GoDaddy: A glimpse of the Internet under SOPA

12/26/2011

This story has never been told, and it's incredibly important to tell it today; it's a perfect example of what might come to be if SOPA becomes law -- a shoot first, question later mentality held by GoDaddy. Want to know what the world would be like under SOPA? Read on.

Sometime in 2009, Weebly was starting to gain momentum. We hadn't yet achieved the scale we have today, but we were hosting a couple million websites -- certainly a decent size by any measure. We registered weebly.com with GoDaddy back in early 2006, and hadn't paid any attention to our registrar since then. After all, GoDaddy was a reputable registrar and a decent place to house your domain.

One Saturday in the summer of 2009, we were eating lunch at Big Daddy's Burgers in South Lake Tahoe. I received a call from an unknown number on my cell phone, sometime around noon. I don't usually answer these calls, but we were waiting for our food, and for some reason this time I did.

The person on the other end seemed startled that I had actually answered. It was someone from GoDaddy's abuse department, who informed me that they were "turning off" weebly.com due to a complaint.

"WHAT?" I said frantically into the phone. He explained that they had received a complaint about the content of a site, and that they were removing the DNS entries for weebly.com because of it. I asked him if they had contacted us previously -- he responded that they hadn't.

The site in question featured a bad review of a local business, and that business had complained. Why on earth would a domain registrar take it upon themselves to police content?

As calmly as I possibly could at that moment, I explained to him that Weebly served millions of websites -- most of them US small businesses -- and asked if he had already changed the DNS entries. He said that he had, but that it wouldn't hit the system for another 10 minutes or so, and he could quickly revert it. Unbelievable -- crisis narrowly averted.

The very next day, we proceeded to transfer all of our domain names away from GoDaddy, to a registrar that actually cares about their customers.

This will be the future of the Internet if SOPA passes. A place where a complaint "in good faith" is all that is needed to take down millions of small businesses. This "shoot first" mentality, at the DNS level, is utterly destructive.

The "trial" and sentencing is performed by indifferent corporations who don't care about the collateral damage they cause. When they do cause damage, they plead ignorance or incompetence, and enforce double standards -- similar to how the RIAA recently blamed illegal downloading on their own network on a third party contractor, while holding individuals responsible for the same thing.

Unless this is the future you would like to live in, SOPA must be stopped.

Paul Stamatiou link

12/26/2011 02:37:40 am

Great post David -- more people need to be aware of stuff like this!

William Carleton link

12/26/2011 04:23:35 am

I agree with Paul's comment. I see a lot written about government overreach with SOPA and ProtectIP, but not nearly enough of the corporate "self-help" or vigilante features of the legislation.

For instance, here is a section from SOPA that would say that GoDaddy may not be sued by anybody for taking voluntary actions against someone a big media corporation does not like:

"SEC. 104. IMMUNITY FOR TAKING VOLUNTARY ACTION AGAINST SITES DEDICATED TO THEFT OF U.S. PROPERTY.
No cause of action shall lie in any Federal or State court or administrative agency against, no person may rely in any claim or cause of action against, and no liability for damages to any person shall be granted against, a service provider, payment network provider, Internet advertising service, advertiser, Internet search engine, domain name registry, or domain name registrar for taking any action described in section 102(c)(2), section 103(d)(2), or section 103(b) with respect to an Internet site, or otherwise voluntarily blocking access to or ending financial affiliation with an Internet site, in the reasonable belief that--
(1) the Internet site is a foreign infringing site or is an Internet site dedicated to theft of U.S. property; and
(2) the action is consistent with the entity's terms of service or other contractual rights."

Caveat: I've read elsewhere that amendments to SOPA have been introduced in the House and it's possible that the above section of the bill could be amended to say that corporations cannot take vigilante action outside the reach of police or courts. The above is what is on the Library of Congress bill text service as of today. http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/F?c112:1:./temp/~c112XW4mpe:e55205:

That's at the level of the entrepreneur and the business. At the level of the consumer, MPAA, RIAA, big ISPs and others, with White House blessing, earlier this summer entered into a pact over a prototcol over which internet service providers are to warn, then degrade, then shut off service to users Hollywood suspects of, well, whatever they want to suspect them of. No going to police or courts, again just an arrangement that you would think DOJ anti-trust would be all over.

John Curran

12/28/2011 01:09:44 am

Regarding the current version of SOPA, the point to understand is that it is presently in "markup" in House Judiciary committee (meaning that it is in committee while amendments are being introduced to change sections). These amendments are being made to the "Manager's Amendment" (which incorporates editorial and clarity changes done by the staff before the markup session); i.e. for all practical purposes, the Manager's Amendment plus any approved motions to amend is what is going to be voted on the floor of the House.

Full information on the status of the bill here: http://judiciary.house.gov/hearings/mark_12152011.html
including the Manager's Amendment, all motions, and
transcripts of the last two markup sessions.

/John

Tahiya

12/27/2011 04:00:40 am

Yet another reason we need a constitutional amendment repealing this ludicrous notion that a corporation should have the same legal definition as an individual. It would effectively separate corporation and state, much as the church had to be excised in the past to get rid of ridiculous behavior observable in "corporate" entities assumed to have the capacity for thought.

Bob

12/27/2011 10:57:38 am

The constitution has been trashed so an amendment won't help. Whoever is in office can pass an executive order and circumvent the constitution, Or some other political maneuver will be done to get around it. Elections have far-reaching consequences, more that the average person doesn't realize (or care to understand until it is too late).

Alvin

12/31/2011 07:51:18 pm

David, where did you shift your domain name to? What do you recommend?

