

Mexican Protest Site Censored by GoDaddy with the U.S. Embassy's Help - Dondiego
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2014/03/mexican-protest-site-censored-godaddy-us-embassys-help

======
dangrossman
GoDaddy has a long history of taking down sites at the mere "request" of some
law enforcement agency, or even the request of another company without even
the air of legal authority. [1] They tried to write themselves into SOPA as
the recipient of domains confiscated by the government, and that led to one of
the internet's more effective boycotts, with nearly 80,000 domains transferred
out in 2011. Just two of the many reasons nobody should be entrusting the face
of their business to this company.

1: [http://www.alternet.org/story/47669/the_self-
appointed_censo...](http://www.alternet.org/story/47669/the_self-
appointed_censors_of_godaddy) , one of many examples.

~~~
sitkack
Wow, a corrupt Mexican government convinces a corrupt American government to
break its own laws take this site off of the internet. I am sad.

~~~
chris_wot
I'm going to take this at face value and assume you are, indeed, sad. I hope
you are, because it _is_ sad.

~~~
sitkack
I am sad. This is a violation of not only our constitution, democracy in
general and our civically engaged friends to our south. The message this
unequivocally sends is, "Hey Mexican people who are trying to change shit, we
don't have your back, at all."

------
usaphp
If Russia would have done the same it would be immediately called un-
democratic and totalitarian, but if US does it - nobody notices.

~~~
duaneb
> If Russia would have done the same it would be immediately called un-
> democratic and totalitarian, but if US does it - nobody notices.

I don't think so. I agree with your general sentiment, but this is mostly
GoDaddy taking down sites when someone in government farts in their direction.
In addition, I (and many others, I'm sure) already consider the US
totalitarian.

Meanwhile, I hope people don't become outraged, I hope they do something. All
the outrage in the world hasn't done shit for our civil liberties in the last
13 years.

~~~
balls187
> someone in government farts in their direction

Damn Obama and his crop dusting policy.

------
ewillbefull
ICE/DOJ have been committing all sorts of nasty prior restraint. They got away
with domain seizures against innocent websites simply accused of hosting
copyrighted content. Over a year later they return the domains and don't even
apologize. (Dajaz1.com is a great example of this.)

Prior restraint is one of the worst constitutional abuses with regards to the
first amendment, because it causes irreparable harm. Hopefully defenses can be
made in the courts against this behavior.

Likely in this case, ICE simply intimidated GoDaddy, which is a terrible
company in the first place.

~~~
spenvo
It pains me to hear Obama say that he wishes that the Ukrainian people (who
have sacrificed so much to challenge their government) are righteous and
should determine their own fate, when the US embassy is facilitating the
censorship of opposition websites in Mexico and appointing a SOPA lobbyist to
head up TPP Treaty negotiations. [0]

Yet again, doublespeak in crazy town.

[0] [https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2014/03/obama-nominates-
former...](https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2014/03/obama-nominates-former-sopa-
lobbyist-help-lead-tpp-negotiations)

------
potency
After the SOPA fiasco, nobody should be doing business with GoDaddy. Back then
I was recommended [http://nearlyfreespeech.net/](http://nearlyfreespeech.net/)
and have been happy with their domain services thus far. Even though I don't
have anything worthy of federal controversy being hosted, I'm a peace with my
money going to a company that respects freedom of ALL speech.

------
lone-star
As a side note. To most people here, politics are always accompanied by a
nasty smell of corruption. During election day, poor people are offered shirts
and tortas in exchange for their votes. I still see some people with t-shirts
of the PRI from the elections two years ago. There is so much money involved,
I remember some friends who would support the PRD, but would still work for
the PRI because they were offered compensation. Although I have no way of
proving it, it wouldn't surprise me if the USA had a certain level of
involvement in Mexico. Actually, the contrary would be hard to believe.

Regarding the article, we still don't know at which level were the united
states implicated, or if the takedown was even justified. Still smells like
corruption.

~~~
mncolinlee
You are correct that groups in the United States have had an enormous impact
on Mexican politics. In 2003, Choicepoint was busted buying the secret Mexican
voter files for the George W. Bush administration.

[http://www.theguardian.com/world/2003/may/05/colombia.usa](http://www.theguardian.com/world/2003/may/05/colombia.usa)

While Mexico does not have the resource curse, they are close by, in our time
zones, and can provide massive labor exploitation if policies are tuned to
make Mexicans desperate.

------
esbranson
What was that ICANN arbitration decision that said that law enforcement
requests are not enough, that there must be a court order? Who was the
registrar that went to bat for the site owner?

~~~
porsupah
Perhaps you're thinking of EasyDNS?

[http://domainincite.com/15538-cops-cant-block-domain-
transfe...](http://domainincite.com/15538-cops-cant-block-domain-transfers-
without-court-order-naf-rules)

From the arbitration decision:

"Although there are compelling reasons why the request from a recognized law
enforcement agency such as the City of London Police should be honored, the
Transfer Policy is unambiguous in requiring a court order before a Registrar
of Record may deny a request to transfer a domain name… The term “court order”
is unambiguous and cannot be interpreted to be the equivalent of suspicion of
wrong doing by a policy agency.

To permit a registrar of record to withhold the transfer of a domain based on
the suspicion of a law enforcement agency, without the intervention of a
judicial body, opens the possibility for abuse by agencies far less reputable
than the City of London Police."

------
SwellJoe
So, where can one get the information from the site? Seems like mirroring and
distributing widely would be the Internet neighborly thing to do, and would
help prevent future takedowns of similar nature (because if they are
ineffectual in their purpose, or if they actually result in _more_ awareness
of the censored material, officials will think twice before this kind of
censorship).

~~~
xtracto
It is also available in archive.org (
[https://web.archive.org/web/20130729163414/http://1dmx.org/](https://web.archive.org/web/20130729163414/http://1dmx.org/)
)

From the look of it, it seems this was an action taken by the US government as
a favour to the Mexican ruling party (PRI, who is known for having the
"Perfect Dictatorship" for 70 years, and now has returned).

Unfortunately, when it comes to doing any action against injustice, government
oppression and corruption, Mexican society is even worse than the USA society.

------
belorn
Is it not counter-intuitive how the free market so freely allow government to
pressure private companies into their bidding?

~~~
grecy
Not when the government pays them handsomely to do said bidding. (see Sprint
and wiretapping fees...)

------
huherto
I don't understand why they would take this down. There are tons of sites that
are critical or even insulting of the Mexican government, even main stream
newspapers, and radio stations.

~~~
crystalmace
Probably because this site wasn't just besmirching them, it was helping
organize protests.

~~~
Bhel
Yes. Pretty much this.

The Mexican government is fine with everyone hating them, as long as people
limit themselves to clicking the "like" button on facebook, or ranting about
something, but as soon as there's the risk of people actually doing something,
they start moving.

------
acd
I will pull all the domains I can out of Godaddy and also recommend all I know
in IT not to use them. We also remember Godaddys support of SOPA.

Namecheap is a good alternative

------
collyw
As an in house database developer I asked naively a month or two back what was
so bad about Go-Daddy, assuming name registrars were all pretty much the same.
Now I see how short sighted I was.

------
chris_wot
Why the hell does anyone even _use_ GoDaddy any more?

------
blueskin_
Shouldn't have used GoDaddy. Anyone with a clue moved their domains off years
ago.

