The Stop Online Piracy Act has been met with its fair share of controversy. The bill has sparked outrage in internet communities campaigning against censorship. Now, domain registrar GoDaddy has publicly declared its support, with its name listed among the numerous companies backing the bill.
A thread on Reddit has called for a boycott of all of GoDaddy"s services. "I"m moving my small businesses 51 domains away from them, as well as my personal domains," selfprodigy writes, "I"m suggesting Dec 29th as move your domain away from GoDaddy day because of their support of SOPA. Who"s with me?"
The thread has currently received over 4000 upvotes, making it one of the highest rated threads in the Politics subreddit of all time. Businesses have begun to take notice. Name.com is offering 10% of transfer ins and 40% of hosting packages when the promo code "NODADDY" is used. HostGator is also offering 50% off selected services for the first month when the code "NOSOPA" is used.
Requests for comments from GoDaddy have been met with links to their official statement. "Go Daddy is committed to doing everything it can to ensure that the Internet is a safe and trustworthy way to communicate and conduct business," the statement reads, "although we believe that the DMCA works well in some contexts, its remedies are limited in that it does not include mechanisms for addressing trademark infringement, or for bringing enforcement actions against illegal foreign-based sites."
Congress will resume discussions on SOPA following the winter break.
Update: It looks like GoDaddy has retracted its support. In a statement sent out earlier today:
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."