Mad Guy link

1/17/2012 03:37:36 am

wow mine just got shut down. weebly sucks the gov suck!

Peter Egan link

6/9/2012 07:17:31 am

With all due respect, I don't recall seeing Weebly's name anywhere in the GoDotYourself.com customer logs... We'll welcome your business anytime you're ready to switch to a registrar that REALLY cares about its customers.

Ryan

12/26/2011 02:59:11 am

Something that already happened will be the future if SOPA passes? That doesn't even make sense.

Stephan Wehner link

12/26/2011 05:55:59 am

Well the idea/threat is it will happen by law.

Tom

12/26/2011 06:14:08 am

Your powers of comprehension seem to be lacking, its an example of an event in the past, to illustrate how future events may occur if SOPA passes.

How could you not understand that?

Anon

12/26/2011 07:51:01 pm

He's trolling - thats why.

Michael Roberts

12/26/2011 07:48:02 am

Something that happened because GoDaddy thinks it's a good idea - even though it's a horrible idea - will be mandatory for everybody if SOPA passes. Weebly was able to transfer away to a better DNS provider, but that will be illegal if SOPA passes, and Weebly would simply have been out of business with no recourse and no judicial review, on the basis of one complaint.

Did you actually read the article?

John

12/26/2011 10:11:32 pm

I hope @Ryan is a troll. If not, I think it'll take more than a course in critical thinking 101 to fix that problem.

Ryan is a stupid moron link

12/26/2011 01:53:00 pm

Read a book, you idiot.

Nick

12/26/2011 07:17:56 pm

Clearly SOPA enables time travel such that we will be caught in a temporal loop repeating historical events ad nauseum.

Or perhaps you could consider that you're an idiot and you are incapable of comprehending the point being made.

Runtyrobot

12/26/2011 03:16:29 am

@Ryan; It makes perfect sense - it's an example of what's to come - and what can be expected in a lot broader spectrum than it has here.

Josh

12/26/2011 03:28:14 am

I'm all for giving a company a hard time when they take to policies that hurt everyone, but is this such a case? Is it a policy that they take down sites based on one complaint without asking questions first or was this just one rouge employee who doesn't have a clue what they are doing? I'm not claiming one or the other, I'm just saying this post seems like a slight exaggeration simply because it was a single case. There was no back and forth, or escalation to managers, etc. (or did you leave that out?) The employee took your word for it (another single source of "good faith") to revert the changes.

Just sayin'.

David Rusenko link

12/26/2011 04:41:53 am

I understand that potential, and as someone who has to make sure quite a few people understand the right thing to do with regards to Weebly abuse requests, I still respectfully disagree.

It's just utterly irresponsible to have your abuse department make decisions that (a) do not take into account the size/scale of your customer and (b) do not give any reasonable warning before disabling due to a correctable violation.

It gets even worse when you realize that GoDaddy wasn't our web host, they were just our registrar. I can't stress it any more -- it's not the registrar's job or responsibility to police their domain names.

That they would voluntarily do this, and do it without any kind of warning, suggests that the entire organization has adopted a "vigilante justice" culture.

Iian

12/26/2011 01:30:42 pm

What's even more disturbing than (a) or (b) is that a company that wields the kind of power that GoDaddy does didn't follow anything like a reasonable process for dealing with complaints. I'm having trouble seeing how their actions were even legal (under current law) ...

Josh

12/26/2011 05:24:30 pm

David,

Absolutely, and I too am just questioning respectfully. Thank you. I completely agree that they should simply "maintain a database" of information essentially connecting dots. It would obviously be another thing if they were being asked to take down a site by way of legal channels, etc.

It's possible that this employee was outside the scope of his authority, but even so, I'd go as far to say that GoDaddy should have checks in place that keep any one employee from doing such an insane amount of damage at one time.

There is no doubt that the entire SOPA issue needs to be addressed. I truly hope that we are able to stop the law makers with a total lack of understanding from putting such crazy legislation into practice.

Btw, Thank you for your personal response.

anon

12/27/2011 11:08:34 pm

David, why should "the size/scale" of the customer matter?

Ben

12/26/2011 03:37:14 am

This is insane. A domain registrar's purpose is to ADMINISTER A DATABASE. That's all. Why GoDaddy feels it is their right/responsibility to police the internet is beyond me.

Nerdly Rant link

12/26/2011 03:44:03 am

GoDaddy can go screw themselves, I haven't done business with them since ever (never used them) and thankfully I'm glad I never did business with them. I must be one of the lucky ones.

Scott Wozniak link

12/26/2011 03:49:29 am

Pure insanity. I've linked to this article on my Twitter feed. Thanks, David.

Ben

12/26/2011 04:17:18 am

So what domain registrar did Weebly switch to?

David Rusenko link

12/26/2011 04:34:39 am

We switched to Register.com, because we had a relationship with them (we purchase domains for Weebly users through them).

They delegate all abuse issues for all Weebly domains to us, so there will never be a situation where our domain name is shut off by somebody in their abuse department.

12/27/2011 05:34:50 am

Just went to register.com. Prices are hidden. Fail.

epic Creations

12/27/2011 09:46:12 pm

That's pretty horribly priced, you know. Try name.com for 1/4 the cost and the same features.

Joyce

12/26/2011 04:44:22 am

what domain do you recommend?

David Rusenko link

12/26/2011 04:52:51 am

When you buy a domain name through Weebly, we have a partnership with Register.com, which lets us provide excellent service and make sure something like this will never happen.

Otherwise, others have recommended Namecheap, but I have no personal experience with them.

