GoDaddy accused of interfering with domain transfers

GoDaddy, the domain management and web hosting company suffered a rather bleak Christmas weekend after it became public news that the company was supporting SOPA. The company lost more than 37,000 domains in just a couple of days and that number has gone up further since then.

It all started when Republican congressman Lamar Smith released a full list of those supporting the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) last week. While media firms such as Time Warner, CBS, NBC and the like are no surprise, GoDaddy's addition to the list was, and consequently a huge public backlash ensued.

If that wasn't bad enough, GoDaddy is now being accused of attempting to deliberately delay the transfer process of domains being moved from its service. Namecheap, who saw an opportunity in clearly stating they were anti-SOPA whilst offering discounts to those wanting to move their domains, has reported that GoDaddy is returning incomplete WhoIs information to them during the transfer process.They also made it clear they would manually transfer domains if they had to, in light of GoDaddy's actions.

As many customers have recently complained of transfer issues, we suspect that this competitor is thwarting efforts to transfer domains away from them. Specifically, GoDaddy appears to be returning incomplete WHOIS information to Namecheap, delaying the transfer process. This practice is against ICANN rules. We at Namecheap believe that this action speaks volumes about the impact that informed customers are having on GoDaddy’s business. It’s a shame that GoDaddy feels they have to block their (former) customers from voting with their dollars. We can only guess that at GoDaddy, desperate times call for desperate measures.

Rich Merdinger, Sr. Director of Product Development at GoDaddy responded to the blog post by saying the delay was a normal procedure designed to protect its clients from fraudulent activity.

Namecheap posted their accusations in a blog, but to the best our of knowledge, has yet to contact GoDaddy directly, which would be common practice for situations like this. Normally, the fellow registrar would make a request for us to remove the normal rate limiting block which is a standard practice used by GoDaddy, and many other registrars, to rate limit Whois queries to combat WhoIs abuse.

Because some registrars (and other data gathering, analyzing and reporting entities) have legitimate need for heavy port 43 access, we routinely grant requests for expanded access per an SOP we’ve had in place for many years. Should we make contact with Namecheap, and learn they need similar access, we would treat that request similarly.

As a side note, we have seen some nefarious activity this weekend which came from non-registrar sources. But, that is not unusual for a holiday weekend, nor would it cause legitimate requests to be rejected. Nevertheless, we have now proactively removed the rate limit for Namecheap, as a courtesy, but it is important to point out, there still may be back-end IP addresses affiliated with Namecheap of which we are unaware. For complete resolution, we should be talking to each other — an effort we are initiating since they have not done so themselves.

Namecheap responded with another statement saying they had tried to reach out and resolve the issue.

I understand that a number of publications have received a note from GoDaddy’s PR team saying that “to the best of [their] knowledge,” we hadn’t reached out. This is quite untrue as our upstream technicians had made attempts to reach out directly.

That said, it was known for almost a full 24 hours that we were blocked from having the transfers go through. In efforts to be fully transparent about the delays which were greatly upsetting to our customers, we posted this after reaching out to GoDaddy as we had no response.

We updated this post long before any publication came out with GoDaddy’s PR response to say that GoDaddy did confirm that they unblocked us. We wouldn’t have known that if there was no communication.

I can now confidently say that we’ve been able to process thousands of transfers since we were unblocked and should be up to speed by later tonight. We truly appreciate everyone’s patience and apologize for the delays that impacted our customers.

Meanwhile, domain registrar Hover contacted Neowin to say it hasn't experienced any issues with domain transfers, pointing at the possibility of eNom experiencing technical issues as a potential cause of the problems.

This would be a serious violation of [GoDaddy's] ICANN accreditation if it were the case. Namecheap is an eNom reseller and it may be possible that eNom is experiencing more general issues. I wonder if this is a more localized issue than Namecheaps might be aware of. We've seen a wild and consistent increase in transfer-in activity in the last week and its not showing any signs of slowing up. I'd be surprised if GoDaddy was taking punitive action, and of course, it almost goes without saying that not a day goes by when something in this business doesn't surprise me.

Despite at first suggesting their position would make no impact on its client portfolio, GoDaddy has since retracted its support of SOPA after bearing witness to a huge client exodus. Big household names such as Wikipedia confirming they are to move all their domains away from GoDaddy is not going to help the embattled firm rebuild its now tattered reputation as more people vote with their wallets and follow suit.

Two Firefox add-ons already bypass SOPA's domain censorship

As resistance grows against the Stop Online Piracy Act, some activists are getting creative. If passed, the legislation would allow US Internet service providers to block access to offending domain names at the behest of Hollywood -- that's the gist of it, anyway. Two new browser extensions demonstrate how this process can be automatically circumvented, making SOPA-like regulations an exercise in futility.

First up, "DeSopa" allows Firefox users to click a button and resolve a blocked domain through foreign DNS servers, sidestepping domestic restrictions. DeSopa can't currently resolve subdomains and it can only resolve one tab at a time along with other limitations, but developer Tamer Rizk hopes his add-on will prove to Congress that will "help them err on the side of reason and vote SOPA down."

A group known as MAFIAAFire has created a similar extension called "The Pirate Bay Dancing" (aplay on the film Dirty Dancing). The plugin automatically routes your website request through a random proxy, again bypassing your ISP's blockade. An earlier version of this add-on was released in April after the US Department of Justice along with Immigration and Customs seized domain names.

