6 ms·

GoDaddy is scrambling to do damage control

445 points by cheald 15y ago

dorkitude 15y ago
(copied from my response at http://dorkitude.com/post/14691558851/the-godaddy-victory-is-a-red-herring http://dorkitude.com/post/14691558851/the-godaddy-victory-is...) The GoDaddy victory is a red herring. That GoDaddy reversed its SOPA stance (or at least its PR stance) about SOPA in the wake of our boycott is good news, but it's also distracting news. While it does demonstrate that we, the citizens of the righteous internet, can have P&L impact as consumers in the B2B world, the real and massive culprits have been B2C companies. A very small proportion of a normal B2C company’s revenues come from policy-aware internet citizens. Tactics like the GoDaddy boycott simply will not have an impact (any more than the ongoing boycott of Wal-Mart among the idealistic). _I don't want us to get distracted from that fact._ _Here are the questions we should be considering._ What can we do to flex our muscles before the many (far more evil) consumer-facing companies out there? How do we legally channel our energy into harming their P&L statements in an unequivocally attributable manner? What about the B2B companies over whose procurement processes we regular citizens have no control? The companies of greatest concern should be those with contractual and/or infrastructural lock-in: * telecoms like AT&T and Verizon * ISPs/media pipes like Comcast and Dish Network * top-down sales companies like Microsoft and Symantec * conglomerate-monopolies like Adobe and Autodesk Unless and until we find a way to hamstring those attacking monsters, the internet will always be in peril -- even if we somehow win this battle like we _barely_ won the Net Neutrality battle a few short years ago.
- jpdoctor 15y ago
  > While it does demonstrate that we, [...] can have P&L impact as consumers in the B2B world, the real and massive culprits have been B2C companies. Influence on the P&L is great. Influence at the voting booth is one better, and somehow the tech community has to convince congress that the voting booth is in play. (Yes, P&L leads to political donations, which lead to reelection, but politicians are always playing the trade-off game. So somehow they have to get convinced that supporting dumbass legislation will come back to kick them in the nuts.)
  - wycats 15y ago
    Politicians don't like distractions. If support for some legislation will end up causing distractions, especially during campaign season, they will take notice. The best distractions come from primary challenges directly attributable to their stances on issues, but even having hecklers show up to campaign events can work. The right has been using primary threats for a long time to keep politicians in line. I suspect we could be effective using this strategy as well if we put our energy where our mouth is.
    - phillmv 15y ago
      It's not a matter of distraction, it's a matter of support and influence and money. If you can convince a politician that a sizeable percentage of influential people who are liable to donate money to a cause are for or a against a particular issue that that they are legislating on, preferably people who are from within his/her riding/ward/district and thus directly impact him/her. Say, like well connected, high earning (mostly white, male) nerds. If you stop to think about the amount of power we are actually capable of wielding, it's actually really shocking that msft/goog/aapl etc seem to have really crappy lobbyists. (As an aside, here for instance is a good Planet Money podcast on lobbying: http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2011/11/01/141913370/the-tuesday-podcast-inside-washingtons-money-machine http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2011/11/01/141913370/the-tues... )
      - wycats 15y ago
        "It's all about money" is a one-dimensional caricature that really doesn't reflect the way most congresspeople actually think. Money matters, of course, but it's not the only thing that matters.
        kirubakaran 15y ago
        But it is the most significant bit, correct?
        15y ago
- badkangaroo 15y ago
  I've moved from att to sprint, not really that much of a change, but it's not att. I've moved from godaddy to networksolutions, and I'm on sonic.net for my home dsl, and I've not had regular cable service since 2002. I'm also working at a fringe game company and I dont use photoshop or any other adobe anythings and I try to use Modo or blender for 3d whenever possible. Maya and max are hard to get away from... I wish i could say we used ubuntu, but that's just on my personal laptop... :-\
  - dorkitude 15y ago
    It's a valiant effort, but my point was that end-user boycotts aren't a sound way to affect those companies (unless, perhaps, those end users started boycotting employers that support these companies -- more and more of a possibility, as power shifts into the hands of hackers)
