> In changing its position, Go Daddy remains steadfast in its promise to support security and stability of the Internet. 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.
> "Go Daddy has always fought to preserve the intellectual property rights of third parties, and will continue to do so in the future," Jones said.
Translation: we got caught this time, but will not hesitate to do it again.
> 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.
Translation: we said some pretty stupid things yesterday.
> Go Daddy ... worked with federal lawmakers for months ... legislation first introduced some three years ago ... entire Internet community ... ensure the integrity of the Internet
Translation: we've been neck-deep in this legislation, and will be pushing the next version of this bill too. Seized domains would have been a de facto transfer to Go Daddy.
> Go Daddy has received some emails that appear to stem from the boycott prompt, but we have not seen any impact to our business. We understand there are many differing opinions on the SOPA regulations
Translation: Screw you guys, wait, what did you say Jimmy Wales?
I don't know how tech saavy I am, but I continue to use them because they provide low cost Windows based hosting which is relatively easy to use. Every time I look for an alternative, a comparable level of services is significantly more expensive at other providers. I wish it weren't the case, but it is.
This is the first rational explanation I've seen for this, so I voted it up. I'd be interested in hearing alternative solutions, if only for your sake :).
I don't play around with domain control much, so don't keep myself informed, but if I were to register domains, it doesn't matter how cheap (or free!) GoDaddy was, just having seen their Superbowl ads, they're clearly not a company that intends to be taken seriously.
You can get away with that with beer ads because beer is basically entertainment. But domains are part of business, a core block. You need that to be reliable and serious. Doesn't mean your ads need to be po-faced, but it does mean that you have to exhibit some nod towards indicating you're a professional company. Nice tits are nice tits, but that doesn't make me confident in the technical nous - or perhaps more importantly, intended direction - of an internet company.
> 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.
You'd be surprised how willing most people are to just rewrite or delete history as it suits them.
I've heard of guys whose ex-girlfriends tore out and destroyed pages of their diaries related to the guy when they broke up.
People delete their half of conversations on forums, Facebook, etc. when they get proven wrong, so it looks like the other party was just talking to themselves.
Someone once asked me to help them remove someone from a photo (not a family photo, a documentary photo of a community activity). "Why?" "Because he was being annoying!" "But this photo could be printed in the paper. He was there. You can't just rewrite history like that!" "It's my photo! If you won't help me, I'll get someone else to do it."
Rewriting history is the norm. Most people haven't read 1984, and I suspect that many that do, don't get it.
Yes, they can just continue to lend their name to shooting elephants and misogynist ads.
I seriously doubt this is going to have much of an impact on them. So this one particular instance came back to bite them, good to know for them that pissing off techies is bad for business but animal rights people, devout christians and women ( all of whom have complained about various other parts of their business in the past ) don't have any impact on the companies actions.
most of their ads show some woman exhibiting reluctance to undressing, and then the men around her coercing her to do so anyways.
of course they're misogynist.
supporting SOPA fits in line with that philosophy. The one thing waterboarding, elephant hunting, SOPA and their misogynistic ads have in common is the element of using force against those who are far weaker than you are.
See harrylove's definition of misogynist below this. It's not a word that should be doled out frequently... just because an ad appreciates the female form.
Businesses run the government. Money controls business.
This happened to be one of those issues where it was very easy to clearly show the company that their particular actions would not be tolerated. Not only that, but the difficulty of moving your support away from them was tremendously easy as well.
Because of limitations, not all industries enjoy this sort of free market-esque lateral movement. Comm companies, for instance, enjoy the benefits of an established infrastructure to keep other players out, and to keep you contracted with them, even under anti-consumer behaviors.
This was just a case of all the pieces lining up just right, and the market actually aligning with consumer demand.
I think the mature thing to do, as cynical as this might sound, is to realize that the government is obscenely out of touch with its constituency, and stop going to them for help. Instead, influence the influencers.
At the end of the day, all companies have is customers. If the customers stop utilizing their services, the companies are forced to stop pushing their anti-consumer agendas into legislation. Part of this is utilizing the Internet, as it now is, to circumvent the old ways of doing things.
Essentially, while it is free, startups should be focusing on helping consumers circumvent traditional industries.
We all hate banks as they are. Let's reinvent them.
We all hate telecoms. Let's try to create startups that can compete with them.
We all hate loan institutions. Let's disrupt the loan structure, allow people to privately invest in one another on a micro scale. Hell, it's already being done for 3rd world nations.
