GoDaddy Faces PR Nightmare Over Domain Suspension

[Gerry]

GoDaddy Faces PR Nightmare Over Domain Suspension
Friday, January 26th, 2007

http://www.domainnamewire.com/

Kinda cool that the story broke yesterday DNforum and now headlining.

[MobileDesigner]

love this part:

"To make matters worse, GoDaddy general counsel Christine Jones responded by saying GoDaddy’s terms of service say the company “reserves the right to terminate your access to the services at any time, without notice, for any reason whatsoever”, according to the CNET article."

Who the heck do they think they are!? What gives godaddy the right to sensor? If we talk about anything, do we need to ask DADDY!? Its freedom of speech! How dare they.

shame, shame, shame on you godaddy.

[Duckinla]

"To make matters worse, GoDaddy general counsel Christine Jones responded by saying GoDaddy’s terms of service say the company “reserves the right to terminate your access to the services at any time, without notice, for any reason whatsoever”, according to the CNET article."

Wow, Nice response. That's why she's the head of Legal and not the head of Public Relations.

[carlton]

... the internet world was shocked today to learn that GoDaddy suspended a domain name, seclists.org, based on the content on that site. MySpace contacted GoDaddy to suspend the registration because the site had information about MySpace users including their usernames and passwords. GoDaddy complied.

There was a valid reason to do so (see above). Suspension can be temporary and would seem merited in this case.

[MobileDesigner]

But that would be myspace decision and not GoDaddy. We are paying customers. So if you buy a house, is someone going to control the way you talk?
IMO, i think its not fair.

[Dave Zan]

Who the heck do they think they are!? What gives GoDaddy the right to sensor? If we talk about anything, do we need to ask DADDY!? Its freedom of speech! How dare they.

People can believe A should become B. But there's no cosmic law saying one
should believe what the other does, nor are they obliged to.

You wanna make it a free speech issue? Do as you wish.

But is that going to change the fact you agree to all of their terms once you
check the box beside "I have read the registration agreement and agree to all
its terms" if you're using them? No.

Speaking of which:

http:// www. godaddy.com/gdshop/legal_agreements/show_doc.asp?pageid=REG%5FSA

As a condition of Your use of Go Daddy ’s Software and Services, You agree not to use them for any purpose that is unlawful or prohibited by these terms and conditions, and You agree to comply with any applicable local, state, federal and international laws, government rules or requirements. You agree You will not be entitled to a refund of any fees paid to Go Daddy if, for any reason, Go Daddy takes corrective action with respect to Your improper or illegal use of its Services.

Go Daddy reserves the right at all times to disclose any information as Go Daddy deems necessary to satisfy any applicable law, regulation, legal process or governmental request, or to edit, refuse to post or to remove any information or materials, in whole or in part, in Go Daddy's sole discretion.

If You have purchased Services, Go Daddy has no obligation to monitor Your use of the Services. Go Daddy reserves the right to review Your use of the Services and to cancel the Services in its sole discretion. Go Daddy reserves the right to terminate Your access to the Services at any time, without notice, for any reason whatsoever.

Go Daddy reserves the right to terminate Services if Your usage of the Services results in, or is the subject of, legal action or threatened legal action, against Go Daddy or any of its affiliates or partners, without consideration for whether such legal action or threatened legal action is eventually determined to be with or without merit. Go Daddy may review every account for excessive space and bandwidth utilization and to terminate or apply additional fees to those accounts that exceed allowed levels.

Except as set forth below, Go Daddy may also cancel Your use of the Services, after thirty (30) days, if You are using the Services, as determined by Go Daddy in its sole discretion, in association with spam or morally objectionable activities. Morally objectionable activities will include, but not be limited to: activities designed to defame, embarrass, harm, abuse, threaten, slander or harass third parties; activities prohibited by the laws of the United States and/or foreign territories in which You conduct business; activities designed to encourage unlawful behavior by others, such as hate crimes, terrorism and child pornography; activities that are tortuous, vulgar, obscene, invasive of the privacy of a third party, racially, ethnically, or otherwise objectionable; activities designed to impersonate the identity of a third party; illegal access to other computers or networks (i.e., hacking); distribution of Internet viruses or similar destructive activities; and activities designed to harm or use unethically minors in any way. Notwithstanding anything to the contrary herein, in the event Go Daddy cancels Your Services during the first thirty (30) days after You purchase the Services, You will receive a refund of any fees paid to Go Daddy in connection with the Services being canceled. In the event Go Daddy deletes Your Services because they are being used in association with spam or morally objectionable activities, no refund will be issued. You agree You will not be entitled to a refund of any fees paid to Go Daddy if, for any reason, Go Daddy takes corrective action with respect to Your improper or illegal use of its Services.

You don't like their terms, don't use them. And you can't force them to make
their terms suitable to you or anyone, nor do they have to.

Awareness and responsibility is a 2-way street. Be aware and be responsible,
or someone else will do that for you even if you don't like it.

[Banned: biznews]

Read what the respondent said. The very information GoDaddy tried to remove at the asking of myspace is freely available on google. Would they shut down google?

America is full of crap when it comes to being fair and equal. It is for the most part all about the big guys gunning for the little guy. Even if the little guy was wrong, there has to be procedures followed. You don't just hang someone without due process.