- sc00ter 15y ago
  I'm not sure on what basis you picked the comanies named on your list, but at least three of the four software companies you mentioned are incorrect, and two of those were never in support of SOPA other than by association with the BSA. http://www.pcworld.com/article/246461/the_case_for_sopa_legislation.html http://www.pcworld.com/article/246461/the_case_for_sopa_legi...
  - cma 15y ago
    Isn't association with BSA, being that they are a copyright-enforcement arm, extremely relevant?
    - fpgeek 15y ago
      IIRC, the BSA backed away from SOPA a while back (after a similar but shorter and less extensive pressure campaign focused on its members). I'd say that makes BSA membership less relevant at this point.
- zby 15y ago
  What could hit them would be a "I will not work for a company supporting SOPA" campaign - but that would be a hard sell I guess.
amanuel 15y ago
I got the same "yeah lol, whatever" email last night after I emailed them my concerns regarding their support of SOPA. Knowing they helped create SOPA is the most damaging fact in my opinion which is why I'm still heading for the door. I admired Bob back in the day but it seems things have changed over the years.
MrJagil 15y ago
So, who's next? It's going to be immensely tougher to demonstrate power against the media moguls as directly.
- pasbesoin 15y ago
  I've been considering for some weeks whether I can simply go "cold turkey" on paid, mainstream media for a period of time. When I consider this, I have enough backlog of reading and (legitimately free, e.g. SICP and the like) online videos in my mental queue to do so. I might -- really -- be better off for doing so. I haven't formulated a well-worded proposal and scenario/approach to share, but I would suggest working towards an opt-in mainstream media blackout -- or brownout, for those who can't opt-out altogether (and that includes me as far as needing to keep up with the news and maintain an ISP connection that doesn't have a viable alternative). This will seem too extreme to many. But I encourage you to stop and think for a minute or five what a month or two's "brownout" would look like for you, and for media companies currently trying to ramrod through SOPA et al. Let them see what it really looks like when their U.S. (and other) revenue stream "dries up", for real -- as opposed to their claims of losses. Particularly right when they're foisting this crap on us.
  - aw3c2 15y ago
    For music it is easy. There is so much free stuff around, netlabels, jamendo, etc. For reading there is so much out-of-copyright on archive.org and Gutenberg.
    - famblycat 15y ago
      The problem is that they control our culture. Boycotting some of these companies involves removing ourselves from many of the shared experiences which allow us to identify with the society and time that we live in. Until our artists figure out a viable way to extract themselves from this machine (through methods such as Louis CK's experiment, perhaps?) I don't see this kind of boycott ever gaining the critical mass it would need to make an impact.
  - 15y ago
MrJagil 15y ago
I was thinking, we can safely assume theres a lot of start-up CEOs/founders/whatevers around here. What if all of these companies prominently displayed dissatisfaction with SOPA. Wouldn't this be an immediate, effective way to reach the uninformed masses? If PG can involve politics in his company, why can't you?
- opreal 15y ago
  What are you suggesting? I'm pretty sure we've all been voicing our opinions or at least acting as conduits to expression against such endeavors. Do the politicians take notice though? Sounds like we may all need to step it up a notch? Apparently power in numbers in is the only thing that counts to law makers and their lobbyists.
chrislaco 15y ago
I can confirm damage control. I'm just your average nerd. 34 domains. Had some of them for over a decade. Transfered to NameCheap last night. Just got a call/voicemail from Mandy from the Office of the [GoDaddy] President (480-505-8828) wanting to talk about my account. I haven't returned the call yet. I bet others are getting this call.
- tuxcanfly 15y ago
  Please do let them know that you are doing this for protest.
lancefisher 15y ago
It would be really interesting to know how many domains were transferred yesterday. I moved 6 of my 9. On the other 3, I turned off auto-renewal so they'll just expire.
sage_joch 15y ago
I'm not sure if I'm alone in this, but I had to actually look up the name of SOPA's founder (Lamar Smith). He should be facing heavy criticism right now, at least to the extent that SOPA-supporting companies are. It's as if his career isn't in any jeopardy at all over this.
- r00fus 15y ago
  Our democracy is completely broken, as there are no congress critters that disavow corporate money. Lamar Smith is one of the most blatantly corrupt.
  - rytis 15y ago
    democracy? what democracy?
- phil 15y ago
