GoDaddy removes RateMyCop.com with no warning

As the name implies, RateMyCop rates police officers across the U.S. Police officers vehemently protested the idea, but there were no legal reasons to stop the site. However, hosting company GoDaddy.com pulled the plug on the site without warning.

RateMyCop.com is a new website that ranks police officers across the U.S. The site gathers information about the police officers from the public domain and asks users to rate their experience with any of the officers. The Police are opposed to this site and want it removed; they fear their private names and addresses will be misused by users, however they didn’t have any legal reasons to stop the site. RateMyCop.com has only the names of the officers and their department locations. But today GoDaddy.com, which hosts the RateMyCop.com site, has removed the site’s content from the Web. The company gave some vague reasons for the removal of the site. However, Wired.com spoke with RateMyCop founder Gino Sesto, who said he was not called by GoDaddy.com or given any prior notice about the suspension of his site. So, he is planning to switch to a different provider. GoDaddy said they sent him an e-mail about the “Suspicious activity” on the site. Later the company changed the reason for termination, saying it was shut off because “the site has surpassed its 3 terabyte bandwidth limit”. Sesto says that is impossible, saying he only received 80,000 page views yesterday and 400,000 the day before. GoDaddy pulled the same move with another website SecLists.org last year. Should GoDaddy.com or any other registrar have the right to remove a site like this? Update: The site is online again but it's not yet clear who is hosting it now. You can see a sample rating here.