[ga] Re: [Politech] More experiences with GoDaddy, free speech, and domain deletion [fs]

[Jeff Williams <jwkckid1@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Declan, Marc, and all,

  Good work Marc.

Declan McCullagh wrote:

> Previous Politech message:
> http://www.politechbot.com/2007/01/26/godaddy-pull-plug/
>
> -------- Original Message --------
> Subject: Re: [Politech] MySpace, GoDaddy pull plug on computer security
> domain name without warning [fs]
> Date: Fri, 26 Jan 2007 07:10:30 -0800
> From: Marc Perkel <marc@xxxxxxxxxx>
> To: Declan McCullagh <declan@xxxxxxxx>
> References: <45B9C4BE.9060301@xxxxxxxx>
>
> Declan,
>
> Last your GoDaddy yanked the domain for the data center where my
> computers are hosted. (nectartech.com) They managed to take thousands of
> domains offline as a result. I helped get them back online by recording
> two phone calls to their tech support department.
>
> http://marc.perkel.com/archives/000861.html
> http://marc.perkel.com/audio/godaddy.mp3
> http://marc.perkel.com/audio/godaddy2.mp3
>
> -------- Original Message --------
> Subject: Re: [Politech] MySpace, GoDaddy pull plug on computer security
> domain name without warning [fs]
> Date: Fri, 26 Jan 2007 09:00:28 -0600
> From: Buzz <buzz@xxxxxxxxxx>
> Reply-To: Buzz <buzz@xxxxxxxxxx>
> To: Declan McCullagh <declan@xxxxxxxx>
>
> Declan,
>
> This may not be on the same scale, but I recently had a personal website
> shut down by GoDaddy. The site is for a humorous rock band some friends
> and I have been in for many years now (http://www.bhtch.com); it gets
> very little traffic.
>
> One day the site just disappeared. The site was hosted via SiteFlip,
> which is a reseller of SSLcatacombnetowrks.com. Getting into contact
> with SiteFlip was next to impossible, as they are one of those
> fly-by-night, email-contact-only web hosts run out of some guy's garage.
> The response I eventually got gave me no indication as to why the
> hosting was shut down, and it took massive effort by multiple members of
> our band to get them to let us get our data off their servers
> (essentially, they kept canceling our tech support accounts). As far as
> I was able to discern, they were told to shut us down by our registrar,
> i.e. GoDaddy. Mind you, we were never given any sort of refund of
> hosting fees.
>
> As far as I could tell, our site was never in violation of SiteFlip's
> TOS. Our domain does get spoofed a lot by spammers, as you can imagine,
> but I would have thought the Powers That Be at our host and registrar
> would possess basic postmaster skills like reading email headers. I used
> to work for an ISP as acting postmaster, and I can tell you it's not
> rocket science.
>
> Regardless, I've since transferred all domains away from GoDaddy, and I
> will never use them, SiteFlip, or any SSLCatacomb-related services ever
> again. I'm now with eNom, the registrar for ICDSoft, which is one of the
> best hosting companies I've ever dealt with. I've had other sites hosted
> with them for years with no problems, and their tech support is amazing.
>
> Cheers,
> Buzz
>
> -------- Original Message --------
> Subject: Re: [Politech] MySpace, GoDaddy pull plug on computer security
> domain name without warning [fs]
> Date: Fri, 26 Jan 2007 15:26:58 +0530
> From: Suresh Ramasubramanian <suresh@xxxxxxxxxx>
> Organization: -ENOENT
> To: Declan McCullagh <declan@xxxxxxxx>
> References: <45B9C4BE.9060301@xxxxxxxx>
>
> Hey Declan
>
> Curious what you get when you add two and two together (and this case
> could very well be me getting an answer "twenty two", but still..).
>
> Myspace is suing Scott Richter for illegally accessing thousands of
> myspace accounts and posting spam bulletins to the friends list of those
> accounts ..
>
> And now there's this big list of myspace accounts floating around
> online. This stuff is quite possibly phished from myspace users, usually
> naive kids who routinely post the kind of personal information online
> that's an ID thief's dream come true,  There's a huge amount of phishing
> spam targeted at myspace, so it need not necessarily be shoddy security
> on myspace's part.
>
> Coincidence? Or not?
>
> -------- Original Message --------
> Subject: RE: [Politech] MySpace, GoDaddy pull plug on computer security
> domain name without warning [fs]
> Date: Fri, 26 Jan 2007 10:32:41 -0500
> From: Richard M. Smith <rms@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> To: 'Declan McCullagh' <declan@xxxxxxxx>
>
> As an aside, using the DNS system to censor Web sites is sometimes
> necessary.  Back in 2004, a number of folks and myself investigated a piece
> of malware that turned people's home computers into Web proxy servers in
> order to host porn and phishing Web sites.  Every 10 minutes, DNS records
> would get updated to move a Web site from one home computer to another.  The
> goal was to make it hard to shut down the Web sites.  I tried to get the
> domain registration company to turn off the domain names being used by the
> scammers, but had no luck.  The system was finally shut down when analysis
> of the malware showed that a master host system at Everyone's Internet was
> running the whole show.  Turning off the master killed the network of scam
> Web sites.  Had the scammers moved the master system around to other
> hijacked home computers, the DNS system might have been the only way to turn
> off the scam network.
>
> Richard
>
> -------- Original Message --------
> Subject: Re: [Politech] MySpace, GoDaddy pull plug on computer security
