GoDaddy Silences RateMyCop.com

mikesd81 writes "Wired is running a story about GoDaddy shutting down a police watchdog site called RateMyCop. However, GoDaddy can't seem to give a consistent answer as for why. From the article: 'RateMyCop founder Gino Sesto says he was given no notice of the suspension. When he called GoDaddy, the company told him that he'd been shut down for suspicious activity. When Sesto got a supervisor on the phone, the company changed its story and claimed the site had surpassed its 3 terabyte bandwidth limit, a claim that Sesto says is nonsense. "How can it be overloaded when it only had 80,000 page views today, and 400,000 yesterday?" Sesto says police can post comments as well, and a future version of the site will allow them to authenticate themselves to post rebuttals more prominently. Chief Dyer wants to get legislation passed that would make RateMyCop.com illegal, which, of course, wouldn't pass constitutional muster in any court in America.'"

Comments

The site is back up now.

[Paeva]

ratemycop.com is back up now... which makes this story pretty uninteresting.

This is not the first time.

[hilather]

This is not the first time GoDaddy has shut down sites without notice or just cause. Fyodor's seclist was shut down by them quite some time ago.

Our popular SecLists.Org public mailing list archive is back up and running after it was inexcusably shut down with no notice by our soon-to-be-former domain registrar GoDaddy at the behest of MySpace.Com. We believe web site content is the responsibility of the site owner (registrant) and (if that fails) hosting or bandwidth provider. If the whois contact data is valid, registrars shouldn't be involved without a court order. They even started up a website to document the poor customer service GoDaddy provides http://nodaddy.com/

Cops don't actually get shot that much.

[ClioCJS]

Taxi drivers, fishermen, and garbage men all die at a rate greater than police. This was in mainstream media just a few months ago -- article probably still up at CNN.com. Meanwhile, police act like this, and pretty much get away with it the majority of the time. Criticism is more than necessary, and being skewed has nothing to do with it -- They are already skewed by being in the position they are. They can already shoot someone in the back and have internal affairs clear it in a week. That's pretty skewed too. Like the others said, Free Speech isn't necessarily about being fair. You need a little more perspective into the police. Go RSS subscribe to BadCopNews and read EVERY article for 6 months and tell me if your worldview is not changed by the experience.

Re:1984

[wumingzi]

Oh, and considering the police, teachers and professors already have regular reviews of their performance what on earth do these "rating" sites bring to the table other than the chance to rant?

I wont speak to teachers and professors, but I'd say the police review mechanism may be a little flawed.

Here in my hometown, 40-odd people have been killed by police officers since 1980. Number of cases where a fatality shooting by a police officer resulted in criminal prosecution? Zero. Not zero since 1980. Zero since the establishment of the city.

I don't have any particular axe to grind with the police. I don't get pulled over very often, and the few times it's happened, the officers have been polite and professional. But please. Not one criminal prosecution in over 150 years? Just from a point of statistics, I'd say something is wrong here.

Back to the fundamental issue: GoDaddy.

[Futurepower(R)]

I'm keeping a list of stories about GoDaddy on Slashdot, in order by date:
Go Daddy Usurps Network Solutions (2005-05-04)
GoDaddy Serves Blank Pages to Safari & Opera (2005-12-08)
GoDaddy.com Dumps Linux for Microsoft (2006-03-23)
GoDaddy Holds Domains Hostage (2006-06-17)
GoDaddy Caves To Irish Legal Threat (2006-09-16)
MySpace and GoDaddy Shut Down Security Site (2007-01-26)
That incident prompted this web site:
Exposing the Many Reasons Not to Trust GoDaddy with Your Domain Names.
Alternative Registrars to GoDaddy? (2007-02-03)
GoDaddy Bobbles DST Changeover? (2007-03-11)
850K RegisterFly Domains Moved To GoDaddy (2007-05-29)
GoDaddy Silences RateMyCop.com (2008-03-12)

Any error or stories not included?