MySpace and GoDaddy Shut Down Security Site

Several readers wrote in with a CNET report that raises novel free-speech questions. MySpace asked GoDaddy to pull the plug on Seclists.org, a site run by Fyodor Vaskovich, the father of nmap. The site hosts a quarter million pages of mailing-list archives and the like. MySpace did not obtain a court order or, apparently, compose a DMCA takedown notice: it simply asked GoDaddy to remove a site that happened to archive a list of thousands of MySpace usernames and passwords, and GoDaddy complied. Fyodor says the takedown happened without prior notice. The site was unavailable for about seven hours until he found out what was happening and removed the offending posting. The CNET article concludes: "When asked if GoDaddy would remove the registration for a news site like CNET News.com, if a reader posted illegal information in a discussion forum and editors could not be immediately reached over a holiday, Jones replied: 'I don't know... It's a case-by-case basis.'"

Comments

Am I the only one wondering this?

[djblair]

What the hell was a list of usernames and passwords doing on the site anyway? Can anyone shed some light on this? That's a huge security risk. An attacker could use usernames and passwords to launch a massive spam attack via MySpace's messaging features.

Re:Real-world analogy

[AutopsyReport]

And had GoDaddy (or whoever) simply blocked/deleted the single webpage, it would have taken all of two minutes for the website to re-post the same page under a different name. And that accomplishes what?