Did they have any automated detection? If they didn't have a "report a bad form" button then maybe they didn't even try and find bad forms ... like anything with a sign in button or password field. 2 million forms is too many to inspect, but you could narrow that list down very easily.
What happened to them sucks but it seems like the problem could probably have been avoided.
Edit: it let me make a form with "Account number" and "Password" complete with emailing me what people put in it which is suggestive of no preventative measures at all.
See this comment by the founder of Jotform: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3597821 (Relevant quote: "Our Bayesian phishing filter has suspended 65.000 accounts last year.")
But surely they should have been sent a warning, even a 24 hour one, to remove some content before just being wiped off the Internet.
This action is business destroying and draconian.
1) GoDaddy overstepping their bounds and shutting down a website
2) JotForm having inadequate, perhaps even non-existant measures in place to prevent or respond to phishing
Obviously #1 dwarfs #2 significantly but that doesn't make #2 okay.
GoDaddy might not have, if those provisions had been in place. Do these sorts of stories with GoDaddy happen often?
Maybe it wouldn't have saved them, but there are a lot of free-x-hosting companies out there that haven't been shut down in spite of abuse.
It's easy to not imagine what sort of evil your site could be used for when you're thinking of just the awesome problem you're trying to solve.
How can anyone who has ever used the Internet or has even a basic understanding of the Domain Name System believe that it is a registrar's right or responsibility to take down a domain, especially without notice, and that does nothing to contravene the conditions of owning that domain name?
I wouldn't even say you are beating a dead horse with that dependency. It was never a horse to begin with!
The blame obviously lies squarely with the US federal agencies - you do not see this happen in other developed countries, for example (UK does not count since its a US colony in all but name).
In particular, to be able to shutdown or ruin the reputation of a business at the drop of a hat due to alleged breaking of the law - not even by the business itself - before it has even been processed by the justice system!
Just imagine if this had been a takedown of Google, Microsoft, Apple or Facebook site, all of which easily meet or have met the conditions for alleged infringements of US IP or other laws at some point, if for no other reason than hosting user-generated content...
GoDaddy is, regardless, ridiculous.
He didn't. In fact, his point was that there is not a dependency between the points - which is what it means that even if 1 is worse than 2, 2 is still a serious problem.
I think things like this will make websites with user generated content to move away from .com domains and even move into countries where there is more due process to things like this.
It's up to nerds like us to design, develop and innovate systems that decentralize not only the internet - but politics as well.
Damn right it's their fault.
It all depends on what was on the letter they got and who sent it.
Should they have ditched GoDaddy? Most probably yes. Would that save them now? I wouldn't bet my company.
This is why we can't have nice things.
What the real issue here is, is that law enforcement pretty much busted in and took down a domain name without warning. They shot first and asked questions later. Jotform is a legit site, not even close to dubious like some others where you can actually argue that they might have been knowingly violating copyright and such. This is scary stuff. There was no due process, no warning, nothing. They just did it. It's proof that any more laws giving the Feds power to take down sites is totally superfluous and unnecessary as its already happening in a very public way.
You don't get mad at the company for not switching registrars (even if they are a douchey one). Jotform could have been able to take care of this situation had someone just alerted them to the problem. No way is this their fault, especially not for the reason you put forth.
This was even a reason people were advocating against GoDaddy before the whole SOPA story.
I no longer want to take this risk blindly.
A while back I was advocating that we reach out to such people and explain this SOPA censorship stuff in a way they understand and this is precisely why. SOPA's supporters have done a really great job of training regular folks to think like some of these angry users making them think that somehow it was Jotform that did wrong. If they only knew how totally arbitrary this stuff is I think they'd be mad at the Feds like they should be.
It's so sickening that the government probably just hurt not one but maybe thousands of companies in one fell swoop and everyone's pissed at the wrong guy. Then the politicians want to go around talking about creating jobs... Ha! How about destroying them? That's what it looks like to me.