GoDaddy Backs SOPA

redletterdave writes "Website hosting company GoDaddy has officially voiced its support for the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) Bill in 2012, which is designed to thwart movie and music piracy on the Internet by empowering copyright holders to effectively shut down websites or online services found with infringing material. If passed, the U.S. government could blacklist any website it deems in violation of copyright, which could range from a few posts in a Web forum to a few links sent in an e-mail. GoDaddy supports SOPA for 'protecting the intellectual property of hard-working Americans, U.S. business and the American public from the harm that necessarily flows from the purchase of counterfeit products.' Yet, of the 142 companies that support the SOPA bill, GoDaddy is the only Internet company on the list."

Comments

GoDaddy

[InterestingFella]

Anyone in the industry has known to avoid GoDaddy for domains. Their sole existence is based on commercials and advertisements, not good service. It's a perfect example that advertisements works too. This news isn't exactly surprising and will do nothing to GoDaddy's market share.

Re:GoDaddy

[ChromeAeonium]

Ugh, some of those ads were reason enough to avoid them.

Re:GoDaddy

[Hadlock]

What do you mean "not good service"? I've been with them since 2006 or so (with 5 domains) and would rank them right up there with T-Mobile - one of two companies whose phone support I don't completely loathe calling when something goes awry. Sure, their hosting is a little anemic compared to some newer options like slicehost and similar, but they spell out pretty clearly what you're paying for.
 
That said, I'm sort of disappointed on their stance on SOPA, although from a legal standpoint it doesn't seem out of character given the business they're in.

Re:GoDaddy

[InterestingFella]

The question is not who's phone support is best, but why would you need to call them in the first place. And this is strictly limited to /. geeky persons, I do understand why normal businesses rather just call them to set up stuff. But if you have any intelligence about domains, it takes like half a minute to set up your stuff. At least with good providers, like Namecheap or Gandi.net.

Re:GoDaddy

[erick99]

I've hosted five commercial sites there for my customers over the past three years with zero problems. Their customer service has been excellent for me and their pricing is great. I can understand that they may not be everyone's cup of tea but they have worked out well for me.

Re:GoDaddy

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm in the industry, they have a good price point.

Re:GoDaddy

[osu-neko]

Their sole existence is based on commercials and advertisements, not good service.

I thought it was based on cheap prices. I've used them, but I've never once seen a commercial or advertisement for them.

Re:GoDaddy

[AngryDeuce]

I started boycotting GoDaddy earlier this year when their CEO, Bob Parsons, went to Africa to get his rocks off killing an elephant for sport.

And no, I'm not anti-hunting, but I am anti-hunting endangered animals, especially if there is no cultural norms involved, and I am definitely anti-hunting if your sole motivation is just to kill something for fun.

Re:GoDaddy

[arose]

You don't mind T-Mobile's we're-gona-forward-you-every-five-minutes-through-several-countris-but-not-any-case-information-if-your-problem-is-not-the-top-five-on-the-script phone support?

Re:GoDaddy

[masternerdguy]

Watch the superbowl more often. Be prepared to facepalm.

Re:GoDaddy

[Ihmhi]

Same. The people I've set them up with have really appreciated their 24 hour tech support.

That said, any good suggestions on who to switch to? I'm seriously considering moving my assets away from GoDaddy permanently.

Re:GoDaddy

[JAlexoi]

No... Hunting with firearms is for spoiled cowards. I would be all for it if he was to fight it out with his bear hands! On a plus side, we would no longer have a GoDaddy CEO :-D

Re:GoDaddy

[Lumpy]

Same here, I have 5 domains and 5 sites hosted there. Migrated from 1&1 because of 1&1's crappy service and yet another rate hike. I've been at godaddy now for 4 years, zero problems at all.

Now I'm stuck. I am not staying at a provider that supports SOPA. I either have to double my rates to customers and waste an entire weekend moving all this crap and locating a hosting service that is not ran by idiots.

Re:GoDaddy

[Anonymous Coward]

He's got bear hands!!! He might stand a chance the - unless they're panda bear hands!

Re:GoDaddy

[Lumpy]

News flash, really rich assholes like to do this kind of thing. you had better start boycotting all the oil companies, all computer companies, etc....

Re:GoDaddy

[tibit]

Sigh, have to get off my ass (or rather on it, as it were), and move the domains at work elsewhere. Where, is the question, then. Any hints?

Re:GoDaddy

[GameboyRMH]

This. GoDaddy is one of those few, special businesses that has pissed off customers so much that it has a dedicated hate site. Glad I never used them for anything I set up myself, and I've been trying to convince the IT manager here to get our domain management off of them. It's bad enough that a domain speculator has the .com for our business, we don't need to lose any more.

Re:GoDaddy

[Anonymous Coward]

I started boycotting GoDaddy earlier this year when their CEO, Bob Parsons, went to Africa to get his rocks off killing an elephant for sport.

And no, I'm not anti-hunting, but I am anti-hunting endangered animals, especially if there is no cultural norms involved, and I am definitely anti-hunting if your sole motivation is just to kill something for fun.

While you are free to do whatever you want, you need to get the story right before making a decision.
1. He was not actually there to hunt elephant. He was hunting other animals, his license just happened to cover elephant so it was a legal shoot.
2. The reason he shot the elephant was that a village there asked him to because said elephant was destroying their only form of income, their crops.
3. The people there also ate off that elephant for several weeks, some walking long distances to get some of it.

Re:GoDaddy

[lemur3]

silly reason to boycott...

most any elephant killed in africa by rich foreigners is killed as part of conservation efforts and for many other reasons that scientists biologists and experts on various habitats deem required.

this aint poaching.

Re:GoDaddy

[lemur3]

stop thinking so rationally!

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/6091334.stm

In southern Africa, countries have followed the philosophy of sustainable use. They have issued permits to sport hunters to kill a limited number of elephants that are pre-selected according to factors like age and sex. They cannot shoot breeding animals...

The result is that in Namibia, South Africa and Botswana, elephant populations are well-stocked and healthy, while incidences of poaching have been kept to low levels.

this is not just random poaching with no goal.

i think people who dont hunt might not realize how much paperwork is involved.. its a lot of thought out work by conservation programs to make sure populations are kept in balance with their environment and other species..

Re:GoDaddy

[cybernanga]

While elephants are endangered globally, they are not always endangered locally if you see what I mean.

Some areas of Africa, have good conservation and wildlife management programs, and actually have too many elephants for their local environment to support. The funds they pull in from rich foreigners who want to kill something for fun, are used to sustain the management programs.

Supposedly they could move the elephants to areas where they are low in numbers, but this is not always sensible. Firstly, it costs money, which they don't have much of. Secondly, there is a reason why some areas have low elephant populations, usually lack of management programs or high numbers of poachers, in which case moving elephants to that location is non-productive, as they will be killed by poachers.

I know it is counter-intuitive, but sometimes killing elephants for fun, actually helps the elephant population to survive.

One way of looking at it, is that sport hunting attaches a monetary value to an elephant, turning it into an asset for people to whom an elephant is usually a liability. (They destroy crops, and large areas of vegetation). People tend to look after their assets.

Re:GoDaddy

[Anonymous Coward]

Sure pandas are cute and fluffy, but they still got mean claws and can gut you just well.

Re:GoDaddy

[Anonymous Coward]

A 1%er goes on an expensive and highly destructive African safari, leading to the death of an elephant. You can claim that killing the elephant improved the condition for some in Africa, but that papers over two pretty big facts:

1. Overall, Africa is worse off due to these safaris,
2. Instead of putting himself in a position where he will likely be called out as an exploiter of Africa, Bob Parsons could have found other productive uses for the money.

Re:GoDaddy

[g0bshiTe]

I actually was clueless to how bad they were. I've used them in the past simply as registrars, never hosted anything with them though.

Knowing their stance on this, I'll never be using them again.

Re:GoDaddy

[Anonymous Coward]

Ah yes, the big bad elephant hunter...

So I guess you're OK with Africans starving because they can't keep crops alive due to them being trampled?

White people make me fucking sick.

Re:GoDaddy

[dgatwood]

I've hosted five commercial sites there for my customers over the past three years with zero problems.

Then you got really, really lucky. About two years ago, I tried hosting a site at GoDaddy. Among other things:

• They had a wall-clock time limit per process that was so low (30 seconds) that I was having to try two or three times apiece to upload single files of five or six megs to the site for hosting because SCP kept dropping the connections. Yeah, time limits on commands running over SSH. Seriously.
• This also meant that their servers often failed to serve those files back.
• They had a maximum number of connections per IP per minute, which meant that my SCP upload script had to alternate between a pool of IP numbers just to get content uploaded to my site. I had barely finished the upload before I determined that performance was so poor that they were history. It took several days to upload the content.
• Their servers were overloaded and regularly stalled for as much as a half minute at a time before they served the first byte of data on an HTTP request.
• Their customer service reps refused to even take a look at what was going on on the server at the time, even though my server monitoring scripts provided them with detailed, atomic-clock-accurate time stamps of the periods of time when the server was malfunctioning.
• They also refused to move me to a different shared server even though I was serving purely static content. Thus, as long as I stayed with GoDaddy, my trivial requests were going to be forever blocked behind phpBB search requests and requests going to badly misconfigured WordPress instances. Uh... no.
• My attempt to buy an SSL cert from them was thwarted when they sold me a cert and then refused to actually fulfill it. Apparently, they no longer sold certificates for that length of time, but they hadn't updated their website to remove them.

I ran, not walked, over to DreamHost, and couldn't be happier. Their servers are always fast and always responsive—much, much faster than what I was getting from GoDaddy, and without any of the ridiculous 30 second process limits or SSH connections-per-minute limits that made me feel like I was dealing with a bunch of bozos who had never configured a server before. In short, it "just works", which is basically my sole criterion for choosing an ISP, so long as the cost isn't exorbitant.

Re:GoDaddy

[jimbolauski]

So you are mad that T-mobile fixed your problem but not quick enough for your liking. Think of it this way 90% of the calls can be solved with a simple follow the script solutions having knowledgeable staff handle those problems would be a huge waste of money and I couldn't see many of them sticking around if they did. The next 9% are handled by people with a greater knowledge of what is going on and the final 1% are handled by the guru's, it is the only way to make knowledgeable staff available to their customers a be able to stay in business. Yes it is inconvenient to get bounced around but there is not other way for a customer base that large.

Re:GoDaddy

[Anonymous Coward]

The fact that the killing is done responsibly doesn't change the fact that the guy could have taken the same money and supported elephant management in some POSITIVE way rather than knocking off the officially-designated stragglers in the population. For example, he could have donated money to the anti-poacher efforts in the areas that do have fewer elephants than the environment can sustain. Instead he goes to one of the areas where they are "overstocked" and shoots them for fun, thus contributing little to solving the problem, and providing an incentive for further game hunting of any kind (well-managed or not). If it was hunting for food, then I'd have a somewhat different opinion.

Re:GoDaddy

[jimbolauski]

Hunting is for spoiled cowards.

You do realize that without hunting the deer population in the US would be at a dangerous level, overpopulation due to lack of predators will lead to the thinning of the heard by disease, starvation, and automobiles, or did your PETA comrades leave that out in your brain washing. Wolves, coyotes, mountain lions, and bobcats have all been pushed out and there are not enough predators to control populations, hunting is the substitute for natural predators. For the record I do not hunt but think it is ignorant to think everyone goes out hunting to get their rocks off, a deer can yield 40-60lbs of meat that could easily feed a family of 4 for over a month.

Re:GoDaddy

[Sectoid_Dev]

Deer != Elephant

Re:GoDaddy

[Anonymous Coward]

its a lot of thought out work by conservation programs to make sure populations are kept in balance with their environment and other species.

You know, mother nature used to do that quite well. Human beings upset that balance to begin with. And now, we think we are capable of managing it. What hubris.

Re:GoDaddy

[Vellmont]

I know it is counter-intuitive, but sometimes killing elephants for fun, actually helps the elephant population to survive.

WTF? This isn't about the elephant, it's about the person. There's something fucked up about people who want to kill something solely for fun.

Re:GoDaddy

[cybernanga]

I realise the parent poster was talking about the person.

I was just offering some other information regarding hunting, that in my experience may people have never thought about.

While I agree that it is indeed fucked up to kill animals simply for fun, sensible thinking people can take the foolishness of others and turn it around so it has a net positive effect!

Re:GoDaddy

[mordur]

For hosting go to https://1984.is/

1984 hosting company supports immi.is, which is conceptually the flip side of SOPA. I'ts a project (well under way) to create a single jurisdiction in the world with optimal legal framework for freedom of speech.

Re:GoDaddy

[marcosdumay]

Well, you have three options:

1 - Try to manage it;
2 - Do nothing about it;
3 - Stop interfering.

Doing 1 something COULD go wrong; doing 2 everything WILL go wrong; you are free to do 3 and kill yourself, just don't expect that we'll follow your steps.

Re:GoDaddy

[cjcela]

I second that. DreamHost is excellent for hosting. Fast servers, good service, and they allow you to do pretty much whatever you want with your account without hassles or unreasonable extra charges. Their prices seem competitive too, but to be honest, I am so happy with them that I have not checked out for pricing elsewhere. I've been using them for about 3 years and will not go back to other providers.

Re:GoDaddy

[sesshomaru]

"You're wrong, kid. It's not a crime to kill an elephant. It's bigger than all that. It's a sin to kill an elephant. You understand? It's the only sin you can buy a license for and go out and commit... do you understand me? Of course you don't. I don't even understand myself."

Re:GoDaddy

[dbolgheroni]

Maybe you should realize that almost none of these problems existed before human intervention. I think your signature says a lot about you.

Re:GoDaddy

[Anonymous Coward]

This is a flawed, selective argument. How about this:

"A November 2004 study by the University of Port Elizabeth estimated that eco-tourism on private game
reserves generated "more than 15 times the income of livestock or game rearing or
overseas hunting". (1) Eco-tourism lodges in Eastern Cape Province produce almost 2000 rand
(£180) per hectare. Researchers also noted that more jobs were created and staff received "extensive
skills training". (2)
The reasons for this are obvious. Although hunters pay large sums, ordinary tourists are much more
numerous. Hunters shoot an animal once, but photographic tourists can shoot it a thousand times and
the animal is still there. In 1982, it was estimated that a maned male lion earned Kenya National Parks
$50,000 (£26,500) a year through photographic tourism.(3) In comparison, in neighbouring Tanzania,
hunters currently pay a $2000 (£1060) trophy fee and the lion is gone forever.(4) "

http://www.animalrightsafrica.org/Archive/Hunting/The_%20Myth_of_Trophy_Hunting_as_Conservation.pdf

Non-dead animals appear to be worth more.

Additionally the IWMC is: "...now a member of the World Council of Whalers. IWMC is a world-wide coalition of wildlife managers who believe in the sustainable utilization of wildlife resources. Its membership includes governments, regional associations of governments, NGOs and other organizations involved in wildlife management. Visit their web site at www.iwmc.org ."

http://www.worldwhalers.com/publications/newsletters/4.htm

Conservation works by attracting visitors to see the animals without killing them. Significant conservation work is done to overcome the damage caused by war and the related killing of animals to fund militias and related groups. (http://www.treehugger.com/corporate-responsibility/killing-rare-animals-funds-terror.html) and the killing of animals conducted to support militias and related groups.

