GoDaddy Caves To Irish Legal Threat

crush writes, "An Irish website RateYourSolicitor.com, which aims to let clients find and rate solicitors (a British Isles flavor of lawyer), has received an Irish High Court injunction to remove defamatory material about one such rated solicitor. The site is hosted by a US provider, gmax.net, which has reportedly been served notice by lawyers acting for the defamed solicitor. According to the article, GoDaddy, as the domain name registrar, has locked access to the site (registration or bugmenot required). (Amusingly, the records are all for a 'John Smith' in the Russian Federation at 'lawyercatcher@lawyer.com'!) An interesting twist to all of this is that according to the Communications Decency Act, an ISP, as a publisher, cannot be held responsible or legally liable for what their clients do. So how can GoDaddy justify this censorship? Or are registrars the weak link in a system that seems like it ought to be robust against censorship?"

Comments

Maybe not censorship?

[CRCulver]

Perhaps GoDaddy is blocking them not out of pure censorship, but because this scandal has revealed that one of the domains they manage doesn't have correct WHOIS information, which many registrars require in the TOS?

Censorship by any other name...

[schwaang]

A broadly-worded TOS is the way that ISPs in countries like America perform censorship.

We ostensibly have freedom of speech, and don't legally ban things like hate speech as they do in France, for example. Instead we use our corporations to enforce the same kinds of restrictions against "offensive content" and such.

In this case, GoDaddy's TOS includes this gem:

Go Daddy reserves the right to terminate Services if Your usage of the Services results in, or is the subject of, legal action or threatened legal action, against Go Daddy or any of its affiliates or partners, without consideration for whether such legal action or threatened legal action is eventually determined to be with or without merit.

So any jackass could shut you down by threatening to sue GoDaddy. Niiiice.

"Freedom of the press belongs to those who own one."

[TOS = "Terms of Service", you know -- the huge page of small print that you scroll past in order to click the "I agree" button.]

Re:Censorship by any other name...

[Tanktalus]

Side note: "your" freedom of speech is one predicated on government involvement. Specifically, the lack therein. It does not, however, compel a newspaper to print your article or letter to the editor. It merely prevents the government (in theory) deciding for the newspaper that it won't. The newspaper is still free to deny your article for any reason, whether trivial (it spelled "its" wrong) or conspiratorial ("for the common good").

Similarly, ISPs are free to restrict who gets to use their service. (Of course, there are other repercussions here - if they take an overtly active role in this, for example, they lose common-carrier status, and thus become liable for everything, where "overtly" and "active" are loosely defined based on case law.) If GoDaddy doesn't want to provide service to pornographers or spammers, that's their business. If GoDaddy has a weak stomach for lawsuits, that, too, is their business. However, even if they do have a strong stomach for lawsuits, their TOS says that they reserve the right to make decisions to terminate service unilaterally based on their perception of the lawsuit. The "with or without merit" part is simply a cover-your-ass statement that says that you and they could even disagree about the winnability of a lawsuit, but they still get to make the call. That's there just because someone got sued at some point in the past for doing something like capitulating over what turned out to be nothing, I'm sure.

So, please. Do not bring up freedom of speech. Your constitutional amendment to that effect is irrelevant. At least to this situation.

(Disclaimer: nothing in here says you are wrong for disliking GoDaddy. Just as you're free to express your view, I am mine. I'm not preventing you from blaming free speech - just trying to explain it a bit more.)

Re:"British"?

[eiscir]

Where're you from mate? 'British Isles' is purely a geographical description - it includes all the islands off the northwest coast of Europe, the largest of which is called Britain. Makes sense to me, as an Irishman, to call them the British Isles then! However, if the /. had said 'A British flavour of lawyer', that would necessarily involve a political or ethnic implication, which would of course be incorrect. The wikipedia has an interesting article about the correct terminology here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Isles_(termin ology). However, unfortunately it seems that Irish-America has got to it in places, making it seem that Irish people are far more puffed up about the term 'British Isles' than they really are. Needs a bit of editing, methinks.

