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Amazing discussions on Reddit and Hacker News - it'll be till Sept 2012 that this goes to vote again, let's make sure the SOPA discussion doesn't die during this time.
> In changing its position, Go Daddy remains steadfast in its promise to support security and stability of the Internet. 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.
> "Go Daddy has always fought to preserve the intellectual property rights of third parties, and will continue to do so in the future," Jones said.
Translation: we got caught this time, but will not hesitate to do it again.
I don't know how tech saavy I am, but I continue to use them because they provide low cost Windows based hosting which is relatively easy to use. Every time I look for an alternative, a comparable level of services is significantly more expensive at other providers. I wish it weren't the case, but it is.
This is the first rational explanation I've seen for this, so I voted it up. I'd be interested in hearing alternative solutions, if only for your sake :).
I don't play around with domain control much, so don't keep myself informed, but if I were to register domains, it doesn't matter how cheap (or free!) GoDaddy was, just having seen their Superbowl ads, they're clearly not a company that intends to be taken seriously.
You can get away with that with beer ads because beer is basically entertainment. But domains are part of business, a core block. You need that to be reliable and serious. Doesn't mean your ads need to be po-faced, but it does mean that you have to exhibit some nod towards indicating you're a professional company. Nice tits are nice tits, but that doesn't make me confident in the technical nous - or perhaps more importantly, intended direction - of an internet company.
Yes, they can just continue to lend their name to shooting elephants and misogynist ads.
I seriously doubt this is going to have much of an impact on them. So this one particular instance came back to bite them, good to know for them that pissing off techies is bad for business but animal rights people, devout christians and women ( all of whom have complained about various other parts of their business in the past ) don't have any impact on the companies actions.
most of their ads show some woman exhibiting reluctance to undressing, and then the men around her coercing her to do so anyways.
of course they're misogynist.
supporting SOPA fits in line with that philosophy. The one thing waterboarding, elephant hunting, SOPA and their misogynistic ads have in common is the element of using force against those who are far weaker than you are.
See harrylove's definition of misogynist below this. It's not a word that should be doled out frequently... just because an ad appreciates the female form.
> 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.
Translation: we said some pretty stupid things yesterday.
> Go Daddy ... worked with federal lawmakers for months ... legislation first introduced some three years ago ... entire Internet community ... ensure the integrity of the Internet
Translation: we've been neck-deep in this legislation, and will be pushing the next version of this bill too. Seized domains would have been a de facto transfer to Go Daddy.
> Go Daddy has received some emails that appear to stem from the boycott prompt, but we have not seen any impact to our business. We understand there are many differing opinions on the SOPA regulations
Translation: Screw you guys, wait, what did you say Jimmy Wales?
> 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.
You'd be surprised how willing most people are to just rewrite or delete history as it suits them.
I've heard of guys whose ex-girlfriends tore out and destroyed pages of their diaries related to the guy when they broke up.
People delete their half of conversations on forums, Facebook, etc. when they get proven wrong, so it looks like the other party was just talking to themselves.
Someone once asked me to help them remove someone from a photo (not a family photo, a documentary photo of a community activity). "Why?" "Because he was being annoying!" "But this photo could be printed in the paper. He was there. You can't just rewrite history like that!" "It's my photo! If you won't help me, I'll get someone else to do it."
Rewriting history is the norm. Most people haven't read 1984, and I suspect that many that do, don't get it.
Realistically, the best way to stop systemically bad legislation like SOPA is just to keep delaying and delaying it until it loses momentum and peters out (at which time another systemically bad piece of legislation will arrive to take its place, starting the cycle over again).
I've noticed they are directly tweeting to people like @aplusk and @photomatt, trying to get the word out. Obviously the community has made a dent in their bottom line.
Bad publicity has an impact all its own at most companies. For example, they have a whole Marketing department trying to get their name out there in a positive light. When their phones light up with every member of the press wanting quotes (press contacts they've spent years working on their relationship with) the executives have to get together and talk about it and come up with a unified response that won't blow up on them like CarrierIQ.
It's a big big deal for a public-facing company. Bigger than, say, a small decrease in the rate of new $2 account customers.