We have a real opportunity to change things and make them better. Get out from under the institutionalized world we grew up in. Why not?
I love the idea of disrupting the loan structure. I think using things like Prosper or Lending Club is great. But I live in Pennsylvania where they are against the law.
We cannot ignore the ways in which government is broken.
Agree that "the government is obscenely out of touch with its constituency." Also agree that it makes sense to stop going to them for help, and the influencing the influencers is prudent. But there is another lever: get rid of the government system that would be so easily influenced by money over and above policy. Turn 'em out. Withdraw consent of the governed.
As far as loan institutions go and trying to create something that lets people invest in one another, the UK already has something along those lines: http://uk.zopa.com
I think the idea is great and wish Zopa got more press than they do.
I don't think it is that unrealistic to expect a shift away from TVs. In fact, number of households with a TV set is starting a downward trend which is accelerating.
It is certainly possible to buy DRM-free tracks, and indeed this should be encouraged. Creative commons music exists too. Movies are another matter, although I don't think discouraging people from movies altogether is too unrealistic, that could just be because I'm not big on movies in general myself.
yes but i say good luck with that because how big of a dent to the Comcasts of the world is this community?
For Godaddy this community is their market and thus we can force action by canceling our service. The market for Hollywood and the RIAA's products cover all walks of life.
You'd have to get your neighbor, aunt, 3rd cousin, etc to stop patronizing Hollywood and the ilk to hurt their bottom line. Your neighbor and grandma have never heard of SOPA nor do they care they just want to watch wheel of fortune or their favorite show.
Many in this community have canceled cable tv services, but again has your grandmother, father, 3rd cousin or neighbor done so too?
There's a lot of truth in these comments. The most effective change is productive change. Don't like something? Do something that's better. Look at startups like Square who are turning payment processing on its ear, or our project, Ting.com, promising to turn mobility on its ear. Doing a startup that tries to stick it to the man is probably the most effective means of achieving real positive change.
I think some good points are made in this post. People need to start implementing or at least, work toward implementation of changes to the status quo, whatever the industry/sector may be. Unless that happens, it is all moot.
There's no good place to say this, but that URL bothers me every time I see it. What the hell are "Rouge Websites?" I think they meant something else. :-P
I haven't actually read the text of SOPA, but I have this amusing fantasy of Anonymous having planted a congressional staffer to do a global search-and-replace through the entire law. Then, when it passes, the following can occur:
EvilMegaCorp : Remove this rogue domain from your DNS immediately.
DNS : Sorry, we're not going to do that.
EvilMegaCorp : But you are legally required to, per SOPA!
DNS : Actually, SOPA only requires us to de-link rouge websites. The Engrish-branded knockoff Asian cosmetics industry has really been decimated by this.
https://www.graphicartistsguild.org/ !! :)
They point to position statements ( https://twitter.com/#!/gaguild/status/150004542073872386 <- written by the copyright alliance) that speak to copyright and say the bill's scope is narrow and specific (I disagree), but I didn't see anything about technical concerns. I think it's fair to say those position statements are a load of horse shit.
"Sure we're giving the gov't the right to indefinitely detain anyone, but they're only going to do it if someone is rilly rilly bad, so don't worry! :)"* <- constitutional and civil liberties protections do not work this way.
*I know SOPA isn't the same, it's just an analogy :)
I'm looking at a dollar bill on the table in front of me, and I don't think it controls anything. It's an inanimate object.
I know this isn't what you mean. But it's helpful to point this out, for the sake of clear thinking and accuracy: human beings control money. They choose if, where and how to earn it or spend it. Ultimately, it's not money that controls business, but people, with ideas, lives, dreams, goals, motives (sometimes shortsighted and foolhardy, but also sometimes farsighted and brilliant) etc. There is no good reason to imply that one inanimate object or technology such as money is somehow inherently tainted, even if only to some small degree.
Why not try calling out bad ideas instead? What are they, and why are they bad?
> Fighting online piracy is of the utmost importance
This is not what I expect to hear from a CEO of the company that is an integral cog of the Internet. He still got his priorities all wrong, and his interests are still not aligned with the interests of the majority of Internet users. GoDaddy is exactly where it was yesterday, they simply made a cosmetic PR statement that doesn't really affect anything long term.
Exactly. I hope the move your domain day goes forward as planned. The ball has started rolling, why stop. Please people, don't stop.