Productive, long-term education and job development produces and environment in which rich people are not able to use the needs of the poor to justify their own peculiar killing interests. Killing animals for fun? Spend the money directly on assisting the poor if you really think that's what you're doing. Or get a life and read a book or race cars. Use your money for something which would actually benefit all parties in the long term...or just get your jollies killing animals.

Anti-hunting? Only when the human animals possess more than what they were born with. Sport is an even contest. Killing animals is not sport - humans only call it that so they can feel better about it...and superior.

Re:GoDaddy

[walterbyrd]

You are not stuck. At best, godaddy is nothing special. It's easy to move. Read this:

http://lifehacker.com/5870649/ditch-godaddys-sopa+loving-butt-and-get-a-better-web-host-at-a-discount

Re:GoDaddy

[Hal_Porter]

I once worked with someone who had that damn ad as the ringtone on his phone. On full blast.

Re:GoDaddy

[forebees]

"...and harvest data suggest that African countries and U.S. states with the highest intensity of sport hunting have shown the steepest population declines in African lions and cougars over the past 25 yrs."

http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0005941

"A November 2004 study by the University of Port Elizabeth estimated that eco-tourism on private game
reserves generated "more than 15 times the income of livestock or game rearing or
overseas hunting". (1) Eco-tourism lodges in Eastern Cape Province produce almost 2000 rand
(£180) per hectare. Researchers also noted that more jobs were created and staff received "extensive
skills training". (2)
The reasons for this are obvious. Although hunters pay large sums, ordinary tourists are much more
numerous. Hunters shoot an animal once, but photographic tourists can shoot it a thousand times and
the animal is still there. In 1982, it was estimated that a maned male lion earned Kenya National Parks
$50,000 (£26,500) a year through photographic tourism.(3) In comparison, in neighbouring Tanzania,
hunters currently pay a $2000 (£1060) trophy fee and the lion is gone forever.(4)"
Hunting safaris are seasonal and are open for a maximum of six months a year. They use very basic
camps and staff rarely learn any other skills to support themselves during the rest of the year. In
contrast, photographic safaris run all year. They use well-established, often luxurious, camps or hotels.
Staff are trained in management and other useful professional qualifications which advance their
careers

http://www.animalrightsafrica.org/Archive/Hunting/The_%20Myth_of_Trophy_Hunting_as_Conservation.pdf

Re:GoDaddy

[ckaminski]

Rate hike at 1&1?

I've had service with them since 2004. My prices have NEVER gone up, except for newly provisioned services.

Re:GoDaddy

[Anonymous Coward]

That's right, because there was no hunting of animals whatsoever before Europeans came to the Americas.

Re:GoDaddy

[russotto]

While you are free to do whatever you want, you need to get the story right before making a decision.
1. He was not actually there to hunt elephant. He was hunting other animals, his license just happened to cover elephant so it was a legal shoot.
2. The reason he shot the elephant was that a village there asked him to because said elephant was destroying their only form of income, their crops.
3. The people there also ate off that elephant for several weeks, some walking long distances to get some of it.

Sure. None of that excuses his support for SOPA, though. That just gives elephant-hunters a bad name.

Re:GoDaddy

[modecx]

So, what you're saying is kill all humans?

Now that's a campaign promise the members of S.K.I. (Serial Killers International) can really stand behind, you know, as they watch the life drain from your eyes, and also the thirty-seven stab wounds.

Re:GoDaddy

[Anonymous Coward]

No, he's right. No animals hunted anything before humans evolved. Before we came about, all animals lived in perfect harmony, regularly and merrily prancing around in happy, multi-species dance circles under beautiful rainbows while the sun smiled brightly on them through white, fluffy, happy clouds. They all subsisted on nothing but candy and good cheer, with cats and mice inviting each other over for tea parties while the hawks and owls regularly held friendly, joyous baseball games with the chipmunks and squirrels.

As soon as humans appeared, though, they all started killing each other because we brought evil vibes and thetans with us. Predators hunted down prey, small creatures lived in fear of their very innocent, cute lives, and all the baseball games became football matches (or, if you're across the pond, football riots). So it's all our own damn fault. Period.

Re:GoDaddy

[Anonymous Coward]

I spent 5 minutes trying to decide if you are serious or not. I still am not sure.

Re:GoDaddy

[SharkLaser]

Nice, you actually agreed with me ;-)

Re:GoDaddy

[helix2301]

I agree GoDaddy is cheap web hosting and you get what you pay for with them nothing but problems. Poor service,slow propagation, management tools were terrible, imap e-mail was junk. They have WWE as a big supporter with the divas and a massive advertising campaign. They advertise during the Superbowl, Wrestling and UFC and gets the average person to think they are great.

Re:GoDaddy

[Anonymous Coward]

Before we came about, all animals lived in perfect harmony, regularly and merrily prancing around in happy, multi-species dance circles under beautiful rainbows while the sun smiled brightly on them through white, fluffy, happy clouds.

No, but I can tell you emphatically that they didn't kill for sport. That is a purely human invention.

They also tended to find a predator/prey balance that sustained both populations. That's another thing we humans seem to have a knack for fucking up.

While I don't know for sure, I would guess that animals were much better off until we arrived 2 million years ago. We were driving animals to extinction before we had a fucking written language. I think that says a lot....

Re:GoDaddy

[Anonymous Coward]

While I don't know for sure, I would guess that animals were much better off until we arrived 2 million years ago. We were driving animals to extinction before we had a fucking written language. I think that says a lot....

"Most extinctions have occurred naturally, prior to Homo sapiens walking on Earth: it is estimated that 99.9% of all species that have ever existed are now extinct." [1]

Protip: Evolution was around a long time before Darwin. "Harmonious balances" are never static.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extinction

Re:GoDaddy

[Anonymous Coward]

I've been fine with One.com, though I'm not a heavy user. They're limited to PHP/MySQL and really they're Hosting-light. Used to be with Heart Internet up until a few years ago, and they were quite good.
Those are for my personal sites though, at work we take what our clients give us to work with. And one of them requires Go-Daddy. We had to keep pressuring them to give us our SSL certificate.

Makes me feel really dirty working with them, even more so now.

Re:GoDaddy

[Tyler Durden]

No, but I can tell you emphatically that they didn't kill for sport. That is a purely human invention.

Nonsense. Cats love to kill things, and it's not always to eat them either. They do it out of sheer joy.

Re:GoDaddy

[Spykk]

Tell that to the dinosaurs.

Re:GoDaddy

[Anonymous Coward]

Sorry. If I added in mice with footy pajamas, fairies, gingerbread houses, and smiling trees, would that be enough of a gear shift to murderous psychopathy to confirm I was joking?

Re:GoDaddy

[Anonymous Coward]

Are you and InterestingFella the same person? Are cmdrpony and insightin140bytes other accounts that belong to you?
How many other puppet accounts do you have?

Re:GoDaddy

[arose]

So you are mad that T-mobile fixed your problem but not quick enough for your liking.

They didn't fix it, they fixed it partially and I didn't find out until a few hours later. I.e. not only didn't they resolve the issue, they couldn't tell me what the status was either. I don't give a shit how many people call in with problems straight from the faq and only need human answering machines. There is exactly one criteria that I evaluate customer service on. How efficiently, and if, they can solve my problem, one that I've made sure I can't solve on my own and have to call in for.

Yes it is inconvenient to get bounced around but there is not other way for a customer base that large.

The only way to handle a large customer base is to frustrate people who have "hard" problems into hanging up? I wasn't forwarded to a more experienced person, the right department or anything along those lines. Some people were actively wondering why I was forwarded to them! Decent customer service will forward your information so that you don't have to reconfirm who you are and explain your problem six or seven times over and over. No, I was bounced around because no one wanted to deal with me and the ones who tried didn't have the authority (or made it worse).

Re:GoDaddy

[Raenex]

a lot of thought out work by conservation programs to make sure populations are kept in balance with their environment and other species..

Except for the humans, of course.

Re:GoDaddy

[Anonymous Coward]

Nonsense. Cats love to kill things, and it's not always to eat them either.

For one thing, that's instinctual. My instincts may tell me to either beat the hell out of my boss or run, screaming from his office, when he calls me in there out of the blue, but I do neither, because rationally I understand that there will be negative consequences for those actions. Feeling the emotion and and acting on them are two different things. I do not expect a cat to consider that killing something for no reason is wrong because it's a fucking cat. I mean, duh.

Secondly, Bob Parsons is not a cat. He's a human being. Human beings are capable of reason. Whether they elect to use it when making their decisions or not, the capability is there, especially in a CEO of a multimillion dollar company. He should know better. He's college educated, for fuck's sake.

Third, just because a person can do a thing, that does not mean they should do said thing. I can go out in my backyard and kill squirrels for no reason whatsoever, but as I'm not a psychopath, I don't do that. People that hunt purely for sport must be grown up versions of those kids that liked to torture cats and other small animals as kids. Notice I didn't say people that hunt to protect their livestock, or people that hunt to feed their families, or people that euthanize an injured animal that is beyond help. Those deaths serve a purpose. Killing an animal because you felt like killing something is morally repugnant. You want the thrill of the hunt, bring a camera and take a fucking picture..at least you're not needlessly taking a life.

Bob Parsons didn't kill this elephant because the indigenous people needed his help killing it. He didn't kill this animal because the people wanted to eat it. He obviously made the decision to kill the elephant before all that when he booked the fucking trip. If he wanted to feed the people, why didn't he just buy them food? If he was concerned about their crops, why didn't he just relocate the elephant? I mean, he obviously thought to bring enough fucking GoDaddy hats to hand out, if you watch the videos. Couldn't he have left the GoDaddy shit at home and brought them some food, instead? How about water purifiers? How about medicine? How about any of a million other things he could have done to help these people without killing a member of an endangered species?

Re:GoDaddy

[tqk]

While I agree that it is indeed fucked up to kill animals simply for fun, sensible thinking people can take the foolishness of others and turn it around so it has a net positive effect!

Okay, so let's go one further and turn it around again. Let's put a price on the heads of these "fucked up" individuals. Why not? They enjoy hunting, yes? So hunt them.

Logic can often be illogical.

However, I am very much of the opinion that "it is indeed fucked up to kill animals simply for fun", and I can easily see a case for declaring open season on psychopaths like that, just as a Public Service. The world needs none of that sort of person.

Re:GoDaddy

[tqk]

So I guess you're OK with Africans starving because they can't keep crops alive due to them being trampled?

This, on a techie site?!? I've watched documentaries on TV showing Africans' defences against just this. Pointy sticks driven into the ground on an angle, facing out? Barbed wire on steroids! The VietNamese won a war against France and the USA with such things.

White people make me fucking sick.

Fuck off, you racist asshole.

Re:GoDaddy

[SkimTony]

Tragically, they're one of three possible vendors for Intel VPro SSL certs, and in order to obtain such a cert, you must call their support (you can't go create one just through the web interface).

Re:GoDaddy

[Anonymous Coward]

Personally, I will boycott other companies on the list. First and foremost, WalMart and Ford.

Re:GoDaddy

[budgenator]

In the early spring, after the crop lands and lawns are greening up and before the forests start to leaf out I usually see 150 - 250 deer going along about ten miles of road. I usually have a couple near misses a week in my car, it's suicidal to drive more than 25 MPH any where there's a deep ditch or a treeline near the road.

Re:GoDaddy

[budgenator]

No, but I can tell you emphatically that they didn't kill for sport. That is a purely human invention.

You need to get off the cement sidewalk more often, and get in touch with reality. Animals aren't always as different as you think, there are no "Noble Savages", Indian didn't have mystical hunting abilities and there is no "White Man's burden".

Re:GoDaddy

[jimbolauski]

Deer You get much more meat from an elephant, the big game safari I have heard of you need a sponsoring tribe that gets your money and the meat.

So it must be time

[medcalf]

to move my domain off of GoDaddy. My laziness only gets them so much revenue.

Re:So it must be time

[Shadyman]

Anyone have any recommendations for domains/webhosting?

Re:So it must be time

[Anonymous Coward]

I'll be switching my domains to a different registrar as well. I've seen Gandi suggested on slashdot before, so I'll give them a try and I'm telling everyone I know to do the same.

Re:So it must be time

[Shikaku]

http://hostgator.com/

They offer great hosting and domain management with support for everything you'd ever need, even with shared hosting. Technical support is also great and instantaneous.

Use coupon code nosopa25percent for 25% off your entire order as well.

Re:So it must be time

[butalearner]

Namecheap. They currently have a coupon code SOPASUCKS for domain transfers.

Re:So it must be time

[Anonymous Coward]

Anyone have any recommendations for domains/webhosting?

I moved all my domains from godaddy to namecheap.com a couple years ago and can readily recommend them. I have no connection to namecheap other than the fact that I'm a happy customer.

Re:So it must be time

[lothos]

internet.bs is a good registrar.

Name.com, namecheap, and domain.com all have transfer specials right now because of Godaddy's support.

Re:So it must be time

[Kagetsuki]

Ok, that's awesome. They're on my list as registrar-to-consider if I ever need to move a domain for that.

Re:So it must be time

[ethan0]

seconded for namecheap. I've had good experiences with them, albeit for my very-limited needs.

Re:So it must be time

[Lexx Greatrex]

Namecheap. They currently have a coupon code SOPASUCKS for domain transfers.

I can happily confirm that all of my godaddy domains have been successfully transferred to namecheap (eNom) without any noticable downtime. The geeks have spoken.

Re:So it must be time

[Anonymous Coward]

I've been waiting for my expirations to get closer for an xfer - final nail in the lid of the coffin - geenrating EPP codes now...

The coupon code works! Thanks!

Re:So it must be time

[SomePgmr]

Excellent, I'll have to take a look as well.

I assumed that was just an "anything to take GoDaddy customers" move, but found this pretty cut-and-dry:
http://community.namecheap.com/blog/2011/12/22/we-say-no-to-sopa/

Re:So it must be time

[andydread]

Namecheap for domains Bluehost for hosting. Never ever ever mix your registrar and hosting service.

Re:So it must be time

[Anonymous Coward]

Never ever ever mix your registrar and hosting service

Amen!

Re:So it must be time

[madison_wi]

I just switched a domain from Godaddy to Namecheap. Never used namecheap before...

Re:So it must be time

[Hero Zzyzzx]

Namecheap hasn't been an enom reseller for a while. see here. Not affiliated, just a happy customer.

Re:So it must be time

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm switching 4 domains today.

Re:So it must be time

[Anonymous Coward]

Goatse.cx. They really stretch themselves to accommodate your needs.

Re:So it must be time

[modecx]

Thanks! I have a few domains on Godaddy up for expiration in the new year that I've been meaning to transfer over to namecheap anyway.

Re:So it must be time

[Lexx Greatrex]

Namecheap hasn't been an enom reseller for a while. see here. Not affiliated, just a happy customer.