12/27/2011 05:33:31 am

Just went to Register.com. Can't see prices. Fail.

John Humphrey link

12/26/2011 05:33:37 am

Not EVEN to play devil's advocate here, because I completely agree that the DNS is NOT the place to address complaints, but... When I go to Weeebly.com I'm told I'm the 'California winner for December 26' and to 'Click here' to select my prize. Checking the Whois of Weeebly.com I see that the domain is registered at Fabulous and has a private Whois.
Right there you're stumped. You'd need to initiate a UDRP ($2500 at least) to bump some scumbag with an $8 domain registration off the internet. I think we could have avoided a LOT of the problems we're having with SOPA if we'd simply ABOLISH PRIVATE WHOIS!

David Rusenko link

12/26/2011 05:51:34 am

That's actually fairly new and we are in the process of dealing with it. There is a very established way of dealing with domain squatters.

At the end of the day, while the URDP process may be expensive, it still establishes a very fair and just process to get disputes resolved, which is orders of magnitudes better than shoot-first ask-later justice.

El Gaupo

12/26/2011 03:49:49 pm

Sorry, but the answer is NOT to "simply ABOLISH PRIVATE WHOIS!"

...Banks, Hospitals, etc, etc., are all but required to have private listings; and if they don't already have them, they should.

Or else social engineering would be off the charts. The MyCheckFree bill pay site hack that occured back in 2009? yep... someone posing as the 'domain registrar' contacted the info off a whois and was able to talk to an idiot willing to change CheckFree's password.

Cleo

1/5/2012 11:25:04 am

ABSOLUTELY NOT.

Before I used private registration, I got physical letters a dozen times a week from fly-by-nights trying to get me to a) sell my domain, b) buy more domains, c) transfer my domain to them, d) "protect" my domain with unspecified protections...

Private registration protects legitimate users, too, not just domain squatters.

Reasonable IP Is Needed

12/26/2011 06:21:49 am

And yet even before SOPA becomes law you experienced this problem. I AM NOT IN FAVOR OF SOPA AS IT NOW STANDS - all caps for the trolls who will attack me if I merely try to participate in a discussion that doesn't mindlessly attack SOPA - you are attacking SOPA but it wouldn't be necessary to cause the trouble you describe. You defeat your own argument. SOPA is in my opinion, well-intentioned. There are some IP protections that need to be addressed that this does address. The mechanics and language need tweaking. Like many of our existing - and well accepted laws on the books, few start out perfect. I don't want people to abuse SOPA in the ways I've seen described online but these arguments are less about SOPA and more stuff from the FREETARDS who don't want ANY IP protection. Looking at the usual suspects driving the anti-SOPA campaign, I think anyone who's intellectually honest knows what's going on. And it's a shame because there are legitimate reasons to be concerned about SOPA. But when the people attacking it actually have a different agenda, i.e., doing away with ALL IP - especially Copyrights - it ruins the good points of the argument. The only place I've heard a reasonable discussion about SOPA is over at TWIL - everything else I've seen has been mindless bomb throwing by crowds of thugs and bullies.

David Rusenko link

12/26/2011 07:30:20 am

We think IP protection is VERY important, and fully support the protection of trademarks and copyrights -- in fact, it's very important to our business.

What we don't want to see, though, is the proverbial "throwing the baby out with the bath water". When you cause a much larger problem then the problem you're trying to solve, that's a real issue.

The point of this article was to show how dangerous a DNS-level blacklist would be, especially one without any judicial oversight.

James

12/26/2011 10:39:52 pm

"… everything else I've seen has been mindless bomb throwing by crowds of thugs and bullies."

You mean congress?

Protect IP/SOPA are bad at their core. They don't need amendment, they need to be thrown away.

Intellectual Property is very important - but these laws aren't about intellectual property, they're about a handful of big-media companies gaining control over the internet.

Don't get lulled into thinking all they need are minor changes.

Vince Russo

1/3/2012 02:25:20 am

The potential for abuse with Sopa is immense. Web sites will be shut down because people do not like the political or religious content of the site. This is the real reason this absurd legislation is being enacted. The protection from piracy is just the veil.

Daniel Gtz. link

12/26/2011 07:12:58 am

Hello, great post!

How to Stop SOPA? D:

David Rusenko link

12/26/2011 07:27:17 am

If you are in the US, call or email your representative: http://fightforthefuture.org/

If you are outside the US, help spread the word!

PJ Brunet link

12/26/2011 07:28:16 am

"we were hosting a couple million websites"

I don't care what the law is. YOU ARE RESPONSIBLE for all the junk you are publishing. How do you sleep at night? Do you even know what you're publishing? You have no clue. Over two million websites? Seriously, how long did you think that was going to last?

Nobody asked Godaddy to police the Internet? Guess what, nobody asked you to host the whole Internet either. Each of those two million websites you host for free needs to cough up the $10/year registration fee and take responsibility for their actions. And by the way, in case you didn't notice, you're eating Godaddy's lunch.

You're responsible for what you're publishing and guess what--that's going to cost you. You're essentially a slave master with over two million slaves working for free--did you really think nobody would notice? LOL. All the Weeblys, Tumblrs, will be the first to go. Facebook is next. Good luck Mark Z ;-)

David Rusenko link

12/26/2011 08:23:00 am

> YOU ARE RESPONSIBLE for all the junk you are publishing.

That is not what the law says, and if it were the case, it would make it impossible for most of the Internet to exist. We consider ourselves in a similar position to the phone company -- we provide the service, and those that perpetrate the abuse are responsible for their own actions.