I don't have any domains with GoDaddy (I'm contacting the company who handles mine though and asking them about SOPA) but I'm going to join in on the Wikimedia donation run.
What's not reassuring to me is that people are satisfied with this. Let's get real, GoDaddy is trying to dampen the outrage with very little. It may be a good sign - and we should feel happy - that we're starting to make a difference, but GoDaddy did a lot to support SOPA, they should do more than a PR blog post for people to declare victory and wrap up the GoDaddy+SOPA situation.
I'm sure it was some combination of everyone working together and the bad PR, but Google uses them as the default registrat for Google Apps domains.
Threatening to change that arrangement would have a continuing impact on their revenue, rather than being just a one-time outrage. That gives Google more leverage than the other sites, which is why I wonder how that played out.
But make no mistake: I'm very glad to see all the websites out there banding together to fight this. Reddit, Wikipedia and even Cheezburger created enough bad PR that they couldn't ignore this and we have to give them credit for that.
StackOverflow own what? 5 domains? stackoverflow.com, stackexchange.com, superuser.com, serverfault.com and stackapps.com . I can't see GoDaddy being that hugely influenced by 5 domains.
It's not the number but the influence of the entities behind them. If stackoverflow, reddit, and arsetechnica are commenting on an issue, you can be sure many will agree and join in.
It's possible that they were faced with a mass walkout of key employees.
I know I'd tender my resignation the next day if I worked for someone who issued a press release like Go Daddy's earlier one. As a rule, the few employees who are genuinely mission-critical to a large organization can always find work somewhere else.
Don't be fooled, people. I will believe GoDaddy when they provide proof that they have indeed stopped supporting SOPA. They claim that they've been working with lawmakers for months; what is to stop them from publicly "withdrawing" support for SOPA, while they continue to support it behind the scenes?
Until SOPA and its offsprings are dead, keep the pressure on GoDaddy and other supporters of SOPA! Don't let these weak public statements distract you; there's a lot that goes on behind the scenes.
Publicly telling Congress that GoDaddy supported SOPA, but had to back off when customers told them it's a bad idea -- and that Congress should do the same.
No matter what they say, GoDaddy hasn't reversed their position until they do so in front of Congress and publicly withdraw their letter of support from the judiciary committee hearings.
I agree. This boycott is starting to make a difference, but it's too early to declare victory. We've made it this far, we shouldn't give up so easily. If we buy this PR talk without further questions, then we're fooling ourselves to think we won, and we're setting a bad example. They did a lot in favor of SOPA, if they mean what they just said, then they need to do something against it. If not, it's meaningless and we got fooled.
The boycott should continue until they either take - or announce their plan of - action. Until they do, this PR talk is nothing more than that.
what could they say? we know sopa would make us some money but even before it's legilated it started to cost us money than we had to withdrew our support?
Reversing a decision only after costumers leave you in droves doesn't show your trust worthy. They either didn't understand the bill (in which case they shouldn't write a letter supporting it), or they are only changing now waiting for the bad PR to die down. If you have domains with them it is still worth switching to a company that will always publicly support freedom over oppressing peoples views to attempt to prevent some IP infringement. The rights to freedoms are more important than the rights to absolute control over corporations IP.
There is no way they didn't understand the bill. They fully understood the bill and probably were vying for a way to benefit from the bill. Everyone understands how bad this bill is for the Internet, unless someone has something to gain from it.
GoDaddy must have had something either legal or under the table that would benefit them immensely if they supported the bill.
Of course, I would have said that before they stopped supporting SOPA. They've always been a sleazy spammy company whose advertising is full of blatant sexism. We should not have been surprise by their support of SOPA. Sleaze will do as sleaze does.
Sums up my feelings pretty well. Transferred everything to Gandi. Not so many domains (maybe 10), but I couldn't have my personal domains associated with a brand like Godaddy.
The casual sexism and stupidity of their ads always grated, but I simply didn't want to drop the money to leave. That was stupid of me, "carrying a poisonous scorpion on your back" stupid. No more.
I've never been on their website (most of us over here use gandi.net) and was curious what you meant by blatant sexism and I just have to say wow. Just wow. It's so stupid it looks fake.
> In changing its position, Go Daddy remains steadfast in its promise to support security and stability of the Internet. 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.
Translation: Go Daddy removed all incriminating evidence of it's past.