They are indeed an ICANN accredited registrar but they also remain an eNom reseller as well. http://davezan.com/does-enom-own-namecheap.html. It is apparent from their emails that in my case they decided to transfer my domains through eNom. Either that or they provided me with a four year old transfer authorization notification.

"From: Namecheap.com info@transfer-approval.com Attention: Universe II Re: Transfer of UNIVERSEII.COM eNom, Inc. has received a request from Universe II on 22 Dec 2011 to become the new registrar of record."

Either way it's fine with me. My only criteria is that they are not Godaddy!

Also not affiliated with any registrar or reseller; just a happy new Namecheap customer.

Re:So it must be time

[blind biker]

Same here. I really like NameCheap, so far.

Indeed, the geeks have spoken.

Re:So it must be time

[Dave Zan]

Actually, NameCheap is still an eNom reseller. They're keeping that together with their registrar accreditation. In fact, do a WHOIS lookup on their domain name itself and you'll see it's still with eNom. In that link you posted, they explained a little more on reply #8 or so.

So GoDaddy are Mental

[ackthpt]

No surprise there. Aside selling domain registry, what else they got?

Rather like saying it's OK to invade some country because you have an ally who's a pin-prick in the Pacific willing to go along with you.

Re:So GoDaddy are Mental

[Anonymous Coward]

Inexpensive domain registration along with reasonably inexpensive hosting and ssl certs... among other crap most of us don't care about. Also, you know they're not going under next week.

They're like a walmart for web products. Nobody likes them, but lots of people use them for practical reasons. And I'm sure they've got a gajillion of those "web site tonight" customers just from a combination of name recognition and "oh yeah, i guess I do need an intertubes webhome and $8 a month sounds ok". Awfulness, but that's the world we live in.

Bad Decision GoDaddy

[muphin]

i have all my domains hosted with them, if this bill gets passed i'm moving them.
i live in Australia but this bill is rediculous.

Re:Bad Decision GoDaddy

[Anonymous Coward]

Moving your domains now and sending them a note will help *prevent* this bill being passed.

Re:Bad Decision GoDaddy

[amazon10x]

Don't wait for them to pass it.

Do it now, and email them to tell them why you're doing it.

Re:Bad Decision GoDaddy

[HauntedGhost]

Well..this bill is directly/indirectly going to affect the whole world as a significant number of internet companies are hosted in US. If they get blocked, the whole world dont get to see them.

Re:Bad Decision GoDaddy

[muphin]

any suggestions to a good provider?

Re:Bad Decision GoDaddy

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.cheapnames.co.uk/ is getting good reviews. Just make sure you don't go with one that is a subsidiary of GoDaddy.

Re:Bad Decision GoDaddy

[Anonymous Coward]

You're some kind of slactivist troll, right?

Re:Bad Decision GoDaddy

[kyrio]

dynadot.com - pass it on to others as well.

Re:Bad Decision GoDaddy

[ganjadude]

lucky me, my domains are up as of this week, looks like im moving about 25 domains over to someone else, going to read the rest of the comments to see what others are saying but they are losing out on a fairly large, for a consumer anyway, account.

Re:Bad Decision GoDaddy

[Anonymous Coward]

Please, please move now. Dreamhost, pairnic, anyone.

Wait too long with your dollars and you're legitimizing this stance.

Or, you know, keep quiet and take it up the ass when the rest of the world follows the ol' US of A's lead. Which they will.

A dollar is a dollar. That's capitalism, for better or worse. Vote with your feet.

It's about the only way to make your voice heard directly.

--d

Re:Bad Decision GoDaddy

[hawkingradiation]

I just transferred my domain name over to namecheap.com. Pretty good from what I can tell. Automatically populates MX records with my Google Apps account and transferred my domain for 1 year. In 3-8 days I will no longer be a GoDaddy Customer. Maybe somewhere on this board is a good place to let GoDaddy know that the legal interference with the Internent will not be accepted. Who else transferred their domain name(s)?.

Re:Bad Decision GoDaddy

[dadioflex]

If the SOPA bill passes it'll directly affect the websites that chose to continue hosting their websites in the US. Multiple site hosting, which is surely the norm for larger sites now anyway, would be the way to go. Small sites won't really have much choice but to move away from the US. Who is going to risk having a site closed to the entire world because your competitor ratted out a rogue link on your forum?

Re:Bad Decision GoDaddy

[andydread]

I like Namecheap. Their they actually have good service

Re:Bad Decision GoDaddy

[Serpents]

I wonder: will at least some of those companies start leaving the US and moving to places where the laws are less draconian? The EU voiced its opposition to SOPA so it might become a safe heaven to some extent. Iceland after recent reforms is trying to become a "free speech paradise". Of course someone as large as Google could not move its entire infrastructure overseas overnight but such dumb regulations might actually spur an exodus of many companies and there are plenty of countries which will welcome anyone with open arms as long as they are willing to invest there.

Re:Bad Decision GoDaddy

[Lumpy]

godaddy does not read slashdot. you need to EMAIL THEM directly.

Re:Bad Decision GoDaddy

[acoustix]

I've been pleased with 1&1's service over the years. I have both personal and business accounts with them.

Weird

[Anonymous Coward]

One of the biggest scumbag internet companies supports SOPA.

Oh wait. It's not weird. they'll find some way to make a profit off siezing domains even more than they do now.

Of course they back SOPA...

[pr0f3550r]

Regulatory requirements are hardest on smaller entities to implement. This is exactly the kind of barrier that would make it unprofitable for a small DNS provider to implement. Just as HIPAA favors large HMOs over smaller ones, and SOx helps mega-corporations.

Re:Of course they back SOPA...

[Trepidity]

Sarbanes–Oxley is an odd one, because it affects companies in a sort of inverted U shape: small businesses owned by fewer than 500 shareholders are completely exempt, but it hits "medium-sized" large companies more than very large ones.

Re:Of course they back SOPA...

[Anonymous Coward]

Mod this up!!!

Re:Of course they back SOPA...

[Anonymous Coward]

Many people likely know that HIPPA is the 'Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996', I doubt many here know SOx is the 'Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002' http://www.soxlaw.com/

Re:Of course they back SOPA...

[Anonymous Coward]

I doubt many here know SOx is the 'Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002' http://www.soxlaw.com/

Really? It factors quite heavily in IT; it's quite a big deal in my job.

Re:Of course they back SOPA...

[mabhatter654]

Um, if you do t know what SOX is then you're not quite a "real boy" in the IT world. Pretty much ant company big enough to hire IT staff has to deal with SOX now.. Even just to prove they DON'T need to do it.

If you don't know what it is, learn it, love it. The majority of the requirements are good IT practice anyway.

Re:Of course they back SOPA...

[Opportunist]

Might surprise you, but I know SOA but not HIPPA. Maybe because SOA affects even me, across the pond in old Europe (because that piece of turd affects our companies here, too), but HIPPA doesn't.

Re:Of course they back SOPA...

[Maxo-Texas]

Sox slows down productivity of mega corporations by a factor of 10.

What took 4 days in 2000 takes 40 days today.

We had a production emergency with a huge client today... it took FOUR HOURS to get permission for a programmer to debug the problem in production.

A few years back we had a 1 line change to a program. It took 47 days.

Both of these used to be much faster and easier.

I agree big companies can afford to pay the legal costs.

But they suffer invisible massive productivity costs.

And it does NOTHING to stop massive fraud (see MF Global).

Re:Of course they back SOPA...

[Anonymous Coward]

Any company big enough to hire IT staff? There are something like 25 million businesses in the US. ~17,000 of them are public companies.

I agree that everyone should try to be familiar with it though.

Re:Of course they back SOPA...

[Anonymous Coward]

> Pretty much ant company big enough to hire IT staff has to deal with SOX now.

Except... all those companies not based in the USA. Ooops.

Re:Of course they back SOPA...

[Serpents]

Not really... HIPPA seems to apply only to the US, while SOx applies to any company quoted at NYSE, so quite a lot of various international corporations need to comply.

Re:Of course they back SOPA...

[LMacG]

Dude, how can you spell out the name of the act and still get the acronym wrong?

HIPAA. One P, two As.

Re:Of course they back SOPA...

[Anonymous Coward]

What's a HIPPA?

It sounds like you're talking about the US HIPAA law, but I'm never quite sure when reading comments on /.

Re:Of course they back SOPA...

[Anonymous Coward]

Hey, "real boy", privately held companies are not held to the Sarbanes–Oxley Act, no matter how big, or 'real' they are. And yes, the rest of the world still calls it Sarbanes-Oxley, and if it slows down your IT department in being able to troubleshoot a customer system, then:

http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/youre-doing-it-wrong

Re:Of course they back SOPA...

[nedlohs]

Yes, because there are no private companies that hire IT staff. None at all.

My job is a figment of my imagination or something.

Re:Of course they back SOPA...

[Anonymous Coward]

Dude, he said he didn't know HIPPA (sic). If he doesn't know it, why would you expect him to know how to spell the acronym? Obviously you are a PEDANT (Purposely Exacerbating Douche And Nit-picking Twit).

Re:Of course they back SOPA...

[tqk]

Pretty much [any] company big enough to hire IT staff has to deal with SOX now.

Except... all those companies not based in the USA.

Fail. Canucks need to know about your laws even if they don't apply here. Do business with Yanquis, know their law or they can bury you.

Re:Of course they back SOPA...

[Opportunist]

Ok, then HIPAA. GP called it HIPPA, I copied it from there. But I don't know about HIPAA either.

Reddit Boycotts GoDaddy

[souravzzz]

Reddit users are planning to move domain names from GoDaddy to other registrars over this. /. readers also thought of a similar protest, but the 3 guys who still used GoDaddy were nowhere to be found.

One more reason...

[JoeMerchant]

I never liked GoDaddy much in the first place.

"...the purchase of counterfeit products."

[Anonymous Coward]

So...as long as no one purchases said pirated materials, it's all good then? Whew!

Seriously though, you fuck up my internet, and my fury will avert the big crunch...

wow, a reason to like GoDaddy even less

[KingAlanI]

wow, a reason to like GoDaddy even less
I was already skeptical of a company that feels the need to resort to crass sex-appeal ad blitzes

Re:wow, a reason to like GoDaddy even less

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't mind the sex appeal, it's the crass that puts me off. Their pitches have all the class of an ExtenZe ad.

Plus, when I started to register a domain through them ages ago, they pitched so much annoying upselling garbage at me that I aborted and decided to pay *more* to register my domain through Tucows (now Hover) rather than deal with such a sleazy outfit.

Re:wow, a reason to like GoDaddy even less

[RazorSharp]

This is why I never dealt with them. It never even crossed my mind that they might have a good/inexpensive service. I don't have a problem with advertising blitzes as long as they aren't completely tasteless. Take Geico, for example. If they stop advertising I'll be sad, and I'm well aware that their crappy insurance doesn't cover shit. Their commercials are funny and well made and they always come up with new ones. GoDaddy's commercials don't even make sense. They don't even tell you what they sell.

Re:wow, a reason to like GoDaddy even less

[Jafafa Hots]

The fact that Bob Parsons blogged in support of waterboarding and other forms of torture, and then when called on it edited his blog post and lied and said he'd never said what he'd said... that AND the sexism was enough to convince me he was an immoral piece of shit.

Been using namecheap since.

Money

[mcelrath]

I suspect GoDaddy stands to make a lot of money blacklisting, blocking, banning, and otherwise screwing up the DNS, for a price...and that is why they signed.

Re:Money

[Anonymous Coward]

My god, how dare their move on SOPA factor into some sort of business plan! I expect that you, of course, never EVER make decisions for yourself or your family where money is concerned. And I bet you leave your doors unlocked and just let whatever stranger wander into your house (since you don't blacklist) and root through your DVDs, CDs, and digital music collection.

Re:Money

[Anonymous Coward]

I suspect GoDaddy stands to make a lot of money blacklisting, blocking, banning, and otherwise screwing up the DNS, for a price...and that is why they signed.

I thought that was their *current* business model.... ;)

Re:Money

[TheSpoom]

Bingo. Domains transferred away from GoDaddy don't cost them money (unless they're also hosted with them, but that's probably less likely than a domain by itself); they probably see dollar signs because it then means that the customer will buy new replacement domains from them.

Re:Money

[Em Adespoton]

Actually, this is a good point... If a domain is blocked and redirected, if the original registrar is outside the US, then that means that some US-owned registrar will have to host the redirect, and get paid for it.

Two guesses as to who will be hosting the SOPA-pirated domains?

So under SOPA....

[mark-t]

Could the USA shut slashdot down if an AC's posted some torrent links for content that infringed on copyright?

What metric does the US government use to determine if some content is infringing that makes it worth shutting down access to the entire website?

Will the USA also be shutting down irc, which is also used by many people to send copyrighted content to others illegally?

Re:So under SOPA....

[sidthegeek]

What metric does the US government use to determine if some content is infringing that makes it worth shutting down access to the entire website?

Whatever they don't like.

Re:So under SOPA....

[SuricouRaven]

"What metric does the US government use to determine if some content is infringing that makes it worth shutting down access to the entire website?"

The standard one court order. Just needs a single judge to sign the paperwork. The entire point of SOPA is to shut down sites that are hosted and operated from outside the US, so a full trial is not possible.

Re:So under SOPA....

[mark-t]

Yes... but what does it take to make a site worthy of getting that court order in the first place? Is there no metric, and could it be absolutely any website that somebody in the US government dislikes?

Re:So under SOPA....

[mark-t]

Isn't the point of SOPA to block people within the USA from accessing content outside of the USA that they cannot otherwise claim jurisdiction over?

The parallels between what it seems to propose and China's famous firewall seem obvious.

Re:So under SOPA....

[geminidomino]

Isn't the point of SOPA to block people within the USA from accessing content outside of the USA that they cannot otherwise claim jurisdiction over?

Nope. The point of SOPA is to abuse Verisign's US jurisdiction by seizing the domains of content on .COM/.NET/.ORG outside of the USA (and inside, too. Let's be honest. Why go through the trouble of a trial when they've got their new rubber stamp to meet the same end?) so that NO ONE can access it. They're trying to be the great firewall of China for the whole world.

It won't work that way, of course, but it's still the intention.

Re:So under SOPA....

[Anonymous Coward]

Who decides? Some asshat following the SOPA rules with no freaking idea how conversations in forums work, finds someone innocently posting "Oh you should try this link to Filestube to get a copy of such and such a patch for game X.", means that if the forum admin doesn't pounce on the post quick enough, the forum and the entire site gets taken offline for a week or two while the arguments go to court.

I can see large swathes of forums being killed off if this shit goes through, that added to the fact that forum admins and mods will be so scared that their forums will be targetted accidentally or maliciously by those with a grudge after a ban, that the mods will simply pull out anything from anyone they think might possibly get their forums in trouble. Forums will become very squeaky clean and very, very dull.

This bill is not just about shutting down someone who hosted a few links to torrents or MegaUpload/Rapidshare etc, it's designed to divide'n'conquer by spreading FuD, making people so shit scared to post anything for fear of watching their site get tangled up in court for weeks while they try to get 5 mins in front of some judge who neither knows nor cares about how important the site is, all over one small missed accidental posting.

