> "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.
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...
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.
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.
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.
Can we keep doing this, but for SOPA itself?
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?
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?
> 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.
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.
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.
Until SOPA and its offsprings are dead, keep the pressure on GoDaddy and other supporters of SOPA! Don't let these weak public statements distract you; there's a lot that goes on behind the scenes.
Publicly telling Congress that GoDaddy supported SOPA, but had to back off when customers told them it's a bad idea -- and that Congress should do the same.
The boycott should continue until they either take - or announce their plan of - action. Until they do, this PR talk is nothing more than that.
GoDaddy must have had something either legal or under the table that would benefit them immensely if they supported the bill.
Of course, I would have said that before they stopped supporting SOPA. They've always been a sleazy spammy company whose advertising is full of blatant sexism. We should not have been surprise by their support of SOPA. Sleaze will do as sleaze does.
The casual sexism and stupidity of their ads always grated, but I simply didn't want to drop the money to leave. That was stupid of me, "carrying a poisonous scorpion on your back" stupid. No more.
Translation: Go Daddy removed all incriminating evidence of it's past.
There's no doubt they did it to stop the bleeding, but they still did it. And that's what we want right? For SOPA to lose traction, and for it not to pass. Yet it seems like this has almost become a dump on godaddy festival. Please don't lose sight of the reasons as to why we as rational internet using human beings did this in the first place.
This isn't a very "authentic" feeling turnaround. It feels like PR damage control, which is exactly what it is. Its pretty clear looking at their Twitter account that Godaddy doesn't really understand social media, and from this response they don't understand PR in 2011.
In regard to their Twitter responses: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3386961
Here is a link which approves of the point above : http://www.reddit.com/r/politics/comments/nntxp/godaddys_res...
Maybe I'm being overly cynical, but this reads to me like: we still support SOPA, but we're going to pretend we don't, because we realise our customers are against it, but feel we can fool them by making a pro forma denunciation of SOPA.
I'm not a customer of Go Daddy, but if I was I would still transfer my domains. This declaration isn't good enough for me.
One should resist the urge to say “yeah but they’re still awful people” unless one is willing to bring the same passion to everyone else on the list of supporters.
Again: correct outcome and for the right reasons.
I'm happy to forget about them for a while longer.
I’m simply pointing out that (perhaps) outcomes matter a bit more than our indignant feelings.
It's naive to believe anything else.
Let’s focus on behaviors and incentives. Leaving in droves seems to have led to behavior we prefer. What to conclude?
"Go Daddy and its General Counsel, Christine Jones, have worked with federal lawmakers for months to help craft revisions to legislation first introduced some three years ago. "
Go Daddy wasn't simply _supporting_ SOPA - they were involved in creating it. They used their expert knowledge of DNS and DNS systems to create a system, which, I'm sure, would have provided them some competitive advantages.
If anything, this makes them even less trustworthy as an registrar than they were previously.
Don't lose the momentum.
http://techcrunch.com/2011/12/23/godaddy-ceo-there-has-to-be...
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'm a longtime Go Daddy customer and have several domains with them.
I've thought about moving from GoDaddy, but never made it a priority. But I finally got motivated enough to see the process of switching might not be as painful as I thought. Now that I've seen what else is out there, it's go time. As my domains expire in the next few months, I'll switch them over to Namecheap.
At least for me, it's too little, too late this time for Go Daddy.
Just as a company is motivated proportionally by money, a person is motivated by proportionally by how much something affects them.
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.
Nice job keeping the fire on this.
At this point, perhaps I'm biased and this is not the most productive response, by my personal opinion is still to "nuke 'em".
Far too little and way too late -- they were part of getting this monstrosity rolling, and their current action does little to stop it.
Put it in the entertainment industry's own lingo: The world needs an "example". And I think we'd have a hard time finding a better candidate (though there may be a some yet more deserving).
Thanks Wikipedia. (and I hope they continue the switch anyway)
For better or for worse all companies' philosophies are to make money, at least the public ones. They can be sued if they deviate.
