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.'"

The site is back up now.

[Paeva]

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

Re:The site is back up now.

[hakr89]

Your DNS server probably still has the old IP Address cached.

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/ [nodaddy.com]

Re:Chief Dyer?

[$RANDOMLUSER]

Chief Jerry Dyer, president of the California Police Chiefs Association, voices what sounds like a more honest concern: that officers will face "unfair maligning" by the citizens they serve.

Re:The site is back up now.

[Anonymous Coward]

No, it's just that it requires www. http://ratemycop.com/ [ratemycop.com] redirects to http://sites.godaddy.com/sites.html [godaddy.com], http://www.ratemycop.com/ [ratemycop.com] loads the site properly. Sounds more like some DNS noob worked on their records.

you can do better...

[one_red_eye]

... than GoDaddy. It just goes to show if you're not running a website that shows all people in a light and happy and cheery manner, don't use GoDaddy hosting or GoDaddy DNS registration services. They've interfered with other sites as well, if they cannot shutdown your website, they'll just turn off the DNS resolution for your IP address like they did with Seclists.Org http://seclists.org/nmap-hackers/2007/0000.html [seclists.org]

GoDaddy is the Self-Proclaimed Internet Police and just because they have the ability to interfere with certain websites they think it's OK. Of course they'll argue Terms of Service, but no company should be able to interfere with one's First Amendment rights. Also why should they want to disable websites in this manner anyway? All the negative press must affect their profit margin.

Re:Big Companies==Arm of Government

[teknopurge]

Godaddy is not the largest webhost. Please check your facts.

Regards,

our legal tradition

[sdedeo]

In the States, anonymous political speech is held -- at least to date -- to be strongly protected under the 1st Amendment; furthermore, slander and libel, especially in the case of discussion of a public official's official conduct, are insanely hard to prove (much easier in Commonwealth countries, and thus, they have their access to information cut off in cases -- most recently, the Tom Cruise biography -- where there is a powerful corporation or government against them.)

Re:1984

[CrashPoint]

Or, you could prohibit anonymous speech.

No, you couldn't [cornell.edu]

Re:Just because you can, doesn't mean you should

[TubeSteak]

Just because you have free speech, doesn't mean that you can use it to make a person's life hell.

Uhh... that's exactly what it means, until the person gets a restraining order.

Free speech isn't all rainbows and butterflies.

Re:1984

[InvisblePinkUnicorn]

Free speech doesn't include libel or slander.

Re:1984

[crankyspice]

Or, you could prohibit anonymous speech.

Not without convincing SCOTUS of that; see, e.g., McIntyre v. Ohio Elections Comm'n, 514 U.S. 334 (1995) (finding a First Amendment right to anonymous speech).

Re:Alternate company for me?

[tobiah]

I use hostICan.com, I switched from GoDaddy for greater stability and usability. I've been very happy with the experience; no annoying ads for additional services, a clean set of web management tools, all the usual stuff installed and up-to-date (php, mysql, perl, etc.), and great phone and email support. They employ competent people who give me useful answers.

Not the first time

[Gm4n]

Certainly not the first time godaddy has pulled the plug on a legitimate website because someone complained. I was hosting a parody website for a while that was registered at godaddy, and they pulled the plug because some people didn't like the content. Nowadays I use moniker, but that's not due to careful comparisons of all the top registrars; it's because insecure.org uses them.

Re:1984

[sjames]

Um... that's not correct at all. It's not fair to people in a movie theater to yell 'fire!' and create a panic, and that's why such speech is not constitutionally protected.

Fairness has nothing to do with it. The risk of trampling injuries and such combined with the intent being to cause a panic rather than to communicate is why it's not protected speech.

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 [del.icio.us], 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.

Actual current domain status

[Animats]

Right now, it looks like the site is being moved. The name "ratemycop.com" is registered with "name.com", not GoDaddy. GoDaddy was providing hosting only. So moving it to another server is easy.

Checking with the authoritative name server for the domain (NS1.MYCPANELHOST.INFO), we get back [205.234.222.18] [205.234.222.18] as the IP address. That's actually "mycpanelhost.info", indicating this is a site using named virtual hosting (many domains on the same IP address). So addressing the site by IP address just gets you a default "Welcome to Apache" page.

The new IP address hasn't propagated through DNS yet. My local DNS is returning "Addresses: 72.167.159.53, 205.234.222.18". That 72.167.159.53 address is the old GoDaddy address. There's a 7 day TTL on the DNS entry, with 6 days 5 hours to go, so it may take a while for the DNS system to purge the GoDaddy address worldwide. Some users are seeing the new site; some are seeing the old GoDaddy page.

GoDaddy is already out of the picture and has no control over the site. We're just waiting for DNS propagation, after which the new site should be visible everywhere.

Re:1984

[smooth wombat]

It's the idiots driving 20 or 30 mph over the limit and weaving through traffic that most of them are watching for,

Funny you should mention those numbers. Virginia finally decided to do something [usatoday.com] about those idiots.

Needless to say, I can hear the folks on here whining about how the money is just another tax. Which in a sense it is since the fine is designed to add money to pay for road maintenance. But that is beside the point.

There will always be those who feel the rules shouldn't apply to them or that the penalty for endangering someone elses life is too high. Whine, whine, whine. Until it happens to you.

