19 ms·
GoDaddy has not withdrawn its official congressional support for SOPA
- Sami_Lehtinen 15y agoWell. I didn't like GoDaddy in first place anyway. I moved personal and other domains I administer out.
- marze 15y agoWhen they've spent $500k lobbying against, that is when they should be considered forgiven.
- sidww2 15y agoWhile boycotting companies supporting SOPA is important, I feel the excessive focus on GoDaddy is distracting the community from the important issue of actually defeating SOPA/PIPA. The tech community really does not have the size and influence to be able to force even a fifth of the companies to withdraw their support of SOPA. The overwhelming majority of the effort should be going to calling/sending (physical) letters to one's respective representatives, maybe setting up some sort of a fund to oppose SOPA/PIPA, urging tech companies like Google to spend more on lobbying (They can and should be spending more to lobby against the act), etc. Edit: I was under the incorrect impression that OPEN act would end nonsense like SOPA/PIPA. Edited comment to reflect that.
- wh-uws 15y agoI think GoDaddy is just an easier target to make an example out of more than anything.
- _delirium 15y agoProbably also interacts with a lot of pre-existing dislike of GoDaddy; they're not exactly a previously-loved company that just did something to anger people for the first time.
- mike-cardwell 15y agoWhat evidence do you have that the number of letters has been negatively affected by the GoDaddy coverage? This GoDaddy coverage has been perfect. If anything, more people know about SOPA than would have done otherwise. If anything, the number of letters being sent will have increased, not decreased.
- sidww2 15y agoI don't mean to imply that the number of letters has decreased. But if the majority of the community chatter is about boycotting GoDaddy, then that will decrease the focus on other (much much much more important) parts of the campaign which could have a negative effect. For instance, people may think that they've done their part by boycotting GoDaddy. It also focusses attention only on SOPA when PIPA is almost as bad.
- jczhang 15y agoThere is a halo effect. Attention on SOPA increases attention on PIPA. Without the SOPA scandal, this halo effect and increased on attention on PIPA may never have happened. You can't simply convert emotion from one object to the other. I think it's better to support things that are in the same direction than to nitpick the details (eg. pick your battles).
- rhizome 15y agoIndeed. Beware that PIPA is going to be held up as the "reasonable compromise," which also sucks. http://www.firstpost.com/tech/microsoft-opposes-sopa-whilst-pipa-faces-filibuster-138683.html http://www.firstpost.com/tech/microsoft-opposes-sopa-whilst-...
- danilocampos 15y agoPeople, and movements, need victories. GoDaddy may not be anything close to the final blow against this nonsense, but that isn't important. Here's the thing: it's the week of Christmas. People, including elected officials and their constituents, are traveling and distracted. The likelihood of a letter-writing campaign either getting off the ground of making an impressive impact is much slimmer than usual. Meanwhile, a very particular company is identified as supportive of the legislation. It happens that their product is broadly used by the Internet community and that said product provides recurring revenue. The loss of numerous customers, as a result, has lasting impact. And so the community responds and makes an example of this company. Do angels sing, heralding the end of bad legislation? No. But tech news outlets, which would have had nothing substantial to print, now get to focus their full attention again on SOPA, on how a company who supports it is brutally punished, and how the Internet business community is maybe something not to be fucked with after all. So now this is part of the story: Internet folk have teeth, there are consequences for supporting bad law. The best part is that GoDaddy doesn't even have to be wounded in any real sense – the story is enough to change the tone of the conversation. This is mostly a war of perceptions, so it's good to make the bad guys look like scheming clowns. This strikes me as an incredible deal during an otherwise dead week. What would you have preferred in its place? How would the season impact such a proposal? > The overwhelming majority of the effort should be going to calling/sending (physical) letters to one's respective representatives, maybe setting up some sort of a fund to oppose SOPA/PIPA and support the OPEN act, urging tech companies like Google to spend more on lobbying (They can and should be spending more to lobby against the act), etc I'm sure you don't need me to point out the multitude of wonderful, free publishing platforms you're going to be able to use to make your case for just this course of action. Meanwhile, while you're putting that all together, let's see a little gratitude for the good luck of GoDaddy's incompetence and for the time and money spent by the many domain holders who made their point so clearly. This is gonna be hard. We, the people, are way outgunned in terms of cash and lobbying. We need every victory we can get to keep the logs rolling.
- tibbon 15y agoPutting pressure on one company indirectly puts pressure on many however. Other companies that see, "Oh shit, GoDaddy has had nearly 40,000 domains transferred and more bad PR than they can handle, maybe we shouldn't be supporting this. What if that shit hits the fan for us too?" Making an example out of one can't be a bad thing.
- nextparadigms 15y agoI think making an example out of Godaddy for companies who support SOPA, is a good way to get others to quit and deter them from supporting such bills in the future. The worse it gets for Godaddy (say it ends up causing it to go bankrupt as a long term effect) the more chilling the effect will be for everyone else.
- Helianthus 15y agoYour post advocates that we don't act on the grounds that we should act. Silly. Advocacy often falls into the trap of trying to act uniformly, as if there is only one appropriate action for an individual of a movement to take. One individual does not have the capacity to decide those battles which should be fought and those battles from which we should gracefully withdraw. This is, in fact, because every battle that we have the present capacity to fight ought be undertaken: Unless, of course, there is only one battle upon which the war depends. But this is not so currently; your own multitude of (in my experience, only marginally important) battlefields demonstrates this.
