GoDaddy blacks out part of its web site to oppose SOPA
Wednesday, January 18th, 2012
From bill supporter to blackout.
Did you know that GoDaddy is participating in today’s web blackout to oppose SOPA and PIPA?
OK, so it’s only a 500×90 pixel block below the fold on its home page:
Still, this is noteworthy given that GoDaddy’s prior support for the anti-piracy legislation made waves on the internet last month, leading to a spike in domain transfers to competitors.
GoDaddy reversed its opinion on the bill and now opposes it.
Ironically, some of the registrar’s competitors are taking a page out of GoDaddy founder Bob Parson’s playbook to capitalize on SOPA. They’re getting a lot of press today by joining the blackout in one way or another.
Further Reading:
Below the fold on GoDaddy.com — that is not really a strong “supporter”.
Well, I feel totally inconvenienced by this.
At least they put it up. Domainer forums are not doing anything about it. Simple banner would’ve been good.
Gnanes: Namepros is doing it!
I think I might transfer another dozen domains away from GoDaddy for their uninspiring opposition.
Tucows, on the other hand…
http://www.tucows.com/downloads
(full blackout today until 8 PM EST)
Well, if that’s what many people want Go Daddy to do, what else to do but to go with the flow?
“Domainer forums are not doing anything about it.”
If the folks on domainer forums haven’t heard about this before now, then you kind of have to wonder how they found themselves on domainer forums.
By the way, Andrew, “reversed their opinion” is one thing. GoDaddy PAC donated $2500 to Lamar Smith of Texas, who is responsible for SOPA.
Do you remember the Snowe bill from a while back? Cha-ching: $2500 from GODADDY.COM LLC POLITICAL ACTION COMMITTEE.
Do you remember Senator Ted “The internet is tubes” Stevens?
Stevens got $4600 from Bob Parsons alone (and smaller bundles from Warren Adelman and other GoDaddy top staff), before Jim DeMint – oh yeah that craaaaazy liberal Jim “We will break him” DeMint (R – Teabagville)- announced he was considering making Stevens the first Senate expulsion since the Civil War.
“Having an opinion” in this context needs a little more meat to hang on that bone.
GoDaddy, like any company, makes a variety of political contributions to a variety of candidates and committees. Or, just to be clear, their PAC does. In the last cycle, the PAC had only 11 donors, and six donors above the $5000 level. It is a convenient, and perfectly legal, way to get around the personal contribution limit of $2500, since you can give the candidate that amount personally, and then do it again through a PAC which you control with a small handful of people.
Now, one could argue that donations of the kind noted above are a means of getting attention and thus an opportunity to bring politicians around to your point of view (and by that I mean the company’s priorities as an internet company, and not whatever the personal political interests of people in the company might be). On the other hand, there is something to be said for supporting those politicians who agree with you in the first place.
(I urge anyone with an interest in political funding and internet companies to use the wonderful front end to FEC records at opensecrets.org – one of those weird free internet sites that do amazing things.)