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Go Daddy Reverses Course On SOPA
An anonymous reader writes "Go Daddy has relented in the face of public pressure and will no longer support SOPA. 'Fighting online piracy is of the utmost importance, which is why Go Daddy has been working to help craft revisions to this legislation—but we can clearly do better,' Warren Adelman, Go Daddy's newly appointed CEO, said."
Go Daddy was put under a tremendous amount of pressure from around the internet; a boycott had been organized for Dec. 29th, and several major sites threatened to pull their domains from Go Daddy, including Stack Overflow and I Can Has Cheezburger. The U.S. House Judiciary committee posted a list of companies who support SOPA (PDF).
In an effort to eliminate any confusion about its reversal on SOPA though, Jones has removed blog postings that had outlined areas of the bill Go Daddy did support.
Busted!
"Not supporting SOPA" isn't the same as "taking a stand against SOPA."
I want to see them actively lobbying against it now, instead of just taking back what they said. Then maybe I'll have some respect for them. I still plan on transferring away from them as soon as I can.
Voting with your dollars works!
"Love heals scars love left." -- Henry Rollins
Already transferred my domains away today. Reversing their position doesn't really change anything at this point. They supported it and would've continued to if it hadn't been for the backlash.
And even besides that, their advertising schemes have been creepy from the start and Bob Parsons is now and always will be a cunt. SOPA support was just the straw that broke the camel's back for me.
Spelling mistakes, grammatical errors, and stupid comments are intentional.
Stack Overflow used GoDaddy?? WTF?
Ditto ditto. My 3 domains are transferred off already. Honestly I've been planning on doing so anyway as GoDaddy sucks in so many other ways, so their change in course on SOPA is too-little too-late.
Nothing to see here
Cheezburger has 1000 domains. http://techcrunch.com/2011/12/22/cheezburgers-ben-huh-if-godaddy-supports-sopa-were-taking-our-1000-domains-elsewhere/
How else would you expect a company to respond? How many times have people used the phrase "Vote With Your Dollars!"? This is exactly an example of that.
Go Daddy supported something. Its customers voted (or threatened to vote) with their dollars. Go Daddy re-evaluated what that meant and changed its stance.
Isn't that what you would want to see a corporate entity do?
First of all, it should say "a list of companies that support SOPA," because companies are not people
Actually they basically are under US law. Immortal people who have no wants or desires beside profit and no obligations to society at large. The modern corporation is the true American Psycho.
... who stand to profit from the implementation of SOPA.
(Referring to the list of supporters)
-- A change is as good as a reboot.
Don't let laziness prevent you from doing the right thing. In the long run, most of the anti-SOPA registrars offer even cheaper services, so it makes sense even financially, if your ethical sense is underdeveloped.
"The agriculture ministry is not in charge of Gundam" - Japanese ministry official.
I am not interested in doing business with a company sufficiently clueless about the Internet that they would ever have supported that bill.
If they are that unclear on what the Internet is or why it matters, they can go be clueless without me.
I think we've reached the point where it's time to remember that the purpose of copyright is not to ensure absolute and perfect control, it's to give good enough control that people can figure out a way to make money doing creative work. You know what? People are making money doing creative work. We're done. The "problem" of piracy isn't a problem, any more than the expiration of copyright was a problem.
My blog: http://www.seebs.net/log/ --- My iPhone/iPad app: http://www.seebs.net/seebsfrac/
I maded you a reply, but I ated it.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Yeah, you DO NOT want to piss off the LoLCat people. We take our cats very seriously here. Just sayin.
Not really. I'd rather see them do the right thing in the first place. Instead of them being ass hats and only after they've pissed on enough customers make a superficial about face. Just so they can survive just long enough for most people to forget what they did and preform another ass hat move.
What I'd like to see is a change in behavior. If you are constantly evil, an apology won't cut it. What can correct this is changing your behavior and not being constantly evil.
"I can has renewal money" should be GoDaddy's new motto. Never nom the hand that pets you.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
I have been transferring all my domains, it just takes forever with some of them. Since I had been intending to move them from godaddy anyway, this is the perfect excuse to do it.
Go Daddy re-evaluated what that meant and changed its stance.
Isn't that what you would want to see a corporate entity do?
It didn't change its stance. It dropped support for the bill, but still claimed that 'fighting online piracy is of the utmost importance'. So it's still not a company anyone should be dealing with.
I've already transferred my domain and cancelled the auto renewal on another. Ha.
Why only cancel the auto-renew on one? It's worth pointing out (in case this is your reason) that you won't lose your current registration time by transferring to a new registrar. Usually transferring to the new registrar involves paying for a 1 year renewal but this 1 year will be added on to your existing registration, not replacing it. For instance I had domains with Godaddy that expired in 2012 and 2013, now I've transferred to internet.bs they expire in 2013 and 2014 respectively.