Try having passwords stolen from a little known forum posted on some obscure site. See if Godaddy merits them the same response. Now that it was myspace, oh so you want your information protected and at any cost. Why not spend some of your $$$ into making a secure site?

I can't wait till China, India and other countries become a dominant online user force. At least China does not hide behind this freedom of speech and equality for all nonsense.

[carlton]

I just re-read the DomainNameWire article. That was not the kind of objective news reporting one expects. The writer spun the story.

[Togoodhlth]

If there were in fact usernames and passwords then GoDaddy absolutely did the right thing.
What if it was paypal usernames and passwords??? Or credit card numbers?

Read what the respondent said. The very information godaddy tried to remove at the asking of myspace is freely available on google. Would they shut down google?

America is full of crap when it comes to being fair and equal. It is for the most part all about the big guys gunning for the little guy. Even if the little guy was wrong, there has to be procedures followed. You don't just hang someone without due process.

Try having passwords stolen from a little known forum posted on some obscure site. See if Godaddy merits them the same response. Now that it was myspace, oh so you want your information protected and at any cost. Why not spend some of your $$$ into making a secure site?

I can't wait till China, India and other countries become a dominant online user force. At least China does not hide behind this freedom of speech and equality for all nonsense.

I'm puzzled as to how America and "due process" got pulled into Godaddys decision.
What does this have to do with America?
Godaddy has a TOS agreement. They can stop providing service to anyone at anytime.
lol, due process has absolutely nothing to do with this. Godaddy is not an arm of our government they are a corporation. They don't make laws or enforce them.

If you don;t like what Godaddy did that's fine but don't blame an entire country. That's just odd.

[Banned: biznews]

I understand your sentiment. And even though it may seem I crossed the line, it is with great recurrence we experience wealthy people in America go scott free merely because they have the money to secure their guilt. Sure, there are exceptions. But, this country for all its rhetoric as the land of the free, does not shell out equal form of justice to all strata of society.

Anyway, this is my experience rather than pure opinion. I agree with you on separation of government and a corporation. But big governments and big corporations function alike. They wield a lot of power even in places they are caught walking the thin line.

I may have steered the thread elsewhere. So back to GoDaddy...

[Gerry]

That's why she's the head of Legal and not the head of Public Relations.

Now, THAT IS FUNNY!

[myst woman]

If it would have been one of their huge giant customers how much you want to bet it would have been handled differently?

[leo]

But you guys know that the domain which was cancelled really gave out myspace usernames and passwords? :p i managed to get a huge huge list of emails and passwrod..and most of you know the password is smae for all account ...myspace was not wrong in their part but GoDaddy should have warned or asked them to move out rather than terminating their account IMHO.

[namedropper]

GoDaddy Faces PR Nightmare Over Domain Suspension

Translation: Some whiny 12 year old hack wannabe broke federal laws and wrote a nasty barely literate "press release"complaining about the fact that the name only got suspended when he could instead be locked up in prison under cyber-terrorism charges by overly broad laws passed through Congress after 9/11.

Yawn.

To most sane people, GoDaddy shutting down a hacker site is a GOOD thing. That's what any PR message to the world at large is going to be. And anyone hoping to use domain names to break the law aren't the target market GoDaddy is going for anyway. They can leave in droves for all anyone cares.

[Duckinla]

I understand your sentiment. And even though it may seem I crossed the line, it is with great recurrence we experience wealthy people in America go scott free merely because they have the money to secure their guilt. Sure, there are exceptions. But, this country for all its rhetoric as the land of the free, does not shell out equal form of justice to all strata of society.

Rich people get better everything. Health care, vacations, food, drink, women, legal help. It may not seem fair but it's a necessary part of the drive to accumulate wealth. Otherwise we would all be content to watch TV all day.

[Togoodhlth]

Translation: Some whiny 12 year old hack wannabe broke federal laws and wrote a nasty barely literate "press release"complaining about the fact that the name only got suspended when he could instead be locked up in prison under cyber-terrorism charges by overly broad laws passed through Congress after 9/11.

Yawn.

To most sane people, GoDaddy shutting down a hacker site is a GOOD thing. That's what any PR message to the world at large is going to be. And anyone hoping to use domain names to break the law aren't the target market GoDaddy is going for anyway. They can leave in droves for all anyone cares.

Actually the message which most will read is the one on News.com which actually mocks Godaddy.

[Dave Zan]

Actually the message which most will read is the one on News.com which actually mocks GoDaddy.

Too bad they didn't get all their facts straight. Or do they care?

[Leading Names]

Regardless of what was on the site it shouldn't be a registrars responsibility to police content. The registrars responsibility should be to register and maintain domains, that's it - MySpace should have contacted the web host, not the registrar.

Yet another reason not to use GoDaddy (one of hundreds )

- Rob

[Raider]

I'm not a big GoDaddy fan, but they obviously made the right decision here and I respect them for it. Just because security sensitive data is posted on another site, doesn't make it right for all other Registrars to allow it, they stepped up and did the right thing. What if this was a list of social security numbers posted for the world to see? and the IRS asked Godaddy to close it down? Would opponents of the closure claim violation of free speech? perhaps they would unless their number was listed.

[Acro]

This is old news. GoDaddy is known for its hypocrisy: DNS-hijacking names of questionable ethical context vs. flaunting tits & ass commercials at the Superbowl. It's been done several times before.

You say GoDaddy, I say NoDaddy.