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Censorship The Internet Politics Technology

GoDaddy Backs SOPA 353

Posted by samzenpus from the if-you-don't-have-anything-good-to-say dept.
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."
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GoDaddy Backs SOPA More

GoDaddy Backs SOPA

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  • GoDaddy (Score:5, Insightful)

    by InterestingFella ( 2537066 ) on Friday December 23, 2011 @12:38AM (#38468496)
    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.

  • So it must be time (Score:5, Insightful)

    by medcalf ( 68293 ) on Friday December 23, 2011 @12:39AM (#38468502) Homepage
    to move my domain off of GoDaddy. My laziness only gets them so much revenue.

  • 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.

  • Bad Decision GoDaddy (Score:3, Interesting)

    by muphin ( 842524 ) on Friday December 23, 2011 @12:39AM (#38468506) Homepage
    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 (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 23, 2011 @12:42AM (#38468522)

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

    • Re:Bad Decision GoDaddy (Score:5, Insightful)

      by amazon10x ( 737466 ) on Friday December 23, 2011 @12:42AM (#38468526)

      Don't wait for them to pass it.

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

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by muphin ( 842524 )
        any suggestions to a good provider?
      • 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.
    • 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.
      • 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?

  • Of course they back SOPA... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by pr0f3550r ( 553601 ) on Friday December 23, 2011 @12:40AM (#38468516)
    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... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Trepidity ( 597 ) <[delirium-slashdot] [at] [hackish.org]> on Friday December 23, 2011 @12:49AM (#38468566)

      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... (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Maxo-Texas ( 864189 ) on Friday December 23, 2011 @01:28AM (#38468784)

      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).

  • Reddit Boycotts GoDaddy (Score:5, Funny)

    by souravzzz ( 2001514 ) on Friday December 23, 2011 @12:43AM (#38468530) Homepage
    Reddit users [reddit.com]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.

  • I never liked GoDaddy much in the first place.

  • 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

    • 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.

    • Comment removed (Score:5, Informative)

      by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Friday December 23, 2011 @02:55AM (#38469134)
      Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • Money (Score:5, Insightful)

    by mcelrath ( 8027 ) on Friday December 23, 2011 @12:47AM (#38468552) Homepage

    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.

  • So under SOPA.... (Score:3)

    by mark-t ( 151149 ) <markt AT nerdflat DOT com> on Friday December 23, 2011 @12:47AM (#38468560) Journal

    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?

    • 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.... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by SuricouRaven ( 1897204 ) on Friday December 23, 2011 @01:06AM (#38468666)
      "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: (Score:2)

        by mark-t ( 151149 )
        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?
    • Comment removed based on user account deletion

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by mark-t ( 151149 )
        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.... (Score:5, Insightful)

          by geminidomino ( 614729 ) on Friday December 23, 2011 @02:16AM (#38468996) Journal

          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.

  • 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

  • Nerf 'em.

  • 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.
  • 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 fa

    • 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

  • How to Leave GoDaddy (Score:5, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 23, 2011 @01:19AM (#38468738)

    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 [jeffepstein.me]

    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 [namecheap.com]) 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 [twitter.com]) and DNSimple (which offers a discount for those escaping GoDaddy [dnsimple.com]),

    • Re:How to Leave GoDaddy (Score:5, Informative)

      by mariasama16 ( 1895136 ) on Friday December 23, 2011 @02:30AM (#38469046)
      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).

  • I remember an awesome quote (Score:2, Funny)

    by 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

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

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

  • NASCAR (Score:4, Insightful)

    by RazorSharp ( 1418697 ) on Friday December 23, 2011 @01:59AM (#38468924)

    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.

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

  • That is all.

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

  • -3, fuck you godaddy (Score:4, Interesting)

    by X.25 ( 255792 ) on Friday December 23, 2011 @02:56AM (#38469142)

    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.

  • Keep GoDaddy's history in mind (Score:5, Informative)

    by Arrogant-Bastard ( 141720 ) on Friday December 23, 2011 @07:10AM (#38470092)
    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.

  • No thanks (Score:4, Informative)

    by nurb432 ( 527695 ) on Friday December 23, 2011 @09:16AM (#38470722) Homepage Journal

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

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