  This might help: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lamar_S._Smith http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lamar_S._Smith Lamar Smith is a Texas Republican in a district that is 2/3 R -- any effort to unseat him would have to involve a primary challenge and thus speak to Republican primary voters.
  - gojomo 15y ago
    FWIW, Smith's district is very similar to, and adjacent to, Ron Paul's district. So it's thinkable that the seat could be held by a better Republican… although the advantages of incumbency are many and on most issues Smith is acceptable to his constituents.
  - CWuestefeld 15y ago
    I believe that so much of what's wrong in American politics, from the inability to throw out incumbents, to the polarization seen in primaries, can be attributed to gerrymandering.
  - impendia 15y ago
    This says he represents (among other places) much of Austin. Isn't Austin a tech hotbed? Surely there are a couple hundred people in his district who have a lot at stake here? Judging from the campaign rhetoric I've heard, "XYZ's policy destroyed [or will destroy] my business" definitely speaks to Republican primary voters.
hop 15y ago
I would pay $100 to anyone that made a one-click (or close) auto transfer of domains from GoDaddy.
- jeremymcanally 15y ago
  Unfortunately the closest you can get is something like what I hacked together: https://github.com/jm/ditchdaddy https://github.com/jm/ditchdaddy You could conceivably put together a Selenium script or something to automate the first part, but that would be really tricky. As it is, you just have to get an export of your domains (instructions in the repos) and run my script. Right now it supports DNSimple and Namecheap, but I'm almost done with Gandi support and might be adding others.
- georgemcbay 15y ago
  Transferring domains is fairly painless already, but one click transfer would be insanity. The few speedbumps that do exist when transferring exist to prevent domain name hijacking. If you could one-click transfer then domains would be completely unsafe against hijacking.
  - deleted 15y ago
    [deleted]
    - georgemcbay 15y ago
      Are you going to give Mechanical Turks the login credentials for your domain's administrative account of record? Because.. please don't ever do that..
opreal 15y ago
Stop being opportunist flip floppers bent on the bottom line Go Daddy (worse name you could ever come up with for a company). Go Daddy deserves to go extinct their time has come. You have shown your true face (forget the damage control). You've only gotten by up until now because of people not willing to their research and mass marketing, and now it's plainly obvious you are a shill of a company, money can't buy everything. Go form yourselves a new company under a different name. No knowledgeable person on Hacker News would ever choose Go Daddy for anything so go do your online marketing somewhere else. http://blog.operationreality.org/2011/12/24/sopa-nope-a/ http://blog.operationreality.org/2011/12/24/sopa-nope-a/
fletchowns 15y ago
GoDaddy needs to become a very loud opponent of SOPA if they want to retain any customers that have a clue.
acabal 15y ago
Too little, too late. I'm still moving my ~20 domains away. Their initial stance, plus their ridiculous initial response ("We heard some people were mad, but we're not changing our tune until we start losing money") indicates that they don't actually care about dropping SOPA support. I wouldn't be surprised in the least if behind this "we're so sorry" facade, Bob Parsons and Lamar Smith are having dinner and a laugh.
- gry 15y ago
  Same here. I've moved most of mine to gandi.net. They are foreign sites now.
  - wx77 15y ago
    Aren't they still applicable to SOPA if they are .com .net .org .us domains such as homeland security taking down domains previous example shows.
    - culturestate 15y ago
      This is correct. They're not foreign if the registry is controlled by the US.
      - BasDirks 15y ago
        Which is why I prefer eu for my own stuff.
        kkolev 15y ago
        Would one also need a non-US registrar to go with that .eu domain? Right now i'm using Dreamhost, but what would you recommend for a completely non-US solution with decent quality?
        kkolev 15y ago
        Would one also need a non-US registrar to go with that .eu domain? Right now i'm using Dreamhost, but what would you recommend for a completely non-US solution with decent quality?
apechai 15y ago
GoDaddy is owned by private equity firms KKR and Silverlake. These firms aim for short term profits at the expense of creating long term value. Silverlake was the firm behind the whole Skype compensation fiasco, which was basically a quick flip. KKR does dividend recaps where it issues debt and funnels money out of the company. The company, such as HCA or Dollar General, then has to fire people and raise prices on customers. Do you think they'll do what's right for customers over the long term or try to extract every penny? That's why they'll flip flop on an issue like SOPA - no long term values. I moved my domains to namecheap a long time ago.