I can't believe all the hate going on. They publicly admitted they were wrong and changed their stance. I don't care if you are a gigantic corporation or not, that takes guts and I can at least respect that.
There's no doubt they did it to stop the bleeding, but they still did it. And that's what we want right? For SOPA to lose traction, and for it not to pass. Yet it seems like this has almost become a dump on godaddy festival. Please don't lose sight of the reasons as to why we as rational internet using human beings did this in the first place.
I don't think it takes guts. I think it takes your CFO making some financial projections and your PR lead screaming at you for screwing up.
This isn't a very "authentic" feeling turnaround. It feels like PR damage control, which is exactly what it is. Its pretty clear looking at their Twitter account that Godaddy doesn't really understand social media, and from this response they don't understand PR in 2011.
They are simply trying to avoid the impending financial disaster that awaits them. They are just doing PR. It has absolutely nothing with what they "really" think about SOPA. It's all cosmetic, whatever turnaround they have shown. How can you change your thoughts in a day ? It's all about dollars for them and nothing else
> "Go Daddy has always fought to preserve the intellectual property rights of third parties, and will continue to do so in the future"
Maybe I'm being overly cynical, but this reads to me like: we still support SOPA, but we're going to pretend we don't, because we realise our customers are against it, but feel we can fool them by making a pro forma denunciation of SOPA.
I'm not a customer of Go Daddy, but if I was I would still transfer my domains. This declaration isn't good enough for me.
Agreed. They were totally for SOPA yesterday, and even went so far as to publicly antagonize people who disagreed with their position. Their general counsel was also an architect of the bill. Forgive me if I don't quite buy that they're going to stop pulling strings in SOPA's favor behind the scenes.
This is the right outcome, and they should be commended. I think SOPA is awful, and they were on the wrong side of the argument. Subsequently, they listened to customers and changed their position. (Yes, it’s self-interest, just like you and I engage in.)
One should resist the urge to say “yeah but they’re still awful people” unless one is willing to bring the same passion to everyone else on the list of supporters.
I totally agree with you. The real story here is that a large player in the internet (self proclaimed "World's #1 Domain registrar") crossed the line--to the "good side", therein lending more power to the cause of stopping this thing.
No, the "good side" is opposing censorship and DNS filtering.
Read what they wrote:
Go Daddy is no longer supporting SOPA, the "Stop Online Piracy Act" currently working its way through U.S. Congress.
"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. "It's very important that all Internet stakeholders work together on this. Getting it right is worth the wait. Go Daddy will support it when and if the Internet community supports it."
They are explicitly just backing off on this specific bill with the intent to do it "better" in the future.
GoDaddy sounds to me like they're reaffirming their support of the principle of DNS-based censorship and the domain seizure practices they currently participate in.
But what is the outcome? In what way does this undo the damage? They submitted a letter of support, and I presume money, to Congress. A post on their web page does not take back any of that.
I've seen lots of separate instances of scummy behaviour by GoDaddy, long before this SOPA spectacle.
Money is the only incentive they need, and the only one they follow. A big company is all about maximizing profits at every turn.
What to conclude? -Nothing. GoDaddy is still just as full of shit as it was before today, and will continue shafting its customers and corrupting your government.
GoDaddy's problem was that people who manage Internet domains tend to be technical folks, aware of SOPA and against it. As a result of this combination, there were actual consequences to supporting SOPA. It just happens to be easy enough to protest by moving your domains away, so lots of people did.
This was purely an exercise in damage control, not an indication of anything actually changing at GoDaddy.
My lord - I'm reading the response - and it gets worse:
"Go Daddy and its General Counsel, Christine Jones, have worked with federal lawmakers for months to help craft revisions to legislation first introduced some three years ago. "
Go Daddy wasn't simply _supporting_ SOPA - they were involved in creating it. They used their expert knowledge of DNS and DNS systems to create a system, which, I'm sure, would have provided them some competitive advantages.
If anything, this makes them even less trustworthy as an registrar than they were previously.
Realistically, the best way to stop systemically bad legislation like SOPA is just to keep delaying and delaying it until it loses momentum and peters out (at which time another systemically bad piece of legislation will arrive to take its place, starting the cycle over again).
Does anyone know when Bob Parsons stepped down as CEO? I realize he's still the Executive Chairman, but the "About GoDaddy" section at the bottom of the page still refers to him as CEO. The article also refers to Warren Adelman as "Go Daddy's newly appointed CEO."