One of the ones they tweeted to was Jimmy Wales, who had just tweeted "I am proud to announce that the Wikipedia domain names will move away from GoDaddy. Their position on #sopa is unacceptable to us."
I know you were joking, but not a chance. The only effect this will have as far as I'm concerned is to move the transfer to the back burner for a bit (I'm on vacation at the moment, so I wasn't looking forward to dealing with the transfer hassle. Now I can enjoy a guilt-free holiday and do the transfer after I get back).
I was only on GoDaddy out of inertia/laziness anyway. At one time (quite a few years ago) they were...not good, exactly, but maybe the "least evil" of the available choices (a very similar situation to what you see with cell phone and cable TV providers). That hasn't been the case for quite some time, but I stuck with them just for the convenience of having all my stuff in one place. The constant upselling was annoying, but I rarely tinker with domain settings after the original config, so it was tolerable. This nonsense was the last nudge that was needed to push them over the cliff.
Again, the people have won. I am truly looking to see someone productize the power of the people on internet, and urging us to vote for and against a company with our dollars. A place where we can see what each company is up to (socially, and in other ways), and encouraging or discouraging consumers to work with them.
Reversing a decision only after costumers leave you in droves doesn't show your trust worthy. They either didn't understand the bill (in which case they shouldn't write a letter supporting it), or they are only changing now waiting for the bad PR to die down. If you have domains with them it is still worth switching to a company that will always publicly support freedom over oppressing peoples views to attempt to prevent some IP infringement. The rights to freedoms are more important than the rights to absolute control over corporations IP.
There is no way they didn't understand the bill. They fully understood the bill and probably were vying for a way to benefit from the bill. Everyone understands how bad this bill is for the Internet, unless someone has something to gain from it.
GoDaddy must have had something either legal or under the table that would benefit them immensely if they supported the bill.
> In changing its position, Go Daddy remains steadfast in its promise to support security and stability of the Internet. 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.
Translation: Go Daddy removed all incriminating evidence of it's past.
GoDaddy has been under fire for years for various reasons. While the SOPA boycott was definitely worthwhile and effective, we should really understand the power that the community has to influence a company's practices, and maybe shouldn't wait until it gets as bad as SOPA support to do this again in the future?
Businesses run the government. Money controls business.
This happened to be one of those issues where it was very easy to clearly show the company that their particular actions would not be tolerated. Not only that, but the difficulty of moving your support away from them was tremendously easy as well.
Because of limitations, not all industries enjoy this sort of free market-esque lateral movement. Comm companies, for instance, enjoy the benefits of an established infrastructure to keep other players out, and to keep you contracted with them, even under anti-consumer behaviors.
This was just a case of all the pieces lining up just right, and the market actually aligning with consumer demand.
There's a lot of truth in these comments. The most effective change is productive change. Don't like something? Do something that's better. Look at startups like Square who are turning payment processing on its ear, or our project, Ting.com, promising to turn mobility on its ear. Doing a startup that tries to stick it to the man is probably the most effective means of achieving real positive change.
I think some good points are made in this post. People need to start implementing or at least, work toward implementation of changes to the status quo, whatever the industry/sector may be. Unless that happens, it is all moot.
I think the mature thing to do, as cynical as this might sound, is to realize that the government is obscenely out of touch with its constituency, and stop going to them for help. Instead, influence the influencers.
At the end of the day, all companies have is customers. If the customers stop utilizing their services, the companies are forced to stop pushing their anti-consumer agendas into legislation. Part of this is utilizing the Internet, as it now is, to circumvent the old ways of doing things.
Essentially, while it is free, startups should be focusing on helping consumers circumvent traditional industries.
We all hate banks as they are. Let's reinvent them.
We all hate telecoms. Let's try to create startups that can compete with them.
We all hate loan institutions. Let's disrupt the loan structure, allow people to privately invest in one another on a micro scale. Hell, it's already being done for 3rd world nations.
We have a real opportunity to change things and make them better. Get out from under the institutionalized world we grew up in. Why not?
I don't think it is that unrealistic to expect a shift away from TVs. In fact, number of households with a TV set is starting a downward trend which is accelerating.