Spelling mistakes, grammatical errors, and stupid comments are intentional.
We've seen the same thing with their treatment of spammer domains. It works like this:
We notice some spam. We report it to them. They ignore the reports.
We notice some more spam. We report it to them. They tell us it didn't come from their network/their customers/their affiliate/their anything.
We notice some more spam. We report it to them. They forward the reports to the spammers, who either list-wash us or send us more spam or send us nasty notes, sometimes with threats.
We notice some more spam. We report it more widely, and other people start taking notice. Eventually a number of people concur that yes, it's spam, and yes, it's GoDaddy's responsibility, and yes, they ought to do something.
When the chorus gets loud enough, GoDaddy finally does something -- like forcing the spammers to move their domains elsewhere. They announce this as a major blow against spam thanks to their own hard work and diligence. They trumpet their anti-abuse policies, pat themselves on the back, ignore the people who actually did the research, forget all about how long the abuse went on, and claim the whole thing as yet another win for themselves.
Process repeats.
So there is no doubt whatsoever in my mind that this is just the latest variation of that scam. GoDaddy is only allegedly changing its mind because of the money involved. It's not on principle, because they have none. I guarantee you that -- behind the scenes -- they're still doing everything they can to support this bill.
So, please, everyone: don't be naive and stupid enough to fall for this scam. Remember: if GoDaddy was REALLY against this bill, they could have said so yesterday. Or last week. They didn't.
...aren't going to stop pulling this bullshit if they backpedal every time a threat is made. BoA, Netflix, and now GoDaddy seem to be playing these types of games pretty regularly. I've been looking for a decent replacement registrar since seeing the original article this morning and I think that, despite their backpedaling, I'm going to pull my account from them anyway. You know, there's a saying that "it's easier to ask for forgiveness than permission"...these assholes seem to want us to "forgive" them every time they threaten to take our rights away. It's abundantly clear that they aren't interested in preserving Freedom, so fuck them. Flame on...
The story of GoDaddy supporting SOPA is still on /.'s front page, and now this....
Funniest thing I've seen in ages. :-)
From the looks of things, this's just multiplied the Drop GoDaddy boycott by the Steisand Effect.
Funny as hell. And I thought they'd lost any thinking customers once the elephant shoot hit the headlines.
Yuk, yuk, yuk, ...
"Tongue tied and twisted, just an Earth bound misfit
this month's internet bitch! Congrats to the GoDaddy executives and Bobbby Peason for being such wussies. You follow quite well in the standard neocon's shoes....
Yeah, turns out that the vast majority of people that maintain websites are against SOPA. Which is totally obvious considering the demographic. One really wonders what the fuck GoDaddy thought was gonna happen here. This stupid SOPA shit is so totally stacked against anyone that isn't a Huge Media Conglomerate or MAFIAA fuck that they should have expected this response.
Besides, everyone knows they're not sincere with this reversal. They just don't want to lose their customer base. Probably should have thought before they backed legislation that directly harms their customer base, though...
That's why they have such undue pull. If you look at the American economy, tech companies are WAY bigger than media companies. Intel alone could practically buy and sell Hollywood. However they don't spend a whole lot on bribes. They give money, of course, all companies do, but not on the level media companies do. The media companies give tons and have lots of lobbyists. They are real big on trying to buy the laws they want.
from https://twitter.com/#!/jimmy_wales/status/150287579642740736
I am proud to announce that the Wikipedia domain names will move away from GoDaddy. Their position on #sopa is unacceptable to us.
Let's see if wikipedia continues the move or not after this 180 turn
root@127.0.0.1
There been some shrinking of the "Judiciary Committee’s list of SOPA supporters", perhaps due to cold water? Compare this list (439 entries, dec 21) with the 'official' list (142 entries, dec 23).
Beyond the law firms that have complained, I can't help but note that Electronic Arts aren't in the PDF.
Also, every time some actor tweets anti-SOPA sentiment, make sure to point out to them that the Screen Actors Guild are official SOPA supporters according to the judiciary.
Belief is the currency of delusion.
Yeah, I know, but there are far more personal websites out there than Cocacola.com's, if you get my meaning.
Like you said, the odds of someone using their service being in support of SOPA are slim to none. The Cocacola.com's aren't using GoDaddy. They basically gave 99% of their customer base the finger by supporting this stupid shit. What a bunch of idiots...
The PDF list is by far the most interesting thing of this article and you'd expect it to be all media/software companies (since it's online piracy that the bill is concerned with). Surprisingly, there's a fair number of non-media/sofware companies who don't seem to have anything to do with online piracy at all - here's some:
Concerned Women for America (is there a Concerned Men for America too?)
