[Ruku]

I thought everybody moved years ago with one of their many bouts of poor customer service and demonstrations of a total lack of technical competence, but hey, I must be ahead of my time

If you're looking for a dependable registrar with good customer service, technical support and an extremely intuitive control panel, go with http://name.com/. Their renewals are a tad expensive in my opinion, but they've been brilliant in the time I've been with them. I have a couple of renewals coming up, and I'm almost certain I'll stay put. Free domain privacy, too, btw

[ThatRailsGuy]

Digital Censorship and Its Possible Effect on America

[Lemon]

It's really as if GoDaddy's mission is to be the most vile company there is, and judging by their recent press of their CEO has received, they are succeeding magnificently.

If SOPA passes, I can imagine the government here in the UK will jump right on the band-wagon and introduce something similar; they've been itching to bring in a similar system a few times recently but have been knocked back by people who actually know the implications. With the US running such a system, the voice of reason would be swamped by our politicians desire to pander to every whim of America.

Unfortunately, the most vocal proponents in the US government also{ don't appear to have a shred of knowledge of what they are about to do nor even want be educated about it (I read somewhere they rejected the idea of bringing in actual experts). I don't know what it is about some (not all, thankfully) of your politicians, but their repeated denial of proper evidence astounds me.

These same politicians condemned the internet censorship imposed in Egypt during the protests and yet here they are being absolute hypocrites and attempting to bring in a law that would make similar censorship illegal. I would expect that they would argue that the difference is their system is to fight piracy, but in the event of protests in the US they wouldn't hesitate to abuse it to attempt to quell any outcries.

However, as far as I can tell the method by which sites are blocked is just removing/altering DNS records, meaning the IP is still accessible. If it passes into law, I expect to see alternate DNS root systems being more important than the sideline systems they currently are. It's a worrying time indeed though when the ignorant are making decisions on topics they have absolutely no education on; it's like a toddler running a murder investigation, only the toddler's pockets are lined with the money of the music industry in an attempt to swing the vote.

edit: Also, if it passes, someone needs to post copyrighted media to these politicians' publicity sites and get them brought down, perhaps then they'll see why they shouldn't back every bill they are paid to.

P.S. The elephant wasn't enough to decide that GoDaddy's morals are all wrong?

[callumacrae]

Lemon, on 22 December 2011 - 01:28 PM, said:

edit: Also, if it passes, someone needs to post copyrighted media to these politicians' publicity sites and get them brought down, perhaps then they'll see why they shouldn't back every bill they are paid to.

I thought that was just people exaggerating? Are they seriously going to do that?!

[ThatRailsGuy]

callumacrae, on 22 December 2011 - 01:41 PM, said:

I thought that was just people exaggerating? Are they seriously going to do that?!

Doing what? Getting paid to support things they don't understand? Or violating SOPA? http://www.reddit.co..._up_for/c3071a3

[Lemon]

callumacrae, on 22 December 2011 - 01:41 PM, said:

I thought that was just people exaggerating? Are they seriously going to do that?!

I wasn't aware there were any plans, I just thought it was an idea to demonstrate the consequence of their own law. Chances are a lot of other people have had the same idea though...

[ThatRailsGuy]

callumacrae, on 22 December 2011 - 01:41 PM, said:

I thought that was just people exaggerating? Are they seriously going to do that?!

They have the power to do that yeah. Block any site that "infringes" any copyrighted idea. wdR could be shutdown for someone posting a picture here from another site without permission. Essentially any site can be brought down on bullshit charges.

They don't even have to send a cease and desist do they?

[callumacrae]

I thought it was for sites which sole purpose was to break copyright :-/

[ThatRailsGuy]

callumacrae, on 22 December 2011 - 02:20 PM, said:

I thought it was for sites which sole purpose was to break copyright :-/

Which is very loosely defined.

I think Google's sole purpose is to break copyrights because it allows me to search for torrents.
I think wdR's sole purpose is to break copyrights because it's a lot of work posted without permission.

[Lemon]

callumacrae, on 22 December 2011 - 02:20 PM, said:

I thought it was for sites which sole purpose was to break copyright :-/

Theoretically yes, but do you really believe they won't be able to resist blocking a lot more than that if they were given the chance. At the extremes, they'll be able to remove sites with a political message that they disagree with without having to get explicit permission first. If the block is challenged, they'll fabricate a case that the site used copyrighted media (perhaps they'll find an icon that's been used elsewhere...) and there's f' all you can do about it.

