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    Go Daddy Really Screwed Up

    By Adam Clark Estes | The Atlantic Wire – Tue, Dec 27, 2011
    Go Daddy Really Screwed Up

    Christmas passed without a fallen snowflake at Go Daddy's Arizona headquarters, as the former supporter of the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) watched tens of thousands of customers flee its business. The Domains, a web analytics blog, reported on Christmas Eve that customers moved 37,000 domains off of Go Daddy's service in two days, and by the next day, another 28,000 had bailed. Maybe it has something to do with that Reddit boycott planned for December 29, and maybe it had to do with recent reports that Go Daddy shuts down domains at the drop of a hat -- but the business sure is dealing with a reckoning.

    RELATED: The Web Collectively Protests Congress's Censorship Law


    In case you missed it, the great Go Daddy Boycott of 2011 started with a single call to action on Reddit. After the company came out in support of SOPA -- they'd even submitted a testimony to the House Judiciary Committee praising the bill's aggressive approach -- quite a few customers got on board the boycott effort last week. The company's chief executive Warren Adelman stepped forward and pulled Go Daddy's support of SOPA less than 24-hours after the boycott went viral, but he didn't exactly speak out against the bill. He sounded so sincere at first. “Go Daddy is no longer supporting SOPA, the ‘Stop Online Piracy Act’ currently working its way through U.S. Congress.” Adelman said in a statement last Friday, after the Reddit boycott caught fire. But then he waffled a bit. "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. It’s very important that all Internet stakeholders work together on this," Adelman continued. "Getting it right is worth the wait. Go Daddy will support it when and if the Internet community supports it." 

    RELATED: Hollywood Dominates the Debate at Internet Censorship Hearing


    It could be argued that Go Daddy's half-hearted criticism of SOPA only served to piss off the bill's opponents even more. Though the number of domains moved off of the service could be attributed to every day spillage. The Domains reports that on Friday "Godaddy.com lost 21,054 domain through transfers out to other registrars, [but] they received 20,034 transfers into Godaddy.com from other registrars." Meanwhile, other protests have popped up. Anonymous promised to go ahead with the boycott, despite the statement, since Go Daddy could change its stance but it couldn't change the extent to which the company had helped prop up SOPA to begin with. Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales vowed to migrate all of Wikipedia's domains away from Go Daddy's servers around the same time Adelman balked on his company's support. Then things got nasty. On Monday, plans to "Google bomb" Go Daddy's website surfaced on Hacker News. (A Google bomb is a concerted effort to remove a certain site from the top of Google's search results.) A couple days prior, one user pointed out that Reddit's preferred image-hosting site Imgur.com was registered through Go Daddy on Friday, and its founder promised to join the boycott effort just a few hours later. (Remember: This disdain is being expressed during Christmas, the most cheerful time of the year.)

    RELATED: Bring on the Anxiety Parade for the SOPA Alternative


    Then again, some might say that Go Daddy had it coming. The most visceral concern about the effect of SOPA involves the bill's potential to censor the Web, but there's evidence that Go Daddy, one of the biggest domain registrars in the world, has already been doing this. David Rusenko, founder of Go Daddy competitor Weebly, blogged on Monday about how GoDaddy axed his company's domains after a single complaint back in 2009. "[Go Daddy] had received a complaint about the content of a site, and that they were removing the DNS entries for weebly.com because of it," Rusenko explained in his post. "I asked him if they had contacted us previously -- he responded that they hadn't. The site in question featured a bad review of a local business, and that business had complained." This is more or less the same process that would enable the government to block domains following a piracy complaint. But in the name of skepticism, let's not forget that Go Daddy and Weebly are direct competitors, so of course Rusenko would stand to gain by telling stories about how Go Daddy censors sites.

    RELATED: The Titans of Silicon Valley Rally Around the SOPA Alternative


    All things told, we're still a couple of days away from the planned Go Daddy boycott, and the worst is probably yet to come. We'll keep an eye on the number of customers fleeing Go Daddy's business, but given its history of hijinks, we're tempted to pay more attention to Anonymous's as-yet-unannounced plans for a protest. Anonymous's telling tweet reads: "@GoDaddy We do not forgive, We do not forget. We are legion. Expect us. #BoycottGoDaddy."