I don't give a shit about links to ripped-off media, I don't rip stuff off that's up to others to decide if they want to do that stuff but what I do care about is peoples right to express themselves, argue, engage and make mistakes during those engagements.

This may not kill the internet to my mind but it will certainly make it less about us, the people and more about all those corps and advertisers who can pay to have someone bang the "independent thought alarm" button every time someone makes a post out of turn. The internet is about to become as faceless and boring every shopping mall across the entire world, a wall to wall electronic advertising space.

If this SOPA shit is allowed to progress all you will be able to say is, "Well it was fun while it lasted.".

Re:So under SOPA....

[sound vision]

Presumably, it would only take "Warner Music Group says so", if it works anything like the DMCA notices on Youtube and such.

Re:So under SOPA....

[bob')DROP TABLE user]

" a foreign Internet site or portion thereof is a `foreign infringing site' if--
(1) the Internet site or portion thereof is a U.S.-directed site and is used by users in the United States;
(2) the owner or operator of such Internet site is committing or facilitating the commission of criminal violations punishable under section 2318, 2319, 2319A, 2319B, or 2320, or chapter 90, of title 18, United States Code; and
(3) the Internet site would, by reason of acts described in paragraph (1), be subject to seizure in the United States in an action brought by the Attorney General if such site were a domestic Internet site."


Which then follows up with:
(2) IN REM- If through due diligence the Attorney General is unable to find a person described in subparagraph (A) or (B) of paragraph (1), or no such person found has an address within a judicial district of the United States, the Attorney General may commence an in rem action against a foreign infringing site or the foreign domain name used by such site.



It also covers:
DEDICATED TO THEFT OF U.S. PROPERTY- An `Internet site is dedicated to theft of U.S. property' if--
(A) it is an Internet site, or a portion thereof, that is a U.S.-directed site and is used by users within the United States; and
(B) either--
(i) the U.S.-directed site is primarily designed or operated for the purpose of, has only limited purpose or use other than, or is marketed by its operator or another acting in concert with that operator for use in, offering goods or services in a manner that engages in, enables, or facilitates--
(I) a violation of section 501 of title 17, United States Code;
(II) a violation of section 1201 of title 17, United States Code; or
(III) the sale, distribution, or promotion of goods, services, or materials bearing a counterfeit mark, as that term is defined in section 34(d) of the Lanham Act or section 2320 of title 18, United States Code; or
(ii) the operator of the U.S.-directed site--
(I) is taking, or has taken, deliberate actions to avoid confirming a high probability of the use of the U.S.-directed site to carry out acts that constitute a violation of section 501 or 1201 of title 17, United States Code; or
(II) operates the U.S.-directed site with the object of promoting, or has promoted, its use to carry out acts that constitute a violation of section 501 or 1201 of title 17, United States Code, as shown by clear expression or other affirmative steps taken to foster infringement.


And they technically only cover 2 site types for support (ad companies, and payment processors).


Now, IANAL, but that to me says:
1) Site has to be dedicated to promoting piracy. (violating those above codes or counterfeit goods)
2) The operator has to be notified first
3) The operator has to ignore the initial request for action


(Text: http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/z?c112:H.R.3261:)

So, a post on a forum would not ACTUALLY be enough to shut the site down, whereas The Pirate Bay would be eligible

Re:So under SOPA....

[mark-t]

1) Site has to be dedicated to promoting piracy...

Yes... I can see that as well. The sticky part is what is the metric that they use to determine that the site is dedicated to that purpose, and not merely incidentally used for that purpose by a lot of people? If more than a certain majority percentage of its usage is piracy related? This could be problematic for something like IRC, which has a huge amount of illegitimate content being traded on it between its users, but also has a significant legitimate use as well.

Secondly, is SOPA only dedicated to blocking internet sites? Or can it also block individual protocols as well? The ratio of illegal to legitimate torrent traffic, for instance, is huge... and could arguably provide a case for the blocking of any traffic using that protocol, although again... there is still significant legitimate use as well, even though it might happen to be only trace amounts when compared to the illegal usage. If SOPA empowers the US government to block protocols that have significant illegal use, then this I can see this being enormously problematic, as the government and the pirates start to play a virtual game of "whack a mole", and a significant number of legitimate users start getting impacted by the government's efforts.

Re:So under SOPA....

[Anonymus]

If SOPA manages to pass, I hope that some 4chan group gets together and starts taking over corporate support forums to share pirate torrent and download links.

Re:So under SOPA....

[bob')DROP TABLE user]

TL;DR - No, they can only block IP addresses and domains for infringing sites. The rules for what make up infringement are there. Yes, it does punish violations of the DMCA and copyright by foreign companies, but its making websites targeted at the US primarily (see definitions below) play by the same rules our businesses have to. To your example of IRC, individual IRC servers could be at risk IF they are there primarily for piracy, not that piracy happens on them (For instance, YouTube vs. Pirate Bay - Infringement happens on youtube, it is encouraged on TPB).

I never read anything about protocol level blocking - SOPA deals with blocking IP addresses, not specific protocols. Internet site is also defined as

The term `Internet site' means the collection of digital assets, including links, indexes, or pointers to digital assets, accessible through the Internet that are addressed relative to a common domain name or, if there is no domain name, a common Internet Protocol address.

So, from that definition, no. For dedicated to promoting piracy -

"DEDICATED TO THEFT OF U.S. PROPERTY- An `Internet site is dedicated to theft of U.S. property' if-- (A) it is an Internet site, or a portion thereof, that is a U.S.-directed site and is used by users within the United States; and (B) either-- (i) the U.S.-directed site is primarily designed or operated for the purpose of, has only limited purpose or use other than, or is marketed by its operator or another acting in concert with that operator for use in, offering goods or services in a manner that engages in, enables, or facilitates-- (I) a violation of section 501 of title 17, United States Code; (II) a violation of section 1201 of title 17, United States Code; or (III) the sale, distribution, or promotion of goods, services, or materials bearing a counterfeit mark, as that term is defined in section 34(d) of the Lanham Act or section 2320 of title 18, United States Code; or (ii) the operator of the U.S.-directed site-- (I) is taking, or has taken, deliberate actions to avoid confirming a high probability of the use of the U.S.-directed site to carry out acts that constitute a violation of section 501 or 1201 of title 17, United States Code; or (II) operates the U.S.-directed site with the object of promoting, or has promoted, its use to carry out acts that constitute a violation of section 501 or 1201 of title 17, United States Code, as shown by clear expression or other affirmative steps taken to foster infringement."

So, breaking that down for that definition: A) Targeted at US users

The term `U.S.-directed site' means an Internet site or portion thereof that is used to conduct business directed to residents of the United States, or that otherwise demonstrates the existence of minimum contacts sufficient for the exercise of personal jurisdiction over the owner or operator of the Internet site consistent with the Constitution of the United States, based on relevant evidence that may include whether-- (A) the Internet site is used to provide goods or services to users located in the United States; (B) there is evidence that the Internet site or portion thereof is intended to offer or provide-- (i) such goods and services, (ii) access to such goods and services, or (iii) delivery of such goods and services, to users located in the United States; (C) the Internet site or portion thereof does not contain reasonable measures to prevent such goods and services from being obtained in or delivered to the United States; and (D) any prices for goods and services are indicated or billed in the currency of the United States.

I read as: Sells stuff to US people, or doesn't explicitly prohibit the sale to US citizens (Like a Russian pharmacy, selling only to russians, would not fall under this definition, assuming they made reasonable effort not to deliver to US addresses)

The other provisions above: B)
(I-III) Has a limite

Re:So under SOPA....

[Anonymous Coward]

Essential their is no metric, but it isn't the Government who chooses the sites, its companies like the RIAA and MPAA.

Re:So under SOPA....

[Em Adespoton]

The effects are even more insidious globally... if a site, say, in Russia has a huge Russian following and complies with Russian IP rules, but happens to use a .com domain, they could get that name yanked if someone in the US decides it doesn't abide by US IP rules.

I see this as the tipping point that actually gets .com, .net and .org treated as having a silent .us suffix, and other country TLDs getting more airplay (such as .bs).

Re:So under SOPA....

[mark-t]

To your example of IRC, individual IRC servers could be at risk IF they are there primarily for piracy, not that piracy happens on them (For instance, YouTube vs. Pirate Bay - Infringement happens on youtube, it is encouraged on TPB).

While I can see that for individual servers, IRC is a distributed system, and doesn't generally utilize a single server. It's not inconceivable that a majority of file traffic transmitted via irc is infringing on copyright, and if how something is being used to a significant measure is sufficient criteria to consider that use as its primary purpose, then it would seem to me that they may be compelled to shut down IRC. Of course, that would mean blocking many hundreds of servers, very few of which could ever be said to have been party to the infringement, but if they were to try to prevent irc file sharing, how would SOPA assist them?

GoDaddy

[Anonymous Coward]

Dear GoDaddy.com,

You guys are a bunch of farking idiots.

*post*

[DMCA'd] FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFUUUUUUUUUUU-

As a web business owner, I hereby sever GoDaddy

[dajjhman]

I have hung onto GoDaddy because of how cheap they are, and that I've so far never had a problem. But this just goes too far for a mediocre service. The service works, and is cheap, but I'd rather pay more for a better service, even if I don't need it, than support them anymore. As soon as the holidays are over, I am moving over EVERYTHING from them. I also will no longer advise any of my clients from using them (though they were never really "recommended" except for how cheap things can be with them thanks to promos).

Re:As a web business owner, I hereby sever GoDaddy

[Osgeld]

I dont dis them, my dad actually uses them but I switched to hostmonter a long time ago because I could not get them to understand that my FTP access was just plain old not working at all

"No sir its your DSL connection, that is why you cant upload a 18k text file"
"No sir our servers are running fine, its your FTP client"
"No sir we will not even bother looking into the possibility that there might be something wrong, other people on the same server are experiencing no issues, nevermind they have not uploaded anything via FTP in their entire life"

this went on for quite a few months, at least once a week with them

so now, though I have to pay up front, I enjoy cheaper service, with bigger numbers in the important area's, and after 6 years my only complaint is that my hosting service is not spending my money to come up with a lame Superbowl commercial featuring some money whore out some fad girl no one cares about.

Wide, wide open to abuse

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh, I don't like what they are saying on their site. They are infringing on periods which I use at the end of my complete thoughts (when written down). COPYRIGHT VIOLATION! COPYRIGHT VIOLATION! (rinse, repeat). And you can suppress anything you want. This is so ripe and open to abuse. Companies who don't like customer complaints shut down sites that make them look bad on anything trumped up (and with the US government the wild west mentality wins: shoot first, ask questions maybe later, maybe not, it might not matter). Likewise politics, victims of the government (people who suffer from bad policy, etc). This is sooo open to abuses of every kind. Free speech is on the line, and the government doesn't mind violating the US constitution (once again). Any reasonably large site the government doesn't like will have to maintain servers in jurisdictions the US government control (hello Wikileaks). Talk about curbing civil liberties!

more interesting links

[Weezul]

Cheezburger network CEO Ben Huh may pull over 1000 domains from GoDaddy in protest of GoDaddy's support for SOPA. Gizmodo has a list of companies supporting SOPA. Jeff Epstein has instructions for bulk transfers away from GoDaddy.

Adam Savage has also warned that SOPA could destroy the internet as we know it. Reddit concurs that SOPA could destroy them.

Two congressional staffers, Allison Halataei and Lauren Pastarnack, who helped write SOPA/PIPA become entertainment industry lobbyists

Re:more interesting links

[Nugoo]

I get all the publishers and entertainment companies, but what's up with the support from the cosmetics industry? L'Oreal and Revlon?

Re:more interesting links

[Anonymous Coward]

They want a monopoly on torturing small animals.

Re:more interesting links

[Anonymous Coward]

Must say, I'm get-off-my-lawn old and haven't lived "home" in the US of A in several years, but... gotta say I kinda dig seeing guys (bigger the better) go to the wall over this thing.

The **aa don't deserve to write the legislation tha WILL be adopted by half the world (or more). Make your damned voice heard.

--T

Re:more interesting links

[Anonymous Coward]

More ridiculous punishments for people counterfeiting their products and harsher enforcement is something they'd pay for.

Re:more interesting links

[Anonymous Coward]

You have any idea how ugly humans look on HD?

Re:more interesting links

[Anonymous Coward]

Counterfeit Cosmetics. The stuff that comes from China is not only bears fraudulent trademarks, but if you thought tainted baby formula and petfood was trouble, just wait till someone dies from tainted cosmetics.

Anyway, yes based on what eBay takes down under VeRO, the cosmetics industry (namely MAC ) tends to err on the side of "probably counterfeit" even re-imports.

I also need to mention that a lot of stuff that is taken down under DMCA's in the cosmetic and pharmacutical industry is not always counterfeit, but rather it's parallel imports. eg Company A owns the right to Trademark B in country C, but in Country Z, Company A doesn't own the rights to Trademark B, or Company A markets it under Trademark Y, or something. Case in point the iPhone trademark in the US and Canada, the iPhone trademark was owned by different companies in Canada and the US, but Apple was still using it to sell the iPhone.

But that's generally the problem with stuff that comes from China, you don't know if it's actually Counterfeit as in FAKE, or counterfeit as in it just violates a trademark right but otherwise is the exact same product. Here's an example, a lot of companies, like JCP sell stuff under their house brand, but it's made in China. Those exact same Chinese companies then throw a site up on Taobao and sell the exact same item, using JCP's stock photo's. Now 50% chance you'll get the item as displayed, the other 50% of the time you get "factory seconds" or in other words, counterfeits.

I'm speaking purely from experience with dealing with China. Trust me when I say that SOPA goes beyond simply the MPAA's agenda. The companies already have the laws they need under the DMCA, they do not need any more power. What they do need is a bigger hammer for dealing with foreign sites that are neither hosted nor have any financial ties to the US. This is what SOPA tries to do but goes about it in the most incompetent manner they could imagine.

If it was stripped down to deal only with suspending financial transactions (ads and credit card payments) I'm sure most of the software/media pirates could live with it, along with most of the tech sites (well maybe not the filelocker sites) as this hurts the people making money off of piracy. It's much harder to get a throw-away merchant account than it is for the people buying throw-away prepaid cards. But the systematic abuse of the DMCA (see UMG and also Public Domain content on Youtube) to prevent people from making money, hurting competitors (see parallel imports above) means that the SOPA is simply bad law that would be abused in the same manner by the same people.

It is in the worlds best interest that copyright be free-market, that means no regulations, that means no anti-piracy regulations as well. Counterfeits are already covered by consumer safety laws, and even trademark laws. The companies that want these draconian laws just want the regulations so that it's cheaper for them to censor the internet.

Megaupload has legitimate purposes (much more than the pirate bay) but the unfortunate thing is, pirates have been getting around laws and terms of service contracts for far longer than many of you people have been alive. What was Jobs and Woz's first product? The bluebox for making free phone calls. This is how many people get started inventing... guns don't kill people, people kill people. Proof of concept the bluebox yes defrauds the phone company of potential money. But when you sell the box, you aren't providing them with this info, and you as the seller are not marketing it as "defraud the phone company" you are marketing as "free phone calls, I don't know why."