[Kyek]

callumacrae, on 22 December 2011 - 02:20 PM, said:

I thought it was for sites which sole purpose was to break copyright :-/

Lemon, on 22 December 2011 - 02:37 PM, said:

Theoretically yes, but do you really believe they won't be able to resist blocking a lot more than that if they were given the chance. At the extremes, they'll be able to remove sites with a political message that they disagree with without having to get explicit permission first. If the block is challenged, they'll fabricate a case that the site used copyrighted media (perhaps they'll find an icon that's been used elsewhere...) and there's f' all you can do about it.

Actually, there was a politician (I forget who) who made amendments to SOPA to indicate that it was only to be used against sites who sole purpose was piracy, and that this had to be determined by a court, etc etc. These edits were shot down almost immediately and SOPA continued in its unaltered form, which makes the provision that any site can be shut down without due process of law based on the good faith of the company making the request, and that site only needs to CONTAIN copyrighted content in some form, be it a user-posed video/audio clip/graphic/etc. There's no language at all in SOPA that in any way implies a limit to sites with a piracy focus. Though a lot of the politicians being paid off to support this will tell you that's what it's for, because what they say really doesn't matter as long as the document is signed into law.

But yes -- there's already a history of the kind of censorship Lemon mentioned, even with the DCMA. A great recent example is Uri Gellar, a "psychic" who was challenged by Johnny Carson on The Tonight Show in 1973 to perform his acts live, right there in the studio, and he was completely humiliated in front of millions of people. The copyright for that clip is owned by NBC. Yet when it started getting put on Youtube a couple years ago, Uri fired off DMCA threats to youtube and other video sites to have it taken down. And it worked, to a degree. It just goes to show that with these kinds of laws, no one gives a shit how legitimate the claims are. If there's a claim, you're screwed. Site offline.

[ThatRailsGuy]

Kyek, on 22 December 2011 - 02:56 PM, said:

Actually, there was a politician (I forget who) who made amendments to SOPA to indicate that it was only to be used against sites who sole purpose was piracy, and that this had to be determined by a court, etc etc. These edits were shot down almost immediately and SOPA continued in its unaltered form, which makes the provision that any site can be shut down without due process of law based on the good faith of the company making the request [...]

And now we can detain people without due process of law Guess who can't take plane, train, etc. trips anymore!

[Kyek]

ThatRailsGuy, on 22 December 2011 - 03:35 PM, said:

And now we can detain people without due process of law Guess who can't take plane, train, etc. trips anymore!

Yeah, people who "might be terrorists". And protesters "are exercising a form of terrorism" according to paid-off fundies. So you, and everyone making a difference ;-)

[DarkCoder]

Ruku, on 22 December 2011 - 01:10 PM, said:

Free domain privacy, too, btw

Only for domains registered before a certain date. Now, you have to pay $3.99 (I think that's about right), but they sent out a promo to existing customers for free private WHOIS. I can't think of it off the top of my head, something like "FREEWHOIS", which still works. I'll edit this post if people are interested.

[Ruku]

olie122333, on 22 December 2011 - 03:52 PM, said:

Only for domains registered before a certain date. Now, you have to pay $3.99 (I think that's about right), but they sent out a promo to existing customers for free private WHOIS. I can't think of it off the top of my head, something like "FREEWHOIS", which still works. I'll edit this post if people are interested.

Exactly, and it works regardless of the registration date/number of domains (a couple of mine that weren't protected are now because I ordered it separately, at a cost of £0). It doesn't save you too much when you consider the renewal prices, but it's better than nothing

[Daniel15]

And now Name.com are running a promotion - Coupon code "nodaddy" for 10% off transfers. Very clever of them.
http://blog.name.com...ving-you-money/
http://twitter.com/#...952004062576641
http://twitter.com/#...950050913628161

Quote

Their renewals are a tad expensive in my opinion

There's almost always coupon codes. Just find a renewal coupon code when it's time to renew. Or register your domain for more than a year

[Lemon]

You may have already seen this, but for those who haven't:
"Seeing who still has domains to transfer away from Go Daddy is the internet's walk of shame."

[derTechniker]

Hell, as an european, SOPA still pisses me off.

Anyways. If you want to transfer your domain and don't like namecheap, you can try www.internet.bs

Prices are good. I have some domains with them and used their support chat once, and their support is great and helpfull. I sadly have no coupons for internet.bs

[soulcyon]

Did they misspell SOAP or something?

/troll

Check this out: http://gizmodo.com/5870241