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Go Daddy falls off high horse, drops support of SOPA

Go Daddy falls off high horse, drops support of SOPA

Go Daddy reverses their position on SOPADomain registrar GoDaddy.com was forced to recant its stance it took just 24 hours ago on the Stop Online Piracy Act thanks to an internet-wide boycott of the service. The statement released today reverses the pro-SOPA stance they took just a day ago, in which it applauded the bill while simultaneously calling its opponents “myopic.”

Go Daddy have only themselves to blame for the backlash, which was spearheaded by Reddit, once they’d gotten wind of an op-ed piece on Politico explaining the registrar’s support of the bill currently making its way through Congress. The boycott resulted in a number of registrars offering  discount codes of ‘NoDaddy’ and ‘SopaSucks’ to entice customers away from the 50-million strong domain name behemoth. In fact, of the 142 supporters of the bill released by the House Judiciary Committee, GoDaddy appeared to be the only registrar on the list (as well as the only internet service company).  If you’d like to dive into the long-winded written statement GoDaddy provided House Judiciary Committee explaining its position earlier this month, a copy can be found here.

While the company intially stayed steadfast in its decision to support the very contoversial bill, the effect of the exodus from their services must have been enough to change their mind. Blog posts in support of SOPA were removed from the company’s site today, while Warren Adelmen, GoDaddy CEO, had the following to say:

Fighting online piracy is of the utmost importance, which is why Go Daddy has been working to help craft revisions to this legislation—but we can clearly do better. It’s very important that all Internet stakeholders work together on this. Getting it right is worth the wait. Go Daddy will support it when and if the Internet community supports it.

In the end, it’s not all that unsurprising how this story has developed. As seen time and time again, it never ends well when you go to war with the webernets. Stoking the flames of Reddit’s fire won’t help, either (GoDaddy essentially updated everyone to the effect of ‘yeah, entire boycott is babies’ yesterday evening). To understand what has everyone up in arms over SOPA and it’s ugly twin brother/sister PIPA, TechDirt has written a wonderfully detailed piece as to why these bills will do more harm than good.

Comments

  1. Thrax
    Thrax
    Drops public support of SOPA
    FTFY
  2. NiGHTS
  3. Cliff_Forster
    Cliff_Forster Our leadership is terrified. People have finally figured out that the internet is not just for stupid cat videos and watching porn. It's actually a way to extend the voice and influence of common people. Its our media, we control it, and our leaders could not be more terrified. We all have to keep the pressure on. Any leader or corporation that supports SOPA or any bill that compromises a free internet has to know that there will be hell to pay.

    There are already laws in place to punish internet pirates through litigation. Everyone knows SOPA has more to do with quelling a revolution than stopping online piracy. 2011 will go down as the year that the internet returned power to the people.
  4. Game Blade SOPA, is actually a government spy/sedition suppression measure. Because everyone knows u can get around a block using a simple proxy.
    and in other news
    DAMN GOVERNMENT GETIN IN MIAH INTERNETZ
  5. timuchan
    timuchan So SOPA is back to having "0" support from the industry it is making a law for. Makes me smile. :)
  6. Straight_Man
    Straight_Man I wanted to delete this one.... :(
  7. Straight_Man
    Straight_Man "So SOPA is back to having "0" support from the industry it is making a law for. Makes me smile. "

    Me too - and here I thought I was going to have to find a new site host. ;( Happy they did an about-face. :D

  8. Linc
    Linc Sounds like too little, too late. Their initial glib reply to the boycott was the nail in the coffin. They have customer service reps calling up now-former customers in a panic trying to win them back.
  9. Canti
    Canti Bunch of insincere cowards. This is insulting to their (former) customers. Considering how bad Netflix apparently suffered from something as insignificant as their service changes earlier this year I hope this comes close to running GoDaddy into the ground as an example for other companies who support SOPA.
  10. Linc
    Linc TPM quoted a senator as saying there is a specific exemption for GoDaddy in SOPA. Unbelieveable.
  11. Shorty
    Shorty What a mess. SOPA is bad. Lets face facts though, GoDaddys general reputation is gutter anyway.
  12. ardichoke
    ardichoke
    "So SOPA is back to having "0" support from the industry it is making a law for. Makes me smile. "