That's how Napster, Kazaa, and Bittorrent all started out as well. The push for better file sharing techniques, it just so happened that piracy is the easiest way to demonstrate a how cheap it really is to transfer information over the internet if everyone has to put their bandwidth in. The MPAA still equate piracy with people who have a million dollars in replication equipment, who

Re:more interesting links

[Anonymous Coward]

Wikimedia is leaving GoDaddy too.

Re:more interesting links

[Anonymous Coward]

The media abuses the word "piracy" just like they do "hacker". Piracy is NOT when you download a game without paying for it. Piracy is NOT when a friend photocopies a book for you to read. Piracy is NOT getting a copy of the latest Gaga CD from a torrent.

Piracy is when you use someone else's copyrighted or patented content and sell it as your own. This is usually done by organized crime. For example, crime organizations in Malaysia or even NYC that have duplicating operations to mass produce DVDs. They make 10,000 copies of The Matrix and then sell them on the streets for $5. THAT is piracy.

Likewise, when someone operates a back room knock-off salon in NYC or elsewhere (including online) where people knowing or unknowingly buy, say, knock-off Prada handbags for $50 instead of $500.. That is piracy.

Re:more interesting links

[Anonymous Coward]

SOPA is designed to takle counterfeiting as well.

Re:more interesting links

[dyingtolive]

I'd stop doing business with the companies in the gizmodo link, but I already don't consume any of the 'services' they offer. :(

Re:more interesting links

[Nf1nk]

My understanding is that the cosmetics industry has a huge problem with counterfeit products. Many of the products are available online and it can be difficult to stop the sellers of these products. The counterfeit cosmetics are rarely made to quality or safety standards that the law requires and consumers expect.
   

Re:more interesting links

[Em Adespoton]

My understanding is that this wouldn't be a problem, except for the fact that the cosmetics industry has been brainwashing people into thinking they need cosmetics when they don't, and underplaying the health risks associated with almost any cosmetics.

Cosmetics have their place, but they are as severely overconsumed in NA as fast food.

Stop with the false advertising and propped up prices, and I bet the counterfeit products issue would go away (or at least decrease to tolerable levels) overnight.

Nerf 'em

[lightknight]

Nerf 'em.

Yea its really hard work

[Osgeld]

For an "artist" to show up late to the recording studio drunk and stoned off their ass and speak into a mic connected to a protools loop and autotuner. I have been in around the loop quite a few times in recording studios, the only difference tween a pro and the bum on the corner is the ability to not waste tape.

Re:Yea its really hard work

[Anonymous Coward]

What in the bloody fuck are you going on about?

Re:Yea its really hard work

[Anonymous Coward]

Pro Tools

Auto-Tune

Drunk

Stoned

Re:Yea its really hard work

[glitch0]

Indeed, they're lucky to be paid to do what they love AT ALL. Most americans are stuck doing some job they HATE, and these "artists" complain because they're not able to buy another gold statue of themselves.

Here's a hint to all those "artists": most musicians are broke as fuck but keep playing anyway, because they're not in it for the money, they're in it for the music. As a musician myself, I would be honored if people downloaded my music for free. I'm sharing something that I created with the world, and the fact that another person can get joy out of my music just like I can makes it all worthwhile. I think that any street musician would agree.

Alternative Provider

[Anonymous Coward]

Alot of people on Reddit are recomending namecheap because they have good service and well they are cheap. You might want to check the thread on Reddit for more options.

CRAP

[drb226]

They just auto-renewed me last month. I was looking into other options, but since my website has ~0 traffic, I didn't worry about it too much. Now I have more reason to be sad that I didn't switch.

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[account_deleted]

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[account_deleted]

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It's about the prices

[TheMiddleRoad]

And their prices after coupons are low enough that I don't care about their ads. Does anybody else have better prices for .com or anything else for that matter? Not that I've found.

Re:It's about the prices

[xombo]

http://internet.bs/ has great deals on domains and it's located in the Bahamas.

Did I mention they have an API?

Re:It's about the prices

[brusewitz]

Now that is a great domain (.bs). They should not have given it to a country but used it for more relevant purposes such as: politics.bs, ads.bs, sales.bs, and of course steveballmer.bs.

Re:It's about the prices

[lothos]

+1 for internet.bs, I've been using them for about 18 months now with absolutely no problems. Clean interface, great pricing, no upsells.

Re:It's about the prices

[Anonymous Coward]

"And their prices after coupons are low enough that I don't care about their ads."

Yes, they only need to make money for the 600 Nitro-Express ammo their CEO needs to kill elephants.

Re:It's about the prices

[Anonymous Coward]

You missed out stevejobs.bs

Re:It's about the prices

[bhcompy]

And?

Re:It's about the prices

[andydread]

Namecheap much better service and better price.

Re:It's about the prices

[smpoole7]

If price is all you care about, then you get what you pay for. McDonalds and Burger King have nice, cheap lunches ... that will eventually kill you.

My ISP here in Alabama is Hiwaay Information Services. Yes, they charge about $10 more per month than ATT, but they're extremely reliable. When I have a problem, I speak to a local expert who actually knows what he or she is talking about. Y' gets what you pay for.

We can say that we oppose things like SOPA, but one of the most effective ways to prove it is to put your money where your mouth is. Support those businesses that are doing the "right" thing -- EVEN IF IT COSTS A BIT MORE.

Otherwise, when the day comes that the entire Internet is censored and controlled by powerful interests, you'll have no one but yourself to blame.

Re:It's about the prices

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh come on. Everybody knows that 600NE is only used on puppies and babies. The GP clearly used "elephants" in a sarcastic way.

Re:It's about the prices

[galaad2]

http://internet.bs/ has great deals on domains and it's located in the Bahamas.

Did I mention they have an API?

yea right.. ever looked at the protocol used by default on the profile administration page?
i just tried it and it defaults to http, no https. All your profile data on internetbs is sent over the wire in plain text, including the security question and all the rest.

Even though their servers seems to support it, once you click on a link on a secured page on their site you're automatically directed to the plaintext http access pages.

Re:It's about the prices

[Anonymous Coward]

DRINK YO PRUNE JUICE

Re:It's about the prices

[perryizgr8]

You missed out stevejo.bs

ftfy.

Re:It's about the prices

[galaad2]

P.S.
it does this on new account registrations (sending all profile data unencrypted) but after i logout and when i try to log back in i am presented with a checkbox to enable ssl for all requests.

first time users don't get that checkbox though, all their data is sent via plaintext on registration :(

Re:It's about the prices

[j-pimp]

Support those businesses that are doing the "right" thing -- EVEN IF IT COSTS A BIT MORE.

Agreed, but nothing wrong with looking for the cheapest price for a registrar that does the right thing. In the case of an ISP, it probably makes sense for paying extra for service. In the case of a registrar, one that is anti-SOPA doesn't have any more overhead than one that is pro-SOPA. Also, using a cheap registrar is not like fast food.

Re:It's about the prices

[shiftless]

Off topic, but it's amazing what a small world we live in. I used to dial up a BBS in Huntsville called Thunder Mountain. It was a Wildcat system with 3-4 nodes IIRC. My dad never would get area calling on our line so it was just outside the calling area and I couldn't dial in too often, but I remember them having good door games and files, plus a Fidonet feed. As I recall, either the owners of that board sold it to a company, or themselves went into business and created HiWAAY Information Services, an early dialup ISP in the area. I guess they are still around and doing just fine huh?

Re:It's about the prices

[Ravon Rodriguez]

*blink*

Re:It's about the prices

[Anonymous Coward]

Even though their servers seems to support it, once you click on a link on a secured page on their site you're automatically directed to the plaintext http access pages.

If this is so, their .BS domain was well chosen.

Re:It's about the prices

[Gr8Apes]

Yep, and anyone with GoDaddy should migrate away from them asap. Nothing gets a message across like a mass exodus. See Netflix for an executive getting the message.

Re:It's about the prices

[Anonymous Coward]

How about having them for 10yrs with no problems? I have and love the service I've gotten but that being said I think this action their taking shows that they aren't "good domain hosts" as I once thought but just another company that is owned by the man.

Re:It's about the prices

[R3d M3rcury]

Actually, I think it was better the other way... :^D

Re:It's about the prices

[bmxeroh]

I don't get it either.

Re:It's about the prices

[fast turtle]

Well I've had my domain through GoDaddy for the last 10 years and they've not tried to upsell me. Very few issues though they only thing I'm using them for is a MX Record to my Google Business account (Docs/Calendar/Mail). Works nicely and it's been stable.

Re:It's about the prices

[Anonymous Coward]

Did you mention they do not have a telephone?

Re:It's about the prices

[galaad2]

P.S. #2
i got in touch with their tech support [Ticket#1047262] and they promised to fix this small security issue that appears after registration but before the first ever actual login by a new user.
  The registration process itself is secure but right after the registration if you click their company logo and try to manage your profile you get sent to the unencrypted page that shows the data you filled in during the registration (except the pw)

To avoid this issue the first thing you should do after registration is to click the LOG OUT link (or clear the cookies for their site) and then login back in, you will then get the form with the "always use ssl" checkbox.

Re:It's about the prices

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, because who cares about other nations and their identities? We can make funny-sounding English phrases!!! THAT'S the important part!

Re:It's about the prices

[Anonymous Coward]

namecheap.com

Better service, cheaper prices.
If you want to transfer your domains from GoDaddy to them, it's $6.99 with the coupon code "SOPASucks"

Re:It's about the prices

[galaad2]

Did you mention they do not have a telephone?

well, since they are an accredited ICANN registrar they do have phones listed with ICANN and Verisign as well as contact email addresses and a postal address. They also have a postal address is in Florida and one in Bahamas in Panama. (not sure if any of them are currently valid though, google maps shows the Florida address to be some sort of rented storage area)

Just search for them on ICANN's site and follow the whois data trail on verisign's site (hint: search by registrar).

Re:It's about the prices

[galaad2]

typo: one in Bahamas and one in Panama

Re:It's about the prices

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, I think it was better the other way... :^D

bs.stevejo? That doesn't even make sense! Get it together, R3d M3rcury!

Re:It's about the prices

[Anonymous Coward]

blowjo.bs

Re:It's about the prices

[Anonymous Coward]

What good is registering a .com, .net, or .org if the registrar has officially announced that they support seizing your domain from you without due process or recompense?

I've been leery of GoDaddy for years, now they've put the nail in the coffin and joined the list of "companies to never, ever, ever do business with."

Re:It's about the prices

[Anonymous Coward]

Try their online Support Chat and ask them what their phone number is so you can call to talk to them. They told me their phone system was being worked on and they didn't know when it would be operational again. - that was 6 months ago and still no phone number listed on their website.

If I were a betting man, I'd say the ICANN listed number goes straight to voice mail.

Re:It's about the prices

[Grishnakh]

I've been reasonably happy with Fatcow.com. It's only about $3/month if you get a 3-year subscription, and their CEO doesn't go around hunting endangered animals or otherwise making an ass out of himself (in fact, I have no idea who their CEO is, unlike the sociopathic egomaniac that runs GoDaddy.

Re:It's about the prices

[Anonymous Coward]

I am Marco Rinaudo, Internet.bs Corp. CEO and I can confirm that login data is ALWAYS sent in SSL, please check our forms and you will see that even though it might not be prominently presented, the credential are ALWAYS sent in SSL. Furthermore, for guys willing to have their full session is SSL, we have a checkbox under the login page (https://internetbs.net/en/domain-name-registrations/login.html) named "Always SSL".

Re:It's about the prices

[razorh]

Exactly!

Anyone else do an easy Domains by Proxy?

[SuricouRaven]

I like to debate politics online. It is important to remain anonymous when debating politics, because there are a few extremeist crazy people around who believe it is their patriotic duty to utterly destroy their opponents. I've heard some real horror stories about that - one blogger I used to debate was known for impersonating his opponents and posting in support of child porn, even going so far as to buy a domain under a false name. I'd rather not risk setting off one of those nuts and having them send false accusations to my employer. I work with children in a very sensitive country, the mere hint of suspicion is enough to not only get me fired but ensure I never work in the sector again.

I used godaddy solely because they also offered Domains by Proxy, allowing me to keep my real identity secret. I don't use them for hosting though.

Re:Anyone else do an easy Domains by Proxy?

[forkazoo]

I used godaddy solely because they also offered Domains by Proxy, allowing me to keep my real identity secret. I don't use them for hosting though.

I use dreamhost, and my domain whois info is all under "Dreamhost Customer." I have the option to fill it in, but have never bothered, so I seem to get this "special privacy proxy service" just by default. This is what happened with getting the domain as part of my hosting plan. Not sure if they similarly proxy for people who bring their own domains, but it is certainly worth asking. Several other slashdotters appear to be using their services as well, so it is a reasonably well respected hosting company. (I like my ssh access and mySQL access and such. I barely even use it as a 'real' website. Quite slashdotter friendly, IMO.) I suspect it would be similar with other providers. Of course, my domain name is just my real name, so I obviously wasn't terribly careful about keeping that a secret, but I think the principle obviously applies with more clever domain names:

      Registrant Contact:
            willrosecrans.com Private Registrant willrosecrans.com@proxy.dreamhost.com
            A Happy DreamHost Customer
            417 Associated Rd #324
            Brea, CA 92821
            US
            +1.2139471032

      Administrative Contact:
            willrosecrans.com Private Registrant willrosecrans.com@proxy.dreamhost.com
            A Happy DreamHost Customer
            417 Associated Rd #324
            Brea, CA 92821
            US
            +1.2139471032

      Technical Contact:
            willrosecrans.com Private Registrant willrosecrans.com@proxy.dreamhost.com
            A Happy DreamHost Customer
            417 Associated Rd #324
            Brea, CA 92821
            US
            +1.2139471032

      Billing Contact:
            willrosecrans.com Private Registrant willrosecrans.com@proxy.dreamhost.com
            A Happy DreamHost Customer
            417 Associated Rd #324
            Brea, CA 92821
            US
            +1.2139471032

Re:Anyone else do an easy Domains by Proxy?

[dlgeek]

Namecheap(.com) is offering their "Whois Guard" service (the same thing) for free, as well as a discount if you transfer a domain using the coupon code SOPASUCKS.

I know this because I'm in the process of transferring right now...

Re:Anyone else do an easy Domains by Proxy?

[Dr_Barnowl]

I reckon there's a dark side to Domains by Proxy as well. I did a whois lookup at GoDaddy for a domain I wanted. I dithered over it, and a few days later someone else had bought it, hidden behind Domains by Proxy. I wouldn't be at all surprised if I were to find that GoDaddy had a number of proxy companies of their own who buy domains, informed by hits on their whois logs, and then squeeze people.

Re:Anyone else do an easy Domains by Proxy?

[soundguy]

That's why you NEVER do a whois at a registrar unless you are ready to buy right then. On Windows, use something like SamSpade. On Mac or LInux, do a whois from the command line.

Re:Anyone else do an easy Domains by Proxy?

[SteveFoerster]

Next time, use purewhois.com. I do, and that's never happened to me.