It is certainly possible to buy DRM-free tracks, and indeed this should be encouraged. Creative commons music exists too. Movies are another matter, although I don't think discouraging people from movies altogether is too unrealistic, that could just be because I'm not big on movies in general myself.
yes but i say good luck with that because how big of a dent to the Comcasts of the world is this community?
For Godaddy this community is their market and thus we can force action by canceling our service. The market for Hollywood and the RIAA's products cover all walks of life.
You'd have to get your neighbor, aunt, 3rd cousin, etc to stop patronizing Hollywood and the ilk to hurt their bottom line. Your neighbor and grandma have never heard of SOPA nor do they care they just want to watch wheel of fortune or their favorite show.
Many in this community have canceled cable tv services, but again has your grandmother, father, 3rd cousin or neighbor done so too?
I love the idea of disrupting the loan structure. I think using things like Prosper or Lending Club is great. But I live in Pennsylvania where they are against the law.
We cannot ignore the ways in which government is broken.
As far as loan institutions go and trying to create something that lets people invest in one another, the UK already has something along those lines: http://uk.zopa.com
I think the idea is great and wish Zopa got more press than they do.
Agree that "the government is obscenely out of touch with its constituency." Also agree that it makes sense to stop going to them for help, and the influencing the influencers is prudent. But there is another lever: get rid of the government system that would be so easily influenced by money over and above policy. Turn 'em out. Withdraw consent of the governed.
There's no good place to say this, but that URL bothers me every time I see it. What the hell are "Rouge Websites?" I think they meant something else. :-P
I haven't actually read the text of SOPA, but I have this amusing fantasy of Anonymous having planted a congressional staffer to do a global search-and-replace through the entire law. Then, when it passes, the following can occur:
EvilMegaCorp : Remove this rogue domain from your DNS immediately.
DNS : Sorry, we're not going to do that.
EvilMegaCorp : But you are legally required to, per SOPA!
DNS : Actually, SOPA only requires us to de-link rouge websites. The Engrish-branded knockoff Asian cosmetics industry has really been decimated by this.
https://www.graphicartistsguild.org/ !! :)
They point to position statements ( https://twitter.com/#!/gaguild/status/150004542073872386 <- written by the copyright alliance) that speak to copyright and say the bill's scope is narrow and specific (I disagree), but I didn't see anything about technical concerns. I think it's fair to say those position statements are a load of horse shit.
"Sure we're giving the gov't the right to indefinitely detain anyone, but they're only going to do it if someone is rilly rilly bad, so don't worry! :)"* <- constitutional and civil liberties protections do not work this way.
*I know SOPA isn't the same, it's just an analogy :)
I'm looking at a dollar bill on the table in front of me, and I don't think it controls anything. It's an inanimate object.
I know this isn't what you mean. But it's helpful to point this out, for the sake of clear thinking and accuracy: human beings control money. They choose if, where and how to earn it or spend it. Ultimately, it's not money that controls business, but people, with ideas, lives, dreams, goals, motives (sometimes shortsighted and foolhardy, but also sometimes farsighted and brilliant) etc. There is no good reason to imply that one inanimate object or technology such as money is somehow inherently tainted, even if only to some small degree.
Why not try calling out bad ideas instead? What are they, and why are they bad?
I'm sure it was some combination of everyone working together and the bad PR, but Google uses them as the default registrat for Google Apps domains.
Threatening to change that arrangement would have a continuing impact on their revenue, rather than being just a one-time outrage. That gives Google more leverage than the other sites, which is why I wonder how that played out.
But make no mistake: I'm very glad to see all the websites out there banding together to fight this. Reddit, Wikipedia and even Cheezburger created enough bad PR that they couldn't ignore this and we have to give them credit for that.
StackOverflow own what? 5 domains? stackoverflow.com, stackexchange.com, superuser.com, serverfault.com and stackapps.com . I can't see GoDaddy being that hugely influenced by 5 domains.
It's not the number but the influence of the entities behind them. If stackoverflow, reddit, and arsetechnica are commenting on an issue, you can be sure many will agree and join in.
