Joel Olson
13 years ago
On December 22, 2011, a thread[119] was started on the social news website
Reddit discussing the identity of supporters of the US Stop Online Piracy Act
(SOPA), which included Go Daddy. Go Daddy subsequently released additional
statements supporting SOPA. A boycott and transfer of domains was proposed. This
quickly spread across the Internet, gained support, and was followed by a
proposed Boycott Go Daddy day on December 29, 2011.[120] One strong supporter of
this action was Cheezburger CEO Ben Huh, who threatened that the organization
would remove over 1,000 domains from Go Daddy if they continued their support of
SOPA.[121] Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales also announced that all Wikipedia
domains would be moved away from Go Daddy as their position on SOPA was
"unacceptable".[122] After a brief campaign on Reddit, imgur owner Alan Schaaf
transferred his domain from Go Daddy.[123]
Go Daddy pulled its support for SOPA on December 23, releasing a statement
saying "Go Daddy will support it when and if the Internet community supports
it."[124][125] Later that day, CEO Warren Adelman couldn't commit to changing Go
Daddy's position on the record in Congress when asked, but said "I'll take that
back to our legislative guys, but I agree that's an important step."[126] when
pressed, he said "We're going to step back and let others take leadership
roles."[126] He felt that the public statement removing their support would be
sufficient for now, though further steps would be considered. Further outrage
was due to the fact that many Internet sites and domain registrars would be
subject to shutdowns under SOPA, but GoDaddy is in a narrow class of exempted
businesses that would have immunity, where many other domain operators would
not.[127]
On December 25, 2011 (Christmas Day), Go Daddy lost a net 16,191 domains as a
result of the boycott.[128] However, on December 29 (the day of the proposed
boycott), Go Daddy gained a net of 20,748 domains, twice as many as it lost that
day.[129][130]
On December 26, 2011, a Google bomb was started against Go Daddy to remove them
from the #1 place on Google for the term "Domain Registration" in retaliation
for supporting SOPA.[131] This was then disseminated through Hacker News.[132]
On September 10, 2012, GoDaddy was shut down completely. A self-proclaimed
member of the hacktivist group Anonymous took responsibility for shutting down
GoDaddy along with all GoDaddy serviced websites.[133] This claim was disputed
by Wagner, who stated that the isolated incident was due to internal mistakes
that lead to corrupt data tables. Wagner stood by the quality of GoDaddy's
infrastructure, citing a 99.999% uptime[134]. Parts of his claims were
disputable as the nearly 6-hour downtime would suggest that GoDaddy had been in
operation for approximately 70 years when the statement was released.
Reddit discussing the identity of supporters of the US Stop Online Piracy Act
(SOPA), which included Go Daddy. Go Daddy subsequently released additional
statements supporting SOPA. A boycott and transfer of domains was proposed. This
quickly spread across the Internet, gained support, and was followed by a
proposed Boycott Go Daddy day on December 29, 2011.[120] One strong supporter of
this action was Cheezburger CEO Ben Huh, who threatened that the organization
would remove over 1,000 domains from Go Daddy if they continued their support of
SOPA.[121] Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales also announced that all Wikipedia
domains would be moved away from Go Daddy as their position on SOPA was
"unacceptable".[122] After a brief campaign on Reddit, imgur owner Alan Schaaf
transferred his domain from Go Daddy.[123]
Go Daddy pulled its support for SOPA on December 23, releasing a statement
saying "Go Daddy will support it when and if the Internet community supports
it."[124][125] Later that day, CEO Warren Adelman couldn't commit to changing Go
Daddy's position on the record in Congress when asked, but said "I'll take that
back to our legislative guys, but I agree that's an important step."[126] when
pressed, he said "We're going to step back and let others take leadership
roles."[126] He felt that the public statement removing their support would be
sufficient for now, though further steps would be considered. Further outrage
was due to the fact that many Internet sites and domain registrars would be
subject to shutdowns under SOPA, but GoDaddy is in a narrow class of exempted
businesses that would have immunity, where many other domain operators would
not.[127]
On December 25, 2011 (Christmas Day), Go Daddy lost a net 16,191 domains as a
result of the boycott.[128] However, on December 29 (the day of the proposed
boycott), Go Daddy gained a net of 20,748 domains, twice as many as it lost that
day.[129][130]
On December 26, 2011, a Google bomb was started against Go Daddy to remove them
from the #1 place on Google for the term "Domain Registration" in retaliation
for supporting SOPA.[131] This was then disseminated through Hacker News.[132]
On September 10, 2012, GoDaddy was shut down completely. A self-proclaimed
member of the hacktivist group Anonymous took responsibility for shutting down
GoDaddy along with all GoDaddy serviced websites.[133] This claim was disputed
by Wagner, who stated that the isolated incident was due to internal mistakes
that lead to corrupt data tables. Wagner stood by the quality of GoDaddy's
infrastructure, citing a 99.999% uptime[134]. Parts of his claims were
disputable as the nearly 6-hour downtime would suggest that GoDaddy had been in
operation for approximately 70 years when the statement was released.