Here we go...

[hugh nicks]

Let the boycott begin...

Re:Here we go...

[Anonymous Coward]

Moved my 42 domains from Cheapnames.com which is a GoDaddy affiliate.

Vegard Skjefstad aka Shady / Crusaders
Admin organizer of The Gathering - http://www.gathering.org
Tech manager of Hovefestivalen - http://www.hovefestivalen.com

How to Leave GoDaddy

[Anonymous Coward]

Jeff Epstein has put up a step-by-step guide detailing the easiest way to leave GoDaddy:

http://blog.jeffepstein.me/post/14629857835/a-step-by-step-guide-to-transfer-domains-out-of-godaddy

Take special note of that trick to confirm the transfers at the end, because it can save you a five day wait. There are also ways to export your zones if you made the mistake of using GoDaddy as your DNS provider. Several other registrars are running deals right now, too. I've heard people saying that NameCheap (which is anti-SOPA) will let you keep the time you had paid for, so if you registered a domain for 10 years, you won't just lose it all. They even have a coupon of SOPASUCKS

While NameCheap appears to be the most active anti-SOPA registrar, other honorable mentions include MediaTemple (the CEO has tweeted that he is opposed to SOPA) and DNSimple (which offers a discount for those escaping GoDaddy),

Re:How to Leave GoDaddy

[mariasama16]

For those who get to this far down in the threads, NameCheap also has a coupon of BYEBYEGD. Disclaimer: I have no domain, so can't say whether they're good or not (the Reddit thread has lots of happy people, their Social Media contact involved, quite a few people switching to them and directions for how to get off of GD as well).

Re:How to Leave GoDaddy

[Rich0]

I've been using them for years and like them. Their DNS service is very good for something that is free (for domains hosted there) - they support dynamic DNS and you can edit just about all the zone records.

Re:How to Leave GoDaddy

[bcmm]

December the 29th is Move Your Domain day. Be sure to tell GoDaddy why you are leaving.

Re:How to Leave GoDaddy

[Anonymous Coward]

If enough people leave GoDaddy, you won't need to tell them why. The will get the picture just like Netflix did. But unlike Netflix, GoDaddy won't care.

Nathan

Re:How to Leave GoDaddy

[zoonix]

I have over 200 domains on GoDaddy and have been avoiding moving them simply because it's too big a pain in the ass. This is completely unacceptable though. Hi ho hi ho, it's off to NameCheap I go...

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[account_deleted]

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I like Hover.com

[Sycraft-fu]

Nothing exceptional, but they do the job well. Price isn't bad, nice little web interface to change everything. I'm sure it isn't the be all end all, but I've been pleased with it.

There are really no comments

[Anonymous Coward]

on their facebook page ? They must be up late deleting all of them. Also, they disabled the comments on their own site mentioning SOPA. Leave the net free. Im sure they were promised something from the government for supporting it.

I remember an awesome quote

[Anonymous Coward]

From an episode of the apprentice, Trump said "It only takes one stupid decision to ruin a company".

"GoneDaddy" has a nice ring to it xD

Screw you Godaddy

[Anonymous Coward]

This is the last straw, I had my domains parked on your servers out of sheer laziness. I've put up with your b.s., now you backhand the people that give you money, you will not see another dime from me

another interesting link

[Weezul]

How SOPA's 'circumvention' ban could put a target on Tor

Re:another interesting link

[Anonymous Coward]

It won't pass or it won't affect Tor - it would hurt our intelligence community.

Why is this even news?

[drunkennewfiemidget]

GoDaddy is unbelievably evil, and most people already know that. Did this surprise anyone?

Re:Why is this even news?

[Anonymous Coward]

Did it surprise anyone that a tech company supports a bill that is set to break the very infrastructure of the internet? Yes, you can be smart and evil or dumb and evil. You never know which one the evil company is being, but stuff like this shows us and so we adapt and change to avoid the dumb and evil especially hard.

Re:Why is this even news?

[drunkennewfiemidget]

Yes, but part of what makes GoDaddy evil is their penchant for doing things that look EXACTLY like things this bill does. (ie bow to corporate interests regardless of what's better for EVERYONE ELSE.)

I know 2 people personally who have had their domains revoked by GoDaddy. When they asked why, they were told they violated the GoDaddy terms of service.

Neither of them had anything illegal or even questionable on their websites. GoDaddy refused to elaborate. A few weeks later, their domains both belonged to large corporations.

Discounts

[0100010001010011]

Use "NODADDY" a Name.com for 10% off transfer ins (COM, NET, ORG, TV, INFO, IN, US, CO, ME & TEL) and also receive 40% off any hosting plans.
HostGator is doing 50% off Shared / Reseller / VPS first month. Coupon code: NOSOPA
Name Cheap has a "special discount deal": BYEBYEGD
DreamHost use NOTOSOPA you get your first registration free.

I can't claim credit for this, all came from Reddit

Re:Discounts

[Anonymous Coward]

Another is No-IP http://www.no-ip.com
Offering 50% off transfers with coupon code godaddy50

Re:Discounts

[Anonymous Coward]

Use "NODADDY" a Name.com for 10% off transfer ins (COM, NET, ORG, TV, INFO, IN, US, CO, ME & TEL) and also receive 40% off any hosting plans.
HostGator is doing 50% off Shared / Reseller / VPS first month. Coupon code: NOSOPA
Name Cheap has a "special discount deal": BYEBYEGD
DreamHost use NOTOSOPA you get your first registration free.

I can't claim credit for this, all came from Reddit

Name.com has a page where they talk about how they don't support SOPA, but "calls on Congress to search for a new way to protect intellectual property rights." So they sound like they'd support alternate legislation that is slightly changed (like OPEN), but honestly almost as bad.

Be aware that many registrars may just be trying to steal business from Go Daddy, and are just pretending to be against SOPA in order to do so. It would be wise to research the policies of these companies before just going for the coupons.

Re:Discounts

[iONiUM]

I have about 15 domains, and I switched to NameCheap last year from GD, because someone mentioned it on /. around that time. I have had no issues at all with NameCheap, I would recommend them.

Re:Discounts

[tguyton]

Thanks very much for sharing! My domains are now successfully transferred.

It's their own fault

[SpaceLifeForm]

If those chicks were not so hot, no one would be pirating their commercials.

i'm ashamed

[Anonymous Coward]

of my laziness. A-hole elephant hunter. consider my humble transfer imminent. Its worth nothing by itself but might be worth something as a whole /.

NASCAR

[RazorSharp]

NASCAR, need I say more? NASCAR depends on ESPN and the networks who are part of the media conglomerates who are pushing SOPA through in the first place. GoDaddy's primary advertising partner is a NASCAR driver.

Personally, I don't know how advertising through Danika Patrick ever worked out for them. It's not like they have advertisements on their website, so it's not like tricking rednecks into thinking there's Danika Patrick porn on there really brings in any revenue. I've had to explain to several people what GoDaddy actually is, because even after they visit the site in the vain hope of seeing Danika take it all off, they still don't understand what it's for.

As far as purchasing domains and web hosting. . .I don't know anyone who uses them. Obviously some people do, but I've always assumed they have some advertising scheme worked out. The way they exploit Danika just seems to imply there's no sense of business ethics, or even the desire to appear to have some, at the company. Of course, supporting SOPA proves this theory of mine.

Re:NASCAR

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm sorry, as a Nascar fan I have to point that its Danica herself that permits and is rewarded for what we all see as exploitation. She chose to take a role that she knew going into would be something that no well-adjusted young girl could or should look up to her as a role model. She made the decision to accept money to have men leer at her and dangle a string bikini a foot away from her face. She is an active and content participant in the denigration you see on your TV. Please never excuse her for that the way you did in your comment. She is not the one exploited.

Re:NASCAR

[RazorSharp]

I didn't excuse her. Just because she's being exploited doesn't mean that 1) I feel sorry for her 2) She's not to blame 3) She can drive.

It's just, she's not the issue with this story, GoDaddy is. Danica is just a peripheral character. I could care less about her.

Re:NASCAR

[Anonymous Coward]

I think that a huge chunk of their advertising (to geeks, at least) succeeded through other channels than Danicka Patric or TV commercials. They used podcasting and popular geek websites. Name a podcast and they advertised through them (except Leo Laporte's podcasts and streams as he has voiced his displeasure with GoDaddy for ages very publicly). They advertise and have for years with every podcast on Revision3 as well as Digg.com and Kevin Rose's "Diggnation" podcast among many other places.

Re:NASCAR

[Arashi256]

And the Linux Action Show....they spent about five minutes of every bloody show banging on about GoDaddy. What has Jupiter Broadcasting to say about this? Are they still sponsored by GoDaddy?

Re:NASCAR

[Anonymous Coward]

I could care less about her.

Couldn't. You couldn't care less about her.

Bye Bye Go-Daddy

[Anonymous Coward]

I know someone who just lost my business and all the business of my clients ^_^

Monetizing the Copyright Screening

[Cogent91]

I bet they're banking on monetizing the "copyright" screening tools that are going to cost us all an absurd amount, making entry into the internet damned near impossible for those of us without thousands to invest. Shameful Godaddy.com. I hope consumer confidence is shattered in their business because of this poor decision, placing profiteering over protecting basic freedoms. They should know better.

Re:Monetizing the Copyright Screening

[masternerdguy]

Considering most people (not slashdotters, normal people) don't even know what SOPA is, I expect nothing to change.

GoDaddy is to Blank...

[MoldySpore]

GoDaddy is to Web Hosting Services what AOL is to ISP's circa 2011.

NSOL's SRS Plus

[jbov]

For anyone managing a large amount of domains, an SRS Plus partner account from Network Solutions would be the way to go. There are two benefits:
1) The prices are cheaper.
2) They are not GoDaddy


With a partner account you have access to change contact information, DNS servers, request auth codes, etc...

Oh, and like xombo said about internet.bs below, SRS Plus also has an API.

Re:NSOL's SRS Plus

[Anrego]

Wern't they the ones who used to have the "check if this domain is available" box that would then register the name and try to sell it to you at a higher price?

Re:NSOL's SRS Plus

[Anonymous Coward]

The very same

Re:NSOL's SRS Plus

[Missing.Matter]

Godaddy does that too. They did that to me on several domains I searched for that were one day available, the next day "parked for my convenience (and by the way you have to pay $9.99 more for that convenience)"

Re:NSOL's SRS Plus

[Anonymous Coward]

Network Solutions would be the way to go

Network Solutions sucks balls worst than GoDaddy and will rip you off in a thousand ways. Also they are NOT cheaper.

Transfer

[Anonymous Coward]

I transfered my last domain from GoDaddy 5 minutes ago to another provider, now I can sleep happy again.

small business still feels the pain....

[Shakrai]

because it affects companies in a sort of inverted U shape: small businesses owned by fewer than 500 shareholders are completely exempt

Perhaps by the letter of the law they are exempt but they still feel the pain. My small employer (60+ employees) is privately owned but our accounting costs almost doubled after SOx. I'm willing to bet the bottom line hit from this represents a higher percentage of our income than it does for random mega-corp.

Gandi.net - ethical registrar that don't advertise

[dopeghost]

Gandi.net are a sizable international registrar i first heard of back during the last 'elephant sized' Godaddy debacle.

They support a load of projects like Debian and the EFF, along with charities like the International Federation of Human Rights and the WWF.

They cost a tiny bit more than Godaddy but it's a pittance given the manner with which they conduct themselves.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gandi

https://www.gandi.net/supports/

I reply to support moving away from GoDaddy

[jsse]

Actually I hate their name since day one but since they were the cheapest around I moved all my domains from networksolutions, which has suck services.

Thank you for all the good tips above. I will celebrate on the day GoDaddy is going out of business.

.bs domains

[naroom]

My favorite .bs domain (Yes, it is SFW.)

Thank you, 1&1

[scottbomb]

That is all.

Re:Thank you, 1&1

[Anonymous Coward]

1&1 is like the same as GD, along with Strato too... Avoid them like there's no tomorrow.

moving domains tomorrow

[richardkelleher]

Well, I guess I have to move a half dozen domains to a new registrar now. Along with hosting for 4 of them. What a pain in the a##, but it must be done. I cannot support a company that supports SOPA in its current form.

Re:moving domains tomorrow

[KMnO4]

Add me to the chorus. I only use my domain for my email address, but I will move off Godaddy at the next opportunity. This is just crazy.

RIM Job

[trolman]

Looks like GoDaddy is about to get a RIM job. I am moving my one customer from GoDaddy.

-3, fuck you godaddy

[X.25]

Was too lazy to transfer domains, but now I moved my 3 domains away from GoDaddy, to Gandi.net.

Now I don't understand how I managed to ever use that horrible GoDaddy interface, aargh.

Re:-3, fuck you godaddy

[Dhalka226]

Yep, exactly. I didn't have a great deal of domains with them--five--but they are now all hosted with Gandi. Next step, to send them a message telling them exactly why.

GoDaddy sucks

[Anonymous Coward]

After I posted a link on a relevant forum to my site, GoDaddy accused me of spamming and held all of my domains hostage until I paid a $199 "fine." No due process or anything.

I've heard a lot of other people have gone through this as well.

http://www.nodaddy.com/

Re:GoDaddy sucks

[Arrogant-Bastard]

NoDaddy.com is now owned by GoDaddy. See http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/07/12/godaddy_shuts_down_nodaddy/ for details.

SOPA reminds me of the trice-failed CDA

[xenobyte]

Full of vague definitions and basically a huge mallet to hit those you don't like over the head with. Will be abused to do just about everything not stated in its purpose. Thankfully the CDA's were struck down in the Supreme Court because the vagueness opened a huge loophole in the protection of free speech.

Based on my understanding this bill can do the same - any domain that has something you don't like will also have something illegal somewhere and then SOPA can be used to kill it all - and I hope the Supreme Court repeats its protection rulings.

Re:Dreamhost

[Anonymous Coward]

Too lazy to log in, but his code does indeed work. It makes one year of hosting and account registration 22.40 incase anyone was wondering.

How does SOPA work exactly?

[mwvdlee]

I have a small company in my spare time. It doesn't make a lot of profit, and most profit pays for expenses, but it does mean I have some IP. Therefore, I am an IP holder.

SOPA apparently allows IP holders to ban domains based on "good faith" assumptions.
Would I therefore be allowed to ban, say, any of the RIAA/MPAA sites if I have "good faith" that something on their site looks suspiciously much like my IP or something made with an illegal copy of my IP? (FYI, this would include pretty much any sufficiently large site, due to the nature of the products I sell).

Or is SOPA realistically only available to large corporations?

Re:How does SOPA work exactly?

[masternerdguy]

Most likely if you used this against them they'd get you for filing a false takedown notice. But if they take something of yours down that wasn't infringing they won't even get a slap on the wrist.

Re:How does SOPA work exactly?

[Em Adespoton]

This is a question to send to those currently debating the bill. Please do it. I really want to know their answer.

Re:Gandi.net - ethical registrar that don't advert

[Skylinux]

Gandi is a great company. I don't use them for my domains because I don't like getting it all from one company but their VPS offer is really good.
I used to run on Knownhost but switched to Gandi because their servers are more reliable, faster and customer service is better.