    Me too - and here I thought I was going to have to find a new site host. ;( Happy they did an about-face. :D

    You should move your stuff anyway. Face it, Thrax is right on this one, they only dropped their public support for SOPA as a PR move. I wouldn't be at all surprised to find out they're still supporting it through back channel measures. People need to continue to dump them as a warning to all the other would-be GoDaddy's out there: You screw with the Internet, you will pay the price, even if you do a half-hearted about face after all your customers get pissed.
  13. Canti
    Canti ^ THIS

    I can't find the article anymore but when reading up on this I found that GoDaddy was involved in writing this bill in the first place, not simply supporting something others proposed, and that their CEO hasn't gone on official record as opposing it. They only did this to try and win over people like you Straight_Man. Don't buy into this. Besides, there are plenty of other providers who offer better hosting deals than GoDaddy regardless of any of this SOPA nonsense.
  14. ardichoke
    ardichoke There are also hosting providers who don't have utterly offensive advertising, have a control panel that doesn't suck and don't try to constantly upsell you every time you so much as glance sidelong at them.
  15. Basil
    Basil
    There are plenty of other providers who offer better hosting deals than GoDaddy regardless of any of this SOPA nonsense.
    QFT, no idea why people used them even before all this drama.
  16. primesuspect
    primesuspect Dotster since 1999, and perfectly happy with them for all these years.
  17. Straight_Man
    Straight_Man Well, I chose another hosting company than GoDaddy, site is uploaded and DNS revision is propagating. 2-48 hours time, depending on where folks are in the world.
  18. Game Blade @basil
    The reason is supermodels....need I say more
  19. Tushon
    Tushon The way you know that they still support it: THEY WROTE THEMSELVES A FUCKING EXEMPTION. I lulz'd when I saw that, and then hoped they die in a fire.
  20. Snarkasm
    Snarkasm Taking a while to transfer mine. Might be Christmas-related, though.
  21. Basil
  22. Straight_Man
    Straight_Man Yes, Go Daddy sent me a 25% off hosting offer after I changed hosting accounts to iPage. Too little, too late, Go Daddy. Looks like LOTS of people went elsewhere, hurting them in return for thier real dumb stunt (SOPA involvement).
  23. BobbyDigi
    BobbyDigi I use GoDaddy solely for their registrations because they were the cheapest I could find the last I researched it. Is there a service any of ya can recommend that you can get a year for less than $8?

    thanks for any recommendations

    -Digi
  24. Tushon
    Tushon http://www.namecheap.com/ was commonly recommended in a reddit "move your domain day" thread.

    Relevant comment on thread, with discount codes:

    "XMASJOY" (not sure) or "SOPASucks" ($6.99 transfers) or "BYEBYEGD" (donation to "Save The Elephants")
  25. ardichoke
    ardichoke
    I use GoDaddy solely for their registrations because they were the cheapest I could find the last I researched it. Is there a service any of ya can recommend that you can get a year for less than $8?

    thanks for any recommendations

    -Digi
    I moved all my stuff earlier this year to domain.com. They run really good sales from time to time (such as $3.99 for a .com now through Dec 28th). I think their non-coupon prices are a bit higher (around $10/yr.), but that's still not expensive enough to outweigh the time I would spend finding another provider and moving my domains again.
  26. GHoosdum
    GHoosdum I got a long-winded email from my hosting provider (1and1) today about how they oppose SOPA and always have. I wonder if other providers have been fielding a lot of inquiries about their stance on SOPA since the GoDaddy debacle.
  27. T1theinfamous
    T1theinfamous I for one could never understand how GoDaddy could support SOPA when the bill has the potential to shred their entire base of customers. Then again,I could never understand how congress came up with a bill that has language so vague and outright stupid that it runs the risk of actually being able to have the subdomains of websites for members of congress shutdown for copyright infringement.
  28. Tushon
    Tushon They uniquely positioned themselves as the premiere take down center and (one can assume) would benefit monetarily.

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