https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/19/us/exotic-hunting-texas-ranch.html
Wow, this is pretty terrible:
Oxley has a ranch where people can shoot endangered species.
Giraffes are going extinct, and yet Oxley has brought one to Texas. If there's more than 1, that's bad, and if it's just 1, the giraffe must be lonely and isn't able to contribute to its herd.
I see Oxley also allows people to kill African bongo antelopes (charges $35,000 for it), which are also going extinct... apparently only 28,000 left in the world, and Oxley has taken 30 of them to Texas. Yeah, gotta be a big tough guy to shoot an herbivore. He doesn't allow hunting of the giraffe at least, but it's still bad, and a lot of other endangered species are hunted:
"Himalayan tahrs, wild goats with a bushy lion-style mane, are far cheaper. The trophy fee, or kill fee, to shoot one is $7,500. An Arabian oryx is $9,500; a sitatunga antelope, $12,000; and a black wildebeest, $15,000."
It does make me lose any sympathy for Oxley.
Godaddy has obviously still acted incompetently though, and this is a concern for all domain owners.
Also a few points:
- There's a famous quote
"Never ascribe to malice that which is adequately explained by incompetence".
That's obviously what's at play here, not some conspiracy against Oxley because of his (imo) odious views and activities. This is a classic type of stupidity that big bureaucracies sometimes end up doing if they become a place where people "just follow the rules" instead of using common sense. Kind of reminds me of the famous book "The Trial" by Franz Kafka.
- Anyone who thinks GoDaddy's CEO being of Indian background means he has some connection to the lowlife Agarwal, is simply an idiot. India has over 1 billion people.
- Basic logic and common sense shows there's no incentive for GoDaddy to lock his domains just to target him, because one would know that if others found out, it would scare away customers and damage GoDaddy's business (plus the endangered species hunting thing just reminds people that GoDaddy's founder did that as well).
It's obviously just a case of their legal department being incompetent, and I guess overly cautious, because Oxley and Agarwal did have some kind of business relationship, and he was renewing Agarwal's domains for him. Agarwal is obviously trying to pull a scam now though.