My Letter to GKG and Their Response

Self

[Sir_Ed]

This is the email I placed to GKG earlier, regarding them suspending FreeRepublic.com:

Dear GKG,

I am totally amazed that you shut down one of the world's biggest sites, FreeRepublic.com, because one of their PHONE NUMBERS was bad!

I am stunned that you would be so unprofessional. There were three other numbers that were correct, you could have called them, and why would a mistyped phone number warrant actually shutting down the entire site???

I tell ya', my ISP is on shakey financial grounds, and we have been considering moving to another domain server, but after hearing of the absurd actions of GKG.net in SHUTTING down an ENTIRE site because of ONE misspelled phone number, I would never consider moving my three domains to GKG.net.

Ed XXX Grants Pass, Oregon

And their reply, by Sara "B.,"

This domain was not placed on hold due to only a bad phone number- it was also placed on hold due to a bad email address. This was not due to a mis-typed phone number, it was due to a blatantly false number listed by the registrant.

We tried contacting the registrant several times, to no avail. Per the ICANN agreement and our anti-spam policy, the domain was placed on hold.

*ALL * domains must follow the rules set forth in the agreement.

If you need further assistance, I recommend that you contact the registrant and ask him to provide valid contact information at all times.

Kind regards, Sara

And my reply:

I still believe it was a blatantly political attempt to shut down the biggest Conservative website in America.

If that were to happen to a John Kerry site I would also be as upset...this is a pure political "hit," in my opiniuon, and it's a shoddy way to treat a customer.

Ed XXX

Hopefully I wasn't out of line by emailing them...but this was an outrage. You are certainly no spammer.

Ed

[CedarDave]

PING

[NYC Republican]

PING

[hellinahandcart]

"Spam"? WTH?

[GeronL]

at least they know people are paying attention

[GeronL]

I know. Spam!!?

[McGavin999]

This was a politial move, no two ways about it.

[rogueleader]

The wild west days of the Internet are well and truly over. We are all fenced in and subdivided by electronic barbed wire now.

The virtue of the Internet is speed. You can send someone in Bangalore a long message inside of 15 seconds. Unfortunately, that also means bureaucratization of the medium moves faster as well. Not that it means the bureaucracy will move faster once it has taken over, but that the bureaucratization process is faster. Mr. Robinson just got caught in the expanding web of rules.

[FreedomCalls]

Can anyone do a "whois" search and see how many other sites have a 555 prefixed telephone number?

[netmilsmom]

Good Job!

I can't live without FR. All my friends are here.

[Boundless]

> This was a political move, no two ways about it.

If so, it happened at a convenient time.

Perhaps 1/3 of the sites I visit regularly have been
temporarily idled due to registration issues (usually
expiration). My first thought when I saw the DNS failure
was that the problem was administrative.

Now if the problem WAS political, this is a convenient
time for it to happen - rather than, say, just as the
Dems cook up some fictional October Surprise.

JR has learned an important lesson about the host, and
the readership here has gotten a minor shock. We all need
to have alternate resources for news & discussion.

And if it was political, expect it to happen again, and
not just to FR. BCRA (McCain-Feingold) is another line of
attack that may be used against web sites.

Perhaps a standby emergency off-shore host ...

[Cold Heat]

Perhaps a standby emergency off-shore host ...

LOL!:-)

Better duck!

[Don W]

My ISP still isn't connecting to this site. I got here only because I got the numeric addy from FreeDominion this morning.

I can't even call the ISP to tell them to update because my cordless phone died, and my backup phone is a rotary dialer.

[ladyinred]

This so called business person is rather arrogant isn't she? Spam? They know what this website is and does. Why would they be concerned about spam from FR?

[Atchafalaya]

I got on obviously late; what is going on and is the issue going to be resolved? What is DNS or whatever? Thanks in advance!

[ladyinred]

I can't connect yet either. I got a link off Yahoo to get here. I am hoping it is back up soon.

[teletech]

You have to ask yourself how they just happened to find this "incorrect information"? Don't be fooled into thinking they don't know what FR does! I believe this was a shameful blatant attempt to stifle a political point of view but knowing it and proving it are two separate things.

[Boundless]

>> Perhaps a standby emergency off-shore host ...

> Better duck!

I might add that if it is indeed possible to use an
off-shore site to circumvent BCRA, the DNC will likely
be the first to exploit it.

Sad ... we're actually discussing having to go outside
the country to conduct free speech.

[Drago]

I got on obviously late; what is going on and is the issue going to be resolved? What is DNS or whatever? Thanks in advance!

DNS=Domain Name Server/Service. It resolves human-friendly names ..."Freepublic.com" into the number that computers understand. In this case "209.157.64.200" Try http://209.157.64.200 in your browser, it works the same as www.freerepublic.com.

[Chummy]

A "bad e-mail address"?

Doesn't their hosting plan include at least one e-mail address for the domain? Wouldn't they know it?