I've noticed they are directly tweeting to people like @aplusk and @photomatt, trying to get the word out. Obviously the community has made a dent in their bottom line.
Bad publicity has an impact all its own at most companies. For example, they have a whole Marketing department trying to get their name out there in a positive light. When their phones light up with every member of the press wanting quotes (press contacts they've spent years working on their relationship with) the executives have to get together and talk about it and come up with a unified response that won't blow up on them like CarrierIQ.
It's a big big deal for a public-facing company. Bigger than, say, a small decrease in the rate of new $2 account customers.
One of the ones they tweeted to was Jimmy Wales, who had just tweeted "I am proud to announce that the Wikipedia domain names will move away from GoDaddy. Their position on #sopa is unacceptable to us."
I set up a Namecheap account and purchased a domain yesterday. No terrible upselling, pretty straightforward shopping cart (not a fan that it didn't take Discover, but no biggie). Overall, it was a pleasant experience.
I'm a longtime Go Daddy customer and have several domains with them.
I've thought about moving from GoDaddy, but never made it a priority. But I finally got motivated enough to see the process of switching might not be as painful as I thought. Now that I've seen what else is out there, it's go time. As my domains expire in the next few months, I'll switch them over to Namecheap.
At least for me, it's too little, too late this time for Go Daddy.
I wouldn't wait; the process takes some time and if you put it off until the last minute you will be forced to stay with godaddy. You are not able to transfer a domain if there is less than 7 days left until expiration. do it now and namecheap(or most registrars) will honor the remaining time on the contract and add the year that you buy onto it. really no reason to wait.
GoDaddy has been under fire for years for various reasons. While the SOPA boycott was definitely worthwhile and effective, we should really understand the power that the community has to influence a company's practices, and maybe shouldn't wait until it gets as bad as SOPA support to do this again in the future?
The power of reality and real feedback from technology leaders - and not just a suit in an office checking the [yes] box on a document.
Amazing discussions on Reddit and Hacker News - it'll be till Sept 2012 that this goes to vote again, let's make sure the SOPA discussion doesn't die during this time.
At this point, perhaps I'm biased and this is not the most productive response, by my personal opinion is still to "nuke 'em".
Far too little and way too late -- they were part of getting this monstrosity rolling, and their current action does little to stop it.
Put it in the entertainment industry's own lingo: The world needs an "example". And I think we'd have a hard time finding a better candidate (though there may be a some yet more deserving).
Boycotting is one of the most effective strategies to use when dealing with a company whose actions or stance you don't like. I'd wish more people started doing this when dealing with insurance companies,ISPs, record labels, facebook, heck even the government. After all, they are nothing without their customers.
This is great, and obviously from pressure. I suspect thought that it wasn't the hundreds of relatively unknown sites that turned it around. I'd bet it was Wikipedia. At some point even GoDaddy had to realize that this looks really, really bad.
Thanks Wikipedia. (and I hope they continue the switch anyway)
Read their press release. They still basically support it, they're just temporarily pausing public support because we're all upset about it.
Action speaks louder than words. Let GoDaddy know they actually have to _do_ something that is in the interests of a free and open internet. Taking action that is harmful and then giving lip service to freedom and spewing platitudes is not enough. Let them know it:
Someone posted this in a comment section and I had to say it, it's clever.
If neither side strongly supports or opposes something but lobbyists strongly support it then expect it to pass John Doe.
The best way to stop SOPA would ironically be the democrats strongly coming out in support of the bill, which would make the house suddenly refuse to even vote on SOPA, and would cause the bill to be filibustered in the senate. Why, because republicans have to oppose anything Obama/democrats are for.
Republicans strongly supporting SOPA would also likely kill it. The house would pass it, and Reid would refuse to even bring it to a vote in the Senate, or would bring it to a vote knowing that it'll lose just to show republicans that it can't pass the senate.
If you doubt me then look at the payroll taxcut fight going on right now. Republicans always support tax cuts, except when Obama & democrats support it, like the payroll tax cut being discussed.
The pharmacy lobbyists know this as well, there was part of Obama's healthcare law (I forget what part) that big pharma wanted removed from the bill that a lot of democrats had opposed when the healthcare law was written. Big pharma lobbyists told Republicans not to go on a public rampage demonizing that provision and blaming it on Obama, republicans demonized it and Obama for signing it into law anyway, and dozens of democrats who had previously voiced opposition to the provision voted against repealing the provision when the House voted on it months ago, and Reid refused to even hold a vote on it.
