Go Daddy shuts down police-rating Web site
Domain hoster Go Daddy has shut down a Web site that lets people criticize individual police officers, saying it was using too much bandwidth. But the site owner says he is being censored after police complained.
(Credit:
Go Daddy)
Late last week, KGO TV in San Francisco ran a news story saying that police officers wanted the site shut down, claiming it puts them at risk by revealing their information.
On Wednesday, the site continued to be offline displaying a message that says "Oops!!!" and urged the site owner to contact Go Daddy.
RateMyCop founder Gino Sesto contacted the company and was initially told the site was shut down for "suspicious activity," according to Wired News.
Then a supervisor told him the site had exceeded its 3 terabyte bandwidth limit, but Sesto disputes that, telling Wired News: "How can it be overloaded when it only had 80,000 page views today, and 400,000 yesterday?"
Go Daddy spokesperson Elizabeth Driscoll told CNET News.com that the site was using six times the amount of bandwidth allotted for its $15-a-month "shared server" plan.
"Basically, he was paying for compact car, when he really needed a semi-truck. The customer was not willing to work with our staff to resolve the issue," she wrote in an e-mail. "The situation was absolutely NOT about censorship in ANY way."
This isn't the first time Go Daddy has been accused of censoring a site because of outside pressure. A year ago, it pulled the plug on a security list Web site, after giving the site owner less than an hour notice, after MySpace complained that there its members' usernames and passwords were archived on the site.
After that incident, CNET News.com asked a Go Daddy executive under what circumstances would it suspend a customer's domain name based on the content of the Web site, in the absence of a court order. "Go Daddy takes action to suspend a domain name in cases where the domain name is being used for, or in association with, illegal activities. Our most common instances involve phishing sites, child pornography Web sites, terrorist sites, and the like," Go Daddy General Counsel Christine Jones said. "As an established partner with the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, we also take action based on sites that pose a significant threat to or exploitation of children--as was the case in this instance."
Elinor Mills covers Internet security and privacy. She joined CNET News in 2005 after working as a foreign correspondent for Reuters in Portugal and writing for The Industry Standard, the IDG News Service, and the Associated Press. E-mail Elinor. 
As long as this guy kept backups, and given he was on such a low rent host he probably didn't, he can set up shop again easily.
Godaddy is web space for the clueless who need a slight bump up from MySpace.
We should respect their privacy and honor them, not use the smut that is the internet to exploit these individuals.
A site like this could provide this.
This is the same kind of whining we see from professors and ratemyprofessor.com.
say, more or less, "Oh, poor police, we shouldn't hold them
accountable." You are, probably, a cop since cops don't have
friends who aren't other cops.
Cops get what they sign up for. If they give BS, they get back
BS. If they would just step back, take a big breath, realize they
are just like everybody else and start respecting people they
wouldn't have to worry. Unfortunately, most of the ones I have
had the misfortune of coming into contact with in the last 30
years as a paramedic are egotistical meglomaniacs that think
they are better than everyone else.
If a person in any other profession considered everyone they
met a threat to them, as cops do, they would be incarcerated as
paranoid. Not wanting or tolerating public accountability is
another symptom of paranoia. If anything, because of their
behavior, cops I have met should be placed under constant
scrutiny and held accountable for every one of the legion of
dumb, stupid, dangerous and sadistic things they do.
Cops are not your friend...
The reason I discovered later on was that Googlebot couldn't access Godaddy hosted web sites.
Needless to say I gave up my Godaddy account and reappeared back in the Google index some time later.
A costly exercise, but I learned never to repeat that mistake.
Good to know because we can now AVOID GoDaddy forever !
it looks like the freedom of speech dose not count on these web sites and they like our money but if we try to say something then we get shut down, all because some body tells them we do not like that so kill it, we do not want you to have that person saying that any more...
GoDaddy is the worst of them all if I need to say it they are chickens cause they let others push them around so much, in a way I feel sorry for them, they remind me of the kid that got bullied in school and had no one to tell oh well maybe some day they well find some one to help them out
Dragon...
So, though you may think that this was another big brother move, this time it was a good one. We are people to, and deserve the same right to privacy as you do.
- Good Job GO DADDY!
- by MedicKam March 12, 2008 10:55 PM PDT
- I am glad that GO DADDY realized that this site was a bad thing. So, thank you GO DADDY!
- Like this Reply to this comment
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