"This is just a start, now that we have opened this can of worms people can expect many add-ons, extensions and plug-ins from us," the group told TorrentFreak at the time. "Our goal is to reverse governments attempts to censor the Internet, and nearly anything the anti-piracy people put up to protect their dinosaur business models." "We really are tired of the corruption...Enough is enough."

It seems that passion still burns strong. "DNS and IP blocking is probably the most dangerous part of SOPA/PIPA in terms of 'breaking the Internet,' so we tackled that first. We will be going after the other parts of SOPA in later releases but probably not in 'our usual plugin form' -- the other parts require different solutions that we have already started work on," MAFIAAFire said late last month.

The group described Internet censorship as an overwhelming game of whack-a-mole, and that's proven accurate thus far. SOPA has been outwitted on many levels before even becoming law. More than being a technological proof of concept, the add-ons have given "good guys" an opportunity to flex a little muscle. The US demanded that Mozilla remove the MAFIAAFire add-on in May. It refused.

After two days of heated debates, the House Judiciary Committee adjourned its markup session on SOPA until after Congress' winter recess (despite attempts by committee chairman Lamar Smith toreconvene this week). When discussions resume 2012, Congress is expected to enlist the aid of some experts, as few members have a firm understanding of the technology they're trying to regulate.

GoDaddy loses over 37,000 domains due to SOPA stance

It's been a hell of a Christmas weekend for GoDaddy. The hosting and domain registrar company lost more than 37,000 domains in the past couple of days due to its shaky stance on the controversial Stop Online Piracy Act. According to information reported by The Domains, over 15,000 domains were transferred off Thursday and another 21,054 on Friday, despite GoDaddy's attempt to control damage by withdrawing its support to SOPA.

The backlash against GoDaddy kicked off after the company appeared on an official list of companies supporting SOPA, a proposed bill that would allow the U.S. Department of Justice and copyright holders to block access to sites accused of infringing copyright, and stop payment processors and online advertising networks from doing business with them -- all without due process.

The idea of a domain registrar supporting DNS blocking legislation to serve the interests of overzealous copyright owners and media companies prompted Internet users to stage a widespread boycott, declaring December 29 "move your domain day." GoDaddy initially dismissed the move as having little impact on their business, but was later scrambling to let everyone know it no longer supports SOPA legislation.

In a recent statement, Warren Adelman, the company's newly appointed CEO said: "Fighting online piracy is of the utmost importance, which is why Go Daddy has been working to help craft revisions to this legislation – but we can clearly do better. [...] It’s very important that all Internet stakeholders work together on this. Getting it right is worth the wait. Go Daddy will support it when and if the Internet community supports it."

Despite the reversal, the company is not taking an active stance against the bill either, which may have prompted many to carry on moving their business elsewhere. High profile customers threatening to move away from GoDaddy include Wikipedia cofounder Jimmy Wales, and the CEO of the Cheezburger family of humor websites, Ben Huh. It's unclear if they carried on with their plans after GoDaddy's change of heart.

Go Daddy and its General Counsel, Christine Jones, have worked with federal lawmakers for months to help craft revisions to legislation first introduced some three years ago, and have said the company would support DNS blocking as a way to strike at foreign websites that infringe U.S. copyrights. As of Friday, Jones has removed posts at GoDaddy.com describing the company's support of provisions in SOPA.

Megaupload sues Universal and joins fight against SOPA

The file-hosting service Megaupload and Universal Music Group (UMG) have locked horns, after a video released by the former was removed on Friday from the popular video sharing site YouTube over Universal's claim that it violated the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). 

The surprise video featured leading recording artists including P Diddy, Will.i.am, Alicia Keys, Kanye West, Snoop Dogg, Macy Gray, Chris Brown, The Game and Mary J Blige, singing the praises of the popular service. As news of the video began to spread Google pulled the video in response to UMG and IFPI copyright takedown demands.

On late Friday, Megaupload founder Kim Dotcom demanded that YouTube re-instate the video, to which UMG then responded to with another takedown request.  Speaking with TorrentFreak yesterday, the file-sharing service's CEO David Robb said, "let us be clear: Nothing in our song or the video belongs to Universal Music Group. We have signed agreements with all artists endorsing Megaupload."

The illegitimate removal of the Mega Song was in promotion of its soon to be launched, iTunes style service Megabox, which will see artists earn 90% of each song sold. In Robb's opinion, it was a deliberate step in order to prevent a real competitor from going viral as news spread. The irony is it might actually benefit the firm by providing the type of media coverage that money cannot buy.

He further commented that all attempts to contact the music giant to start a dialogue have resulted in questionable legal threats, including demands for a public apology. "Regrettably, we are being attacked and labelled as a ‘rogue operator’ by organizations like the RIAA and the MPAA," Robb said, while pointing out that his firm take piracy very seriously by closing accounts of repeat offenders and removing illegal files.

After getting nowhere with the music group, the file-sharing site has filed a lawsuit with the San Jose District Court, and intends to sue the group for misrepresenting DMCA rights as a basis for validating the removal of the video from YouTube.

The whole situation has led them to start endorsing those opposing the controversial Stop Online Piracy Act, otherwise known as SOPA. “UMG is currently lobbying lawmakers in Washington for legislation that would allow them to not only delete specific content from a website, but to delete entire websites from the Internet. After this demonstration of the abuse of power by UMG, we are certain that such an instrument of Internet censorship should not be put into the hands of corporations,” Robb said.

He also took the opportunity to thank everyone for their massive support, and asked everyone who agreed to join forces and fight for an Internet without censorship.