December 23rd, 2011

The "SOPA": Not At All what It Seems As "Go-Daddy" Webhost Drops Support Under Pressure

Posted by: Barry Secrest
Published on December 23rd, 2011 @ 11:34:03 pm , using 357 words

Posted in Events and Issues: Credible Resources

Law and Disorder

Under intense pressure from an Internet-wide boycott, domain registrar GoDaddy has given the open Internet an early Christmas present: it's dropping its support for the Stop Online Piracy Act. The change was announced in a statement sent to Ars Technica:

Go Daddy is no longer supporting SOPA, the "Stop Online Piracy Act" currently working its way through U.S. Congress.

"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," Warren Adelman, Go Daddy's newly appointed CEO, said. "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."

GoDaddy's embarrassing climbdown took barely 24 hours. The boycott started on Thursday on reddit (an Ars sister site), but it quickly spread to the broader Internet. GoDaddy's competitors began offering special deals with promo codes like "SopaSucks" to entice GoDaddy switchers.

Initially, GoDaddy was defiant. In a statement emailed to Ars Technica Thursday evening, the company said "Go Daddy has received some emails that appear to stem from the boycott prompt, but we have not seen any impact to our business."

But this reaction only enraged GoDaddy's customers. And evidently, the impact on their business began to be more obvious on Friday.

GoDaddy claims that during negotiations over SOPA, the company "fought to express the concerns of the entire Internet community and to improve the bill" by pushing to make the bill's provisions less onerous. But now the company has been forced to concede that the bill's authors did not adequately address the Internet community's concerns.

"In changing its position, Go Daddy remains steadfast in its promise to support security and stability of the Internet," the company's Friday statement reads. GoDaddy says it has removed past postings expressing support for the legislation from its website.

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