yuhong 15y ago
Do anyone has stats on exactly how many domains were transferred so far?
kermitthehermit 15y ago
Migrate away from GoDaddy. I couldn't care less that they have changed their position when they started seeing people are migrating their domains from their services. After all, let's not forget other "great" news about GoDaddy we've seen in the past. Migrate, migrate and don't look back. Any company which supported SOPA doesn't deserve my money (or yours) in the future. Who can say they will not be using that money to try to subvert the rights of the people in the future or that they deserve to be trusted now?
F_J_H 15y ago
Thinking about moving my domains - any suggestions on the best alternative? Update: For what it's worth, here's a reddit link that lists a number of alternatives: http://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/no1ux/reddit_if_one_wants_to_switch_domains_from/ http://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/no1ux/reddit_if_o...
- elliottcarlson 15y ago
  I have been a big fan of Gandi.net for quite some time - they have an anti-SOPA [1] stand point for a while, their administrative tools are great and easy to use, and their support for the one time I required it was friendly and knowledgeable and last but not least offer a free SSL certificate with each domain. http://www.gandibar.net/post/2011/12/23/Gandi-s-Opposition-to-the-SOPA-Legislation http://www.gandibar.net/post/2011/12/23/Gandi-s-Opposition-t...
  - onedognight 15y ago
    > Gandi.net [...] offer a free SSL certificate with each domain. For one year. http://startssl.com/ http://startssl.com/ offer them for free to anyone.
- deleted 15y ago
  [deleted]
timr 15y ago
Urgh. I can't be the only person who is getting exceptionally tired of seeing self-congratulatory blog posts about GoDaddy rise to the top of HN. Dear interwebnerds: the point has been made. Stop obsessing. Every time you get your knickers in a knot and write a crowing blog post about how you just put it to The Domain Provider Who Shall Not Be Named, you give them more name recognition, free press and SEO. So stop it. Transfer your domains, make your point to customer service if/when they call, then stop talking about their service. Maybe you folks can spread a little more of your furor around to the other companies on the list...a list that includes most of the major providers of media in our culture.
- quacker 15y ago
  It's only been a day or two. GoDaddy is getting free press but bad press. It's getting name recognition but not the kind it wants. This will have a dramatic effect on the image of the company, and personally I want to see how GoDaddy handles this and what effect it has on the company and its competitors, if any, as well as the effect on the bill's passage, if any. I'll agree that some of the revelry may be unwarranted, but this submission is still entirely relevant.
  - timr 15y ago
    As they say: "there's no such thing as bad publicity". This old maxim is particularly true when the publicity helps you to come up as the #1 search result for "domain registration" (or worse, links directly to your press releases), and most of your customers don't care about your position on SOPA. Every seething blog post you vote up to the front page of HN sends potential customers to GoDaddy, if only to see what the fuss is all about.
    - rue 15y ago
      “There's no such thing as bad publicity” is a highly profession-dependent proposition.
  - balloot 15y ago
    At the very least, I think GoDaddy put namecheap.com on the map this week. I know I had personally never heard of namecheap before the last few days. GoDaddy probably won't release how many customers they lost, but I bet namecheap will be happy to tell us all how many transfers happened after all this is over.
klausjensen 15y ago
In the words of Bloodhound Gang: "The roof, the roof, the roof is on fire, The roof, the roof, the roof is on fire, We don't need no water let the motherfucker burn, Burn motherfucker burn"
blhack 15y ago
"The true measure of a person is what they do when nobody is watching. You lose, Godaddy."
popsift 15y ago
ah s hit.. what's going on?
dlitz 15y ago
GoDaddy needs to be boycotted anyway. We're talking about a law that would create a national Internet censorship infrastructure in the United States. This is serious stuff. We need to send the message that when you pull crap like this, it might really hurt your bottom line. Permanently.
eurohacker 15y ago
If GoDaddy is boycotted until they close their business, may be it remains as a lesson for the future generations - to never F with the internet again
ck2 15y ago
Isn't it counterproductive to keep punishing a company where you've already successfully affected their actions? But I secretly wish PayPal had been dumb enough to sponsor SOPA.