Congressional Fire Services Institute
Coty / Estee Lauder Companies / L'Oreal / Revlon (why so many cosmetics companies?!)
International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers
Pharmeceutical Research and Manufacturers of America
Pfizer, Inc.
Tiffany & Co.
Not to mention a slew of slimebag lawyers who might stand to profit from any future legal action taken as a result of SOPA. About a third of the list includes conpanies that don't produce anything online to pirate and therefore, should never have been on the list on the first place (their presence is simply lobbying and not actually justified). I wonder how many boycotts we're going to see other than the frankly awful Go Daddy (who were terrible even before supposedly briefly supporting SOPA).
Being based in the UK, I wonder if a UK version of SOPA would result in a list of companies being released that supported the act - I don't know if companies in the UK publicly admit their support for legislation (or at least admitted in a way that a Freedom of Information Act request could reveal).
'Fighting online piracy is of the utmost importance
No, it isn't. Fighting online piracy is a nice-to-have, not a mission-critical.
The ability to transmit information quickly and reliably around the world -- that is of utmost importance. Promoting the progress of science and the useful arts is of utmost importance. Protecting this one particular, possibly outmoded, approach to funding science and the arts is something that we should do if there is a cost effective way to make it happen.
We have not found a cost effective way to do so. The past 15 years of copyright law have cost us far more than they have paid, even in the short run, and their long-run impact in denying or delaying new forms of art, let alone new means of information distribution, is impossible to measure. It is time for us to stop defending and losing ground. This little industry that represents less than 5% of the U.S. GDP is taking far too much away from the other 95% that is absolutely dependent on information distribution. It is time to roll back these hasty and flawed laws that hinder information distribution to protect one small sector of our economy. We need to find ways to enable creators to profit that do not damage the entire rest of the economy. We need to challenge the unsubstantiated belief that this one archaic mode of funding is "of utmost importance."
Stop-Prism.org: Opt Out of Surveillance
http://techcrunch.com/2011/12/23/godaddy-ceo-there-has-to-be-consensus-about-the-leadership-of-the-internet-community/
Especially this piece:
Adelman couldn’t commit to changing its position on the record in Congress when asked about that, but said “I’ll take that back to our legislative guys, but I agree that’s an important step.” But when pressed, he said “We’re going to step back and let others take leadership roles.” He felt that the public statement removing their support would be sufficient for now, though further steps would be considered.
It's clear that they just want to hide in the shadow instead of taking "leadership" role in supporting SOPA now. Surprise!
I'd never heard of either of the previous issues. Their commercials were scummy, but they started them after I'd already started registering domains with them, and it was convenient to keep all my domains in one place, and bad commercials aren't enough to make me leave a product that's working for me.
However, this news put transferring my domains as part of my to-do list for the weekend. This reversal doesn't change that: It says they can listen, but not that they can think. Otherwise wouldn't have taken the position they did in the first place.
'Sensible' is a curse word.
this 180 turn
This is not a 180 degree turn. It is a grudging submission to their customers on one issue. A 180 degree turn would be for them to oppose SOPA and to challenge the notion that imposing traditional copyright onto this new and incompatible medium is the only possible way to promote the progress of science and the useful arts.
This is maybe a 60 degree turn, and I'm being generous.
Stop-Prism.org: Opt Out of Surveillance
ICANN has Cheeseburger indeed... ICANN will disintegrate if SOPA goes through. It'll be replaced by something with minimal US presence, which pretty much all ISPs and ICPs will use, unless legislated not to.
When Congress goes as far as telling Google they can't use their own DNS root, things will begin to get REALLY interesting.
And barring that, I'd like to see them do the right thing now... which, given the visibility they have with congress, is NOT to quietly sit in the back row and remove their blatant pro-SOPA propaganda... it's to go in and tell congress "We're losing all our business just on the THREAT of SOPA passing. I think we may want to kill this thing and come up with something that doesn't negatively affect everyone who uses web sites." Then to start lobbying in that direction, and start speaking out against the ways SOPA is harmful.
This isn't how I expect GoDaddy to respond, but this is the only way they'd gain my respect.
Well, I'm sure GoDaddy is reading this thread, so I just wanted to chime in: my employer is moving all of our ten trillion domains off of GoDaddy. And, we're suing GoDaddy for breach of contract; our contract contained explicit terms that the hosting company would not participate in the political process.
I feel fantastic, and I'm still alive.
GoDaddy has NOT withdrawn its official congressional support for SOPA
The Christian religion has been and still is the principal enemy of moral progress in the world. -- Bertrand Russell