- gasull 15y agoWhy do you think the OPEN act is good?
- dagda1 15y agoMicrosoft and Apple are harder to boycott sadly and both are in favour of SOPA. We still need a victory and Godaddy will do for me. Signing petitions is a useless act. Can anybody recommend a SOPA safe registrar that I can transfer my domains to?
- jamesbritt 15y agoCan anybody recommend a SOPA safe registrar that I can transfer my domains to? There are about a 6 threads on HN right now that mention various anti-SOPA registrars. Read a few and see what the opinions are.
- koolcomp 15y agowhere is that thread
- VMG 15y agoAccording to my research it isn't quite clear that Microsoft strongly supports SOPA. They seemed to be indirectly backing it via BSA, but there are some stories of MS opposing it as well. Might be a case of the right hand not knowing what the left is doing.
- Tichy 15y agoI find them both rather easy to boycott. I can see how Adobe users would struggle to boycott all three, though.
- dagda1 15y agoWhat can we do against ADOBE, Apple, Microsoft and Visa who are also pro SOPA. When companies start feeling the pain, they will soon withdraw their support.
- wycats 15y agoWhat makes you think Apple and Microsoft are pro-SOPA? They were part of an industry group that was pro-SOPA until an uproar a few months ago for the group to pull out.
- mattdeboard 15y agoOk, seriously, enough. SOPA isn't going to collapse in on itself if GoDaddy comes out swinging against it. This reminds me of the phrase "security theater" as applied to the TSA. This is "activism theater" -- it accomplishes nothing but it puts on a show and makes people feel better. Applying this pressure to your congressmen is the only real way to affect change. I've called each of mine and have the vapid "We're studying this closely" response letters to prove it. I agree that action against individual companies can be effective, but there is an extreme focus on GoDaddy like they're the linchpin of this whole thing, some kind of mob boss when they're just another company who has lent their weight to this legislation.
- vacri 15y agoThe issue here in this particular article is that GoDaddy lied about an issue that people are passionate enough to vote with their wallets about. It also doesn't accomplish nothing - it's better than a petition, which costs the petitioners nothing and is generally ignored in politics. It's a real demonstration of groundswell sentiment.
- ohashi 15y agoIt also makes other companies recognize that we don't like to be fucked with and we vote with our wallets too. Today Godaddy, tomorrow your company supporting SOPA?
- nc 15y agoYou're right. Though, look at it this way: this is a battle in the war against SOPA and a victory here does help get people who are standing at the bylines get motivated enough to take action.
- Lagged2Death 15y agoWho really stands a better chance of being heard in Congress, me or a corporation that "has been working to help craft revisions to this legislation?"
- savrajsingh 15y ago
- rhizome 15y agoSOPA is dead, this story will continue by itself. People who want to move domains certainly should, but I think it behooves freedom to focus on PIPA now.
- saurik 15y ago(Asking some random questions into the aether in the hope that someone knowledgeable might answer ;P.) So, how does one register "official congressional support" for something? (As in: how did companies get on this list in the first place? Is that just a list of entities who have contributed money to the committee somehow?) Is there a way to register congressional "dissupport"? (Why is there no equivalent list of "dissupporters" for this bill? Is it common practice to only list supporters?)
- badragon 15y agoWe should go after Lamar Smith. How do I donate to an opponent or action committee that will run embarrassing ads questioning his intelligence?
- badragon 15y agoMaybe somebody with TV talent should do a kickstarter?
- dangrossman 15y agoYou can create and run the ads yourself from Google TV Ads http://www.google.com/ads/tv/ http://www.google.com/ads/tv/
- NARKOZ 15y ago>You can lie on the internet, but you don't lie to the internet.
- deleted 15y ago[deleted]
- Blunt 15y agoNothing speakers louder than the dollar. Bitching and moaning really does nothing compared to the mighty dollar. Fortunately for me I own a small hosting company with roughly 1500 or so domain names that I will do a bulk transfer too after the xmas holiday. These are domain names I mainly control as a consultant for other companies (my clients)... This ought to get interesting when I begin pulling the trigger. About 6 years ago I did something similar to move away from NetSol and they attempted to block this; making it very difficult to close my accounts.
- georgemcbay 15y agoUnfortunately I don't think the Godaddy situation proves much of anything to other companies because Godaddy is so easy to boycott. Transferring a domain will cost you some fees, but it is relatively painless, you can get the same exact service from someone else with ease. Are the people who turned their back on Godaddy as likely to not buy the next big Nintendo game if they are Nintendo fans? I'm pretty skeptical that a godaddy style boycott will work on a company whose good/service is not so easily replaceable. See: http://cache.gawkerassets.com/assets/images/9/2011/11/6e49368e85bd37eee55b92c4a1e63640.jpg http://cache.gawkerassets.com/assets/images/9/2011/11/6e4936...
- hadronzoo 15y agoAccording to Namecheap customer service, GoDaddy is blocking whois requests, forcing whois information to be entered manually. Due to the large number of recent domain transfers, this is slowing down the transfer rate. .com domains appear to be blocked, but not .me domains.
- Canada 15y agoDoes ICANN allow registrars to do that?
- RobertKohr 15y agoA better way to fight GoDaddy other than a boycott: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3393177 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3393177
- RobertKohr 15y agoBetter than boycotting godaddy, take away their number 1 spot on google. Just add this link to any websites you control: <a href="http://www.namecheap.com>Domain http://www.namecheap.com>Domain Registrar</a> This will heavily effect their SEO.