It's possible that they were faced with a mass walkout of key employees.
I know I'd tender my resignation the next day if I worked for someone who issued a press release like Go Daddy's earlier one. As a rule, the few employees who are genuinely mission-critical to a large organization can always find work somewhere else.
> Fighting online piracy is of the utmost importance
This is not what I expect to hear from a CEO of the company that is an integral cog of the Internet. He still got his priorities all wrong, and his interests are still not aligned with the interests of the majority of Internet users. GoDaddy is exactly where it was yesterday, they simply made a cosmetic PR statement that doesn't really affect anything long term.
Exactly. I hope the move your domain day goes forward as planned. The ball has started rolling, why stop. Please people, don't stop.
I don't have any domains with GoDaddy (I'm contacting the company who handles mine though and asking them about SOPA) but I'm going to join in on the Wikimedia donation run.
What's not reassuring to me is that people are satisfied with this. Let's get real, GoDaddy is trying to dampen the outrage with very little. It may be a good sign - and we should feel happy - that we're starting to make a difference, but GoDaddy did a lot to support SOPA, they should do more than a PR blog post for people to declare victory and wrap up the GoDaddy+SOPA situation.
You are needlessly cynical, my friend. Money does drive a lot of corporate decisions, but plenty of stuff is done because "it's cool" or out of pure altruism too. It's possible to somehow attribute even altruism to eventual profits (altruism = good image = more business), but do we need to be so cynical?
One could argue that if they fought to preserve the IP rights of third parties, they wouldn't be in the business of enabling the infringement of those rights by selling domain names and server space.
This is good for multiple reasons. One, it shows people that their voices do matter. They can contact their vendors and express opposition and if there are plenty enough of them, they can exert influence. Two, it shows other companies that there are enough people out there who are against SOPA that a big vendor like GoDaddy has had to flipflop its support for it because it threatened their bottom line. It will at least force them to have another conversation about withdrawing SOPA support.
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[ 15.4 ms ] story [ 282 ms ] threadAmazing discussions on Reddit and Hacker News - it'll be till Sept 2012 that this goes to vote again, let's make sure the SOPA discussion doesn't die during this time.
Nice job keeping the fire on this.
> "Go Daddy has always fought to preserve the intellectual property rights of third parties, and will continue to do so in the future," Jones said.
Translation: we got caught this time, but will not hesitate to do it again.
The man said it himself. They are not trustworthy.
Have to say I'm shocked at how many tech savvy people use them. Didn't realize how convincing Danica Patrick is I guess.
You can get away with that with beer ads because beer is basically entertainment. But domains are part of business, a core block. You need that to be reliable and serious. Doesn't mean your ads need to be po-faced, but it does mean that you have to exhibit some nod towards indicating you're a professional company. Nice tits are nice tits, but that doesn't make me confident in the technical nous - or perhaps more importantly, intended direction - of an internet company.
I seriously doubt this is going to have much of an impact on them. So this one particular instance came back to bite them, good to know for them that pissing off techies is bad for business but animal rights people, devout christians and women ( all of whom have complained about various other parts of their business in the past ) don't have any impact on the companies actions.
But of course, you have to understand that it's part of the company's philosophy. This is the same CEO that came out in favor of waterboarding: http://www.metafilter.com/42906/Dear-Bob-Im-glad-youre-not-i...
the same CEO that goes elephant hunting: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/03/31/bob-parsons-godaddy...
supporting SOPA fits in line with that philosophy. The one thing waterboarding, elephant hunting, SOPA and their misogynistic ads have in common is the element of using force against those who are far weaker than you are.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4aHe_9nH_Mc
my IQ dropped just looking for these. I can't wait for the end of this company.
Sexist? Furtherance of gender inequality? Perhaps as a side effect.
Sexual objectification? Definitely.
Isn't it obvious to everyone that they are still supporting SOPA, but realized that supporting it publically was a bad call?
More translations that might make your day:
> 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.
Translation: we said some pretty stupid things yesterday.
