GoDaddy.com has redirected RateMyCop.com to their own “OOPS” page providing a number for the site owner to contact. RateMyCop.com is a website where users rate more than 140,000cops on certain aspects of performance and behavior. The site displays public information from more than 400 precincts.

Cops have been complaining about the site, gaining attention from major media companies and even adding to the popularity of the website. In an interview with ABC television affiliate KGO, Officer Hector Basurto says “Having a website like that puts a lot of law enforcement, in my eyes, in danger because it exposes us out there.”

The site went live on February 28th, but had the plug pulled sometime on Tuesday. Founder Gino Sesto says that there was no notice prior to the suspension. Sesto called in to GoDaddy.com, and was told that his account was suspended for “suspicious activity.” Later, according to Sesto, the story was changed to the bandwidth cap of 3 terabytes being exceeded, a claim which Sesto says is false.

This isn’t the first time GoDaddy has jumped the gun and suspended accounts with no questions. MySpace was unhappy about some stolen passwords, and went behind the back of the SecList mailing list admin to have GoDaddy.com shut it down, which GoDaddy.com done without question or notice.

GoDaddy.com failed to respond when I asked them their motives for pulling the plug on RateMyCop.com. There are debates as to whether or not a domain registrar should be allowed to do such things. I think that a private company should be able to censor whatever they choose from a hosting perspective, but I don’t think they should be allowed to tinker with DNS entries to accomplish it.

UPDATE: There is new information about this story.

Service was restored sometime Wednesday morning, though Sesto says that he has already arranged to have the site hosted elsewhere.

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Entry was posted on Wednesday, March 12th, 2008 at 12:16 pm under Uncategorized.

Read more entries by Ken Mitchell.
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