Shoot first and ask questions later

In a classic case of shoot first and ask questions later, domain registrar GoDaddy yanked the domain Seclists.org, from nMap creator Fyodor, after giving him 52 seconds notice.  It seems GoDaddy received a request to pull the plug on the domain from MySpace because the popular mailing list archive was housing a file that contained the usernames and passwords from MySpace users.  I am not defending that the file should have been on the site or whether or not Fyodor has an obligation to know that it was there.  What I do have a problem with though is Go Daddy pulling the plug on the domain without due process, court order, giving their customer a chance to cure or anything other than they felt like it.

What made it worse is that GoDaddy then got caught lying around the circumstances around it and fell back to their boilerplate language in their domain registrar agreement, that probably no one actually reads.  The facts according to the C/Net article, are that after receiving the complaint from MySpace and verifying the file, GoDaddy pulled the plug on the domain.  GoDaddy's general counsel claimed that they tried to contact the Fyodor, but he was not available. Jones says that after they could not contact Fyodor they pulled the plug.  Fyodor they claim contacted them about an hour later.  Fyodor on the other hand has a log of correspondence that shows they shut down the domain 52 seconds after trying to contact him.  It then took 7 hours for him to get the domain unsuspended.  When confronted, it appears the attorney for Go Daddy fell back to saying under the terms of their service agreement, they can suspend any domain anytime they want for any reason they want.

OK, I registered my domain at GoDaddy, but am looking for a new registrar now. Customer service like that, I don't need.  Back when I was in the hosting business, we often had situations where hosting customers had put up inappropriate or illegal content.  When and how we could take it down was a very particular matter that we only undertook with legal advice.  I realize GoDaddy has an obligation to the web browsing public, but they also have an obligation to their customers.  If they are going to yank the plug every time some big company is going to bitch, without giving their customer a chance to react or correct, they are not the kind of company I want to do business with!