Weebly is making it possible for millions of small businesses (the majority of which are in the US) to get a web presence and grow. They are indeed responsible for their own actions, but this point is generally moot as our level of abuse complaints is very low.

The Internet is now our shared global community, and we believe that it's important that *everybody* be able to participate, not just those with technical knowledge or enough money to pay someone who has that knowledge.

PJ Brunet link

12/27/2011 07:39:19 am

"That is not what the law says, and if it were the case, it would make it impossible for most of the Internet to exist."

Based on what math? There's over 135 million domain names registered--the majority of them don't consider themselves in "a similar position to the phone company."

"We consider ourselves in a similar position to the phone company -- we provide the service, and those that perpetrate the abuse are responsible for their own actions."

Phone companies are heavily regulated.

"The Internet is now our shared global community, and we believe that it's important that *everybody* be able to participate, not just those with technical knowledge or enough money to pay someone who has that knowledge."

A $10 domain registration is not much of a barrier to entry. Nowadays you would spend about that much for a pen and a stack of paper if you wanted to publish the old-fashioned way. Godaddy would not have contacted you if you were simply hosting the content of some rogue dot-com that bothered to pay the $10. Obviously, that's not what happened--Weebly.com was phoned by Godaddy because the content was published on Weebly.com. I really can see how you think you are not responsible for everything published under your dot-com domain name--but if you're following the news here, it appears the winds of change are not blowing in your favor.

To John and Nick--there's not a law for every common sense decision. People make good decisions every day, not because there's a written law. Also I recommend a reading comprehension class.

Judith_IP

12/26/2011 03:50:07 pm

I assume you don't know how the Internet works.

You think the host is responsible for the content of the websites? I presume you would also argue that the coffee shop is responsible for the contents of the newspapers you can find there?

Massimo

12/27/2011 04:43:00 pm

If the Coffee Shop receives complaints from people regarding the content of a newspaper with abusive/offensive/illegal content, what do you think they are going to do?

They are going to REMOVE the newspaper from their premises!

Same story!

John Coolvart link

12/26/2011 06:51:17 pm

I felt compelled to express my opinion on this comment.

> "I don't care what the law is."

Really? So you don't care if SOPA takes down all your websites, by the law?

> "YOU ARE RESPONSIBLE for all the junk you are publishing."

Wrong. I assume the creator(s) of the worldwide web, or the internet as we call it, is responsible for all the "junk" that is being published on it. Is it so? Doubt that.

As for your second paragraph, yes, nobody asked GoDaddy to police the internet. Please remember that at the time of this occurring it was basically against the law and still is. As for "hosting the whole internet", it is not against the law and never was. Note the difference? I'm guessing you don't, because you "don't care what the law is".

I'm no judge, but you may even be put into jail, solely because the law isn't important enough for you. Now that's a shame, isn't it?

Nick

12/26/2011 07:24:20 pm

Great troll. You don't care what the law is? I guess you won't mind should someone decide to steal all your money then torture you. After all, who cares about the law?

Raymond

12/26/2011 11:29:19 pm

Oh, okay. You don't care about the law. F*** YOU. (sorry about that!) "PJ Brunet", you certainly ARE a brunet, you as*****.

u64 link

12/26/2011 07:30:56 am

I don't get it. Can anyone make bogus complaints and take down *any* site they wants?

El Guapo

12/26/2011 03:58:33 pm

If SOPA is passed in the coming weeks... YES. that is the jist. SOPA is horribly written, allows no recourse or oversight, and pretty much makes the accused 'guilty, until proven innocent' when someone else claims they are in violation.

I'm not quite sure about D's case here, though. In reading it, it first sounded like social engineering to me. I can't imagine a registrar making those changes without several contact attempts and warnings... with or without SOPA

Jeff Answerton

12/26/2011 10:53:53 pm

"El Guapo" is incorrect. AT MOST, all someone could do is ask Google Ads or PayPal to stop servicing your site. There's strict criteria for when this is allowed, a defined appeal process, and explicit penalties for those who abuse it. And your site remains online while things get resolved.

The broader, panic-inducing stuff only applies to sites totally outside the US that have no US registered contacts, which explicitly exist and are designed *solely and primarily* to violate US law AND which target US customers. It requires the Attorney General to make a formal request and a Judge to approve it.

Skeptic

12/26/2011 07:32:58 am

This story sounds fishy, to be honest. Did you ever follow up with GoDaddy to see if the phone call you received was legitimate? It almost sounds like a prank call (if it really occurred). Did you convey the details of the call completely here? If it really did occur, it sounds like some sort of phishing or scam attempt.

PJ Brunet link

12/26/2011 08:06:58 am

Well, there's laws against defamation. Most people know that.

If you have a complaint, contacting the registrar is actually a good idea. For example, let's say you're dealing with a cybersquatter who isn't cooperative. This is what you do. Get a list of all the cybersquatter's service providers and contact them, "Did you know you're doing business with a cybersquatter? Etc." Guess what, it works. Do you really think Weebly wants to defend the questionable defamation of some random website it hosts? I wonder if Weebly bothers to make a phone call to ever account it takes off the Internet?

David Rusenko link

12/26/2011 08:17:05 am

PJ, there are laws against defamation and we comply with them. However, we are not arrogant enough to believe that we are in a position to judge whether a libel complaint is valid or not -- that is the purpose of a court of law.

To answer the parent's question, this was a confirmed incident and not a phishing or scam attempt, based on our DNS record changes that we observed on the account.