So the moral of the story? If we want to kill SOPA we just need to convince one political party to strongly support SOPA. The other party will reflexively strongly oppose SOPA and block it from ever becoming law.
I agree with a lot of people here. This is clearly a direct result of the harsh public backlash they've faced from the community. This statement can only be taken at face value until they do much more than post a public statement rescinding their support. We should continue pushing them and they should publicly speak against SOPA to its supporters and in Congress. They need to walk the walk not just talk the talk.
I am, however, a little confused.
Wasn't the goal of the campaign against GoDaddy to convince them to no longer support SOPA? Isn't this a small victory? If people in the community are not going to support them no matter what they do, where is their incentive to change behavior? I understand the cynicism but we need to also reward companies doing the right thing, even if they took some wrong turns along the way.
I've been reading over GoDaddy's blog posting from yesterday, and I just can't dismiss the feeling that GoDaddy's position as one of the largest domain registrars has given them a different view of American businesses facing difficulty with these so-called "foreign-based websites."
The blog posting emphasizes several times the importance and need to protect American businesses, which to me seems patriotic and sympathetic to promoting a good intention. I'm sure they didn't realize they would be "villanized" as a result of their actions.
As a registrar that does business internationally, it may seem (to an American) that it is appropriate for them to be patriotic ... but it is certainly not a good way to continue appealing to international consumers. The Internet should be boundary-free.
While I applaud GoDaddy for having reversed their position on SOPA, I believe they did so not because it was the right thing to do but because they feared for their bottom line.
I still think people should stay away from GoDaddy. You should not do business with anyone whose first instinct is to support defective legislation when they so clearly should know better. GoDaddy have shown what their values are. It is going to take a lot more than a press release to convince me that they are deserving of my business in the future.
Why is everyone so scornful? I am not suggesting we forgive and forget, but shouldn't we be a little more understanding? What's with the "no flip-flop" culture we have nowadays?
I'm scornful because their "recanting" still explicitly names dns filtering as A Good Useful Thing that they are proud of helping refine. They explicitly say they are proud of and would love to support this legislation. They don't get it.
"Go Daddy will support it when and if the Internet community supports it."
GoDaddy previously invested time and money into supporting this legislation: "have worked with federal lawmakers for months to help craft revisions to legislation first introduced some three years ago."
Let's see them invest some time and money into stopping SOPA. Making a statement is one thing, but money is speech these days and they can afford better lobbyists than we can.
The cynic in me is wondering whether this was a strategic move by SOPA supporters to remove a very easy source of negative press. I suspect the other pro-SOPA organisations are going to be a lot harder to boycott effectively.
The anti-SOPA movement is going to view this as a major win, which may distract from the bigger issue.
The question is now, if they do not "support" SOPA, willthey comply with any SOPA related domain takedowns should SOPA pass?
Sure, they don't overtly claim to support this law - but their actions after the fact shall really show whats going on inside.
Anyone recall when Earthlink was the only company to refuse to comply with allowing Carnivore boxes in its network?
Even though Earthlink, as a Scientologist founded provider, already had an internal policy of scanning all the traffic on their network to begin with.)
When the government shows up and wants something, very few companies refuse to comply. Even when they do not support the actions of the government.
We should be standing up to those companies as well - but we tend to forget quickly.
Nobody stood up to AT&T when they spied on EVERYONE for the crooks in DHS/NSA/CIA.
The reality is though that AT&T is far less of a public-facing company with a much more locked-in customer base. It's very easy to switch away from a company like GoDaddy and they know it.
It's too late GoDaddy! You're an evil company and have been so for years. Now the internet community has finally seen your true colors. Take your war-mongering, right-wing founder and go to hell for all I care. I hope everyone continues the backlash against you.
I say still boycott godaddy, just for having supported SOPA in the first place. The problem is Godaddy still does support and only pulled out, since threats of boycotts were made by there customers. LEAVE GO DADDY
This can't be reiterated enough. A company that is so evil, that it could support SOPA in the first place, will not lose that evilness and rotten culture overnight.
One could argue that if they fought to preserve the IP rights of third parties, they wouldn't be in the business of enabling the infringement of those rights by selling domain names and server space.