445 points by cheald 15y ago

(copied from my response at http://dorkitude.com/post/14691558851/the-godaddy-victory-is-a-red-herring http://dorkitude.com/post/14691558851/the-godaddy-victory-is...) The GoDaddy victory is a red herring. That GoDaddy reversed its SOPA stance (or at least its PR stance) about SOPA in the wake of our boycott is good news, but it's also distracting news. While it does demonstrate that we, the citizens of the righteous internet, can have P&L impact as consumers in the B2B world, the real and massive culprits have been B2C companies. A very small proportion of a normal B2C company’s revenues come from policy-aware internet citizens. Tactics like the GoDaddy boycott simply will not have an impact (any more than the ongoing boycott of Wal-Mart among the idealistic). _I don't want us to get distracted from that fact._ _Here are the questions we should be considering._ What can we do to flex our muscles before the many (far more evil) consumer-facing companies out there? How do we legally channel our energy into harming their P&L statements in an unequivocally attributable manner? What about the B2B companies over whose procurement processes we regular citizens have no control? The companies of greatest concern should be those with contractual and/or infrastructural lock-in: * telecoms like AT&T and Verizon * ISPs/media pipes like Comcast and Dish Network * top-down sales companies like Microsoft and Symantec * conglomerate-monopolies like Adobe and Autodesk Unless and until we find a way to hamstring those attacking monsters, the internet will always be in peril -- even if we somehow win this battle like we _barely_ won the Net Neutrality battle a few short years ago.

jpdoctor 15y ago
> While it does demonstrate that we, [...] can have P&L impact as consumers in the B2B world, the real and massive culprits have been B2C companies. Influence on the P&L is great. Influence at the voting booth is one better, and somehow the tech community has to convince congress that the voting booth is in play. (Yes, P&L leads to political donations, which lead to reelection, but politicians are always playing the trade-off game. So somehow they have to get convinced that supporting dumbass legislation will come back to kick them in the nuts.)
- wycats 15y ago
  Politicians don't like distractions. If support for some legislation will end up causing distractions, especially during campaign season, they will take notice. The best distractions come from primary challenges directly attributable to their stances on issues, but even having hecklers show up to campaign events can work. The right has been using primary threats for a long time to keep politicians in line. I suspect we could be effective using this strategy as well if we put our energy where our mouth is.
  - phillmv 15y ago
    It's not a matter of distraction, it's a matter of support and influence and money. If you can convince a politician that a sizeable percentage of influential people who are liable to donate money to a cause are for or a against a particular issue that that they are legislating on, preferably people who are from within his/her riding/ward/district and thus directly impact him/her. Say, like well connected, high earning (mostly white, male) nerds. If you stop to think about the amount of power we are actually capable of wielding, it's actually really shocking that msft/goog/aapl etc seem to have really crappy lobbyists. (As an aside, here for instance is a good Planet Money podcast on lobbying: http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2011/11/01/141913370/the-tuesday-podcast-inside-washingtons-money-machine http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2011/11/01/141913370/the-tues... )
    - wycats 15y ago
      "It's all about money" is a one-dimensional caricature that really doesn't reflect the way most congresspeople actually think. Money matters, of course, but it's not the only thing that matters.
      - kirubakaran 15y ago
        But it is the most significant bit, correct?
        15y ago
badkangaroo 15y ago
I've moved from att to sprint, not really that much of a change, but it's not att. I've moved from godaddy to networksolutions, and I'm on sonic.net for my home dsl, and I've not had regular cable service since 2002. I'm also working at a fringe game company and I dont use photoshop or any other adobe anythings and I try to use Modo or blender for 3d whenever possible. Maya and max are hard to get away from... I wish i could say we used ubuntu, but that's just on my personal laptop... :-\
- dorkitude 15y ago
  It's a valiant effort, but my point was that end-user boycotts aren't a sound way to affect those companies (unless, perhaps, those end users started boycotting employers that support these companies -- more and more of a possibility, as power shifts into the hands of hackers)
sc00ter 15y ago
I'm not sure on what basis you picked the comanies named on your list, but at least three of the four software companies you mentioned are incorrect, and two of those were never in support of SOPA other than by association with the BSA. http://www.pcworld.com/article/246461/the_case_for_sopa_legislation.html http://www.pcworld.com/article/246461/the_case_for_sopa_legi...
- cma 15y ago
  Isn't association with BSA, being that they are a copyright-enforcement arm, extremely relevant?
  - fpgeek 15y ago
    IIRC, the BSA backed away from SOPA a while back (after a similar but shorter and less extensive pressure campaign focused on its members). I'd say that makes BSA membership less relevant at this point.
zby 15y ago
What could hit them would be a "I will not work for a company supporting SOPA" campaign - but that would be a hard sell I guess.

