Police upset with RateMyCop.com, so they tell the media all about it

March 12, 2008 – 8:12 am

RateMyCop logoRateMyCop is a new site that allows you to rate police officers that you deal with, similar to sites for teachers, doctors, restaurants, etc.  However, the police aren’t happy about it at all.  A few sites (Wired, TechDirt) call the fears of the police unnecessary, because the site doesn’t post information about undercover officers, nor does it post personal information like home addresses.

To try to fight back against the site, police are using the media to vent.  However, most people hadn’t heard of the site until the police started complaining about it, and now it’s all over the news.  To add to the popularity of the site, GoDaddy recently disabled their account, leading to even more media attention.  Before it was shut down, the site had received 80,000 pageviews that day, and around 400,000 the day before.  How many of those were a direct result of the police outcry?

The site is back up and running now, though it’s responding pretty slowly due to the huge influx of new users…

Posted in Websites | |

  • http://technologyslice.blogspot.com Technology Slice

    The police have no right to be upset. There is no personal information there. They are public figures and as such should be able to handle some scrutiny.

  • Bookskin

    At 8:36 PM EDT, the site is down.

  • mickey

    Bookskin – Good call. Interestingly, it’s a GoDaddy error message. I thought he had already switched to a new host. I wonder what’s going on?

  • mickey

    The site is back up now.

  • http://www.ratemycop.com me

    i think that i am being censored in america… if i go by my isp’s dns then i get some home decor site. Then if i look up the domain by dns, it results in a brand new apache server at http://205.234.222.18/ that is not serving any website. is this site down or is freedom of speech being violated? Just like i have been trained, i will just forget it and go on to what works… Comments? doesn’t matter cause i probably won’t see this again…what? oh, its those sites that work that i will view next. sheeez.