The form response Lamar Smith sends to opponents of SOPA.

As I mentioned in a previous post, I live in Lamar Smith’s district in Texas. His office is literally a couple miles from mine. Smith is the sponsor of Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA).

I wrote to him a week ago via his web site expressing how I didn’t like the SOPA bill because it reinforces the idea that America owns the internet.

Here’s the form response I received:

Dear Mr. Allemann,

Thank you for contacting me regarding H.R. 3621, the “Stop Online Piracy Act.” I appreciate hearing from you.

The Stop Online Piracy Act specifically targets foreign, not domestic, websites primarily dedicated to illegal activity. The bill addresses the real and widespread problem of foreign online criminals who steal and sell America’s intellectual property and seek to keep the profits for themselves.

These foreign websites are called “rogue sites” because they are out of reach of U.S. laws. Movies and music are not the only stolen products that are offered by rogue sites. Counterfeit medicine, automotive parts and even baby food are a big part of the counterfeiting business and pose a serious threat to the health and safety of American consumers.

While some critics of online piracy and counterfeiting legislation acknowledge that intellectual property should be protected, they oppose every proposal to effectively reduce the theft of intellectual property and the counterfeiting of American products.

The Stop Online Piracy Act does not threaten the Internet nor does it impede the ability of any American to exercise their First Amendment rights. But it does threaten the profits sought by those who willfully steal intellectual property by trafficking in counterfeit or pirated goods. Claims that the bill would allow anyone to file a complaint to block access or support to a website for any reason are blatantly false. The bill affords the same due process protections provided in all civil litigation in federal courts and requires a judge to make a determination and issue a court order prior to there being any obligation to take action in compliance with the Act.

For more information on issues of interest to you or to send me an electronic message, please visit the 21st District’s website, http://lamarsmith.house.gov.

You can hate SOPA, but at least take a few minutes to educate yourself about it.

Let me start off by saying I’m opposed to Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA). My House representative, Lamar Smith, is the sponsor of the bill and he offices just down the road from me. I have submitted comments to him letting him know I’m not in favor of the bill, primarily because of my concern that it suggests the internet belongs to America.

But after reading lots of criticism of the bill last week, I realized that a lot of people who are blasting it haven’t even made an attempt to learn the basics of the bill.

Kind of like this article from Engadget last week, blasting GoDaddy for its (since retracted) support of SOPA.

I generally don’t give much credence to articles that have “Hate F*cking” in the title, but I decided to read a couple paragraphs of the post.

It’s clear the author at this tech publication knows less about SOPA that I do.

First sentence: “GoDaddy, proud supporter of internet censorship bill SOPA, has responded to those questioning its motives.”

The story then links to a (since removed) blog post on GoDaddy’s web site that includes GoDaddy general counsel Christine Jones’ comments on the bill. But she wasn’t responding to the recent uproar; it was written long ago.

(Which brings up another point — GoDaddy has supported SOPA since it’s beginning, yet the internet just found out about it last week.)

But the next part of the Engadget story is the kicker:

Well, actually, it is about both of these.

Time and time again I see articles like this one that just spread confusion. I suspect 99% of those that say they’re against SOPA know very little about it, other than that people they like say they’re opposed to it.

Don’t look to DailyChanges.com to see how many domains GoDaddy has lost.

Ever since GoDaddy faced a boycott of its services over its (since changed) position on SOPA, people have been trying to quantify domain losses for the company.

A typical data source is DailyChanges.com, which monitors changes to nameservers.

This is a bad source in this case for two reasons:

1. Domain names typically take 5 or more days to transfer, so the full effect won’t be evident for five plus days after someone decides to transfer their names.

2. DailyChanges tracks nameserver changes, not domain transfers.

I’m not writing this to blast the people who have used DailyChanges as a proxy. After all, I kept an eye on it during the elephant boycott and called it a “proxy” for domain transfers.

But looking at the data this time I think it’s actually a poor proxy.

The number people will quote is the number of domains transferred off of GoDaddy’s “domaincontrol.com” nameservers. For December 26, domaincontrol.com had 22,542 domains transferred out.

A closer look at this 22,542 number shows that it has little do do with people transferring their domains from GoDaddy to a competitor. I took at a look at the first 3,878 domains in the alphabet transferred away from domaincontrol.com on December 26, and found that a whopping 2,454 were transferred to internettraffic.com. This is the nameserver for Frank Schilling’s parking service. In other words, these domains weren’t transferred away from GoDaddy. They were merely moved to a parking service.

I have no idea if this is an anomaly, but I think it proves a point: DailyChanges.com is actually a poor proxy for GoDaddy’s domain transfers.

New GoDaddy CEO explains his company’s reversal of support for SOPA.

GoDaddy just pulled its support of Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), a bill designed to protect intellectual property.

The reversal came after a call for a boycott of GoDaddy because of its support hit a fevered pitch yesterday. Although GoDaddy has supported SOPA from the beginning, its name was included in a list of supporters that was published this week.

Warren Adelman, who became CEO of GoDaddy upon the closing of an investment by KKR, Silver Lake and Technology Crossover Ventures last Friday, told Domain Name Wire he was able to take a step back and evaluate the company’s support of SOPA.

“I’ve been in this role as CEO for exactly a week,” he said. “I had the luxury of coming in and looking at this from that vantage point and make this decision.”

Adelman was president and COO of the company before stepping into the CEO role.

The uproar from customers and the media over the past twenty-four hours helped shape his opinion.

“We’ve heard from our customers and it’s clear there’s no consensus in the internet community” supporting the bill, he said. “We also don’t think the bill is ready in its current form.”

Adelman said the company won’t step back from taking an active role in internet legislation. The company has backed previous legislation for shutting down rogue internet pharmacies. It has also worked to protect children on the internet.

The company didn’t see an abnormal number of outbound domain name transfers yesterday, he said. But Adelman said the company “acted quickly” because of customer feedback about the company’s stance on SOPA.

GoDaddy changes mind on SOPA.

[Update: Read my interview with Go Daddy CEO Warren Adelman about his company's changed stance on SOPA]

A growing call for a boycott of GoDaddy over its support of the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) has achieved its goal — GoDaddy just announced it no longer supports the bill.

GoDaddy general counsel Christine Jones had been steadfast in her support of the bill, and GoDaddy had posted her commentary on the bill on its web site. That post has been removed.

Although the company came out in support of the bill a couple months ago, no one seemed to notice until a list of supporting organizations was released this week. That lead to a movement on Reddit for people to transfer their domains away.

Domain registrars such as Name.com and Hover offered coupon codes for transfers to people who wanted to join the movement. The movement echoed a similar outcry earlier this year after video surfaced of the company’s founder Bob Parsons shooting an elephant.