Christine Jones needs to encourage Congress not to pass this on behalf of Godaddy for this to be more than just a PR move. If they don't reverse their support in Congress, this is nothing more than a copout.
The fact that GoDaddy recanted is significant because any other internet companies will think twice before supporting SOPA, atleast publicly but that matters a lot. Maybe if US citizens could get more aware of the situation, they can make a dent in Media moguls' purses as well.
PR matters a lot to companies, if general population shows this kind of activism, SOPA can be defeated. Good luck US, the rest of the world is waiting for you to nip this censorship in the bud before it spreads like the virus in Resident Evil movies.
This is good for multiple reasons. One, it shows people that their voices do matter. They can contact their vendors and express opposition and if there are plenty enough of them, they can exert influence. Two, it shows other companies that there are enough people out there who are against SOPA that a big vendor like GoDaddy has had to flipflop its support for it because it threatened their bottom line. It will at least force them to have another conversation about withdrawing SOPA support.
But now the question is whether this is just damage control or if they really support anti-SOPA efforts now. Either way, they learned not to fuck with the Internet (their customers).
I think the positive outcome here is that Go Daddy publicly responded to customer pressure over what was no doubt a lot of 'insider' pressure from the folks at the RIAA/MPAA etc.
Getting the public and Congress educated on the realities of information value is a painfully slow process. However, as the wave finally crests I think our grandchildren will look back on this and say "Wow, you all really thought some weird things." (of course they will likely think that anyway but still)
I just tried to follow this link on my phone and it redirects to godaddymobile.com to show me some spam and no article. And they're in the Internet business...?
This company just reeks of clunkiness and tackiness. As keeps being mentioned, I can't believe tech-savvy, well-informed, well-educated people (e.g. YC founders) could go on godaddy.com, see their marketing material ("Go Daddy Girl (R)" ... what?!), their interface etc., and still go ahead and give them money.
I think a lot of people here are missing the point. It's not about GoDaddy. It's about results. This is a very public about-face, and regardless of their actual intent shows that these types of campaigns can be successful.
May I suggest the next target? Comcast and the other cable providers. We should threaten to cancel our cable service unless they stop supporting SOPA. Obviously they will not do this, so we should actually cancel our cable subscriptions!
This has just proved that we need to redesign the society, we are living with an obsolete model pre-internet. Who need their interest represented by one individual when everyone can have his voice now!? It's really evident that SOPA is an example of antidemoCrazy.
I'm glad Go-Daddy changed his mind. Now, this was just one battle, the war is not over! Let's stop when SOPA is no more, let's stop when we can decide what's best for all of us!
If they still support the Senate version (PROTECT-IP / PIPA) this means little. I'm ecstatic that the anti-SOPA crowd is advancing by leaps and bounds on an almost daily basis here, but in the next month we need to up the pressure on PIPA too - especially because it's farther along (full Senate set to discuss it January 24)
Again, the people have won. I am truly looking to see someone productize the power of the people on internet, and urging us to vote for and against a company with our dollars. A place where we can see what each company is up to (socially, and in other ways), and encouraging or discouraging consumers to work with them.
This doesn't mean it's okay to use them. Even if they're sincere in this turnaround (and I highly doubt they are), the fact that they lent support to this legislation at all shows that they are at best clueless, and at worst evil. In either case, they aren't going to be getting my business anymore.
A lot of behind the scenes action was probably going on here. Lots of negative scenarios could have played out for GoDaddy. Bob will do as he pleases, but other executives and board members could have pushed back to save key relationships.
"While it’s nice that they changed their stance (publicly, at least), you’ve got to ask yourself: do you want to continue throwing money at a company blind enough to support SOPA in the first place?"
This is great news. Now for the relevant question: How does it impact the passage of SOPA?
GoDaddy doesn't vote on legislation. I'm sending letters to my representatives right now pointing out the backlash and about face that GoDaddy has done.
I know you were joking, but not a chance. The only effect this will have as far as I'm concerned is to move the transfer to the back burner for a bit (I'm on vacation at the moment, so I wasn't looking forward to dealing with the transfer hassle. Now I can enjoy a guilt-free holiday and do the transfer after I get back).
I was only on GoDaddy out of inertia/laziness anyway. At one time (quite a few years ago) they were...not good, exactly, but maybe the "least evil" of the available choices (a very similar situation to what you see with cell phone and cable TV providers). That hasn't been the case for quite some time, but I stuck with them just for the convenience of having all my stuff in one place. The constant upselling was annoying, but I rarely tinker with domain settings after the original config, so it was tolerable. This nonsense was the last nudge that was needed to push them over the cliff.
if they really cared about the internet community, they wouldn't have been defending this stuff tooth and nail...mocking people saying that their transfers don't matter to them.