GoDaddy, cowardice, and non-free speech.

[mbauser2]

I worked in GoDaddy's tech support department for a little while many years ago. They struck me as a little spineless when it comes to real controversy (as opposed to the manufactured controversy of some of their ads). GoDaddy's AUP is a lot tougher than their competitors, giving them permission to yank a domain for saying the wrong thing.

Check out this excerpt from their Registration Agreement:

Go Daddy may also cancel the registration of a domain name, after thirty (30) days, if that name is being used, as determined by Go Daddy in its sole discretion, in association with spam or morally objectionable activities. Morally objectionable activities will include, but not be limited to: activities designed to defame, embarrass, harm, abuse, threaten, slander or harass third parties; activities prohibited by the laws of the United States and/or foreign territories in which You conduct business; activities designed to encourage unlawful behavior by others, such as hate crimes, terrorism and child pornography; activities that are tortious, vulgar, obscene, invasive of the privacy of a third party, racially, ethnically, or otherwise objectionable; activities designed to impersonate the identity of a third party; and activities designed to harm or use unethically minors in any way.

It's not exactly a free-speech-friendly contract, is it? You can lose your registration for embarrassing someone. This is why I never moved any of my domains to GoDaddy when I was working for them. You can't count on them to stay out of legal battles that other registrars would ignore. Instead, they'll kill your registration, and expect to be patted on the back for being good citizens.

Sometimes, I think their real problem is that they want everyone to like them.

Re:Not a surprise

[Beryllium Sphere(tm)]

>why should the legal sector be held to a higher standard?

A car mechanic who does a bad job can waste money and cause inconvenience. Lawers abusing the system can shut down entire industries, for example light aircraft manufacturing.

An electrician who does a bad job can make someone's house burn down. A lawyer who does a bad job can let a client go to Death Row (http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/article.php?scid= 17&did=442).

A floor tile installer who does a bad job can shake someone's faith in floor tile installers. A lawyer who does a bad job can shake the trust in the court system that holds society together.

Don't you get it?

[Travoltus]

Freedom from Government censorship isn't worth anything when corporations can make an end run around them and shut you up.

You can't go anywhere now and put out fliers because there's ordninances against it. You can't broadcast online because ISP's shut you down when you say something "objectionable enough".

We need free speech zones on the internet that do not depend on corporations or Government.

Re:Don't you get it?

[Infernal Device]

Tell me, Mr. Infernal,

Technically speaking, using the rules of English, that's Mr. Device. Be that as it may ...

what good is a phone call... if you are unable to speak?

Let's see here. There's pen and paper (could get your hands lopped off or perhaps your eyes gouged out) or ultimately, you can still walk out the door and communicate directly with your supplicants.

I get the general gist of your argument - really, I do. But you need to understand that no one person, corporation, business, or other entity is required to help you with whatever your mission is. Count yourself lucky that for the most part, these businesses aren't too worried about it - it's a side effect of the communications business that you have the ability to spread your screed over a wide area.

But it doesn't have to be that way and you should not count on it if what you have to say is particularly disturbing to the rest of society (or even some small part of it - as long as it's influential). Ultimately, you are only guaranteed the Freedom, not the means to utilize it in a convenient manner.

no..

[plasmacutter]

There is a difference betweeen denying service at request, and denying service after a client has been accepted and paid for his services.

No landlord, once the person has signed a lease, is allowed to evict their tenant for things like voting habits, their tendency to protest their favorite political party, their tendency to denounce the company they work for, etc.

If they tried it they could be sued into destitution.

The same thing with wrongful termination. While empolyers have the right to not hire you, once you are hired theyre not allowed to fire you for things like the hobbies you keep in your spare time or your political affiliation.

Finally, and most importantly, with increased power or wealth comes increased responsibility. Webhosting companies, like corporations who dominate a geographic area in terms of employment opportunity, estensibly have power rivaling a government and carrying the same weight.. as such they should be held to the same constitutional standards as the government, otherwise those constitutional guarantees don't mean jack.