Jeff Answerton

12/26/2011 08:12:46 am

What happened certainly sucked, but that wouldn't be possible under SOPA. You should probably read section 102 and 103 of the bill to see what powers are being granted. In short, rogue requests from individuals or corporations, worst case, could only tinker with PayPal and Google Ads (or equivalents).

The government could tinker with Google Search Results and DNS, but that would require the Attorney General to get involved, followed by approval of a judge.

The whole thing is definitely weird, but facts always help.

Sean Marcus

12/26/2011 02:17:22 pm

This guy is right. Few complaints will not destroy large corporations.

Sean Marcus

12/26/2011 02:17:22 pm

This guy is right. Few complaints will not destroy large corporations.

Matt Maroon link

12/26/2011 11:15:18 am

False. SOPA and PROTECT-IP both specifically apply only to "non-domestic" domain names. I'm too lazy to look it up, but I'm guessing Weebly was registered in the US.

Please don't contribute to the mass hysteria with more inaccuracy. SOPA sucks enough that we don't have to make up reasons to hate it. GoDaddy sucks but that has no relevancy at all to SOPA.

David Rusenko

1/17/2012 02:39:14 pm

That's just not true. Title I Section 102 applies to sites with non-US domain names, even if they are US sites, like bit.ly or justin.tv. And Section 103 -- the market-based system -- required payment providers and ad networks to shut down any site within 5 days (including US-based sites!) based on a simple DMCA-like complaint from anybody.

FMyBoss link

12/26/2011 12:09:42 pm

Im running a similar website that potentially attracts moral policing from domain registrars. Need to shift base to europe if SOPA bill is passed

Nathan

12/26/2011 02:57:02 pm

So let me get this straight. You went with the guys who use cheerleaders to sell web hosting, and you're shocked -- SHOCKED! -- to learn they're a bunch of shysters?

John Coolvart link

12/26/2011 06:35:26 pm

I agree with you and I want to thank you for writing this truthful post. I'm greatly against SOPA and you are definitely right in saying that this will be the future if it isn't stopped.

Some people choose to ignore that, though. Shame.

davo

12/26/2011 08:47:06 pm

Ha ha Yankees, now websites belong to us - free world no more - we laugh at you ha ha

John link

12/26/2011 10:34:47 pm

I've had some experiences similar to David's. When somebody issues a bunk DMCA, it's shoot and ask questions later! No doubt that SOPA would make this 10x worse.

Bob

12/26/2011 11:13:32 pm

Count all the trolls posting in this thread. This is at least the number of SOPA complaints your business DNS would receive from *competitors*. With SOPA your website would be down and you will be out of business. Great job, US Government, protecting the criminals.

Jeff Answerton

12/27/2011 12:53:55 pm

The number of U.S. Attorney Generals posting here is zero. Since only the US Attorney General can tinker with DNS (after getting separate court approval) you may want to revise your argument.

Masterchen link

12/26/2011 11:44:39 pm

SOPA is a scary concept. It's the only thing I've been reposting about adamantly in the past two weeks.

Will link

12/26/2011 11:48:33 pm

I transferred my domains to NameCheap a while back when the CEO of GoDaddy thought it would be fun to shoot elephants. I guess we all have different issues that make us actually take action.

Joshua Dorkin link

12/27/2011 12:30:22 am

Will SOPA apply to the cell companies, phone companies and internet providers? These common carriers should be equally as guilty as the common carrier websites, shouldn't they?

This is a crazy bill designed by people who clearly don't understand technology or the ramifications of their actions.

Bill E link

12/27/2011 12:59:52 am

Thats censorship. Why stop at the Internet, put tape on peoples mouths too?

mark link

12/27/2011 01:11:05 am

that was 2009. I'm sure they've changed their policies and DNS takes at least 24 hours not 10minutes. always has. I'm sure there's more to this. i wish you could actually price this story was true but i guess anyone can just claim anything without citing a source now.

12/27/2011 02:04:35 am

"DNS takes at least 24 hours not 10minutes. always has."

That's incorrect. GoDaddy was about to publish their changes to the domain and any new requests would get that information almost immediately. It would take longer for existing cached requests to get the information, which is what it sounds like you are thinking of.

By convention, most folks will set their Time To Live (TTL) to 24 hours so their DNS servers do not get constant requests for data that hasn't changed. The TTL tells the requesting DNS server to save that information for X # of seconds.

The TTL can be set to just a few seconds if the administrator wants. At a previous job, I would routinely set TTLs to 5 minutes a few days prior to making changes to DNS records so that they would go into affect rapidly during the change window.

Angelo B.

12/27/2011 08:27:37 am

Your Kung Fu is strong.

Ed link

12/27/2011 02:48:28 am

Site owners should NEVER face this risk with such feeble causation (whether you have a single site, or your branching a million subs), without lengthy due process.
It's backwards that a stranger can sway a registrar against an existing client (unless of course, it's law enforcement and you're posting child abuse, etc).

Three relevant points:
1) The reputation management paradigm as it relates to registrars, hosts, and the powerful social media blogosphere, who will punish businesses trying to stifle negative reviews, has changed substantially since 2009 (that's not to say GD's policy has become client-safe. I don't know/trust that it is).

2) One-Off but crucial:
This is why Weebly - and every other parent domain - needs to self-police better.
When you have an 'anything goes' attitude,
you forfeit trust.
A complaint from a business should never prompt a registrar to pull a DNS down. (Was this really over one (1) complaint? Seems impossible).
But in reality, I have tried to tell Weebly about countless aggressive spammers/phishing attempts, and only once have I received a reply that they'll even look at it.
Everyone is frothing over SOPA right now,
and I too am fighting it - though we DO need more powerful enforcement for certain criteria.
But don't suddenly forget the *staggering* amount of loss to ALL internet users from spam, phishing, scams, pedophiles, pirates, etc.
If you want an absolute 'anything goes', wild west internet, you're an idiot.

