tera Byte for all my sites, both business and personal. They are a Canadian company (based in Calgary, I think) that I've found cheap and reliable.
@#5 David
no, we have very little abuse from cops, here in NL. And if there is, usually there is pretty good protection against it.
And yes, that site is pretty much US-centric.
The explanation for GoDaddy's behavior is Real Simple, unfortunately. I had occasion for lengthy and multiple conversations with the guy in charge of take-downs in a case in which an unpleasantly Photoshopped image of my 9-year-old son was posted on the website of a convicted criminal who was serving time in jail for a violent crime. The photo in question was a clear ToS violation and I asked that it be removed.
It was explained to me at some length that GoDaddy's employees are not competent to interpret their own terms of service. But rather that Law Enforcement interprets the ToS for them, and so what I needed to do was get the FBI to call them and say that they would prefer that the photo be removed.
I had a lovely conversation with my local FBI agent, with whom I was already in discussions about matters involving this particular jailbird. My FBI agent explained that the FBI does not make the kind of calls GoDaddy said that it needed in order to enforce its Terms of Service. As far as I know the image in question is still hosted on GoDaddy servers.
What we see here is the flip side of this nutty policy, which is that Law Enforcement is perfectly happy to make phone calls to cover its own behind. GoDaddy should not outsource judgements about its Terms of Service to Da Man. Otherwise you get this kind of nonsense in which Big Boy Bob acts as a Tool of the State.
A few years ago I registered a bunch of domains with godaddy.com. A year or so ago, I heard about the founder's support of torture and tried to move the domains to another registrar, but found the entire process so baffling I eventually gave up. Godaddy clearly wasn't aiming to make the process of transferring a domain away from them easy, and it wasn't helped by my lack of knowledge about how domain transfers work.
Does anyone know of (or feel the urge to write) a clear, lay-language guide to transferring domains from godaddy to another registrar, so myself and others like me who are fed up with godaddy's repulsive politics can stop giving them money?
Hugh wrote:
Yes. GANDI is all of the above. They are French. They explicitly state that you, not they, own a domain you register with them. After the Fyodor/GoDaddy/MySpace debacle, GANDI assured me that they would not have such a knee-jerk reaction, that they do not intend to police the Internet. They're a favorite among techies. I'm a satisfied customer.
Nearly Free Speech is awesome for solid hosting, good customer service, and solid defense of free speech.
But, they are located in the US, which means they can be compelled by US institutions like, say, police departments or homeland security.
For a reliable registrar not subject to US silliness, try Gandi.net. It's located in France, and explicitly promises that you can use it for anything that's legal under French law. They offer hosting and virtual dedicated servers, too.
this why I love BoingBoing
enom (www.enom.net) comes highly recommended. Cheap, I don' tknow.
@23 Caitifty:
You ought to give Go Daddy's support a shot at it. They have been very helpful and should be helpful with the transfer process.
Barring that, try this from Dreamhost's support wiki.
Good luck!
Wow, censorship in America at its finest.
The odds makers in Las Vegas are giving 20 to 1 odds that www.STOPcopsLying.com will be the next website Go Daddy kicks off its servers.
CAITYFTY (#23) wrote: A few years ago I registered a bunch of domains with godaddy.com. A year or so ago, I heard about the founder's support of torture and tried to move the domains to another registrar, but found the entire process so baffling I eventually gave up. Godaddy clearly wasn't aiming to make the process of transferring a domain away from them easy, and it wasn't helped by my lack of knowledge about how domain transfers work.
Does anyone know of (or feel the urge to write) a clear, lay-language guide to transferring domains from godaddy to another registrar, so myself and others like me who are fed up with godaddy's repulsive politics can stop giving them money?
Exactly the same thing has happened to many many people. There are websites and forums about this issue, just do a search.
Apparently making a complaint with ICANN has helped people get out of GoDaddy's claws.
In my partner's case, he just gave up, he didn't know about ICANN at the time. GoDaddy locked his domain name and let it go after about 2 years. The name had zero commercial value. I am sure they would not have let it go otherwise.
GoDaddy are scumbags who have messed with thousands of people, and repeatedly violated ICANN agreements.
They will typically lock down domain names and make it very difficult for clients to switch to other less thuggish hosts.
Only noobs and downright suckers go to daddy. Certainly anyone hoping to set up a site with any kind of alternative (let alone subversive) content would be a LOSER if they signed up with these fascistic scum. argh.
Get a host that is not based in the US if you value free speech and human service. (Some european hosts are juts re-selling american server space, so look well).
I don't see any problem with this. Police already abuse the public too much, and finally the public gets a small, but useful upper hand. The police are only afraid of their corruption becoming more publicized.
Here's what REALLY sucks! I switched my domains to GoDaddy because MARK told me to in Rule The Web! What have you got to say, Mark??