GoDaddy blocks friends of jailed Iranian blogger "Hoder" from renewing hoder.com

GoDaddy won't allow supporters of blogger Hossein Derakhshan on MetaFilter to renew hoder.com, which expires in three weeks. "Hoder," as he is known online, has been in prison in Iran for the past year. (via Cyrus Farivar) | UPDATE: looks like it's been successfully renewed now.

Boing Boing editor/partner and tech culture journalist Xeni Jardin hosts and produces Boing Boing's in-flight TV channel on Virgin America airlines (#10 on the dial), and writes about living with breast cancer. Diagnosed in 2011. @xeni on Twitter. email: xeni@boingboing.net.

More at Boing Boing

Ants and Stars: Bruce Sterling and Jasmina Tesanovic visit the Sardinia Radio Telescope in Italy

The Snowden Principle

jaytkay

Some guy: Renew my domain
Godaddy: Who are you?
Some guy: Some guy
Godaddy: We need the registrant’s OK
Some guy: “ZOMG> NAZI PERSECUTION YOU R TERRORISHTS!11!!”
EH

GoDaddy is a terrible company. Very poor service, lowest common denominator, advertising driven and glossy. Nobody should use GoDaddy unless they have enough money to push them around. If you do use them and haven’t had any problems with them, it’s merely because you haven’t had any problems with them.
DasBub

“If you … haven’t had any problems with them, it’s merely because you haven’t had any problems with them.”

How Zen.
cortana

Godaddy is notorious for finding ways to snag popular / well-trafficked domains, so they can slap a stack of ads on them and cash in.

That and selling domains out to squatters from under the actual registrants before they expire (ex – 4chan.net – don’t go there though)