Action speaks louder than words. Let GoDaddy know they actually have to _do_ something that is in the interests of a free and open internet. Taking action that is harmful and then giving lip service to freedom and spewing platitudes is not enough. Let them know it:
Stephanie Bracken, PR Specialist 480.505.8800 ext.4451 PR@GoDaddy.com
If neither side strongly supports or opposes something but lobbyists strongly support it then expect it to pass John Doe.
The best way to stop SOPA would ironically be the democrats strongly coming out in support of the bill, which would make the house suddenly refuse to even vote on SOPA, and would cause the bill to be filibustered in the senate. Why, because republicans have to oppose anything Obama/democrats are for.
Republicans strongly supporting SOPA would also likely kill it. The house would pass it, and Reid would refuse to even bring it to a vote in the Senate, or would bring it to a vote knowing that it'll lose just to show republicans that it can't pass the senate.
If you doubt me then look at the payroll taxcut fight going on right now. Republicans always support tax cuts, except when Obama & democrats support it, like the payroll tax cut being discussed.
The pharmacy lobbyists know this as well, there was part of Obama's healthcare law (I forget what part) that big pharma wanted removed from the bill that a lot of democrats had opposed when the healthcare law was written. Big pharma lobbyists told Republicans not to go on a public rampage demonizing that provision and blaming it on Obama, republicans demonized it and Obama for signing it into law anyway, and dozens of democrats who had previously voiced opposition to the provision voted against repealing the provision when the House voted on it months ago, and Reid refused to even hold a vote on it.
So the moral of the story? If we want to kill SOPA we just need to convince one political party to strongly support SOPA. The other party will reflexively strongly oppose SOPA and block it from ever becoming law.
I wouldn't put it past them to support SOPA once enough people transfer back/keep their business with them.
Karma is a benefit...
carry on...
I am, however, a little confused.
Wasn't the goal of the campaign against GoDaddy to convince them to no longer support SOPA? Isn't this a small victory? If people in the community are not going to support them no matter what they do, where is their incentive to change behavior? I understand the cynicism but we need to also reward companies doing the right thing, even if they took some wrong turns along the way.
[edit: formatting]
The blog posting emphasizes several times the importance and need to protect American businesses, which to me seems patriotic and sympathetic to promoting a good intention. I'm sure they didn't realize they would be "villanized" as a result of their actions.
Disclaimer: I don't support SOPA.
I still think people should stay away from GoDaddy. You should not do business with anyone whose first instinct is to support defective legislation when they so clearly should know better. GoDaddy have shown what their values are. It is going to take a lot more than a press release to convince me that they are deserving of my business in the future.
They already did the damage, and they've showed many, many, many times over that they do not deserve to have anyone's business.
The boycott should remain.
"Go Daddy will support it when and if the Internet community supports it."
Let's see them invest some time and money into stopping SOPA. Making a statement is one thing, but money is speech these days and they can afford better lobbyists than we can.
The anti-SOPA movement is going to view this as a major win, which may distract from the bigger issue.
Sure, they don't overtly claim to support this law - but their actions after the fact shall really show whats going on inside.
Anyone recall when Earthlink was the only company to refuse to comply with allowing Carnivore boxes in its network?
Even though Earthlink, as a Scientologist founded provider, already had an internal policy of scanning all the traffic on their network to begin with.)
When the government shows up and wants something, very few companies refuse to comply. Even when they do not support the actions of the government.
We should be standing up to those companies as well - but we tend to forget quickly.
Nobody stood up to AT&T when they spied on EVERYONE for the crooks in DHS/NSA/CIA.
The reality is though that AT&T is far less of a public-facing company with a much more locked-in customer base. It's very easy to switch away from a company like GoDaddy and they know it.
Doesn't that kind of imply that GoDaddy is less than concerned about the rights of domain owners? Guilty until proven innocent, I guess.
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2011/11/strange-bedf...
