Perharps everybody noticed several hours of downtime of Page2RSS on May 15. Here is the story.
That morning we found that our domain does not exists anymore. Our registrar, GoDaddy, has suspended the domain and send an email requiring to remove specific content. The problem is that they did it without any notification. No phone calls. Yes, sometimes they call us pitching some additional service. No, they didn't call this time.
Quick investigation revealed that somebody used Page2RSS to obtain feed of warez site featuring full text of: Half-Life 2 Mods For Dummies (ISBN: 0470096314), Windows Vista For Dummies (ISBN: 0471754218). Investigators hired by John Wiley & Sons, Inc, copyright owner, didn't contact us, but contacted our domain registrar GoDaddy instead. They sent a letter with the subject "Demand for Immediate Take-Down: Notice of Infringing Activity" at 8:09, Go Daddy Software's owned IP was here at 8:12. Very shortly after that, the domain page2rss.com disappeared from the internet.
It took 30 seconds to remove the content and write an email to CopyrightClaims@GoDaddy.com. Several hours to wait until they read the email and turn the domain back on. When we have to fix the dns records GoDaddy broke and wait until all changes propagated on the internet.
Thank you, GoDaddy for teaching us such a great experience - we didn't know that it was a bad idea to deal with GoDaddy.
Thank you, Ms. Internet Investigator from far overseas, for your hard work on keeping US Internet free of links to illegal copies of Windows Vista For Dummies. Keep it up! Next time try to contact ICANN, maybe they will shutdown the entire .COM.Thank you for not shutting down Google for exactly the same.
Thank you, unknown hacker from another far overseas, for keeping the Ms. Internet Investigator employed and for revealing what GoDaddy actually is.
Thank you, SlashDot crowd, for support on the similar case with seclists.org.
Thank you, Fyodor, for your nodaddy.com
Well... Could somebody recommend a registrar who, at least, contact it's customers first?