You are needlessly cynical, my friend. Money does drive a lot of corporate decisions, but plenty of stuff is done because "it's cool" or out of pure altruism too. It's possible to somehow attribute even altruism to eventual profits (altruism = good image = more business), but do we need to be so cynical?
Hah. I just reloaded HN and clicked the comments here -- I've had a few drinks -- I thought this was the same article along the lines of "Go Daddy Supports SOPA", until I read through the responses.
This just shows what a couple thousand mobilized, highly motivated geeks can do in six hours. HN is solely responsible for this. Imagine if the top-ten stories for the day on this board were about the conditions at Apple's factories in China. Or the massacres going on in Syria, for that matter. Something more important than whether that elephant-murdering bastard is a 99%, or a 100% asshole.
But, credit where it's due, this isn't the first time I've noticed a shift in public perception within 24-48 hours of a major HN freakout. I won't say how much money I've made buying or selling based on watching this phenomenon -- not a ton -- but it's recently been more than I make at my day job. It's a shame Godaddy's not publicly traded, or we could've all had some fun with it.
This is the place where the people who man the engines spend their time. And when the engineers are pissed, shit breaks. Never mind that engineers are just as often wrong as everybody else, just think of HN articles as events that bubble, and figure out if they're going to be ignored or not by the larger program.
I love HN. But that statement is myopic and over the top. I believe that Reddit started the discussion on a boycott. At the very least, much discussion took place there.
> Imagine if the top-ten stories for the day on this board were about the conditions at Apple's factories in China.
I don't think it would have the same effect. Go Daddy is immensely reliant on the decisions of a handful of tech-savvy people. It's easy to move a domain, which hurts their bottom line. (for example, there was an effort made by some redditors to try to convince Wikipedia to move away from Go Daddy)
If everyone who visited HN stopped buying Apple products, it would be a blip (if that) on their revenue. While I wish it were that easy, I think Go Daddy is a special case.
even than it would not matter. Apple could move every manufacturing operation to another bad but better than china condition countries overnight. And we would pay half more for the same equipment..
"Imagine if the top-ten stories for the day on this board were about the conditions at Apple's factories in China" Or imagine if the top ten stories pointed out that they aren't Apple's factories, but Foxconn's, and that Foxconn also makes the Playstation 3, the Wii, the Xbox, and the Amazon Kindle, as well as stuff for Acer, ASUS, Cisco, Dell, Hewlett-Packard, Microsoft, Nokia, Samsung... Yet somehow Apple always takes the blame. I've even seen this used as a justification for buying an Android device over an iPhone. Does anyone seriously think that conditions in the HTC or Huawei factories are different from Foxconn's to any significant degree?
I don't like the factory conditions in China, either, but neither do I like seeing Apple getting the brunt of the criticism.
Several communities worked together, such as the tech blogosphere, Reddit, and other social media. Although HN may be the birthplace of the idea to boycott Godaddy, its hardly just HN being responsible.
OK -- I didn't mean to leave Reddit out of this. I'm not a regular there and didn't read the initiating post, so it's fair I'm over-estimating the solo value of HN in this. Either way, it's impressive when you look at the small numbers of HN users and regular Redditors who took a stand on this and got results so fast. This is dirty democracy in action.
This just shows what a couple thousand mobilized, highly motivated geeks can do in six hours. HN is solely responsible for this. Imagine if the top-ten stories for the day on this board were about the conditions at Apple's factories in China. Or the massacres going on in Syria, for that matter. Something more important than whether that elephant-murdering bastard is a 99%, or a 100% asshole.
Unsurprisingly, I have failed at googling up some other examples, but in recent years it has become common (at least in my circles) to use the word "this" as short hand for, roughly, "this thing here is something which is important/i agree with."
I wrote my comment, rather than simply upvoting yours (the parent), because the parent contained several other points which I either don't agree with, or which I thought clouded the message of the part I quoted. In short, I wished to emphasize that one part of your comment.
> "Go Daddy has always fought to preserve the intellectual property rights of third parties, and will continue to do so in the future," Jones said.
Translation: we got caught this time, but will not hesitate to do it again.