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20111115/09233216778/ron-pa...
PR matters a lot to companies, if general population shows this kind of activism, SOPA can be defeated. Good luck US, the rest of the world is waiting for you to nip this censorship in the bud before it spreads like the virus in Resident Evil movies.
Getting the public and Congress educated on the realities of information value is a painfully slow process. However, as the wave finally crests I think our grandchildren will look back on this and say "Wow, you all really thought some weird things." (of course they will likely think that anyway but still)
This company just reeks of clunkiness and tackiness. As keeps being mentioned, I can't believe tech-savvy, well-informed, well-educated people (e.g. YC founders) could go on godaddy.com, see their marketing material ("Go Daddy Girl (R)" ... what?!), their interface etc., and still go ahead and give them money.
May I suggest the next target? Comcast and the other cable providers. We should threaten to cancel our cable service unless they stop supporting SOPA. Obviously they will not do this, so we should actually cancel our cable subscriptions!
I'm glad Go-Daddy changed his mind. Now, this was just one battle, the war is not over! Let's stop when SOPA is no more, let's stop when we can decide what's best for all of us!
Go Daddy wouldn't be my first choice for who I want representing the internet to the government.
"While it’s nice that they changed their stance (publicly, at least), you’ve got to ask yourself: do you want to continue throwing money at a company blind enough to support SOPA in the first place?"
GoDaddy doesn't vote on legislation. I'm sending letters to my representatives right now pointing out the backlash and about face that GoDaddy has done.
It needs to be someone visible to whom we can send a very clear message, quite quickly.
Yeah right.
Maybe if we focusing on Congress.
Maybe if we stop focusing on SOPA supporters.
Maybe if we focus on the media industries that are pushing SOPA through.
Maybe if we boycott them and their entertainment products.
Maybe they will recoil, just like GoDaddy.
Maybe.
"Boycotts do not work."
If they do that, perhaps I'll consider staying with them.
Backing down from a position they had such strong convictions in only makes them look like more of a rat.
They have no honor and now they no longer have my business.
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.
Just looking out for their bottom line, I'm sure.
This just shows what a couple thousand mobilized, highly motivated geeks can do in six hours. HN is solely responsible for this. Imagine if the top-ten stories for the day on this board were about the conditions at Apple's factories in China. Or the massacres going on in Syria, for that matter. Something more important than whether that elephant-murdering bastard is a 99%, or a 100% asshole.
But, credit where it's due, this isn't the first time I've noticed a shift in public perception within 24-48 hours of a major HN freakout. I won't say how much money I've made buying or selling based on watching this phenomenon -- not a ton -- but it's recently been more than I make at my day job. It's a shame Godaddy's not publicly traded, or we could've all had some fun with it.
This is the place where the people who man the engines spend their time. And when the engineers are pissed, shit breaks. Never mind that engineers are just as often wrong as everybody else, just think of HN articles as events that bubble, and figure out if they're going to be ignored or not by the larger program.
I love HN. But that statement is myopic and over the top. I believe that Reddit started the discussion on a boycott. At the very least, much discussion took place there.
I don't think it would have the same effect. Go Daddy is immensely reliant on the decisions of a handful of tech-savvy people. It's easy to move a domain, which hurts their bottom line. (for example, there was an effort made by some redditors to try to convince Wikipedia to move away from Go Daddy)
If everyone who visited HN stopped buying Apple products, it would be a blip (if that) on their revenue. While I wish it were that easy, I think Go Daddy is a special case.
I don't like the factory conditions in China, either, but neither do I like seeing Apple getting the brunt of the criticism.
Several communities worked together, such as the tech blogosphere, Reddit, and other social media. Although HN may be the birthplace of the idea to boycott Godaddy, its hardly just HN being responsible.
I'm relatively sure the idea started on reddit too.[1][2]
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[1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3381822
[2]: http://www.reddit.com/r/politics/comments/nmnie/godaddy_supp...
this.
