Yet another censorship case at GoDaddy.com

**Acro** · 03-13-2008, 07:29 PM

GoDaddy Silences Police-Watchdog Site RateMyCop.com

A new web service that lets users rate and comment on the uniformed police officers in their community is scrambling to restore service Tuesday, after Hosting company GoDaddy unceremonious pulled-the-plug on the site in the wake of outrage from criticism-leery cops.
Visitors to RateMyCop.com on Tuesday were redirected to a GoDaddy page reading, "Oops!!!", which urged the site owner to contact GoDaddy to find out why the company pulled the plug.

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 80,00 page views today, and 400,000 yesterday?"

Police departments became uneasy about RateMyCop's plans to watch the watchers in January, when the Culver City, California, startup began issuing public information requests for lists of uniformed officers.

Then the site went live on February 28th. It stores the names and, in some cases, badge numbers of over 140,000 cops in as many as 500 police departments, and allows users to post comments about police they've interacted with, and rate them. The site garnered media interest this week as cops around the country complained that they'd be put at risk if their names were on the internet.

"Having a website like that puts a lot of law enforcement, in my eyes, in danger because it exposes us out there," Officer Hector Basurto, vice president of the Latino Police Officers Association, told ABC television affiliate KGO.

Full article at Wired.

**Banned: theinvestor** · 03-13-2008, 07:41 PM

It looks like the site is up now. This is a pretty interesting idea.

**Acro** · 03-13-2008, 08:04 PM

Originally Posted by theinvestor

It looks like the site is up now. This is a pretty interesting idea.

I see a 404 page.

**Banned: theinvestor** · 03-13-2008, 08:08 PM

It works for me Acroplex...some funny comments actually.

Try to clear your cookies.

**eabigelow** · 03-13-2008, 08:23 PM

Yep--site is up. Nice idea, too! Thanks for this post!

**Irish31** · 03-13-2008, 08:27 PM

Ya its up and running again. This is actually quite the neat idea. Although I highly doubt everything I heard is true, if I had a loonie for each "abusive cop" or "power tripping cop" story I heard, I .. well you get the picture.

The RCMP has really been doing a great PR job over here in Canada lately too, killing off a few innocent people, maybe someone should start one up for us!

**Banned: theinvestor** · 03-13-2008, 08:28 PM

Probably in the making...or at least...a domainer already stole the domain.

It's taken in .ca . ;(

**Banned: domain newbie** · 03-13-2008, 08:55 PM

co.uk here :p~

**Focus** · 03-13-2008, 09:21 PM

404 page here

**Banned: theinvestor** · 03-13-2008, 09:25 PM

It works!

**Dave Zan** · 03-13-2008, 09:31 PM

The same article eventually gave Go Daddy's reason why, in case it's missed:

"The site's operator has publicly disclosed the concerns were over bandwidth," spokeswoman Elizabeth Driscoll writes in an e-mail "More accurately, GoDaddy's concerns were about how the RateMyCop site was far exceeding the amount of server usage for which it had contracted."

That site's got the words "high risk" written all over it. Even RackSpace didn't
want to take a chance.

Big deal if the other hosts seem like cowards and fools to reject that site. It's
not like it's the one thing that'll make their host well-received.

**stock_post** · 03-13-2008, 10:18 PM

did not load for me. May be they opened the site outside USA.

**Gerry** · 03-13-2008, 10:35 PM

Loading for me here in NC.

So, we really don't need the Snowe Bill.

We got YoDaddy policing the net.

**dcristo** · 03-13-2008, 10:54 PM

Interesting concept. The website works for me too.

**JB7** · 03-13-2008, 11:25 PM

The site is up but not functional right now, from where I am anyway.

Yesterday it was totally down.

**Varchar** · 03-14-2008, 12:08 AM

Got 404. Looks like DNS issue...

**Jacksplat** · 03-14-2008, 12:11 AM

Originally Posted by theinvestor

It's taken in .ca . ;(

103 .ca taken that begin with "ratemy"
266 .ca taken that begin with "rate"

Thanks for story Acro. GoDaddy shut me down a couple times 2 years ago.

**VTEC** · 03-14-2008, 04:36 AM

works for me too...

**draggar** · 03-14-2008, 05:07 AM

Linky no worky here.

The page you tried to access does not exist on this server. This page may not exist due to the following reasons:

You are the owner of this web site and you have not uploaded (or incorrectly uploaded) your web site. For information on uploading your web site using FTP client software or web design software, click here for FTP Upload Information.
The URL that you have entered in your browser is incorrect. Please re-enter the URL and try again.
The Link that you clicked on incorrectly points to this page. Please contact the owner of this web site to inform them of this situation.

With and without the www.