Read more [earthlink.net]

Re:fuck undercover

[tungstencoil]

I have several friends who live in Portland (though I do not, so this is also second-hand) but none have any stories like you relate about your or your friend's personal experience. I do not believe you express the totality of the police experience there (or anywhere); one wonders what you may (or may not) be doing to attract such conspicuous yet unwarranted attention.

Additionally, your "A couple summers ago..." suicidal story's link actually tells a different picture. It goes on to talk about a guy who had a severe drinking problem, threatened to kill not just himself but his family, and was armed. Yes, there's a lot of uncertainty in the articles as to whether or not it was handled properly, but there are compelling arguments on both side.

You make it sound as if there was an angst-filled teen who said to his mom, "I'm going to off myself", she called the police, and they summarily came out and did it for him.

One wonders if the objectivity of your "I am a clean looking law abiding white male" and related experiences is slanted as well?

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 [slashdot.org] (2005-05-04)
GoDaddy Serves Blank Pages to Safari & Opera [slashdot.org] (2005-12-08)
GoDaddy.com Dumps Linux for Microsoft [slashdot.org] (2006-03-23)
GoDaddy Holds Domains Hostage [slashdot.org] (2006-06-17)
GoDaddy Caves To Irish Legal Threat [slashdot.org] (2006-09-16)
MySpace and GoDaddy Shut Down Security Site [slashdot.org] (2007-01-26)
That incident prompted this web site:
Exposing the Many Reasons Not to Trust GoDaddy with Your Domain Names [nodaddy.com].
Alternative Registrars to GoDaddy? [slashdot.org] (2007-02-03)
GoDaddy Bobbles DST Changeover? [slashdot.org] (2007-03-11)
850K RegisterFly Domains Moved To GoDaddy [slashdot.org] (2007-05-29)
GoDaddy Silences RateMyCop.com [slashdot.org] (2008-03-12)

Any error or stories not included?

Re:it's kind of like that

[Anonymous Coward]

but if a cop is genuinely bad, the government will get rid of him or her eventually, through regular channels, as regular people sound off about any mistreatment the cop makes

How bout all these cops, who still have their jobs, and weren't punished for violating the laws they are supposed to be enforcing...

Time to shut down YouTube for being "a tool for slander and unfound rumor", despite videos of this type being copied directly from the police security cameras and making the news.

Posting anon to prevent more abuse from police on slashdot like the last time...

Assault victim arrested and stripped by police.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E0Oqa-oHoOo [youtube.com]
Hope Steffy was assaulted and a friend called the police to report the assault. The sheriff appeared and, instead of seeing the woman as the victim of an assault, he arrested her.
Hope is then taken to jail. So after being assaulted she calls the police who arrest her and then jail her. In jail, and the video shows this, the police begin stripping Hope of all her clothes. This included male sheriffs officers holding her while she is stripped.

Police dump quadriplegic from wheelchair
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UYMKyJRAabE [youtube.com]
Tampa, Florida - The Hillsborough Co. Sheriff's Office held a press conference at 10:30am regarding the deputy who can be seen on video dumping a man in a wheelchair onto the ground.
She has not officially been terminated.

Police Abuse Little Girl
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LrmJvjLXp_c [youtube.com]
Vancouver Island, Victoria Police Department.
15 year old girl abused by police.

Re:it's kind of like that

[alan_dershowitz]

the truth is, you have control over your cops: via your government.

There was an article a while back by a Miami-Dade, Florida television station. They sent guys into police stations to ask for a complaint form. The results were pretty bad across the board, and in multiple cases the complainant was physically threatened by an officer, for merely requesting a form to make a complaint against an officer.

http://cbs4.com/topstories/Miami.News.CBS4.2.395528.html [cbs4.com]

CBS4 News found that, in police departments across Miami-Dade and Broward Counties, large and small, it was virtually impossible to walk in the door, and walk out with a complaint form...there was one incident in which our tester went in to file a complaint. After several times asking for a form, being told "you're not leaving without a form," he was asked to leave and actually walked off the property, to the point where the officer reached for his gun, put his hand on his gun and said, "Take a step closer, and see what happens.".

I think part of the problem is that a bad cop can hurt a lot of people before he hopefully eventually gets punished. If that undercover reporter ended up getting shot by that police officer, it wouldn't be any consolation to him or his family that the officer was punished, because he would be dead. I don't know if sites like this are more bad or good, but it's a reaction to this fact. There's police organizations that are actively fighting transparency for things like, how many complaints an officer has had filed against him. The police simply will not give you that information, so it's difficult to prove there's an administrative problem there where complaints are ignored.

Ideally you will as you said go through proper channels to force the police department to operate more transparently, but if you are in a situation where there are enough totally authoritarian citizens and/or city managers in your area, sites like this might be your only defense. Moving is not always an option, and at any rate everyone has the right to feel safe in their community and shouldn't have to leave.

Re:fuck undercover

[kidgenius]

You know, if you act polite, the chances of getting a "contempt of cop" arrest are a lot lower. Who cares if they are powertripping. Take it up by filing a formal complaint. Your main goal should be to be pulled over for as a little time as possible. See, this is your problem. Instead of going about things properly, you are instead giving the cop a hard time. Maybe he deserves it, but how about go about things properly and file a complaint. What will getting defensive with a cop cause but problems for yourselves and/or passengers?