> Go Daddy ... worked with federal lawmakers for months ... legislation first introduced some three years ago ... entire Internet community ... ensure the integrity of the Internet
Translation: we've been neck-deep in this legislation, and will be pushing the next version of this bill too. Seized domains would have been a de facto transfer to Go Daddy.
> Go Daddy has received some emails that appear to stem from the boycott prompt, but we have not seen any impact to our business. We understand there are many differing opinions on the SOPA regulations
Translation: Screw you guys, wait, what did you say Jimmy Wales?
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2011/12/godaddy-face...
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2011/12/godaddy-face...
http://movies.cosmicbooknews.com/content/michael-bentkover-w...
Somebody read 1984 and rooted for Big Brother.
I've heard of guys whose ex-girlfriends tore out and destroyed pages of their diaries related to the guy when they broke up.
People delete their half of conversations on forums, Facebook, etc. when they get proven wrong, so it looks like the other party was just talking to themselves.
Someone once asked me to help them remove someone from a photo (not a family photo, a documentary photo of a community activity). "Why?" "Because he was being annoying!" "But this photo could be printed in the paper. He was there. You can't just rewrite history like that!" "It's my photo! If you won't help me, I'll get someone else to do it."
Rewriting history is the norm. Most people haven't read 1984, and I suspect that many that do, don't get it.
Don't lose the momentum.
Bad publicity has an impact all its own at most companies. For example, they have a whole Marketing department trying to get their name out there in a positive light. When their phones light up with every member of the press wanting quotes (press contacts they've spent years working on their relationship with) the executives have to get together and talk about it and come up with a unified response that won't blow up on them like CarrierIQ.
It's a big big deal for a public-facing company. Bigger than, say, a small decrease in the rate of new $2 account customers.
Wonder if they'll follow through now?
I was only on GoDaddy out of inertia/laziness anyway. At one time (quite a few years ago) they were...not good, exactly, but maybe the "least evil" of the available choices (a very similar situation to what you see with cell phone and cable TV providers). That hasn't been the case for quite some time, but I stuck with them just for the convenience of having all my stuff in one place. The constant upselling was annoying, but I rarely tinker with domain settings after the original config, so it was tolerable. This nonsense was the last nudge that was needed to push them over the cliff.
GoDaddy must have had something either legal or under the table that would benefit them immensely if they supported the bill.
Translation: Go Daddy removed all incriminating evidence of it's past.
Just as a company is motivated proportionally by money, a person is motivated by proportionally by how much something affects them.
Can we keep doing this, but for SOPA itself?
I have been calling companies I am a customer or have been a customer of, to withdraw support if they want to keep me as a customer.
This happened to be one of those issues where it was very easy to clearly show the company that their particular actions would not be tolerated. Not only that, but the difficulty of moving your support away from them was tremendously easy as well.
Because of limitations, not all industries enjoy this sort of free market-esque lateral movement. Comm companies, for instance, enjoy the benefits of an established infrastructure to keep other players out, and to keep you contracted with them, even under anti-consumer behaviors.
This was just a case of all the pieces lining up just right, and the market actually aligning with consumer demand.
Instead of going through businesses to try to tell the government what the citizens think, and besides writing or calling politicians, what can we do?
Occupy The Internet!
#define competition illegal
is bad, m'kay?
At the end of the day, all companies have is customers. If the customers stop utilizing their services, the companies are forced to stop pushing their anti-consumer agendas into legislation. Part of this is utilizing the Internet, as it now is, to circumvent the old ways of doing things.
Essentially, while it is free, startups should be focusing on helping consumers circumvent traditional industries.
We all hate banks as they are. Let's reinvent them.
We all hate telecoms. Let's try to create startups that can compete with them.
We all hate loan institutions. Let's disrupt the loan structure, allow people to privately invest in one another on a micro scale. Hell, it's already being done for 3rd world nations.
We have a real opportunity to change things and make them better. Get out from under the institutionalized world we grew up in. Why not?
Have everyone turn off their tvs, stop paying for cable tv, stop listening to popular music, stop going to the movies and such ?
