Some call for Dec. 29 as Dump Go Daddy day

By Suzanne Choney

Go Daddy is the target of some angry users who want to penalize the Web hosting giant and Internet domain registrar for its support of a controversial online piracy bill, despite Go Daddy recently retracting it after losing more than 37,000 Web domains in just the last several days, according to reports.

"There's a strange irony to the sudden, seemingly grassroots campaign against Go Daddy," writes Joe Wilcox of BetaNews, which says the "mass call for a Go Daddy boycott ... has taken on mass peer-pressure hysteria ? that by association you are somehow evil if you don't transfer domains from Go Daddy":

Stated differently, Go Daddy protesters block peoples' right to choose, too, by pressuring them to leave the registrar. They're guilty now of what they accuse the government would do in the future ? suppressing freedom on the Internet.

The Go Daddy boycott and "dump day" were organized by users of social news site? Reddit, who also set up a boycott site:

Since the announcement of the boycott of Go Daddy, Go Daddy has just publicly dropped their support of the heinous Stop Online Piracy Act or SOPA. But, they still support the Senate version of SOPA, called PIPA or PROTECT-IP. If you work on the internet and do business with Go Daddy you're supporting a company who is actively working against your best interests.

Hollywood studios and record companies favor the Stop Online Piracy Act as much as many major technology companies ? including Google, Facebook, Apple, Intel and Microsoft ? oppose it. The bill makes the streaming of unauthorized content a felony. But it also would require websites and telecom service providers to monitor content and traffic across their networks for piracy, and let law enforcement actually seize a website and shut it down.

Last week, the House Judiciary Committee said it would delay debate on the bill, H.R. 3261, until early next year.

Go Daddy's CEO, Warren Adelman, in a Dec. 23 press release, said the company is pulling its support for SOPA, and that while fighting online piracy is of "the utmost importance .. we can clearly do better. It's very important that all Internet stakeholders work together on this. Getting it right is worth the wait. Go Daddy will support it when and if the Internet community supports it."

Despite that diplomatic tone, Go Daddy's Christine Jones made it quite clear in the same press release that the company "has always fought to preserve the intellectual property rights of third parties, and will continue to do so in the future."

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Source: http://technolog.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2011/12/27/9744232-some-call-for-dec-29-as-dump-go-daddy-day

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