     
    • TheLadyKT
      TheLadyKT  •  5 mths ago
      The title of the article says it all. Also, seems like SOPA is probably be just another piece of legislation passed by the minority in Congress for the corporate bigwigs who funnel money to their campaigns and AGAINST the wishes of the MAJORITY of Americans
      • Neo
        Neo 5 mths ago
        The minority in the house(dems) or Senate(Reps)
      • A Yahoo! User 4 mths ago
        After the first of the year we will also be moving all of our domains onto someone elses server along with as many of the additional products that I can take with me. I'll also do my part to make sure that nobody forgets how we got there. Fk you godaddy.
    • Jason
      Jason  •  5 mths ago
      It has become very clear that the greatest threat to freedom in the US is our own government.
      • FrankB
        FrankB 5 mths ago
        Not quite, Jason: it's the corporate elite who OWN the government.
    • Coffee man 2
      Coffee man 2  •  5 mths ago
      I think Go Daddy was shady a long time ago. The held my domain name hostage for over a year and half after I cancelled my account with them. I hope they go out of business!!
      • KendraB
        KendraB 5 mths ago
        That happened to me,too!
      • Coffee man 2
        Coffee man 2 5 mths ago
        Ridiculous how they can get away with that isn't it?
      • John
        John 5 mths ago
        Totally agree. Terrible.
    • Jessie
      Jessie  •  Maynard, Massachusetts  •  5 mths ago
      SOPA has very little to do with piracy. The government wants to gain more and more control of our lives. First the Patriot Act, the NDAA...and now this.
      Our enemy is not overseas....People need to realize that.
      • White Candyman
        White Candyman 5 mths ago
        Our primary enemies are Jews and White renegades, and even fewer people understand that.
      • M.
        M. 5 mths ago
        That's smart....blame it on Jews and Whites when it's Obama and the democrats creating this stuff people don't want.
      • The Hangman
        The Hangman 5 mths ago
        M, the NDAA was passed by a majority of Republicans in the house. This is not an issue or left, right or race. It is an issue for all freedom loving Americans. It is true, the enemy is not over there, they are over here.
    • RuneTree
      RuneTree  •  Ramsey, New Jersey  •  5 mths ago
      Honestly did they really think with the name "Go Daddy" they would earn or command respect never liked them never will.
    • Rev. Al Schmuckton
      Rev. Al Schmuckton  •  Newark, New Jersey  •  5 mths ago
      You internet coneheads had better figure out a way to put Go Daddy out of business.
    • Truth Rising
      Truth Rising  •  St Charles, Missouri  •  5 mths ago
      Don't try to take our internet. This is USA, not China
      • Norske
        Norske 5 mths ago
        You write like you're from China.
      • Henry
        Henry 5 mths ago
        The day that you see that all peoples live under oppressive regimes will be the day that you are free and on your way to truth.
    • Jac
      Jac  •  5 mths ago
      This is not about piracy. It is about government control of the internet. Go Daddy threw in with the corrupt government. And is getting what it deserves for that.
    • Nick
      Nick  •  5 mths ago
      SOPA isn't about theft, it's about power to censor. The same language used in this bill is used in China's laws to keep people from protesting the government or exposing corruption, yet intellectual theft runs rampant there.
    • M M
      M M  •  5 mths ago
      What most people don't understand is that SOPA has little to do with piracy.

      It gives the government full control over what can be seen online and what can't be seen online for Americans. So, they could block facebook (not that bad of a thing) or block sites with information like wikipedia/etc. because they either "support piracy" or whatever excuse they could make up. They could stop sties that support civil protests when it becomes inconvenient.

      In short, SOPA turns the USA into every other country we criticize for stomping on human rights online. It has absolutely nothing to do with Piracy. They only called SOPA so that casual idiots wouldn't understand it, thinking, "What's so bad about stopping piracy?"

      We all want to stop Piracy, we just don't want to lose our rights to do so!!!
    • paul
      paul  •  Austin, Texas  •  5 mths ago
      I will be dumping my 4 domains, F U Go Daddy!
    • Specter
      Specter  •  Des Moines, Iowa  •  5 mths ago
      I always thought Go daddy was a strip joint somewhere...
    • Alan
      Alan  •  5 mths ago
      I once bought a hosting account with godaddy and screwed up on the domain name i tied it to. apparently at the time they would not let you change the name you assigned it, you had to cancel the account completely, lose your money, and repurchase an account. I called up support and they didn't give 2 chits. You know what their response was? "We're number 1 in the world!" yes, the person on the phone literally told me they can do whatever they want because, and I quote "We're #1 in server hosting". This is literally what he told me and that I should go ahead and just cancel, lose my money and buy a new account even though I hadn't even used the first one due to the name screw up. Needless to say I found a better host after that, GoDaddy can go suck it.
    • Old Corps Grunt
      Old Corps Grunt  •  5 mths ago
      They're even worse when it comes to customer support.
    • Steve
      Steve  •  Culpeper, Virginia  •  5 mths ago
      M M is correct, that SOPA has little to do with online piracy. What is does do is broaden the "online piracy" definition, including intellectual rights, much like the crap Microsoft likes to pull on people.
    • Mary W
      Mary W  •  5 mths ago
      Go Daddy? Oh you mean the idiot that thinks its fun going on canned elephant hunts..
    • Me
      Me  •  Fresno, California  •  5 mths ago
      Ha! I refused to even entertain them as a "professional" business after watching their stupid commercials.
    • Stephen
      Stephen  •  5 mths ago
      HAHAHAHAHAHA wow are a lot of businesses out of touch with reality. Go daddy, straight down the toilet.
    • CC0623
      CC0623  •  Roosevelt, Utah  •  5 mths ago
      I am dropping my godaddy accounts.
    • Fireagle
      Fireagle  •  5 mths ago
      STOP SOPA!
     Post a comment
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