3) The entire ICANN/Registrar/DNS system is broken. Since day one, governments who were caught off guard twenty years ago, appointed industry gatekeepers that have been disastrous.
They have too much control over.

We have to stop SOPA as written,
and demand GoDaddy and every other registrar state their position unambiguously.

Bradley link

12/27/2011 03:01:56 am

One anecdote can't set the precedent without another anecdote or two of rebuttal. Take the case of the up and coming artist whose first album is pirated from a particular website. He approaches the registrar only to be told "We do not police the content, talk to the hosting company". He looks up the hosting IP address and finds it is spread over a fast fluxing botnet of 1,000 IPs across 30 countries.

That's where SOPA comes to the rescue. That's why such a solution is required to today's problem - where registrars fail to act responsibly.

Djibril

12/27/2011 09:30:36 am

How about you give a real example of a real person, rather than one of the industry's favourite imaginary scare stories. (Maybe this has happened to a real person, but I won't believe it until you name that person and show some evidence.)

Chris Chiesa

12/27/2011 05:02:12 am

The more I think about this...

Y'know... DNS is "out there" because it's necessary to translate URLs like "david.weebly.com" into IP addresses. It's done "out there" on the network because it used to be too much information to store "locally" on a 1990s-era personal computer.

Now, it's not. I could probably keep an entire Internet's worth of DNS entries on one of my spare hard drives and not even notice it.

So why don't we just change DNS so it's kept locally, and updated in a peer-to-peer manner? The government would have to enter my home and change settings on my computer in order to block a site, and that, at least, would give me much stronger grounds for complaint/retaliation.

Halconnen

1/8/2012 09:06:35 pm

Well. That mostly sounds like it could lead to issues with keeping the entries current. Primarily for frequently updated addresses.

I do not like the prospect of getting DNS packets and propagating them every time some dork in the middle of nowhere updates his DynDNS Address, especially since I'm currently stuck on a DSL line with glorious 2MBit down- and ~384KBit upstream.

Doubly important for people that do heavy loadbalancing. Look at google.com. Ping it from different machines all over the world. Different IP, almost every time.

That, and peer-based DNS sounds open to security/trust issues if not implemented properly. I don't like the prospect of China proxying the whole internet through itself again, this time by poisoning the peer-based DNS cache.

Or whatever. :|

Halconnen

1/8/2012 09:06:41 pm

Michael Tuck link

12/27/2011 05:40:24 am

David, terrific post. I'm excerpting it for an upcoming Six Revisions article on SOPA, if you don't mind, with appropriate credit and links.

Andres link

12/27/2011 07:22:32 am

I'm not that familiarized with SOPA, as it does not have any consequences on our business model. So pardon me if I am completely wrong on the following; if anyone knows better please reply to this comment and explain what I got wrong about this.

Let's say I have a site like, for instance, youtube. Now, youtube is used by millions of users, each of them upload 100's of videos to the site. Some of those videos are uploaded for piracy purposes, like some teenager uploading a video of his favourite band. But many others are uploaded to share legal content between the users.

From what I have been reading in this past few months, SOPA would allow a content producer like a discographic company to take down the entire youtube domain. I may be wrong, and I really hope I am, because if I understood correctly and this is right, there's no technically feasible way to regulate the content that is pushed to this kind of sites everyday (at least, not one I'm aware of).

And it's not just one site. All the CDN sites, file sharing services, social networks; basically every internet based multicasting platform is technically unfeasible under the new regulations.

Now... I MUST be getting something wrong. Can anybody explain to me what?

Jeff Answerton

12/27/2011 12:51:54 pm

That one is easy: YouTube is a US company so the law around DNS stuff wouldn't apply.

That stuff is an attempt to control companies outside the US that exist primarily and exclusively for the purpose of stealing US stuff. Piratebay? Likely doomed.

Some wonky version of Tumblr in China? Likely safe, as they aren't exclusively devoted to stealing US intellectual property, even if some is here and there.

Kain link

12/27/2011 08:12:17 am

SOPA is a disaster... it isn't about what it says regarding piracy and copyright infringement that matters, but rather the ultra vires [ab]uses to stifle criticism of Big Media.

Oh yes... and by PJ Brunet's twisted logic, he is off the hook for his trolling drivel, you are responsible for it.

Only my two .in domains are registered with GoDaddy, my others are with Pacnames.com - a NZ-based registrar.

Dawn

12/27/2011 08:40:01 am

For those that dont think Sopa and Protect IP arent bad and dont effect them think again. The president just signed the bill NDAA into law and theses two bills go hand and hand with it. We have been a sleep for to long and its time to wake up even though it could already be to late. “The end of democracy and the defeat of the American Revolution will occur when government falls into the hands of lending institutions and moneyed incorporations.” Thomas Jefferson. “Those who surrender freedom for security will not have, nor do they deserve, either one.” Thomas Jefferson

ExcavatorBoy

12/27/2011 06:03:14 pm

This discussion seems to need several things:

1) Facts - While there are some good quotes off the bill, most of what is here is word of mouth. I do not KNOW what SOPA will/can/could do, but I sure hear from a lot of people who want to tell me it is the end of the world, WITHOUT SPECIFICS!