amanuel 15y ago

I got the same "yeah lol, whatever" email last night after I emailed them my concerns regarding their support of SOPA. Knowing they helped create SOPA is the most damaging fact in my opinion which is why I'm still heading for the door. I admired Bob back in the day but it seems things have changed over the years.

MrJagil 15y ago

So, who's next? It's going to be immensely tougher to demonstrate power against the media moguls as directly.

pasbesoin 15y ago
I've been considering for some weeks whether I can simply go "cold turkey" on paid, mainstream media for a period of time. When I consider this, I have enough backlog of reading and (legitimately free, e.g. SICP and the like) online videos in my mental queue to do so. I might -- really -- be better off for doing so. I haven't formulated a well-worded proposal and scenario/approach to share, but I would suggest working towards an opt-in mainstream media blackout -- or brownout, for those who can't opt-out altogether (and that includes me as far as needing to keep up with the news and maintain an ISP connection that doesn't have a viable alternative). This will seem too extreme to many. But I encourage you to stop and think for a minute or five what a month or two's "brownout" would look like for you, and for media companies currently trying to ramrod through SOPA et al. Let them see what it really looks like when their U.S. (and other) revenue stream "dries up", for real -- as opposed to their claims of losses. Particularly right when they're foisting this crap on us.
- aw3c2 15y ago
  For music it is easy. There is so much free stuff around, netlabels, jamendo, etc. For reading there is so much out-of-copyright on archive.org and Gutenberg.
  - famblycat 15y ago
    The problem is that they control our culture. Boycotting some of these companies involves removing ourselves from many of the shared experiences which allow us to identify with the society and time that we live in. Until our artists figure out a viable way to extract themselves from this machine (through methods such as Louis CK's experiment, perhaps?) I don't see this kind of boycott ever gaining the critical mass it would need to make an impact.
- 15y ago

MrJagil 15y ago

I was thinking, we can safely assume theres a lot of start-up CEOs/founders/whatevers around here. What if all of these companies prominently displayed dissatisfaction with SOPA. Wouldn't this be an immediate, effective way to reach the uninformed masses? If PG can involve politics in his company, why can't you?

opreal 15y ago
What are you suggesting? I'm pretty sure we've all been voicing our opinions or at least acting as conduits to expression against such endeavors. Do the politicians take notice though? Sounds like we may all need to step it up a notch? Apparently power in numbers in is the only thing that counts to law makers and their lobbyists.

chrislaco 15y ago

I can confirm damage control. I'm just your average nerd. 34 domains. Had some of them for over a decade. Transfered to NameCheap last night. Just got a call/voicemail from Mandy from the Office of the [GoDaddy] President (480-505-8828) wanting to talk about my account. I haven't returned the call yet. I bet others are getting this call.

tuxcanfly 15y ago
Please do let them know that you are doing this for protest.

lancefisher 15y ago

It would be really interesting to know how many domains were transferred yesterday. I moved 6 of my 9. On the other 3, I turned off auto-renewal so they'll just expire.

sage_joch 15y ago

I'm not sure if I'm alone in this, but I had to actually look up the name of SOPA's founder (Lamar Smith). He should be facing heavy criticism right now, at least to the extent that SOPA-supporting companies are. It's as if his career isn't in any jeopardy at all over this.

