It seems that every Internet company that exists is loudly protesting the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA). Well, all but one: domain registrar GoDaddy.com. Soon after SOPA was announced, the company expressed their support of the Internet censorship bill. Now, users are fighting back and calling for a boycott of the company.
A Reddit thread to call for users to move domains away from GoDaddy and boycott the company was started on Thursday morning by user selfprodigy. The beginning of the post reads,
"i just finished writing GoDaddy a letter stating why I'm moving my small businesses 51 domains away from them, as well as my personal domains. I also pointed out that i transferred over 300 domains to them as a director of IT for a major American company.
I'm suggesting Dec 29th as move your domain away from GoDaddy day because of their support of SOPA. Who's with me?"
That thread already has 2224 replies as of this writing and numerous people have tweeted to link the thread and push more people to move domains away from GoDaddy in protest. Most of the replies are in support of the idea and encourage users to express why they are moving their domains away from the company. Helpful tips about the fact that GoDaddy owns a number of smaller companies that do domain registrations are also in the list, urging users to confirm that GoDaddy doesn't own the company they are moving their domain to.
When GoDaddy was contacted for comment by Ars Technica, they refused to address the boycott, instead linking back to the original written statement made about their support of SOPA. That statement expresses GoDaddy's position saying,
"This debate is about preserving, protecting, and creating American jobs, and protecting American consumers from the dangers that they face on-line. US businesses are getting robbed and US consumers are getting duped."
It goes on to address the First Amendments concerns that many have expressed about SOPA by essentially writing them off all together, saying there is no concern. GoDaddy went as far as reposting this statement on their support forums Thursday in response to the Reddit thread. The support thread with the statement had comments disabled.
I don't personally host any domains with GoDaddy but if I did, this would probably push me to move them to someone else. Do you have any domains hosted at GoDaddy? Did you move them, or will you move them because of the company's support of SOPA? Let us know in the comments.
