A recent statement by Registrar and domain hoster GoDaddy supporting the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) has resulted in quite a frenzy on news aggregation service Reddit today.
A Reddit poster aggressively responded to GoDaddy's decision and announced that he will be moving 51 domains to show his objection and suggested that to readers that other GoDaddy customers should be moving their domains on December 29 as well.
There aren't many companies supporting SOPA and even anti-piracy organizations such as the Business Software Alliance (BSA) said that the bill needs work and would not be supported by the organizations. However, GoDaddy filed a strong statement in favor of SOPA with the U.S. House of Representatives. In the filing, the company writes:
"Go Daddy has a long history of supporting federal legislation directed toward combating illegal conduct on the Internet. […] Go Daddy has always supported both government and private industry efforts to identify and disable all types of illegal activity on the Internet. […] It is for these reasons that I’m still struggling with why some Internet companies oppose PROTECT IP and SOPA. There is no question that we need these added tools to counteract illegal foreign sites that are falling outside the jurisdiction of U.S. law enforcement. And there is clearly more that we could all be doing to adequately address the problems that exist. […] We need to find a way to preserve American ingenuity. Starting from a place of common ground will allow us to have the conversation about how best to achieve those goals. SOPA is a needed tool to get the ball moving."
It is unclear how much of an impact the move-your-domain proposal will be for GoDaddy. The company claims that it has more than 50 million domains registered. The post on Reddit had generated more than 2000 comments at the time of this writing, the majority of them being positive toward the post. GoDaddy itself declined to comment on the outrage and sent us the SOPA filing as a response for our request for a statement. The company also remained firm within its own forums and posted "GoDaddy's position on SOPA".
I suppose you can now say that I am a former GoDaddy customer.
There is no illegal content on my sites, but i SOPA is messed up. It will NOT stop any illegal content. It WILL screw over legitimate sites.
I suppose you can now say that I am a former GoDaddy customer.
yes they are intended to combat the foreign youtube like sites that host movies on them of things still in theaters, but you know it will be abused. and the moment the internet takes a big hit due to the bill, how many people will support godaddy knowing they had a hand it makeing it happen?
this isnt the kind of thing you could say "we didnt know" as a defense.
There is no illegal content on my sites, but i SOPA is messed up. It will NOT stop any illegal content. It WILL screw over legitimate sites.
(this way they will lower their prices even more and I will snap a second dedicated server for peanuts)
WHAT THE FUCK GoDaddy, you use the hottest girls on sports to advertise and yet want to preserve ingenuity?
By the way, this law is reminiscent of the Apple Apps store decision to block apps facilitating the viewing of pornography.
Sorry, let me make my own decisions about such matters.
Wrong, registering through Google as well as a variety of other companies is still the same as registering with GoDaddy as GoDaddy is the parent company to numerous other hosting providers. Do some research before just switching as you may inadvertently give GoDaddy your business anyways. Numerous people recommend namecheap.com and as an added bonus if you use the code SOPASucks when transferring your domain they will give you a discount on the price.
TLDR I'm in full agreement of boycotting GoDaddy, but make sure you're actually boycotting them!