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

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.)

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.