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GoDaddy: A glimpse of the Internet under SOPA

705 points| drusenko | 14 years ago |david.weebly.com | reply

38 comments

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[+] JeremyBanks|14 years ago|reply
A similar story is when GoDaddy shut down seclists.org at the request of MySpace because of a single post out of hundreds of thousands: http://seclists.org/nmap-hackers/2007/0
[+] JS_startup|14 years ago|reply
Wow, what a disturbing story, and a perfect glimpse into a post-SOPA internet. Why GoDaddy is even policing the content of its registrants is beyond me.
[+] suhail|14 years ago|reply
Out of curiosity, what made many of you even use GoDaddy? I've always felt it was a bit sketch due to its:

- Commercials

- And it's shady ability to add $60 worth of crap to your cart when you want to buy a $9 domain.

I found Namecheap and never found anything simpler and less sketch. Even looking for domains on Namecheap 3-4 years ago was much simpler.

Was it just the registrar you had heard of first?

[+] pacemkr|14 years ago|reply
They used to be quite good. A long time ago.

Every year I would come back to renew and it was getting more and more difficult. Eventually, it became ridiculous. The checkout process was finding the "No I don't want this shit" link (yes, link), listing through five pages of "GoDaddy girl" and special offers.

Speaking of the GoDaddy girl. That's how I knew they completely lost touch with their business. I remember their newsletters (were they newsletters?) about "seeing the GoDaddy girl in the shower" or something. I mean, wtf?

I still have a couple of domains there, for complicated reasons, but all others, I've transfered out of there long ago, new business goes to Namecheap.

[+] wpietri|14 years ago|reply
I think it's a common situation for non-experts. If you're in satisficer mode (versus the maximizer mode common to experts), you pick the first thing that's quick, convenient, and apparently safe. Lots of commercials means a recognizable brand, which feels safe to a lot of people when they are comparing a bunch of apparently equivalent choices.

Personally, I wouldn't be sad if GoDaddy went bankrupt tomorrow. I recently had to deal with their latest scam: sending notifications that suggest your domain name is up for auction. Having seen people lose domains before due to missing a renewal and/or outright thievery, my blood pressure went through the roof. It's a marketing lie, of course, to get you to sign up for get more crap.

[+] drusenko|14 years ago|reply
I think there was a certain comfort in their size. You assumed that, because they were so prominent, nothing bad would happen because they were small.

Also, there is definitely a momentum effect -- it was the first registrar many people heard about and just kept using them, because that was the path of least resistance.

[+] sp332|14 years ago|reply
Well it was the registrar I heard of first, and if their ads had been less offensive, I probably would have gone with them. As it was though, I just went with the second registrar I heard of, http://Domain.com/ I had a coupon code from the Hak5 podcast, but I don't really know if it was cheaper than other registrars.
[+] drumdance|14 years ago|reply
I signed up with them something like 12 years ago when they were a refreshing alternative to Network Solutions. Long before the Super Bowl ads and other nonsense.
[+] s00pcan|14 years ago|reply
The first webhost/registrar I used closed down my site (that I had paid yearly for) and made it annoying to move my domain away because I was hosting videos (of myself and friends) on the website. Apparently there was a clause in their terms that I couldn't host any type of video file on there. This was back in 2003; youtube didn't exist yet. Anyway, I moved the domain to godaddy and the website to somewhere else and had no issues for years.
[+] ohashi|14 years ago|reply
Sadly, I know this story isn't an isolated incident. It's also why I don't believe their 'change of heart' in the slightest. This type of behavior and belief is ingrained into the company's culture. On top of that, the whois issues, GoDaddy is also known for messing with their whois (forcing you to go to their site and fill out a captcha instead of giving full info from the whois server directly).
[+] forgotAgain|14 years ago|reply
Gives a glimmer of why GoDaddy would want to support SOPA. It would instantly create a market for premium DNS services where you are protected from this sort of thing.
[+] astrodust|14 years ago|reply
Ah, yes. "Premium Domain Protection (5 years) $89.95" will magically appear in your shopping cart when you purchase a domain.
[+] ericgearhart|14 years ago|reply
SOPA is but a battle in a war. The "war" is the corruption in the US Congress. Go check out what Larry Lessig is doing nowadays... he's trying to fight the war, not the battle.

His comments on why he's "MIA" in the SOPA battle (despite being an open source software and copyleft activist) shed light on this. I'm with Larry... SOPA, the USA PATRIOT Act, DMCA, all that BS are just symptoms of a disease. I'm not saying we "netizens" shouldn't fight SOPA tooth and nail, but some effort should be put into the 'war' as well, to avoid only seeing one or two trees and not the forest.

https://paidcontent.org/article/419-why-is-lawrence-lessig-m...

[+] Gigablah|14 years ago|reply
I had a similar experience when Dyn.com suspended my DNS hosting after a complaint from Amazon about a "phishing" link on my site (it was actually a legitimate Amazon affiliate link). My site was inaccessible while I scrambled to move my DNS entries elsewhere. Even though I have a premium account with Dyn, I was never given any sort of notification beforehand, and it took 5 days of pestering for them to finally reinstate it. Meanwhile, all I got from Amazon was a half-hearted apology from their affiliate customer service rep.

Really, who needs SOPA when companies can shut down websites just like that?

[+] gregable|14 years ago|reply
FWIW, this was the post that made me move my domains out from godaddy. Seems like it shows clearly that Godaddy's product is not high quality rather than just their company's stand on SOPA.

I don't generally feel that I can sanely make all of my product decisions based on the political/moral/etc positions of the companies involved. Not that I wouldn't love to, but it just doesn't seem manageable.

[+] GigabyteCoin|14 years ago|reply
I was perhaps a bit too liberal with my SEO ventures once... I received one single complaint to GoDaddy about a domain name that I owned with them (and admittedly was doing a bit of backlinking with)... One email and a ~$75 "fine" later I was back in business. But this is absurd.

The complaint was along the lines of "Somebody posted a link to this website X and I think it's spam."

GoDaddy immediately placed my domain on hold (same abuse department call that weebly received) and was told I would have to pay the fine to proceed or I could just forfeit the domain to them.

It seemed incredibly heavy handed for a stray blog comment.

[+] altrego99|14 years ago|reply
Doesn't look good. I have decided to move prior to any mishap like this. What alternatives are you guys moving to?
[+] maeon3|14 years ago|reply
If sopa passes maybe there is a way we can get all .gov sites blacklisted with everyone scrambling and wondering why nobody in the world can reach these sites. we need to start programming some weapons into the internet so the people can fight censorship after it becomes law. In the land of spear and sword, the rifleman makes policy.
[+] city41|14 years ago|reply
I'm pretty convinced that SOPA will become law. So I'm wondering if the next best way to fight it is to go with it? Get as many sites shut down as possible to get people to wake up and start noticing?
[+] wvenable|14 years ago|reply
This isn't going to happen. If SOPA passes, there will be selective enforcement just as there is now -- you won't be able to get any .gov sites blacklisted, or facebook, or Google. You probably couldn't even get ycombinator blacklisted. 4chan, maybe.