GoDaddy Boycott: Domain-Hosting Company Changes SOPA Stance

Thursday's GoDaddy boycott may not have been the revolution some had hoped for, but it was enough to convince the domain hosting firm to publicly oppose the controversial Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA).

As reported by CNET, GoDaddy CEO Warren Adelman said on Thursday:

We have observed a spike in domain name transfers, which are running above normal rates and which we attribute to GoDaddy's prior support for SOPA, which was reversed. GoDaddy opposes SOPA because the legislation has not fulfilled its basic requirement to build a consensus among stake-holders in the technology and Internet communities.

While GoDaddy had previously withdrawn its support for SOPA, until Thursday's statement, the company had not voiced public disagreement towards the bill, which the House Judiciary Committee had been debating before adjourning for the holiday.

According to Yahoo, about 70,000 domains had already been switched before Thursday's planned boycott. While these numbers aren't extremely consequential to a company that hosts 50 million websites worldwide, these withdrawals along with high profile moves from Wikipedia, Cheezburger and image sharing site Imgur seem to have been enough to force GoDaddy's hand.

Imgur, one of the largest image hosting sites on the web, announced on Wednesday that it had changed its registry entries. Imgur founder and owner Alan Schaaf told Fox News.com, "I'm against the SOPA act and imgur as a company is against it. We just feel it is terrible that GoDaddy.com would support this legislation."

Further supporting the argument that it was the public outcry and not the domain transfers themselves that changed GoDaddy's stance, TechDirt reports that on the day of the boycott almost twice as many domains were transferred into GoDaddy's network as out. GoDaddy actually ended "Dump GoDaddy Day" up 20,748 domains. TechDirt's stats come from Daily Changes, a DNS changes and web hosting activity monitoring site.

Comments

[allen jino]

01:08 PM on 12/27/2012

GoDaddy is the leading name in domain transfer because of a host of advantages that people seeking domain transfer are assured of. To begin with, there is no time wasting as the step by step process is really rapid courtesy of the company's Rapid Transfer System.

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[Peyton Walker]

07:32 PM on 02/13/2012

smaller companies are better anyhow http://bit.ly/yAJxl7

[Eris23]

08:22 AM on 01/03/2012

Regardless of GoDaddy's SOPA stance, whatever it may be couched as at the moment, they're worth avoiding anyways, particularly for hosting. It's the clunkiest interface I've ever used.

[James McKeon]

08:14 AM on 01/03/2012

I have read this same article on other news sites that have explained Imgur's position better. SOPA do not only allow the Government to restrict traffic, it also allow companies to go after another company hosting Copyright content.

"SOPA would make websites responsible for illegal copyright content uploaded by any user, making it difficult if not impossible for companies like Imgur, YouTube, and Facebook to operate."

Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2011/12/28/on-eve-net-boycott-dump-godaddy-exodus-begins/#ixzz1iOotzuik (sorry for the Fox link just explains it better).

What people don't know is that cute family picture with a certain mouse taken at a park that ends with "World" as a copyright on it (even though it is your picture). While the company that starts with "D" end with "isney" could never go after each and every user that post a family picture online, they can now go after the company that owns the site, maybe that "family pics" folder on Facebook. We all know this was not the intended use of this law but when has that stopped Big Business in the past?

[PLANECRASH]

10:22 PM on 01/02/2012

"Thursday's GoDaddy boycott may not have been the revolution some had hoped for"

The article you link to, in justifying this statement uses flawed numbers to support its claims. That article references DNS changes which don't directly correlate to registrar transfers, for multiple reasons.

The first and foremost would be domain owners that don't use GD's name servers. Most of the larger transfers, 10 - 1000+ domains, are definitely in this boat, and swing the numbers referenced in either direction by precisely zero.

Second, in certain instances, when a customer deletes a domain, it will look like a transfer in, to GD's name servers, as GD takes over that domain.

There's a couple more, but I've probably already lost your attention. ttyl.

[jsgaetano]

07:03 PM on 01/02/2012

I won't mind seeing them go away. At least we won't have to see their stupid commercials anymore.

[leorangerie]

01:31 AM on 01/02/2012

What boycott?

[jflorish]

08:21 PM on 01/01/2012

Great photo .... didn't read the article.

[JackTheSkipper]

08:07 PM on 01/01/2012

I will still register my domains and purchase SSL certificates from Godaddy because the puppies on the godaddy girl are too good to be ignored.

[saramathison77]

05:08 PM on 01/01/2012

It should be noted in every article that GoDaddy is excluded from the bill. Basically they helped write it and made sure it didn't affect them. But schools and non-profits would be affected. I've never bought a domain name from GoDaddy and you can be damn sure I, nor anyone I know, will ever again.

[hoppy678]

04:53 PM on 01/01/2012

The recent caves of Go Daddy and Verizon proves that the corporations/bosses don't have the real power. The workers/normal citizens do. It's time to realize that.

[highlyqualified]

09:10 AM on 01/01/2012

The brand has been damaged severely with the tech community and will not recover easily.

[Thanks4Watching]

04:01 AM on 01/01/2012

I read the SOPA bill online. Besides the fact that it is absolutely Draconian and Lamar Smith is lying through his teeth about what this bill is designed to do, the wording of the bill itself proves that Congress hasn't the vaguest idea of how the internet works. It would require an overnight overhaul of the DNS, which, believe me, would BREAK the internet. That's not hyperbole. It's the equivalent of trying to completely revamp the foundations of a hundred-story skyscraper, without even closing the building down first. It's not as simple as just changing the code, and anyone who says it is is either lying, or ignorant of how the internet as a whole works.

[stjoshy]

08:51 PM on 12/31/2011

i like sopas. theyr kinda like pupusas.. but better in my opinion. OMNOMNOMNOMNOM!!!

[Hoosier451]

06:10 PM on 12/31/2011

SOPA is supported by the very same people who made online piracy easy to do. I'm not usually one to go for the whole "it's a conspiracy" angle, but it sure as heck seems like a conspiracy to me.

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