The legal team at GoDaddy today probably had more than one conversation about Section 13 of the company’s Universal Terms of Service. That Section contains pretty widely used language which limits how badly GoDaddy could get hurt by an epic failure of its system like the one that happened today.
We are conspicuously told that:
IN NO EVENT SHALL Go Daddy, ITS OFFICERS, DIRECTORS, EMPLOYEES, OR AGENTS BE LIABLE TO YOU OR ANY OTHER PERSON OR ENTITY FOR ANY DIRECT, INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, PUNITIVE, OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES WHATSOEVER . . .
Language like this is critical to technology service agreements. Today’s huge blackout illustrates the extent to which GoDaddy would be on the hook if such a limitation were not in place. Thousands of sites were offline for hours, losing uncountable pageviews and ecommerce sales. Holding GoDaddy responsible for those millions of lost dollars (which would be in the categories of indirect, special and consequential damages) could put a company into bankruptcy. GoDaddy would be big enough (probably) to pick up the tab in such a situation once or twice. Smaller enterprises would likely not be as lucky.
To illustrate the effect of limitation of liability clauses, I have often used the example of similar language in Microsoft’s end user license agreement for Office. Because that is there, you cannot go after Microsoft for the business you lose if Word fails on your computer and you miss the deadline for submitting that big proposal. After today we have a new, perhaps more relevant example. GoDaddy would be pretty protected if you claim that you missed out on that million dollar client because your website was down.
So if you were looking for me through my site today, let me know, so I can send a bill for what you would have paid me to GoDaddy. Then again, I guess I’ve already shown why that won’t get paid.
Photo courtesy Flickr user Mikol under this Creative Commons license.