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Rackspace: SOPA "Is a Deeply Flawed Piece of Legislation"
hypnosec writes "Cloud-based hosting service provider Rackspace has joined the ever expanding list of companies that are opposed to the U.S. Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA). In a blog post, Rackspace CEO Lanham Napier said that the controversial bill, which will get its final vote before the House Judiciary Committee, will do more harm than good, punishing innocent users in the process. 'The SOPA bill, as it stands, is a deeply flawed piece of legislation. It is bad for anyone who uses the Internet, including Rackspace, the more than 160,000 business customers that we serve, and the tens of millions of retail customers that they serve. It is bad for job creation and innovation,' Napier wrote."
While Rackspace here says that SOPA is a flawed piece of legislation (jumping on the bandwagon after seeing the turmoil caused for GoDaddy in the blog and geekospheres), it leaves the door open for them to support future, similar acts when that becomes fashionable or serves to make them money.
Coming out now and making a public statement in support would be suicide for their business, especially their cloud hosting business that has a lot more tech-savvy and SOPA-conscious customers than GoDaddy's services like wordpress hosting etc.
But at the end of the day, if anyone sends Rackspace a subpoena or DMCA letter, they knee-jerk right into compliance and give what they want. They don't have a policy of fighting things like Twitter (which is of arguable utility), and have no history of using their legal resources to do anything but guarantee business continuity.
Rackspace is not known a company with any strong moral, ethical or other principles, it's just out there for profit, and it says what is fashionable for profit at the time.