r00fus 15y ago
Our democracy is completely broken, as there are no congress critters that disavow corporate money. Lamar Smith is one of the most blatantly corrupt.
- rytis 15y ago
  democracy? what democracy?
phil 15y ago
This might help: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lamar_S._Smith http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lamar_S._Smith Lamar Smith is a Texas Republican in a district that is 2/3 R -- any effort to unseat him would have to involve a primary challenge and thus speak to Republican primary voters.
- gojomo 15y ago
  FWIW, Smith's district is very similar to, and adjacent to, Ron Paul's district. So it's thinkable that the seat could be held by a better Republican… although the advantages of incumbency are many and on most issues Smith is acceptable to his constituents.
- CWuestefeld 15y ago
  I believe that so much of what's wrong in American politics, from the inability to throw out incumbents, to the polarization seen in primaries, can be attributed to gerrymandering.
- impendia 15y ago
  This says he represents (among other places) much of Austin. Isn't Austin a tech hotbed? Surely there are a couple hundred people in his district who have a lot at stake here? Judging from the campaign rhetoric I've heard, "XYZ's policy destroyed [or will destroy] my business" definitely speaks to Republican primary voters.

hop 15y ago

I would pay $100 to anyone that made a one-click (or close) auto transfer of domains from GoDaddy.

jeremymcanally 15y ago
Unfortunately the closest you can get is something like what I hacked together: https://github.com/jm/ditchdaddy https://github.com/jm/ditchdaddy You could conceivably put together a Selenium script or something to automate the first part, but that would be really tricky. As it is, you just have to get an export of your domains (instructions in the repos) and run my script. Right now it supports DNSimple and Namecheap, but I'm almost done with Gandi support and might be adding others.
georgemcbay 15y ago
Transferring domains is fairly painless already, but one click transfer would be insanity. The few speedbumps that do exist when transferring exist to prevent domain name hijacking. If you could one-click transfer then domains would be completely unsafe against hijacking.
- deleted 15y ago
  [deleted]
  - georgemcbay 15y ago
    Are you going to give Mechanical Turks the login credentials for your domain's administrative account of record? Because.. please don't ever do that..

opreal 15y ago

Stop being opportunist flip floppers bent on the bottom line Go Daddy (worse name you could ever come up with for a company). Go Daddy deserves to go extinct their time has come. You have shown your true face (forget the damage control). You've only gotten by up until now because of people not willing to their research and mass marketing, and now it's plainly obvious you are a shill of a company, money can't buy everything. Go form yourselves a new company under a different name. No knowledgeable person on Hacker News would ever choose Go Daddy for anything so go do your online marketing somewhere else. http://blog.operationreality.org/2011/12/24/sopa-nope-a/ http://blog.operationreality.org/2011/12/24/sopa-nope-a/

fletchowns 15y ago

GoDaddy needs to become a very loud opponent of SOPA if they want to retain any customers that have a clue.

acabal 15y ago

Too little, too late. I'm still moving my ~20 domains away. Their initial stance, plus their ridiculous initial response ("We heard some people were mad, but we're not changing our tune until we start losing money") indicates that they don't actually care about dropping SOPA support. I wouldn't be surprised in the least if behind this "we're so sorry" facade, Bob Parsons and Lamar Smith are having dinner and a laugh.

gry 15y ago
Same here. I've moved most of mine to gandi.net. They are foreign sites now.
- wx77 15y ago
  Aren't they still applicable to SOPA if they are .com .net .org .us domains such as homeland security taking down domains previous example shows.
  - culturestate 15y ago
    This is correct. They're not foreign if the registry is controlled by the US.
    - BasDirks 15y ago
      Which is why I prefer eu for my own stuff.
      - kkolev 15y ago
        Would one also need a non-US registrar to go with that .eu domain? Right now i'm using Dreamhost, but what would you recommend for a completely non-US solution with decent quality?
      - kkolev 15y ago
        Would one also need a non-US registrar to go with that .eu domain? Right now i'm using Dreamhost, but what would you recommend for a completely non-US solution with decent quality?

apechai 15y ago

GoDaddy is owned by private equity firms KKR and Silverlake. These firms aim for short term profits at the expense of creating long term value. Silverlake was the firm behind the whole Skype compensation fiasco, which was basically a quick flip. KKR does dividend recaps where it issues debt and funnels money out of the company. The company, such as HCA or Dollar General, then has to fire people and raise prices on customers. Do you think they'll do what's right for customers over the long term or try to extract every penny? That's why they'll flip flop on an issue like SOPA - no long term values. I moved my domains to namecheap a long time ago.

yuhong 15y ago

Do anyone has stats on exactly how many domains were transferred so far?

kermitthehermit 15y ago

Migrate away from GoDaddy. I couldn't care less that they have changed their position when they started seeing people are migrating their domains from their services. After all, let's not forget other "great" news about GoDaddy we've seen in the past. Migrate, migrate and don't look back. Any company which supported SOPA doesn't deserve my money (or yours) in the future. Who can say they will not be using that money to try to subvert the rights of the people in the future or that they deserve to be trusted now?