Hard at work porn starts

[Anonymous Coward]

Goddady to defend the rights of hard at work porn stars and media

Cosmetics...

[Anonymous Coward]

There's a gigantic problem with fake (counterfeit) cosmetics, there are factories churning out low quality copies of all the top brands. And they are sold on a lot of dodgy websites.

Re:Dreamhost

[Cee]

(It's a referral code, but I don't get anything from it because my bonus is inversely tied to your discount. You get the max discount this way and I get nothing.)

Well, that might not be exactly true. From the Dreamhost referrals page:

And how much will you earn? You decide! Either get 10% forever of everything your referrals (plus 5% for people they refer!) spend on hosting with us, or choose to just get a $97.00 one-time payment (plus $5 for sub-referrals!) per referral!

Sign of character

[cowtamer]

Not surprised. All I knew about the company was the apparent character of their CEO, as indicated by the Elephant Shooting Incident:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/04/01/bob-parsons-go-daddy-elephant-video_n_843623.html

Now that I've posted this, Slashdot will soon be only known as 216.34.181.45 :)

Re:Sign of character

[Em Adespoton]

It worked for Prince :D

For whom do you vote

[2phar]

Would Ron Paul as president actually veto congress pushing through stuff like SOPA?

You can still switch registrars

[SgtChaireBourne]

You can still switch even when your domain is not up for renewal. Purchasing time at another DNS registrar will just add the new time to whatever you already have on the books.

Re:Dear slashdotters,

[Anonymous Coward]

OHAI Bob Parsons

Stories about GoDaddy

[Futurepower(R)]

Here are more reasons. These are stories about GoDaddy on Slashdot, in order by date, to 2010-09-11:

Go Daddy Usurps Network Solutions (2005-05-04)

GoDaddy Serves Blank Pages to Safari & Opera (2005-12-08)

GoDaddy.com Dumps Linux for Microsoft (2006-03-23)

GoDaddy Holds Domains Hostage (2006-06-17)

GoDaddy Caves To Irish Legal Threat (2006-09-16)

MySpace and GoDaddy Shut Down Security Site (2007-01-26) That incident prompted this web site:
Exposing the Many Reasons Not to Trust GoDaddy with Your Domain Names.

Alternative Registrars to GoDaddy? (2007-02-03)

GoDaddy Bobbles DST Changeover? (2007-03-11)

850K RegisterFly Domains Moved To GoDaddy (2007-05-29)

According to this March 11, 2008 story in Wired, GoDaddy shut down an entire web site of 250,000 pages because of one archived mailing list comment: GoDaddy Silences Police-Watchdog Site RateMyCop.com. See below for Slashdot's story about RateMyCop.com.

GoDaddy Silences RateMyCop.com (2008-03-12)

ICANN Moves Against GoDaddy Domain Lockdowns (2008-04-08)

GoDaddy VP Caught Bidding Against Customers (2008-06-29)

KnujOn Updates Top 10 Spam-Friendly Registrars List (2009-02-06, 80 comments) GoDaddy is on the list.

R.I.P. FTP (2009-07-13, 359 comments) The GoDaddy web site is extremely complicated. Quote: "In that case, why don't more people switch to administering their sites via SFTP instead of FTP? Here are the steps it took me to enable SFTP on my GoDaddy hosting account. Feel free to use this as a reference, but the obvious point is that as long as this many steps are required, it's safe to say that most users won't be switching: 1) Go to the 'Hosting' menu and pick 'My Hosting Account.' 2) Next to the name of your website, pick 'Manage Account.' This will open the Hosting Control Center. 3) In Hosting Control Center, click to expand the 'Settings' options. 4) In the 'Settings' control panel, click the 'SSH' icon. 5) You will see a page saying 'SSH is not set up', and prompting you to enter a phone number so that their automated service can call you with a PIN number. After you enter your phone number, the phone rings a second later, and you enter the PIN in a form on the GoDaddy website. 6 ) You will then see a page which says: Current Hosting Account Status: Pending Account Change -- Your request to enable SSH is being processed. This upgrade may take up to 24 hours." [Punctuation and emphasis changed for clarity.]

Registrars Still Ignoring ICANN Rules (2009-07-22, 122 comments) Quote: "GoDaddy (and their reseller arm, Wild West Domains) have a different problem: They still block transfers for 60 days after a registrant's contact update, even after the ICANN update specifically prohibited doing so. They freely admit it, too."

Re:Stories about GoDaddy

[LordLimecat]

Just curious, why is GoDaddy switching from Linux to MS a reason not to use them? Or is there no reason, was this just a mindless anti MS sentiment?

Re:Stories about GoDaddy

[Canazza]

Why switch completely rather than offer both? Like most hosting companies do.

Re:Stories about GoDaddy

[Nethemas the Great]

You don't run MS technology on server hardware unless you are willing to pay for more of it. In a lot of ways its actually pretty good technology with respect to what it enables you to accomplish with minimal developer effort, but at the same time, it's also very heavy. Linux is not.

Re:Stories about GoDaddy

[Dave Zan]

Just curious, why is GoDaddy switching from Linux to MS a reason not to use them? Or is there no reason, was this just a mindless anti MS sentiment?

Heh, it's a choice, I suppose.

Re:GoDaddy as a matter of fact

[NSN A392-99-964-5927]

Anyone in the industry has known to avoid GoDaddy for domains. Their sole existence is based on commercials and advertisements, not good service. It's a perfect example that advertisements works too. This news isn't exactly surprising and will do nothing to GoDaddy's market share.

Use Domain Registry of America / Domain Renewal Group / Grey Hare Inc / Brandon Grey Internet Services / Wild West Domains / dba / Namejuice.com all in cahoots with Enom Inc.

Stay away from the domain slammers marked above and no Enom Inc will not sue me because they actively steal domain names with the above companies Banned in the US but still operate. I will go one further and have created a .pdf and uploaded it for you so you can read the really really small print http://www.fluxradio.org/droa.pdf

Do not get caught out as many have!

All the best NSN

I had serious problems with Namecheap.

[Futurepower(R)]

I had serious problems with Namecheap. They seemed to want to refuse to renew my domains. I transferred everything to domainsite.com. Not wonderful, but no problems with renewal.

What other domain name registrars are good?

20 Stories about GoDaddy on Slashdot

Re:I had serious problems with Namecheap.

[modernzombie]

I have used Dynadot for 3 years and they have been great. .com only $9.75 (every year) and full DNS control.

Re:I had serious problems with Namecheap.

[jez9999]

I had serious problems with Namecheap. They seemed to want to refuse to renew my domains.

I've had no such problem. Namecheap actually bug me to renew my domains, if anything. :-)

Re:I had serious problems with Namecheap.

[Dishevel]

NearlyFreeSpeech.Net

They are quick, cheep and fair.

Great and Awesome for low volumes sites.

Moving my domains

[Anonymous Coward]

After hearing this it is really time to move all our domains elsewhere. Let Godaddy rot.

What if I prepaid multiple years? HELP!

[Anonymous Coward]

If I move my domains that I have pre-paid for multiple years (until 2017) on, what happens? Do I lose all the pre-paid years or is that carried over to the next registrar?

Re:What if I prepaid multiple years? HELP!

[Lumpy]

Yes you lose all that money and have to spend it again.

It's the one tactic I hate about godaddy, you get no refunds for anything. It's better to go month to month so you can leave them.

Re:What if I prepaid multiple years? HELP!

[soundguy]

Yes you lose all that money and have to spend it again.

It's the one tactic I hate about godaddy, you get no refunds for anything. It's better to go month to month so you can leave them.

Complete and utter bullshit. All years paid in advance for a domain will always transfer to a new registrar. The minimum registration period for a domain is one year. There is no "month to month" registration possible.

You are too stupid to be giving out advice. Shut the fuck up!

Re:What if I prepaid multiple years? HELP!

[Anonymous Coward]

Lumpy is 100% right when your domains are HOSTED there. HOSTING FEES are NOT refunded.

Sounds like the bullshit is in between your ears.

Re:What if I prepaid multiple years? HELP!

[babywhiz]

We actually got our hosting refunded, because they were the ones that cancelled ColdFusion support....and we had no desire to recode the whole site.

Re:What if I prepaid multiple years? HELP!

[Grishnakh]

Maybe he's talking about the hosting, rather than the domain registration. I have a small website with Fatcow.com where I paid 3 years in advance to get a lower monthly rate on the hosting service. If I were to transfer to another hosting service, I think it's pretty obvious that I'd lose that money, and Fatcow isn't going to transfer the funds for the unused months/years of hosting service to the new hosting service. While I paid for the domain registration and hosting service at once, in a bundled package, the hosting service part of it was far more money than the domain registration.

Blocked

[Anonymous Coward]

GoDaddy is now added to my routers list of blocked domains. hope their happy.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

I'll admit

[hipp5]

I'm with GoDaddy for my domain name. When I was looking for a personal domain I checked out a bunch of domain sites. They all had basically identical annoying splash pages that tried to upsell me on everything. There was nothing to differentiate them except price. So I went with GoDaddy for its price and because I knew the name. When I get back to my computer after the holidays you can be sure I'll be ditching them and going with some of the good hosts suggested here.

On a related note, I didn't go with GoDaddy for my page hosting because I found holeinthewallhosting.com. Honestly, they're awesome. Nice clean pages, no upselling, awesome price. I dunno how good reliability is, but it's certainly good enough for my person page.

Keep GoDaddy's history in mind

[Arrogant-Bastard]

1. They were founded by spammer Bob Parsons. (Yes, spammer. Check the archives of Usenet's news.admin.net-abuse.email.)

2. They have a very long and ongoing history of supporting more spammer, phishers, scammer, forger, etc. domains than anyone else. (See same source, plus archives of the spam-l mailing list.) The reason? They run an "abuse desk" that passes on complaints to the spammers, who can then of course target complainers for retaliation. (Yes, they do occasionally make a show of removing spammer domains -- but only when sufficient public exposure has turned up the heat enough. And even in those cases, they (a) help the spammers move the domains to another registrar and (b) sell the same spammers more domains.)

3. They confiscated the SecLists.org domain out of sheer spite and stupidity. (See the Wayback Machine's archives of the NoDaddy web site. Read the rest of it while you're at it.)

4. They run offensively sexist, sleazy TV commercials. (Yes, I like boobies too -- who doesn't? -- but these ads are insulting and degrading to women.)

5. They frequently bungle/obstruct domain changes and transfers and make it effectively impossible for domain owners to fix the situation.

6. Spammer Bob Parsons likes to kiil endangered, sentient animals for fun. Think about that for a minute: just for the thrill of the kill, this complete asshole is willing to extinguish the life of a beautiful, compassionate, free animal. That's one of the most selfish, low, vicious things that someone can do -- whether that animal happens to be an elephant or a fellow human being. And it tells you everything that you need to know about him: he'll do anything for self-interest/profit...including selling out the entire Internet.

7. The bottom line is this: there is no point in threatening GoDaddy. If they take it sufficiently seriously, they'll just lie about it and then quietly go back on their word once the furor dies down. So don't threaten. Just act. Get your stuff out of there, tell everyone else you know to get their stuff out of there, and let's be down with it. Spammer Bob Parsons has already made far too much money and done far too much damage in the process; it's time to blacklist him and his company forever. They don't deserve the privilege of your business, and they certainly don't deserve to be part of the Internet community.

Re:Keep GoDaddy's history in mind

[Anonymous Coward]

6. Spammer Bob Parsons likes to kiil endangered, sentient animals for fun.
Think about that for a minute: just for the thrill of the kill, this complete asshole
is willing to extinguish the life of a beautiful, compassionate, free animal.
That's one of the most selfish, low, vicious things that someone can do --
whether that animal happens to be an elephant or a fellow human being.
And it tells you everything that you need to know about him: he'll
do anything for self-interest/profit...including selling out the entire Internet.

Wrong, see my response above referencing his elephant. He did not do it "just for the thrill of the kill."

Re:Keep GoDaddy's history in mind

[Arrogant-Bastard]

It's difficult to figure out which comment you mean, but if it's the one feebly attempting to justify spammer Bob Parson's actions, then do consider this: let's presume, for the sake of argument, that the circumstances are as you portray them. (I have strong doubts that this is the case, but let's go with it for a moment.) Then, given that spammer Bob Parsons is an extraordinarily wealthy man, why not hand a big fat check over to one of the non-profit organizations trying to save endangered species... so that they can relocate the elephant? And while they're at it, some rhinos and primates, too -- there are a lot of animals which are endangered in part because humans have occupied land essential to their survival. Why not do some positive good in the world...instead of getting his rocks off by slaughtering an innocent, thinking, feeling animal?

Re:Keep GoDaddy's history in mind

[Anonymous Coward]

You really should keep to the facts and not push your world views on anyone. I was with you for steps 1, 2 and 3 but then you turned all "This is my view and I'll beat it into you" for 4, 5 and 6..

Whether I agree or not if your going to post "facts" as to why a place is bad keep your head out of yer bum and post facts.

Re:Keep GoDaddy's history in mind

[misexistentialist]

He was just following the rich man's tradition of big game hunting. You can't expect a rich man to suddenly get a conscience: every treasure hoard is built on a mountain of human bones.

subject

[Legion303]

Fucking Quislings.

Go bug them!

[Anonymous Coward]

Just out via contact-form on godaddy.com

RE: Your SOPA Support
Please forward to executive level.
Hi, and hello from Europe,
You must be FUCKING NUTS!
I will immediately tell EVERYONE I know, who deals with you, to cancel ANY affiliation with your company IMMEDIATELY!
What a shame and disgrace.
Go open a pharma-company!
Ciao

Read the fine print.

[Anonymous Coward]

Why do GoDaddy support this? Interestingly they have somehow pre-negotiated a legal exemption from SOPA, should it come to pass, perhaps in return for their support.

http://idealab.talkingpointsmemo.com/2011/12/sopa-hearing-will-never-end.php (search for GoDaddy, their name will be written into the proposed law)

Notice that GoDaddy has this magical get-out-of-jail-free card while e.g. libraries, universities, schools, hospitals and many branches of government do not. They've stolen a life jacket and are now set on scuttling the ship. There are historical parallels:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quisling

I'm moving my domains away, of course, and I should have done so sooner by the sounds of things. To support SOPA is not merely evil, it's also an indication that the guy doesn't understand the technological consequences, and I don't hire such people to run my internets.

Re:Dreamhost

[Anonymous Coward]

yes, like any uptime or reliability. When they first got started they were okay but you'de be crazy to use them for anything that isn't strictly a hobby. If you need reliable and cheap hosting use webfaction.

lowendbox.com for the nerds

[gravyface]

get a $2.99 a month VPS running whatever flavour of *nix you want. I have two of them. I use one for a proxy (for hulu.com access; I'm in Canada) and my personal websites. The other is for friends and family websites; both are from different providers, both run MaraDNS for redundancy (ns1 and ns2).

Look at who just bought godaddy

[Anonymous Coward]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Godaddy

KKR
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kohlberg_Kravis_Roberts

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silver_Lake_Partners

Then it makes perfect sense.

