Domain 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.
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