F_J_H 15y ago

Thinking about moving my domains - any suggestions on the best alternative? Update: For what it's worth, here's a reddit link that lists a number of alternatives: http://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/no1ux/reddit_if_one_wants_to_switch_domains_from/ http://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/no1ux/reddit_if_o...

elliottcarlson 15y ago
I have been a big fan of Gandi.net for quite some time - they have an anti-SOPA [1] stand point for a while, their administrative tools are great and easy to use, and their support for the one time I required it was friendly and knowledgeable and last but not least offer a free SSL certificate with each domain. http://www.gandibar.net/post/2011/12/23/Gandi-s-Opposition-to-the-SOPA-Legislation http://www.gandibar.net/post/2011/12/23/Gandi-s-Opposition-t...
- onedognight 15y ago
  > Gandi.net [...] offer a free SSL certificate with each domain. For one year. http://startssl.com/ http://startssl.com/ offer them for free to anyone.
deleted 15y ago
[deleted]

timr 15y ago

Urgh. I can't be the only person who is getting exceptionally tired of seeing self-congratulatory blog posts about GoDaddy rise to the top of HN. Dear interwebnerds: the point has been made. Stop obsessing. Every time you get your knickers in a knot and write a crowing blog post about how you just put it to The Domain Provider Who Shall Not Be Named, you give them more name recognition, free press and SEO. So stop it. Transfer your domains, make your point to customer service if/when they call, then stop talking about their service. Maybe you folks can spread a little more of your furor around to the other companies on the list...a list that includes most of the major providers of media in our culture.

quacker 15y ago
It's only been a day or two. GoDaddy is getting free press but bad press. It's getting name recognition but not the kind it wants. This will have a dramatic effect on the image of the company, and personally I want to see how GoDaddy handles this and what effect it has on the company and its competitors, if any, as well as the effect on the bill's passage, if any. I'll agree that some of the revelry may be unwarranted, but this submission is still entirely relevant.
- timr 15y ago
  As they say: "there's no such thing as bad publicity". This old maxim is particularly true when the publicity helps you to come up as the #1 search result for "domain registration" (or worse, links directly to your press releases), and most of your customers don't care about your position on SOPA. Every seething blog post you vote up to the front page of HN sends potential customers to GoDaddy, if only to see what the fuss is all about.
  - rue 15y ago
    “There's no such thing as bad publicity” is a highly profession-dependent proposition.
- balloot 15y ago
  At the very least, I think GoDaddy put namecheap.com on the map this week. I know I had personally never heard of namecheap before the last few days. GoDaddy probably won't release how many customers they lost, but I bet namecheap will be happy to tell us all how many transfers happened after all this is over.

klausjensen 15y ago

In the words of Bloodhound Gang: "The roof, the roof, the roof is on fire, The roof, the roof, the roof is on fire, We don't need no water let the motherfucker burn, Burn motherfucker burn"

blhack 15y ago

"The true measure of a person is what they do when nobody is watching. You lose, Godaddy."

popsift 15y ago

ah s hit.. what's going on?

dlitz 15y ago

GoDaddy needs to be boycotted anyway. We're talking about a law that would create a national Internet censorship infrastructure in the United States. This is serious stuff. We need to send the message that when you pull crap like this, it might really hurt your bottom line. Permanently.

eurohacker 15y ago

If GoDaddy is boycotted until they close their business, may be it remains as a lesson for the future generations - to never F with the internet again

ck2 15y ago

Isn't it counterproductive to keep punishing a company where you've already successfully affected their actions? But I secretly wish PayPal had been dumb enough to sponsor SOPA.