Re:Dreamhost

[lee13se]

You forgot to mention their awesome API http://wiki.dreamhost.com/Application_programming_interface

No thanks

[nurb432]

So this means you don't do business with GoDaddy. Don't support companies that want to infringe on you.

Just transferred my domains to Namecheap

[watermark]

Just transferred my domains to Namecheap. Thanks for the recommendations.

It's taking a decent while for the transfer to happen. I wonder if they are being "slammed" with transfers?

This shall not stand

[Munky101]

I sit here this morning drinking my coffee and wondering what the end game is here with SOPA. We have heard so much about it in the past few weeks. In my years (37 long ones), I have seen what can only be described as a slow transformation insto a police state as we gradually give up our personal rights in the hopes that it will give us a greater sense of security. 15 years ago, a security guard at the airport touching your crotch would have been justification to pmel then into oblivion. Now it's accepted as due course. I get it too. I don't agree with it, but I get it. Now, we have politician trying to give away the internet in hopes of giving us more security. If only Orwell could see this. They are concidering giving the right to censor the internet to the media police. First, what the hell are they thinking to allow someone the right to censor anything in the United State? And secondly, to give it to a non-govement agancy. Why don't we give an ICBM to that neighbor kid down the street wit ADD and anger control issues? Makes about as much sense. If there is one thing I remember from college, it is that historically, any nation that is based on revolution will repeat that action. Am I calling for an armed revolt that fills the streets with angry roving gangs of thugs? Definately not! However, each of us hold a weapon that all of these politicians that are voting to give away our freedoms is very afraid of. It's a voter registration card and I am calling for all of you to use in the months to come. From city councils all the way up to the presidential elections. Draw your weapon and put it to use. The parties themselves are getting behind this so we have to oppose the entire party to get our message across. If a single Republican votes for this then no Republicans shall take office. A single Democrat, then the Democrats shall recieve no votes. And so on, till they understand that they cannot strip away our rights for the sake of money. I hate to say it, but this really is one of those "If your not with us, your against us" kind of things. Failing to stand up in this instance is equal to agreeing with them. We must rise up and show them that this is not acceptable to the American people and we WILL NOT TOLERATE IT!

Complete list of supporters

[Anonymous Coward]

Here you can find a complete list of SOPA supporters.
http://venturebeat.com/2011/12/22/list-of-sopa-supporters/

60 Plus Association
ABCAlliance for Safe Online Pharmacies (ASOP)
American Federation of Musicians (AFM)
American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (AFTRA)
American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers (ASCAP)Americans for Tax ReformArtists and Allied Crafts of the United States
Association of American Publishers (AAP)Association of State Criminal Investigative Agencies
Association of Talent Agents (ATA)Baker & Hostetler LLPBeachbody, LLC
BMIBMG ChrysalisBuilding and Construction Trades DepartmentCapitol Records NashvilleCBSCengage LearningChristian Music Trade Association
Church Music Publishers’ Association
Coalition Against Online Video Piracy (CAOVP)Comcast/NBCUniversal
Concerned Women for America (CWA)
Congressional Fire Services InstituteCopyhype
Copyright Alliance
Coty, Inc.Council of Better Business Bureaus (CBBB)
Council of State Governments
Country Music AssociationCountry Music TelevisionCovington & Burling LLPCowan, DeBaets, Abrahams & Sheppard LLPCowan, Liebowitz & Latman, P.C.Creative AmericaDavis Wright Tremaine LLPDeluxe
2Directors Guild of America (DGA)
Disney Publishing Worldwide, Inc.ElsevierEMI Christian Music GroupEMI Music PublishingESPNEstée Lauder CompaniesFraternal Order of Police (FOP)
Go Daddy
Gospel Music AssociationGraphic Artists GuildHachette Book GroupHarperCollins Publishers Worldwide, Inc.HyperionIndependent Film & Television Alliance (IFTA)
International Alliance of Theatrical and Stage Employees (IATSE)
International AntiCounterfeiting Coalition (IACC)
International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW)
International Brotherhood of Teamsters (IBT)
International Trademark Association (INTA)
International Union of Police Associations
Irell & Manella LLPJenner & Block LLPKelley Drye & Warren LLPKendall Brill & Klieger LLPKinsella Weitzman Iser Kump & Aldisert LLP
L’Oreal
Lathrop & Gage LLPLoeb & Loeb LLPLost Highway RecordsMacmillanMajor County Sheriffs
Major League Baseball
Majority City ChiefsMarvel Entertainment, LLCMasterCard WorldwideMCA RecordsMcGraw-Hill EducationMercury NashvilleMinor League Baseball (MiLB)Minority Media & Telecom Council (MMTC)Mitchell Silberberg & Knupp LLPMorrison & Foerster LLPMotion Picture Association of America (MPAA)
Moving Picture Technicians
3MPA
The Association of Magazine MediaNational Association of Manufacturers (NAM)
National Association of Prosecutor Coordinators
National Association of State Chief Information Officers
National Cable & Telecommunications Association (NCTA)National Center for Victims of Crime
National Crime Justice Association
National District Attorneys Association
National Domestic Preparedness Coalition
National Football LeagueNational Governors Association, Economic Development and Commerce CommitteeNational League of Cities
National Narcotics Offers’ Associations’ Coalition
National Sheriffs
Association (NSA)
National Songwriters Association
National Troopers Coalition
News CorporationPatterson Belknap Webb & Tyler LLPPearson EducationPenguin Group (USA), Inc.Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA)
Phillips Nizer, LLPPfizer, Inc.
Proskauer Rose LLPProvident Music GroupRandom HouseRaulet Property PartnersRepublic NashvilleRevlonRobins, Kaplan, Miller & Ciresi LLPScholastic, Inc.Screen Actors Guild (SAG)
Shearman & Sterling LLPShowdog Universal MusicSimpson Thacher & Bartlett LLPSkadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom LLPSony/ATV Music PublishingSony Music EntertainmentSony Music NashvilleState International Development Organization (SIDO)
The National Association of Theatre Owners (NATO)The Perseus Books GroupsThe United States Conference of MayorsTiffany & Co.Time Warner
4Ultimate Fighting Championship

Re:Complete list of supporters

[acoustix]

Wow - lots of unions on the list.

Re:Complete list of supporters

[CanEHdian]

Alliance for Safe Online Pharmacies (ASOP)

ASOP supports SOPA? How about these guys:

National Sheriffs Association (NSA)
National Association of Theatre Owners (NATO)

Don't forget to move your domains away from GoDaddy on Dec 29th, and stock up on Botox and all kinds of rejuvenation creams so you can quit the

60 Plus Association

Yeah. That's the real WTF? moment. All those grampies and grannies don't care about the Intarwebz, eh? So you can print stories like this. It's a good thing Christmas is coming up; you'll be meeting a lot of 60plus people you can scold for this.

Lifehacker lists cheaper alternatives

[walterbyrd]

Lifehacker explains how to save money, and stop supporting SOPA, by ditching GoDaddy. Lifehacker also lists other reasons to ditch godaddy, such as poor customer support, and elephant killing CEO. Surprisingly, Lifehacker forget to mention godaddy's sexist advertisements.

http://lifehacker.com/5870649/ditch-godaddys-sopa+loving-butt-and-get-a-better-web-host-at-a-discount

Lifehacker is listing cheaper alternatives

[walterbyrd]

Godaddy's prices are easy to beat. Don't get suckered by the intro prices that lock you in, then go way up.

http://lifehacker.com/5870649/ditch-godaddys-sopa+loving-butt-and-get-a-better-web-host-at-a-discount

bad place to work too

[Anonymous Coward]

I have a friend who briefly worked at GoDaddy as a graphic designer. He said it was a horrible, stressful work environment and he was glad to get out of there. He created a large set of materials for an ad campaign only to have it all thrown away at the last minute because the lawyers hadn't gotten approval for some of the images that he had been given. Terrible mismanagement. Sounds like the company that I'm working for.

Happy for years...

[ckaminski]

I've been happy with GoDaddy for years - not any more.

Time to find a new registrar.

Lifehacker lists cheaper alternatives to Godaddy

[walterbyrd]

http://lifehacker.com/5870649/ditch-godaddys-sopa+loving-butt-and-get-a-better-web-host-at-a-discount

Lifehacker explains how to save money, and stop supporting SOPA, by ditching GoDaddy. Lifehacker also lists other reasons to ditch godaddy, such as poor customer support, and elephant killing CEO. Surprisingly, Lifehacker forget to mention godaddy's sexist advertisements.

Still, what a sick thing to do

[walterbyrd]

There is no sport in it. It is not "hunting" in the true sense of the word.

These elephant killing sickos just get off on pulling the trigger and killing a helpless animal. Yeah, real manly. Why not torture puppies also? That might be fun.

Re:Still, what a sick thing to do

[cybernanga]

I agree with all the replies that hunting purely for sport is indeed fucked up

I only mentioned what I did because I lived in a country where the elephant population was too large. they were destroying the environment they lived in because there were too many of them for the given land area. Therefore, they HAD to be culled, to prevent the area from turning into a desert that would have been incapable of supporting ANY of the local wildlife, let alone elephants.

Seeing as the elephant had to be culled, why not let someone with more money than sense, shoot them, at least that way, it's less of a waste.

Re:Still, what a sick thing to do

[tqk]

Yeah, real manly. Why not torture puppies also?

That's odd. I was just thinking of Jeffrey Dahmer too.

Even vicious, hardened criminals can't stand to be in the room with these people.

Well, it did surprize me

[marcosdumay]

Ok, I knew GoDaddy was evil. That is not news. But "evil" has degrees, and there are plenty of other evil registars out there.

I have a few domains registered on GoDaddy because I had no reliable source to tell me how evil one the other registars were. Since I knew I'd use a limited variety of services (registering domains and pointing them to a DNS out of there), and that GoDaddy doesn't create many problems to those services, I decided to contract them.

Now things changed, they are lobbying the end of the DNS system. I'm moving my domains as soon as I can.

names9.com

[Anonymous Coward]

I've been using these guys for years with no hassle and great support.

Sellouts

[Anonymous Coward]

that

Just Quit

[Anonymous Coward]

Wrote to godaddy, informing that I will be moving my domains to another provider with their acceptance of SOPA. Response as follows:

Dear XXX,
 
Thank you for your inquiry.

Go Daddy is the world’s largest domain name registrar with more than 50 million domain names in our portfolio. Go Daddy has a full time presence in Washington D.C. and takes an active role in Congressional and legislative proposals.

Included in Go Daddy’s legislative efforts is the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA). We are currently reviewing the most recent legislative proposal and continue to educate ourselves on the many facets of SOPA. We look forward to working with Congress to refine legislative language about this issue when appropriate.

To review Go Daddy's statement on the matter, you can read this article:

http://support.godaddy.com/godaddy/go-daddys-position-on-sopa/

While we regret to hear of your decision to move your services to another provider, please understand that we are unable to cancel products and services on your behalf. You will need to make this change from within your account. Should you still desire to cancel your account with us, you may use the instructions provided below to cancel all products or services for this account, remove all payment methods from this account, and turn off all opt-in email notifications.

To Transfer your domain follow the steps on the following URL:

http://support.godaddy.com/help/3560/transferring-domain-names-to-another-registrar

Once you have logged into your account, follow the steps below to cancel:

    Select 'Payments and Renewing Items' from the 'My Renewals & Upgrades' menu.
    Check the box next to the item(s) you would like to cancel and click on the 'Cancel Item' button.
    Select 'Cancel Now' or 'Cancel at Expiration Date' in the menu that appears to the right.
    Click on 'Save Changes'.

Please be sure that you have copies of any files you want to keep before you cancel your account.

  *Canceling now will immediately remove the service from your account. If you choose to "Cancel at Expiration Date" the service will remain active until the date specified and will not be renewed.

The following instructions may be used to remove a payment method from our system. Note that there must be no products or services in our system which are currently linked to that payment method before you can remove it.

    Select 'My Payment Information' from the 'My Account' menu
    Select the radio button next to the desired payment method in the list.
    Click the 'Deactivate Payment Method' button.
    If there are any products or services currently associated with this item you will then be forced to move them to another payment method before you can continue.
    After moving any products or services to another payment method, click the 'Save Changes' button.

You can choose not to receive email notices by updating your customer account settings. Follow the directions below:

    Select 'Account Settings' from the 'My Account' menu.
    Click on the "Contact Preference Information" link.
    Go through the choices and select your preference for each.
    When you are done, click on the green "Save Changes" button.

You can also use the "UNSUBSCRIBE" link found at the bottom of all the notices that we send out.

Thank you for taking the time to write to us. If there are further matters with which we may assist, please do not hesitate to contact us.

Regards,

Brandon H.
Online Support Supervisor

Registrar with free DNS slaving and IPv6 glue?

[Just Some Guy]

I've used Domain Monger for years out of simple inertia. One of their features that I love is that I can set their DNS servers to slave off my self-hosted master server. I can make changes locally by editing my zone files, running rndc reload which sends NOTIFYs to their servers, and have the changes live on the Internet a few seconds later. I really, really don't want to give that up.

The problem is that Domain Monger is more expensive than other registrars, they're relatively tiny (will they be around 5 years from now? I don't know), and they don't support IPv6 glue records. I've asked Name.com's tech support and they don't support slave DNS. gkg.net offered to do it for "just" $25/year, which is way more than I pay for the domains themselves through Domain Monger. I haven't found a definitive answer yet for Namecheap.com. Does anyone know of a good registrar with decent prices, IPv6 glue support, and slave DNS?

Not anymore

[Anonymous Coward]

GoDaddy has now dropped its support, do to threat of boycots. See link below:

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2011/12/victory-boycott-forces-godaddy-to-drop-its-support-for-sopa.ars

Of course.

[Anonymous Coward]

The web site gets shut down, and they still get to keep your money. Where's the downside for them?

Also moving off of godaddy

[merkin]

Transferring to namecheap - I'll never use go daddy again. Those guys are up to some serious assholery.

Done with Go Daddy

[Outtascope]

When our certificate renewals come up next year I will be switching companies. I don't give a flying fart that they cowardly backtracked on their initial stupidity. If they actually needed to hear from the "internet community" to discover just how fscking distructive SOPA is to everyone but the *iaa then they are too fscking stupid for me to trust my security with. FOAD GoDaddy! - A former customer

Time for a new host...

[Vrallis]

Well, time for a new web host. No way will I continue to support them.

Go Daddy changes view

[bobdevine]

GoDaddy now does not support SOPA.

http://www.godaddy.com/newscenter/release-view.aspx?news_item_id=378

SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. (Dec. 23, 2011) - Go Daddy is no longer supporting SOPA, the "Stop Online Piracy Act" currently working its way through U.S. Congress.

hi

[costy41]

Well maybe now Danica Patrick can put her clothes back on and get to racing when her Pimp GoDaddy goes belly up and can't afford to pay for her services anymore . sciatic nerve pain

Godaddy flip-flops

[Anonymous Coward]

Godaddy flip-floped and is now no longer supporting the SOPA legislation:
http://www.godaddy.com/newscenter/release-view.aspx?news_item_id=378