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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.'"
When someone is suspected of murder, do you:
1) Call the police to report the crime, wait for them to arrest the suspect, perhaps allow him out on bail while the prosecutor collects evidence to build a case. All the while, this person is available to commit further crimes.
2) Testify in court any possible evidence that you have that might send the accused to prison for the crime you believe he's committed.
3) If that fails, pull out a gun and shoot the suspect, killing him without any due process. Sounds like the best solution of them all! You get the problem solved without having to go through the previous steps -- and the problem is solved much faster.
So to reiterate, if you suspect someone of a crime, do you diplomatically try to resolve the situation, or do you go straight to the top and slit the suspect's throat?
When it's a matter of protecting my community's safety, I'll take the knife over a kinder approach anyday,, and this is exactly what MySpace did. And they did nothing wrong.