I don't the know the details of that case (and I don't expect the WE reporter does either). It seems as if GoDaddy refused to continue hosting the site. That's quite different from providing just DNS for a server owned and administered by the organization.

From linked article: “As a result, we[=godaddy] informed the site yesterday that they have 24 hours to move the domain to another registrar, as they have violated our terms of service" i.e. domain, not hosting.

Their registrar is and was epik.com, starting in 1997 according to whois records.

I can't find an obvious link between godaddy and epik (though one may exist).

Their current DNS service is provided by ... AWS :)

I'm not convinced that the quote from godaddy is technically informative here, though using the word "registrar" would seem to be more indicative of something other than hosting.

No, Epik is current. They moved this week after GoDaddy set them to ClientHold (which doesn’t resolve)

Source: a thread on the forum

Wierd, since whois says:

   Domain Name: AR15.COM
   Registry Domain ID: 984217_DOMAIN_COM-VRSN
   Registrar WHOIS Server: whois.epik.com
   Registrar URL: http://www.epik.com
   Updated Date: 2021-01-12T19:30:31Z
   Creation Date: 1997-03-28T05:00:00Z
   Registry Expiry Date: 2023-03-29T04:00:00Z
   Registrar: Epik Inc.

I guess "Creation Date" refers to the original registration of the domain anywhere rather than with the current registrar.

> I guess "Creation Date" refers to the original registration of the domain anywhere rather than with the current registrar.

Correct. Even more interestingly if you backorder a domain name owned by another person and that domain name expires, the creation date reflected in the WHOIS record once you obtain it will be the previous owner's creation date, not the date you obtained the domain. I think this behavior varies by registrar but that is how it seems to function on GoDaddy.

Epik didn't even exist in 1997.

Transfers between registrars do not usually reset the "Creation Date". Actually the creation date field is not correct anymore for most domain names. Some registrars just show a fixed date such as 1985-01-01.

Meanwhile on top of HN today:

https://www.nasdaq.com/articles/pirated-academic-database-sc...

I think this is an English thing. That “widely trafficked forum” means to me that it is popular. If I wanted to imply they were a part of trafficking I would write “ar15 a popular forum for the trafficking of firearms” or something like that. Trafficked does imply the illegal part, but the way it’s written that makes no sense.

it may have simply been an opportunity for a better choice of words. in this case, i think they meant trafficked as in heavily visited.

I meant site traffic, yes. Thank you for clarifying.