> domain name without warning [fs]
> Date: Fri, 26 Jan 2007 11:41:50 -0500
> From: Paul Levy <plevy@xxxxxxxxxxx>
> To: <declan@xxxxxxxx>
>
> We have had our own go-around with Christine Jones, after Domains by
> Proxy (an affiliate of GoDaddy) gave us very little time to get into
> court to oppose a subpoena to identify a Doe.  It was like pulling teeth
> to get even a couple of days extension, and even though the time they
> were willing to delay compliance with a subpoena is much less that the
> real biggies like Yahoo! and Google insist on as a matter of course, she
> used similar  words, "very generous," to describe her response to our
> requests.  Of course, when a case is pending far from where you are
> (this one was in Arizona), the lawyer who wants to help needs time not
> only to review the case and prepare papers, but to find local counsel.
> We were able to get to court in time, thank goodness, and the court
> quashed the subpoena.  http://www.citizen.org/hot_issues/issue.cfm?ID=1526
>
> We attacked Ms. Jones her publicly for her company's grudging response
> to a customer's appeal for time to protect his anonymity, and although
> she responded by saying how hurt she was, we have actually found that
> she has been much more responsive WRT anonymity issues more recently, at
> least to us.   We certainly commend her for this improvement, and her
> responsiveness has been useful to us as regular litigators representing
> clients trying to preserve their anonymity.   Whether relying on
> personal relationships to decide when to be responsive to customers
> seeking to preserve their anonymity is a good idea for a company that
> wants to build its business by offering a "protect your anonymity"
> product is another question.
>
> The same reasoning would apply to her "good corporate citizenship"
> response to criticism over her willingness to pull a web site without
> notice or opportunity to respond and persuade.  We can only hope that
> GoDaddy will learn from this experience and build a more reasonable
> policy for future cases.
>
> Your comment on the relevance of the DMCA also brings to mind the
> question about whether we should be thinking about reforming the DMCA
> takedown provisions both to ensure better protection for the "accused"
> end user who is victimized by this sort of demand, and at the same time
> extend the DMCA approach -- absolving the host of liability in return
> for entering into the takedown minuet -- to areas other than copyright.
>
> In some ways, one might shudder at the extension of a procedure that
> isn't working well for the end user, but on the other hand the big ISP's
> have, as a practical matter, extended the model to other legal claims
> through programs like eBay's VeRO.  Given the current language of the
> DMCA (and the Communications Decency Act, which protects ISP's against
> liability based on hosting but exempts "intellectual property" claims),
> if a company claims a trademark violation, of a violation of other
> rights at the edges of intellectual property such as the right of
> publicity or trade secrets, the ISP has no protection against liability
> even if it gives notice, receives a put-back response, and then refrains
> from removal.  Knowing the limits of the DMCA protection, companies
> routinely and rather cynically throw claims other than copyright into
> their takedown notices.
>
> There are a couple of ways in which the DMCA take-down process might be
> improved.  Currently the ISP takes down content immediately upon
> receiving a Notice of Claimed Infringement (NOCI), then sends notice to
> the end user.  If the end user files a counternotice, the ISP puts the
> material back online fourteen days later unless the content-owner files
> suit during that period.  This system gives the content owner a free
> 14-day temporary injunction.  A better way would be to notify the user
> as soon as the NOCI is received, and give a reasonable amount of time
> (10 days) to file a counternotice.  If the counternotice is filed within
> the time period, the material will never have been taken down and the
> ISP will still enjoy the benefit of safe harbor.  The content owner
> would then have to seek an injunction to take the material offline.
>
> Moreover, one might, for example, provide that once an alleged victim
> claiming wrongdoing initiates the takedown minuet and the user responds
> to the takedown notice, not only the complainant but the ISP also is
> committed to the process, and the ISP is BARRED from removing the
> material unless the claimant actually does go to court.  At that point,
> the ISP should act as a stakeholder, leave the resulting action
> dependent on what happens in the litigation.
>
> Paul Alan Levy
> Public Citizen Litigation Group
> 1600 - 20th Street, N.W.
> Washington, D.C. 20009
> (202) 588-1000
> http://www.citizen.org/litigation
>
> _______________________________________________
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Regards,

--
Jeffrey A. Williams
Spokesman for INEGroup LLA. - (Over 134k members/stakeholders strong!)
"Obediance of the law is the greatest freedom" -
   Abraham Lincoln

"Credit should go with the performance of duty and not with what is
very often the accident of glory" - Theodore Roosevelt

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liability depends upon whether B is less than L multiplied by
P: i.e., whether B is less than PL."
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