Registrars and Deletions: Are domain registrars free-speech friendly?

[mandy]

A popular computer security Web site was abruptly yanked offline this week by MySpace.com and GoDaddy, the world's largest domain name registrar, raising questions about free speech and Internet governance.

MySpace demanded that GoDaddy pull the plug on Seclists.org, which hosts some 250,000 pages of mailing list archives and other resources, because a list of thousands of MySpace usernames and passwords was archived on the site. GoDaddy claims its customers own about 18 million domains.

GoDaddy complied. In a move that Seclists.org owner Fyodor Vaskovich said happened with no prior notice, the company deleted his domain name--causing his site to be effectively unreachable for about seven hours on Wednesday...

full article: http://news.com.com/2100-1025_3-6153607.html?part=rss&tag=2547-1_3-0-20&subj=news

[mandy]

A survey of 12 leading domain registrars:

Go Daddy's controversial decision last week to suspend the domain name of a popular computer security Web site did more than merely raise questions about the extent of free speech on today's Internet.

It also prompted owners of domain names to wonder about the reliability of their own registrars--and whether the domains they own are safe from suspension in the absence of a court order...

We found that the French registrar Gandi.net and New Orleans-based DirectNIC offered the most extensive guarantees against unnecessary domain name suspension...

full article: http://news.com.com/Survey+Are+domain+re...=nefd.lede

[BellisimaJ.]

MySpace demanded that GoDaddy pull the plug on Seclists.org, which hosts some 250,000 pages of mailing list archives and other resources, because a list of thousands of MySpace usernames and passwords was archived on the site. GoDaddy claims its customers own about 18 million domains.

GoDaddy may delete domains when MySpace requests that they do so, but they don't listen to their average customers. They continue to host domains that knowingly defy GoDaddy's user terms, in spite of customer complaints.