2) What is a complaint? I sell retail over the web. If someone does not get their shipment on time I would assume that I am not damaging US property (well OK, maybe you could stretch it that I cost the guy money by having his product late) so I would be safe. If I sell a product that is a knock off of a US product and a US manufacturer complains, then I am "off the air". eBay is gone in a second! If this is true why is their front page not devoted to having us call our congresscritters?

3) Carrier transparency - There is a huge difference between being the phone company providing the line, the companies providing the equipment, the companies maintaining and operating that equipment and the content provider. This was all settled with 900 number cases and smut laws LONG, LONG ago. AT&T was dragged into court, then motorola and buddies, and then the big call center software providers. The result: You are not responsible for what your user does with the product. You can sell bullets without being responsible for deaths, etc, etc, etc. For years and YEARS this has been tried in industry after industry, and it ALWAYS dies. Weebly, Facebook and the rest are safe UNTIL they police ONE site. ONCE THEY POLICE A SITE THEY ESTABLISH PRECEDENT AND HAVE TO POLICE THEM ALL. This is the trap GoDaddy may be in.

4) People you define as trolls may be ignorant, not stupid. Regardless, being rude is inexcusable in any case. In this country people DIE to allow us to be able to state our opinions freely. Let them state theirs, and if you do not agree, either ignore it or repudiate it with FACTS and rhetoric, not insults and swearing.

Thank you for reading, I hope I have offered some clarity for my point of view.

Galane

1/2/2012 03:48:44 pm

Re #3. That's exactly what the most powerful political money machine in the USA keeps trying. The lawyers keep attempting to sue manufacturers, telcos, and anyone else who makes stuff or provides services that once sold are 100% out of their control yet are expected to be "on the hook" when some idiot does some damage to themselves or others. There's a huge difference between selling something that is known to be dangerous before it's sold and selling something that's perfectly safe when used as it's intended. What SOPA and all this other crap seems to be is Ralph Nader's idealism taken to the furthest extreme. People like him expect the world to be made perfectly safe so if anyone gets hurt by something, the original manufacturer must be held accountable, no matter how much time has passed or what someone did to the product or how they mis-used it.

One fairly recent example was the near destruction of the light aircraft industry through lawsuits by idiots who failed to properly maintain their airplanes. People were suing over things like a decades old plane crashing on takeoff because the pilot failed to check that the carburetors were free of obstructions. Most of the BS was stopped when Congress passed a law putting an 18 years after manufacture cap on product liability lawsuits on small aircraft.

Domain registrars and ISPs should not be able to be held accountable for what their customers have on their websites or use their services to transmit, same as a telco can't be sued for carrying a conversation between people plotting a crime. If someone ships a bomb by FedEX, is the victim (or the victim's family) able to sue FedEX? Not a chance, though I bet it's been tried.

But instead of using the examples of sketchy voice conversations and telcos and illegal packages and shipping companies, the lawyers, politicians and Big Entertainment Media are trying to have everyone in the internet and WWW service providing industry treated as conspirators in *everything* that might be considered the least bit less than legal, with "less than legal" defined as whatever the person(s) issuing C&D e-mails, letters and calls want it to be. In other words, "Do what we say right now or we'll fine you into the poorhouse and/or throw you in jail. "

Donna

12/27/2011 10:41:57 pm

Interesting -- I dumped GoDaddy because they put up a landing page filled with adult links on a domain I had just bought. And they want to shut somebody down over content? Well, I shut them down. Transferred all my domains to 1and1 and lived happily ever after.

PakNik link

12/27/2011 11:01:47 pm

Scary indeed!

David

12/28/2011 06:48:54 am

Wow! You provide ISP services to "millions of small businesses"?! Nice. Must be a lot of coin.

Owen link

12/28/2011 10:15:38 am

The main difference I see between your story here and what SOPA brings is that requests from SOPA are legal documents tendered under threat of perjury, as is the same with the required response. If a fraudulent request is made to take down a site that is not infringing, under current DMCA, there is no recourse in courts for the site owner. If a fraudulent request is made to take down a site that is not infringing under SOPA, the party making the request is in a world of legal trouble, having perjured himself, and is subject to criminal and civil suits.

Besides that, if any request is made to take down or stop payment to a site, then the notified party has five days to respond. My suggestion is to find a host, advertising supplier, and payment processor that will also NOTIFY YOU when they receive these requests, before they respond, so that you can deal with any trouble appropriately within the response time.

Is that reliable host GoDaddy? No. It is not. As I've been saying for quite some time now, between misogyny in advertising, poor administrative UI, unwanted parking pages during initial domain setup, multitudes of upsell during simple purchases, unwanted options enabled by default that are hidden below the fold during checkout, unwillingness to offer their lowest price online versus what you get when you call them, and a CEO that kills elephants for sport and brags about it online -- did you really need SOPA to convince you to use a better service provider?

Owen link

12/28/2011 10:15:41 am

Robert link

12/29/2011 06:14:15 am

The elephant in the room is that the same companies that support SOPA to fight piracy, made millions on enabling piracy and thereby robbing their own clients, the artists, directors and musicians that produced the goods they sell.

