Go Daddy Reverses Course On SOPA 330
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).
Obligatory (Score:5, Interesting)
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!
Just Goes To Show ... (Score:5, Interesting)
Too little too late (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
I think the bigger news here is... (Score:5, Interesting)
Stack Overflow used GoDaddy?? WTF?
Re:Too Late. You've shown us your heart. (Score:5, Interesting)
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?
Re:Too little too late (Score:4, Interesting)
The previous GoDaddy news item on /. was the straw for me. The SOPA support was just a motivator to put some more effort in moving all my domains.
Re:I think the bigger news here is... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Too late? (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
This is a typical GoDaddy scam (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Re:Of which, 24% are law firms... (Score:5, Interesting)
And the most of the rest appear to be either unions (police and labor) and the content owners themselves like MPAA, ABC, CBS, NFL, and Disney (i.e. the usual suspects). GoDaddy seemed to be the only Internet based company on that list. I'm not sure I understand the motivation for all of the major drug and cosmetic companies, except to say that they rely heavily on copyright and patent to maintain their business models (no pun intended for the cosmetic companies).
Honestly, I was expecting that PDF to be a huge download, not 3 1/3 pages of companies I pretty much fully expected to see. If that's a mostly comprehensive list, I'm baffled as to why this sees so much support in Congress. The dollars must really be flowing from the usual suspects mentioned above.
Re:Just Goes To Show ... (Score:5, Interesting)
Voting with your dollars works!
Unless of course it gets [redgreenandblue.org] you [gather.com] arrested [dailykos.com] instead. GoDaddy would probably be thrilled if they could have people arrested for transferring domains to another registrar if too many people try to do so at once -- and don't be surprised if some future version of DMCA/SOPA/FUBAR actually includes such a provision, or at least language which can be twisted that way. Face it, folks, they're not going to quit pushing.
Re:DUMP THEM! (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Just Goes To Show ... (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Too late? (Score:5, Interesting)
from https://twitter.com/#!/jimmy_wales/status/150287579642740736 [twitter.com]
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
The Amazing Shrinking List of Supporters (Score:3, Interesting)
There been some shrinking of the "Judiciary Committee’s list of SOPA supporters", perhaps due to cold water? Compare this list [digitaltrends.com] (439 entries, dec 21) with the 'official' list [house.gov] (142 entries, dec 23).
Beyond the law firms that have complained [techdirt.com], I can't help but note that Electronic Arts aren't in the PDF.
Also, every time some actor tweets [twitter.com] anti-SOPA sentiment, make sure to point out to them that the Screen Actors Guild are official SOPA supporters according to the judiciary.
Amazing how many non-affected companies are listed (Score:4, Interesting)
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).
Re:lolwut? (Score:3, Interesting)
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.
Re:Too late? (Score:5, Interesting)