Good luck with that... Definitely need to focus on govt. maybe a OCCUPY Capitol Hill and other SOPA supportErs' premises is what is needed?!??
http://insidetv.ew.com/2011/11/30/tv-ownership-declines/
It is certainly possible to buy DRM-free tracks, and indeed this should be encouraged. Creative commons music exists too. Movies are another matter, although I don't think discouraging people from movies altogether is too unrealistic, that could just be because I'm not big on movies in general myself.
For Godaddy this community is their market and thus we can force action by canceling our service. The market for Hollywood and the RIAA's products cover all walks of life.
You'd have to get your neighbor, aunt, 3rd cousin, etc to stop patronizing Hollywood and the ilk to hurt their bottom line. Your neighbor and grandma have never heard of SOPA nor do they care they just want to watch wheel of fortune or their favorite show.
Many in this community have canceled cable tv services, but again has your grandmother, father, 3rd cousin or neighbor done so too?
We cannot ignore the ways in which government is broken.
Is there a reason for that? To stop loan sharks, for example? (Which is a highly valid reason).
(If you wanted to outlaw loan sharking, you pass something like the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act, not an "only banks can loan money" law)
As far as loan institutions go and trying to create something that lets people invest in one another, the UK already has something along those lines: http://uk.zopa.com
I think the idea is great and wish Zopa got more press than they do.
Fight the powder! We need SOAP to unmascara the pirates!
EvilMegaCorp : Remove this rogue domain from your DNS immediately.
DNS : Sorry, we're not going to do that.
EvilMegaCorp : But you are legally required to, per SOPA!
DNS : Actually, SOPA only requires us to de-link rouge websites. The Engrish-branded knockoff Asian cosmetics industry has really been decimated by this.
EvilMegaCorp : << explodes in a fit of pique >>
Sigh. A nerd can dream...
"Sure we're giving the gov't the right to indefinitely detain anyone, but they're only going to do it if someone is rilly rilly bad, so don't worry! :)"* <- constitutional and civil liberties protections do not work this way.
*I know SOPA isn't the same, it's just an analogy :)
Edit: Never mind, here is one: http://judiciary.house.gov/issues/Rogue%20Websites/List%20of...
The previous link was about "Rouge websites," not "Rogue websites."
I'm looking at a dollar bill on the table in front of me, and I don't think it controls anything. It's an inanimate object.
I know this isn't what you mean. But it's helpful to point this out, for the sake of clear thinking and accuracy: human beings control money. They choose if, where and how to earn it or spend it. Ultimately, it's not money that controls business, but people, with ideas, lives, dreams, goals, motives (sometimes shortsighted and foolhardy, but also sometimes farsighted and brilliant) etc. There is no good reason to imply that one inanimate object or technology such as money is somehow inherently tainted, even if only to some small degree.
Why not try calling out bad ideas instead? What are they, and why are they bad?
Threatening to change that arrangement would have a continuing impact on their revenue, rather than being just a one-time outrage. That gives Google more leverage than the other sites, which is why I wonder how that played out.
But make no mistake: I'm very glad to see all the websites out there banding together to fight this. Reddit, Wikipedia and even Cheezburger created enough bad PR that they couldn't ignore this and we have to give them credit for that.
I know I'd tender my resignation the next day if I worked for someone who issued a press release like Go Daddy's earlier one. As a rule, the few employees who are genuinely mission-critical to a large organization can always find work somewhere else.
> Fighting online piracy is of the utmost importance
This is not what I expect to hear from a CEO of the company that is an integral cog of the Internet. He still got his priorities all wrong, and his interests are still not aligned with the interests of the majority of Internet users. GoDaddy is exactly where it was yesterday, they simply made a cosmetic PR statement that doesn't really affect anything long term.
I don't have any domains with GoDaddy (I'm contacting the company who handles mine though and asking them about SOPA) but I'm going to join in on the Wikimedia donation run.
Just looking out for their bottom line, I'm sure.
If every company did every thing that everyone else ever did successfully... I can't even finish this sentence.
Karma is a benefit...
carry on...
Doesn't that kind of imply that GoDaddy is less than concerned about the rights of domain owners? Guilty until proven innocent, I guess.
For better or for worse all companies' philosophies are to make money, at least the public ones. They can be sued if they deviate.