The Shocking Truth About The Companies supporting SOPA:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WJIuYgIvKsc

Robert link

12/29/2011 06:14:23 am

Doc Holiday

1/2/2012 06:42:12 am

Youtube locked me out of my channel shortly after posting this; I think we are entering a new era of censorship and invasion of privacy: hopefully things will be calm @Weebly!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bM5vpG6mTtw&feature=channel_video_title

Doc Holiday link

1/4/2012 02:41:30 pm

Ok, they let me back in, after a few emails and turns out all is well, but I did dump GDaddy! I always hated that awful interface they had; what a maze! Back to posting vids and getting a Weebly up and going ASAP. I'm trying to understand how the HTML is plugged in here into your templates, so trying to be patient!

kamrul link

12/29/2011 02:27:59 pm

good writing Thanks

Doc Holiday

1/2/2012 06:38:43 am

I'm glad I found this story, because I had just dumped godaddy and had been looking around for the next steps to take. Weebly has been on my radar, but now I'm going to use it as my host. I'm also having trouble with Youtube and Google and lots of attacks on those sites. Hopefully weebly is with a secure host now!!!!!

walter cronkite

1/2/2012 12:22:02 pm

You can see here that Godaddy is just bouncing fake domains around:

http://www.dailychanges.com/top-movements/

Galane

1/2/2012 04:06:28 pm

I got "zapped" by my ISP when I was looking for torrents of old books on electroplating. I only downloaded the text file that was the contents list. Wasn't anything in there I wanted so I shit down and went to bed. The next day I had no internet but got a call from my ISP. I had to sign a paper stating I'd read their TOS and that I would not download any copyright infringing content. What was I accused of "downloading"? Some audiobooks of a quite popular recent series by some british author. Funny thing was there were no audiobooks in that torrent, they were all text versions, mostly old PalmDOC format, though two were by that british author. Whoever was watchdogging that torrent (which very likely was seeded as a trap) was only watching for the names, not the content's format.

Your accuser doesn't even have to *correctly* accuse you. They say "jump" and your ISP will crack their collective forehead on the ground from kowtowing so fast, without even contacting you, their customer, *beforehand* to get your side of things.

That's what GoDaddy was doing to weebly.com though someone did call immediately after setting the shutdown in motion.

Lesson from this? Encryption. Doesn't matter if you are only doing legal stuff, set your torrent client's encryption on and set it to only accept encrypted incoming connections. I was hunting public domain e-books and got nailed for something I didn't do. Also find a way to check *offline* what files a torrent will download.

Big Entertainment Media is always watching *someone* *somewhere*. They may not be trying to fine you thousands of $ but they won't think twice about threatening your service providers into cutting you off or canceling your accounts.

Vince Russo

1/4/2012 02:24:38 am

Here are a couple of examples of how this bill can be abused to stifle freedom of speech. Let's say for example a news company films something oh like say the collapse of a building that was hit by a jet airliner. Now let's also say that the government comes up with some idiotic explanation for the collapse of that building or buildings that can absolutely be refuted scientifically as being impossible to have happened because of this crash. Then lets say a concerned citizen puts the filmed incident on their web site and refutes the governments explanation. Now that's copyright violation because most likely the web site did not get permission from the news company to replay the video because shock, the news company was simply spreading the party line.
Example two: Group A doesn't like group B's politics or religious views and claims their site has ties to pirates. Group A goes down.
If the government wants to take down web sites, they should use the judicial process, flawed as it is.

Vince Russo

1/4/2012 02:24:40 am

Vince Russo

1/4/2012 02:34:19 am

Excuse me. Group B goes down

Vince Russo

1/4/2012 02:28:29 am

I forgot to carry example 1 a little further to it's logical conclusion. And then the news company that originally published the pictures of the buildings collapsing claims infringement of their copyright, and viola, all evidence over time is taken off of the web.

Mike Tyll

1/9/2012 04:49:36 am

I am having trouble contacting Weebly about a technical issue. There are no phone numbers and support@weebly.com does not get back to me. Does anyone have a contact number or e-mail? Thanks

Ryan Krysiak link

1/16/2012 03:00:40 am

I can't imagine getting that call...
I have never been a huge fan of Godaddy's support... but this story trumps them all.

1/17/2012 06:42:16 am

Excellent and timely post, David. This reminds me of a blog I frequent. I think you and your readers would truly appreciate techdirt.com - a fantastic blog primarily written by the respected-and-connected, Mike Masnick. He has a huge community including public and private professionals, industry insiders but mostly regular people. He presents intelligent, common sense commentary and facts on all such things related to SOPA/PIPA, the abuses of the MPAA, RIAA, Congress, internet issues here and abroad and so much more. I'm not affiliated with techdirt in any way, just a reader for the past 4 years. Check them out.

1/18/2012 12:09:33 am

Hello. I mentioned TechDirt.com's coverage of SOPA yesterday and it just so happens that today that put up an updated analysis on why SOPA/PIPA are bad. This is an important issue on so many levels.
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20120117/23002717445/updated-analysis-why-sopa-pipa-are-bad-idea-dangerous-unnecessary.shtml

thethaiguy link

1/17/2012 01:58:19 pm

WoW, great post and good to know!

John link

2/11/2012 11:33:42 pm

@David, I have a question? I use Weebly too, and I used to use Godaddy. But I couldn't find a good domain company, so I used a free domain. What did you use? I will be glad when I can finally stop using .tk at http://e-how.tk/!

Andrew Jensen link

2/15/2012 11:46:00 am

So ... did GoDaddy strike again today with jotform.com? Was it solely GoDaddy's take down or was a federal agency really involved? Thanks for sharing what happened with weebly - makes me really leery of doing much with GD anymore.

Comments are closed.

David co-founded Weebly, an incredibly easy to use tool that helps millions of people create a professional web site, blog or online store.

He was named to Forbes' 30 under 30 list, is a part-time DJ and has traveled to over 20 countries.

Investments include Cue, Parse, Exec, Churchkey, Streak, Incident Technologies, Adioso and Zenefits.

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