Transfer requests for thousands of domains were started, and even big players such as Wikipedia threatened to move.

In a response, GoDaddy was quick to drop their support for SOPA (but not really), and the company kindly asked customers to come back.

Many customers were nevertheless determined to move to other registrar, but that presented a new problem.

It turns out that GoDaddy is delaying a significant number of the domain transfers for reasons unknown. GoDaddy competitor Namecheap suggests that the transfers are blocked on purpose.

“As many customers have recently complained of transfer issues, we suspect that this competitor is thwarting efforts to transfer domains away from them. Specifically, GoDaddy appears to be returning incomplete WHOIS information to Namecheap, delaying the transfer process. This practice is against ICANN rules,” they write.

“We at Namecheap believe that this action speaks volumes about the impact that informed customers are having on GoDaddy’s business. It’s a shame that GoDaddy feels they have to block their (former) customers from voting with their dollars. We can only guess that at GoDaddy, desperate times call for desperate measures.”

Other GoDaddy competitors such as DNSimple are more reserved in their response, but also state stat the delay is unusual.

“We’ve definitely seen a lot more of these messages since the SOPA announcement just before Christmas. Prior to that I almost never saw domains stalled because of problems getting at whois data. Whether GoDaddy is doing it on purpose or if they are just overwhelmed with the number of domains that are being transferred out is pure speculation at this point,” writes on Hacker News.

GoDaddy has yet to response to the unusual transfer delays, but their image has yet again suffered a blow.

Update: GoDaddy responds.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

A group of people who are completely immersed in this history and absolutely determined to preserve it, are the International Music Score Library Project (IMSLP) who slavishly index public domain scores.

“Started more than five years ago in 2006, IMSLP has grown to include more than 90,000 scores from more than 5,000 composers,” administrator Edward told TorrentFreak.

Indeed, IMSLP’s coverage is extensive, spanning just about every composer one can think of. But one piece from their archives has just caused them a huge amount of inconvenience.

IMSLP’s listing of Rachmaninoff’s Bells, which was created in 1920 by a Russian and is public domain both in Canada and the USA, was spotted thousands of miles away by the UK’s Music Publishers Association (MPA).

Feeling they had some authority over the piece, MPA issued a DMCA takedown notice, not to the IMSLP site, but to their domain registrar, GoDaddy.

“We understand that Godaddy are the sponsoring registrar for the website http://www.IMSLP.ORG which makes available unlicensed copyright protected sheet music notation which is an infringement of copyright. By assisting this website, Godaddy are liable to pay damages for secondary copyright infringement once notice of the infringement has been given,” said the MPA’s Jake Kirner in the DMCA notice.

Without a second look at the issue, elephant gun wielding GoDaddy complied, seizing control of IMSLP’s domain name and taking them completely offline. Needless to say IMSLP were furious noting that the MPA’s assertion – that Rachmaninoff’s The Bells is protected under copyright in the US – “is nothing less than a bald-faced lie.”

IMSLP then when on to publish the MPA’s DMCA takedown notice in full on their website, which solicited demands from the MPA to have it removed. IMSLP refused.

“Seriously, you can’t expect to take down a major website, with a bogus DMCA takedown notice, and then try and hide the evidence. Can you see that? It makes you look ridiculous,” they wrote.

Then, just a few hours ago and following a threat by IMSLP that they could sue, MPA suddenly withdrew their complaint from GoDaddy.

Despite describing the original complaint as “underhanded” and “bogus”, IMSLP still managed to be gentlemen about the issue, and offered a “sincere thanks” to the MPA for their retraction.

“While IMSLP encourages open discussion of copyright issues, we have zero tolerance for underhanded tactics. To MPA’s credit, they have voluntarily retracted their claim. IMSLP will also be working on technical measures to prevent any future attacks,” they added.

This is not the first time IMSLP have had legal woes.

“IMSLP previously encountered major legal turbulence in 2007, when Universal Edition, an Austrian music publisher, successfully forced a shut down of the site,” administrator Edward told TorrentFreak. “However, IMSLP was able to recover after 9 months of reorganization.”

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

MyBitTorrent can be reclaimed by paying 50$ as the suspension letter states

If you wish to transfer your domain name to another registrar, we first require that you pay a $50 administration fee before your domain name can be transferred.

The next step could be mininova, isohunt or torrentspy. These three belong to the biggest (torrent) site on the web and are all registered with godaddy.

Will this be the new “war on BitTorrent”?

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.