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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.'"
Let's post some usernames and passwords on MySpace and ask for their domain to be taken down. It only sounds fair.
I called it a mighty Sperm Whale, she called it Finding Nemo.
It should be downright bloody illegal to do what Godaddy did. Or if not illegal, it should have serious repecussions for them as a registrar up to the point of dropping their registrar status.
Besides, Myspace's effort was entirely useless. Those usernames/passwords were already compromised, Fjodor's site was just one that had it from the many places it can be found. The sensible thing would have been a forced password reset for the users involved not trying to coerce a registrar.
My position is that unless a legal, court ordered action is forced on the registrar, it should be forbidden to drop anything. And in the case there is content that shouldn't be public on the site, that is a _hosting_ issue not a domain issue. Go bugger the hosting company with legal documents.
It takes a man to suffer ignorance and smile
Be yourself no matter what they say
As we have said to our customers - Go Daddy is committed to keeping the Internet a safe place. If there is material online that is jeopardizing Internet safety, we will take necessary action. I
That's not your damn job! You are a registrar. If you take it upon yourself to police the contents of the sites in your registry, what happens when you get sud for failing to do so? Go do your job and stop trying to police things that are none of your business.
"We returned the General to El Salvador, or maybe Guatemala, it's difficult to tell from 10,000 feet"