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GoDaddy on Friday announced their withdrawal of support for the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA).
The announcement comes after thousands of customers began abandoning the company for its support of the program. One of those customers was Ben Huh who’s I Can Haz Cheezburger network has more than 1,000 domains registered to GoDaddy.
In a statement about their decision company CEO Warren Adelman noted:
“As a company that is all about innovation, with our own technology and in support of our customers, Go Daddy is rooted in the idea of First Amendment Rights and believes 100 percent that the Internet is a key engine for our new economy.”
GoDaddy’s support for SOPA was discovered when the United States House of Representatives judiciary committee released a list of 150 backers for the plan.
After changing their stance GoDaddy also removed various blog posts they had written which showed exactly what parts of SOPA they supported “in an effort to eliminate any confusion about its reversal on SOPA.”
At the heart of the SOPA issue is the power it would give to government officials and company’s to shut down websites that infringe on any of their copyright. Rather than having specific material removed an organization could effectively shut down an entire website.
In defending their involvement with SOPA Adelman noted:
“Fighting online piracy is of the utmost importance, which is why Go Daddy has been working to help craft revisions to this legislation — but we can clearly do better,” Adelman said. “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.”
Do you think the mass exodus away from GoDaddy is warranted based on the danger SOPA poses to publishing rights?
