Former SOPA supporters Go Daddy have
pulled a sort-of about face on the bill.
After backlash from customers, Go Daddy announced Friday that it is no longer supporting the Stop Online Piracy Act.
In a company statement, the domain registrar said that it has removed previous postings about its position to “eliminate confusion.”
“In changing its position, Go Daddy remains steadfast in its promise to support the security and stability of the Internet,” the company said in a statement. “In an effort to eliminate any confusion about its reversal on SOPA though, Jones has removed blog postings that had outlined areas of the bill Go Daddy did support.”
Very brave, scrubbing their site of previous statements in support of the legislation, and now not actually actively opposing the bill, just not supporting it. There's no mystery to their withdrawal of support for the bill, but it's not likely to be enough for Internet activists.
This week, they lost around 72,000 domain registrations. At a yearly discounted rate of $6.99 (most registrations are higher), that’s over half a million dollars per year. It is apparently not enough for them to speak out against the bill.
How many domains is the company willing to lose before they oppose this abomination of legislation? Do they believe that when they “step back and let others take leadership roles” that we are going to see it as something other than a “duck and cover” public relations move to try to get out of the spotlight and hope someone else takes the brunt of the attacks while they quietly support the bill?
Since GoDaddy had a hand in writing the bill, and in fact got an exemption for themselves written into it, it's going to take a great deal more than a press release for the company to redeem itself.